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"View Slideshow\n\nMany a woman in New Orleans dreams of herself as the Queen of Comus or the Queen of Rex, riding some fabulous Mardi Gras float in a puff of tulle while the throng pays its respects. Marjorie Shushan would just as soon stay home. She is the Queen of Tranquillity every day of the year.\n\nIt&amp;#39;s a role that comes quite naturally to her, a role she has cultivated through her interior design practice in New York City, to which clients turn when they want urbane, overscale, monochromatic rooms with a profound sense of order and peacefulness. Marjorie Shushan has a way with beige that hasn&amp;#39;t been seen since the days of Van Day Truex. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;m very calm,&amp;quot; she says very calmly. &amp;quot;I have a strong hand.&amp;quot;\n\nNew Orleans is not a particularly beige place, but it has been her place since the age of 20. She was married there and raised two daughters there, and her connections still run deep. &amp;quot;All of us are aware of the New Orleans style,&amp;quot; she says of the city where walls often look like they&amp;#39;re weeping and mahogany sometimes looks like it&amp;#39;s breathing. &amp;quot;The houses in the French Quarter and the Garden District,&amp;quot; she adds, &amp;quot;were designed to be filled with French and English antiques.&amp;quot; She certainly has had her share over the years, and when she moved to this fourroom apartment, the sentimental favorites came along, though they were used in a way that New Orleans does not often see.\n\nShushan has a way with beige that hasn&amp;#39;t been seen since the days of Van Day Truex.\n\nTo pay a call on the Queen of Tranquillity, you ride the grinding old streetcar up St. Charles Avenue, past Polymnia, past Euterpe\u2014no city ever gave its streets more romantic names\u2014to the beginning of the Garden District. The car leaves you in front of an immense redbrick apartment building that&amp;#39;s rather prosaic, and you quickly understand why designers are different from other people.\n\n&amp;quot;I knew immediately that it had potential,&amp;quot; Shushan says of her apartment. &amp;quot;Although it was plain and boxlike, with no architectural details, it was located exactly where I wanted to live, and there was an adjoining rooftop that could be converted to a terrace. I could visualize breaking through the exterior walls and creating my own garden with French doors opening onto it.&amp;quot; It took no special courage; she saw it all in her head, just like that. Four months later the interiors were done, and after another six months of permits and roofing issues, the terrace was ready to receive. That&amp;#39;s very Shushan: She&amp;#39;s decisive, and she keeps things moving along.\n\n&amp;quot;The apartment&amp;#39;s biggest problems were its small windows and rough ceilings, typical of the time the building was constructed,&amp;quot; the designer says. &amp;quot;My curtain treatments were designed to camouflage and change the proportions of the windows.&amp;quot; It&amp;#39;s the defining trick of the apartment, like a good haircut correcting too high a forehead. Those squat, horizontal windows seemed to double in height when Shushan hung bamboo shades from the ceiling, while the silk draperies added a soft frame that makes the windows important. To eliminate the rough ceiling texture, drywall was applied. &amp;quot;It lowered the ceiling height by two inches,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;but the result was very favorable.&amp;quot;\n\nThe other great metamorphosis was the terrace. &amp;quot;Any space, exterior or interior, must be considered part of a project,&amp;quot; says Shushan, who worked with landscape architect Jeffery Amann. &amp;quot;A terrace starts as a negative space, so we must first build a shell with a variety of textures. It was important to have a balance of shaded and sunny areas, with a minimum amount of furniture and maintenance, while keeping the fabulous view of downtown New Orleans and the Superdome.&amp;quot;\n\nThe terrace&amp;#39;s few bold strokes are unmistakably Shushan: a floor of stone pavers, a wood sculpture, a banquette outlined with neatly clipped boxwood, a stone table under a pergola planted with wisteria. And, this being the South, azaleas and hibiscus. In New York the designer lives in a Miesian glass box, sealed tight, so this terrace is a great luxury. &amp;quot;My entertaining is done mostly outdoors,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;On Sunday I often invite friends to come by at the end of the afternoon for cocktails. This usually leads to my cooking an informal dinner for anyone who chooses to stay.&amp;quot; The cooking is done in a sleek, tawny kitchen that Shushan also designed, though it looks like it was designed by Herm\u00E8s.\n\nNew Orleans can be lazy, or sultry, or melancholy, but it isn&amp;#39;t often tranquil. &amp;quot;In order to create a peaceful feeling, I like to keep my color schemes monochromatic,&amp;quot; Shushan says. &amp;quot;Since this apartment is smaller than my customary projects, I used the same color throughout. Color continuity is very important to me. Shades of the same colors, or complementary colors, should flow from one room to another. So it really makes no difference whether I use the color beige or red.&amp;quot;\n\nA cream-on-cream interior can quickly fall flat, but Shushan is a master of this particular souffl\u00E9. Sit in her living area awhile, with that great expanse of creamy carpet and the plump chairs curling this way and that, and see how many textures you can find: silk, bamboo, cane and stone; the varnish on an old globe; the reed of an Indonesian trunk; and a dozen different medium-to-dark woods. Barley-twist floor lamps on either side of the sofa catch your eye, as do the swooping mahogany Regency dining chairs and the two tiny candle sconces paired with a giant round mirror.\n\n&amp;quot;Color continuity is important to me. Shades of the same colors, or complementary colors, should flow from one room to another.&amp;quot;\n\nStep into the bedroom, and you&amp;#39;ll wish you had big iron trays on top of tailored box-pleated skirts on either side of your own bed. And everywhere you look, there is art\u2014strong, contemporary art. &amp;quot;I love every piece of art that I have,&amp;quot; Shushan says, &amp;quot;but if I had to choose my favorites, they would be the paintings by my daughter Alexa&amp;quot;\u2014big, powerful splashes of red.\n\nOf course, the real secret to interiors like these is knowing when to stop. Somehow, some way, Marjorie Shushan always knows when that moment comes. And that&amp;#39;s when the Queen of Tranquillity can really relax."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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