Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
A principal at Cannon Design, George Nikolajevich works large-scale—he’s most recently famous for bringing Cass Gilbert’s downtown beaux-arts masterpiece, the St. Louis Public Library, into the 21st century. But Nikolajevich focuses on elements that any home needs: a sense of welcome, smooth transitions, clear light, serenity, and surprise. We asked him to translate his ideas about contemporary architecture into a primer for home design.
What did you look for when you chose your first house?
Well, my wife was already buying it when we met. It’s a town house built around 1904, and over the years, people were cutting and pasting. We did a complete rehab, and the contractor went out of business in the middle of February with all the windows open.
How did you collaborate?
I did drawings; Sally looked at them and thought about colors, shapes, materials. She was a graphic designer, so she has great taste, and at the time I did not know much about American materials.
What was different?
In Europe, it’s concrete-block cement walls which, when you touch them, don’t sound hollow. This was drywall and wood. I thought that was interesting. It was fast. It was easy to change things.
Didn’t you miss the solidity?
No. Everything was so new to me that I didn’t dwell on the old country.
Define “forward-looking” architecture.
It’s not cluttered. It has natural light. It allows furniture and art to really make an impact because the rest is background. Spaces flow from one to another without destroying privacy. It has to be warm, thus the importance of materials and of departing from rigidity, softening the lines, introducing some elements of the past. One has to be careful about any kind of orthodoxy.
What matters most to you in your own home?
Space and light. We added skylights, and we moved the walls to open up the light east-west. It’s all modern, contemporary tones, a lot of white and soft gray, with medium-dark wood and a dark green tile for the fireplace. It’s not exaggerated in any way.
What’s wrong with a little exaggeration?
One has to be very careful—one learns this as one grows—not to succumb to trends. We live in the 21st century, in a country that looks forward—or should. But one has to be careful not to look at trends that have a short life. These trends are somebody else’s, not your own.
What were you sticklers about?
I don’t think we’re sticklers at all! The things that were most machinelike and precise—like the kitchen—were important to do right. The end of the kitchen was visible from the living room, and it had two really cheap closets. We needed practical elements, like a washing machine. It took me a while to find the right move. Now we have three double-frosted glass doors with soft light behind them. From the living room, guests think that something magical is behind those doors! But really, not.
What advice would you give someone building a house?
The more difficult a site it is—shape, position—the better, because out of difficulty comes discovery. The idea then becomes not only a practical solution but also a hopefully poetic and even surprising solution.
What are interesting sites?
In a city, a corner site, and preferably not the regular shape, can give you something really cool. Outside the city, topography. If it’s hilly, that gives you a nice opportunity. One form that’s interesting in residential is an L-shape, so from one wing of the house you see the other wing. And use architectural elements to integrate with the landscape. Porches and walls give more land use without building too much house.
You grew up in postwar Europe—after Bauhaus had its sway. How does that spirit translate to homes?
First, the house has to feel like a background to your life, rather than being in the way. Second, the use of natural light. Third, the quality of the space, the form just has to be found. And all of that must be done within economic and technical constraints.
Yet you’re not snobbish about architects being the only experts.
What people have built on farms and in small towns is amazing. Shaker architecture is stunningly modern, and Americans in small towns have the same instinct. Windows are beautiful and big—you can’t live with small windows. And there are always porches and terraces. That introduction to the house is very important. You don’t want it stark and forbidding.
What materials work here?
St. Louis is such a brick town that brick is almost unavoidable—but with some other materials mixed in, like concrete. You can’t mold the brick like you mold concrete. But the good part is its warmth. It’s an earthy material. No architect used brick better than Frank Lloyd Wright. He combines it with other materials, then designs the walls to have a relief, so the parts that stick out cast a shadow. Sun and shadow are given to us to take advantage of.
Does that sense of dimension and shadow work inside, too?
[A wary shrug.] If you carry too far the sculptural elements in the house, you can create projections and little cutesy elements that will start chopping up the space.
Why did contemporary architecture move away from ornament?
That’s a very good question because a lot of people have an innate interest in ornament. The last great architect who used it successfully was Louis Sullivan. Modernism, new industry, hygiene, industrial production—all of that resulted in removing the ornament. But there were architects in the 20th century who, in their own way, reintroduced it. Alvar Aalto would surround a round column with vertical wood strips painted indigo; Oscar Niemeyer would use tile and concrete and color; Frank Gehry would fold and play with the walls and roofs. Modern architects did not turn away from ornament per se; they turned away from ornament as known in the 19th century—applied, stuck on, often fussy.
What else in architecture grates on your nerves?
The massive amount of residential that is monotonous and conformist and repetitive. You don’t have to be an architect to say, “I want a house I don’t have trouble finding when I come home at night.” The analogy is the car industry—they started producing cars that were not very inspired. Used to be, when Steve McQueen drove a Ford Mustang, the whole world was looking at it. Americans don’t want banal cars. They were given to them. And I don’t know why. With the mass production in everything—everything—how do we achieve variety? It’s an important question.
Does all this sameness dull our spirit?
I am not trying to come off like a self-righteous modernist, but this is what I believe. We live in the 21st century. Let’s not repeat.
