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" &amp;quot;American style has always looked to the past,&amp;quot; says David Easton, an architect and interior designer who has put his own spin on classic English decor. While Easton has built his share of Georgian manors, including one that famously featured 45 rooms, his own taste is constantly evolving. He and his longtime partner, the artist James Steinmeyer, have traded their uptown Manhattan apartment for a Flatiron district loft and swapped their Hudson Valley home, Balderbrae, with its oak-beamed ceilings and English gardens, for a modernist house in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Easton has now set his sights on building himself a prefab house in Quebec. Whether traditional or modern, says Easton, a well-designed space should make you &amp;quot;feel what the Germans call gem\u00FCtlich: a sense of comfort that pleases.&amp;quot; Education \u2022 I&amp;#039;m known for traditional design, but I studied architecture in the early 1960s in New York at the Pratt Institute, where it was all about modernism and the Bauhaus. When I graduated, I applied for a Fontainebleau scholarship\u2014a three-month course of study at the palace in France. After meeting with the judging committee, one of them approached me and said, &amp;quot;Here&amp;#039;s my card\u2014call me when you get back.&amp;quot; He turned out to be Edward J. Wormley, the great modernist furniture designer. I worked for him for three years when I got back from Europe. \u2022 I first met Albert Hadley at a picnic. He hired me to work at Parish-Hadley, and I was suddenly thrown into traditional. Over the years, that&amp;#039;s what most clients have asked me for, but I have occasionally done modern projects. I find myself heading more and more in that direction. Time of Change \u2022 I&amp;#039;ve designed many Georgian houses, but I don&amp;#039;t think we&amp;#039;ll be building them 50 years from now. Classical architecture is wonderful, but I&amp;#039;m guessing we&amp;#039;ll move away from it. Younger generations want something quieter, less noticeable, simpler. \u2022 We&amp;#039;ve already seen such change from the way I grew up. People are now constantly in motion. Technology lets us be everywhere at once. I worked on an apartment for the chairman of Sony. His engineers told me that in the future we will walk into a space and have it become what we need or desire. It will intuitively satisfy us, emotionally and intellectually. I think it&amp;#039;s exciting. Received Wisdom \u2022 Vitruvius wrote that the basics of architecture are &amp;quot;commodity, firmness, and delight.&amp;quot; Thousands of years later, I believe that this still holds true. To me, the idea of commodity means that a home should reflect the people who live there and how they want to use it. Firmness is architecture that is well built and detailed. Delight is charm. Think of a room with Chinese wallpaper, or Frank Lloyd Wright&amp;#039;s Fallingwater, which is the perfect synthesis of indoors and outdoors. No one has ever surpassed Fallingwater. That&amp;#039;s delight. Essentials \u2022 I believe in having one large room in a home. Yes, you need a little office and a bedroom, but all those rooms ad infinitum? I find those houses so boring. You don&amp;#039;t use most of the rooms. I much prefer a single, large room; I&amp;#039;ll put a table in the center for focus, and then have several seating groups. \u2022 Every room needs a fireplace and a view. \u2022 Red is my favorite color, but I use it as an accent. I prefer a quieter background\u2014stone, cream, greige, gray. It&amp;#039;s calming. \u2022 I don&amp;#039;t believe in curtains anymore. I like an edited simplicity. The simpler things are, the less I feel the need to change them. Inspiration \u2022 Wanderlust: I have it. I&amp;#039;ve been to Tibet, Bhutan, China, Australia, South Africa, and India. I bring a lot of things back. I used a group of textiles I found in my travels as inspiration for a new line of outdoor fabrics for Lee Jofa. But the most important thing is the frisson of learning about another place. \u2022 There won&amp;#039;t be any design rules in the future. They don&amp;#039;t even exist anymore today. The goal is to choose\u2014emotively and functionally\u2014what you need. To find what delights you. I no longer think it has to have a cabriole leg on it. Who needs gilding? Click here to see the gallery for &amp;quot;David Easton on Evolving Taste.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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