anderson architecture and interiors

Project Funway

Designers often fall in love with the job. 
Less often with the client.

Lisa Marie Hart Current Digital, Home & Design, Real Estate

anderson architecture and interiors

Stanley Anderson needed to incorporate several “quirky” items that were meaningful to his client, JB Harrison, in a project that eventually became Anderson’s home, too. In the playful living area, a 12-foot marlin that Harrison caught in his youth is mounted on “Swim” wall panels by modularArts. The wood shuffleboard game table below is designed and handmade in Southern California by District Mills. A shag rug from Flooring Innovations adds texture to a conversation area comprised of Fritz Hansen Jacobsen Egg Chairs, a Richard Schultz Petal Side Table, and Tato Poufs by Baleri Italia around a low table. The Cactus Tatino Pouf is also by Baleri Italia, and the floor lamp is Fortuny. The color palette for the room emerges from the Broken Neverland triptych by artist Paul Richmond.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAN CHAVKIN

When a project throws a curveball, designers meet the challenge. 

“The interesting wrinkle to this home at Seven Lakes [Country Club] is that I designed it for JB Harrison, my partner, before we realized we were meant to be together,” says architect and interior designer Stanley Anderson. “Yes, I crossed the client–architect line.”

A remodel that kicked off with Anderson designing the spaces solely for his client morphed into blending his own design aesthetic with that of his partner’s. 

Per Anderson’s process, he began with the standard design, documentation, and construction phases. His projects typically include architecture, interior architecture, furnishings, art, and accessories. This project encompassed all but the first.

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Stanley Anderson

“We developed the plan and the changes to the interior architectural layouts first, then layered the color and material selections on top of that architectural framework,” he explains. “We identified the furnishings layouts and optional selections. Key existing and new art pieces were identified so the lighting layout could be developed. All of this happens in a couple of meetings with iterations and changes based on the feedback given.”

Everything was going swimmingly, even the incorporation of the marlin Harrison had caught as a teen in Hawaii and a 12-foot-long shuffleboard table. “It was all about making the space for my client, without a thought that I would be moving in someday,” Anderson says.

When the time was right, Anderson easily pivoted to merge his own furnishings and artwork into the new space he had created specifically, and unknowingly, for his future partner. “For the most part, it was seamless,” he says. “Many of the pieces selected and purchased during the design and procurement process I would have selected for myself. And the interior was flexible enough aesthetically to accommodate my modern furnishings.”

Anderson says his architectural training and practice has always revolved around an intense collaboration between himself, the client, and the contractors, consultants, and reps involved in the process of design.

“I really try to get to know my clients and their unique needs and desires and make the home their own expression of themselves to the world.” In this case, it’s a shared expression.

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