In a home architecturally rooted in tradition, designer Christine Markatos Lowe has spent two decades setting the scene for a family to blossom and grow. The ongoing interiors project has evolved along the course of the ever-changing lives and practices of the homeowners and their children, adapting to their tastes and lifestyles as they moved through the years together. “I had just started getting into this maximalist, layered design,” Markatos Lowe describes of the more recent decorative edits, noting her longtime client was right on board with the new direction.
In the early days of their collaboration, Markatos Lowe worked on the kitchen and family room, as well as setting up guest and children’s rooms in the 17,000-square-foot, Italianate-style home. But once the children were all of school age, the homeowners and designer began to really study the way the different spaces in the home were being used. Spaces for entertaining family and friends, and hosting events for charities and the children’s schools, were prioritized equally to the pleasures of everyday living. “This home really became a place for her community,” Markatos Lowe explains. “With that evolution, and the evolution of the family itself, the rooms and the functions of the rooms had to shift.”
Among those transitions were the morphing of a rarely used dining room into a screening room, the enclosing of a loggia to create a year-round entertaining space and the transformation of a family room into a salon, where the wife hosts friends for mahjong and dessert is often served for larger events. Antiques that have been with the homeowners since an earlier property in Malibu are peppered throughout the home and mix at every turn with items and decoration spanning centuries – from a Murano glass chandelier and hand-painted de Gournay wallpaper to a 15th-century chimneypiece and the custom-designed screen that adorns it.
“What I’ve been enjoying doing with all our design projects is this transitional idea … keeping this very traditional architecture and creating tension,” Markatos Lowe notes, pointing to her use of more modern fabric on antique furnishings and to the entry hall’s custom-designed contemporary table, the top for which is inset with a more traditional eglomise pattern. “We were working to juxtapose materials and silhouettes, and to keep it very moody and ethereal,” the designer reflects. “I believe the best homes are about experiences – what you feel as you move from room to room. This house truly captures that sense.”
Photography by Manolo Langis.
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