Where there is a luxury real estate purchase, there is often a designer, and there is often an art collection — What can the industry, as a whole, learn from this?

Sometimes I find myself talking to two disparate audiences with conflicting priorities: designers and home furnishings manufacturers. One is focused on bespoke experiences for their clients and the other about moving products to the mass market. 

Those ahead of the curve, however; see things differently. For them, referring to ‘The Design Industry’ encompasses everything from furnishings and textiles to interior designers to architects to landscape architects to art procurement to real estate to consumer electronics, appliances and more. Everyone is united in home improvement, working synergistically to align their goals. Conversations between the trades are fluid. 

The real estate, interior design and fine art sectors, in particular, are experiencing correlated growth. Despite the cracks in the luxury market, where there is an upward trend, these three things are trending together.

High-end real estate buyers are often interested in art as a financial investment and this synergy is evident in collaborations between real estate agencies, designers and art curators, where art is not only used for staging but also offered as part of the property package.

Today we’re focusing on one specific aspect of the market: sculpture and, if we take into consideration how the trends trickle down or act as a mirror for trends in another sector: its broader implications for The Design Industry as a whole.

From sleek steel installations that integrate effortlessly with modern architecture to natural sculptures that complement their surroundings, Formed For is one of the industry leaders in the sculptural renaissance taking place. (Collectible design fairs are even adding outdoor categories to meet notable demand in the category)

Their curated collection is designed by industry experts Gavin and Kelley Brodin, whose backgrounds in interior design, art and real estate make it seamless for design professionals to create the perfect statement pieces for their projects. 

This week on Disruptive Design, I sat down with the Brodins to discuss their work and how it fits into this synergistic phenomena. Click play on the video below to watch the discussion and read on to uncover the macro trends they are a leading part of:

Investment in sculpture is part of two larger trends. One, which we’ve touched on, is the boom in tying art investments to real estate and interior design services (Which we’ve also written about here and here, from the curator’s point of view). The other macro trend is one of personalization and uniqueness. 

Synergy in sculpture, real estate and interior design is due to an increased demand for uniqueness

Beyond the luxury market, clients at every point on the spectrum are requesting more uniqueness and more custom – even in their hard materials, as discussed here with Texas-based contractor Simply Home. I’d like to emphasize her point about hard materials because the origin of the trend lies in there. 

For the past 30+ years, home owners have considered real estate as an investment to flip. Most clients have been hesitant to op’t for loud colors, patterns, and too custom of design outside of the ultra high end of the market. Instead, homes have been designed to sell, not to live in. Homes have been homogenized and neutral color palettes reigned supreme.  

But something is changing. Have you noticed the increase in client demand for wallpaper? More vendors offering Make-It-Yours programs to customize hardware and cabinet door finishes?

Say what you will about retailers offering “in-house design services” for $200 a year, but this, too, is a reaction to this trend. A demand for originality has hit both high and low ends of the market. 

Custom is king

In part, we have algorithmic social media feeds, Spotify Daylists, and Netflix queues to thank for this custom-and-on-demand consumer behavior. But it is not those things alone. What is happening within that content being consumed and is it a reflection or an escape from what is going on in the world? Are we all consuming exactly the same or entirely different material? Perhaps an exhaustion with those questions is driving our interior trends, how we create our private sanctuaries, namely wellness and sustainability.

Much has been written about the dominance of wellness and sustainability in interior trends and about millennials’ hesitancy around home ownership and having children despite being on track to become the wealthiest generation in history. They are asking: What will make me well? And what can be sustained?

Where they’ve been, where they are and where they are headed tracks along with the synergistic investment in real estate, interior design services and fine art as well as where their aesthetic and purchasing influences come from.  

Sustainability and wellness

A focus on sustainability, finances, and travel brought forth a booming second-hand market and a collectibles market. It changed the way people shop. It makes them question where things come from and how they are made.

There is an increased interest in materiality and process, and in minimalism in the pure sense of the word: what needs to be taken away to reveal what is necessary. I am describing, in measurable terms, how dollars are being spent and, in esoteric terms, a sculpture. To make sense of all of the seemingly conflicting data regarding luxury spending, think more like a sculptor.

As trend forecaster Patti Carpenter points out, sometimes when you study the data, the purchasing behavior runs counter to it. While a certain demographic may be afraid of the costs surrounding homeownership that doesn’t mean they aren’t investing in it. They are just spending differently. They are buying less but better.

A common complaint amongst interior design firms is that the client went over budget building the home. They went all-out during the construction process and have little left over for furniture. 

Something to note here is that the kinds of sculptures Formed For is producing for their clients are often made alongside the architect and designer, during the home building or renovation process, so if they are to be thought of separately from anything, it would be the furniture rather than the architecture. But they really shouldn’t be considered separate from any part of the process.

The holistic approach is entirely the point in the most thriving sectors of the industry ranging from the ultra high end like the Sheats Goldstein residence where the built-in concrete furniture is quite literally inseparable from the home’s architecture, and the New York co-op’s of a one-woman-shop designer like Deana Lenz who begin and end their process with collectible design pieces to projects with more modest budgets.

Consider the middle tier who are still hiring design services: These new homeowners are planning to stay put for much longer. They are buying homes they don’t love that need complete gut renovations. Because they plan to stay for a while, they are splurging on every customized aspect during the construction phase. 

This is fine news, for the design-build firms, the architects and contractors, for the manufacturers of appliances and hardware. This is fine news, for the second-hand furniture dealers and for mid-tier home furnishings companies (for now) so long as they’re in conversation with the other trades.

There is also still a booming market for the bespoke and things with cultural or speculative value like art and collectible design. 

What there isn’t room for is, in this client paradigm shift, is lower end furnishings and throw away art: things that will not last and will end up in a landfill. Clients do not want it and designers will not source it. To sell any products or services in the design industry means you have to tell a story — and the disposable is not part of the story. Nor is the impersonal.

To say that selling is storytelling verges on generic platitude, so to give it more form: The story to tell the client should be a true one. The story is one of process. It is about how something is made, by whom, and where it comes from. But perhaps most importantly, the client is the main character in that story and it is your job to sculpt it around them.