House Interiro Design

Design on a grand scale

Liliana Korn Custy was only 16 when her act of independent thinking became a harbinger of her future career.

Her family was moving to a larger condo in the Recoleta area of Buenos Aires when she insisted on radically changing the look of her bedroom from her parents’ French style taste to the clean contemporary style she saw in the Italian magazine, La Mia Casa.

“I told our designer I wanted white furniture with the only color coming from a big Eames chair and stool in burgundy leather,” the North Miami Beach architect and interior designer said. “I found a Pucci rug in burgundy, blue and light green. It cost $30,000 then, but my father agreed.”

Custy, whose expertly cut blonde hair resembles the perfect bob of Vogue’s Anna Wintour, was confused at first about what career path to follow because she loved writing, art and architecture. Growing up in Argentina, she had a broad education that included all her loves.

“My father told me: ‘Writing is a hobby. Art is a hobby. Architecture is a profession.’ ”

And what a rewarding profession it has been. Custy, 56, can expertly oversee everything from construction and design of a 16,000-square-foot Georgian-style house near Buenos Aires, to designing a 7,000-square-foot penthouse triplex in Oceania Tower V in Sunny Isles Beach. Last year she was awarded the American Society of Interior Designers’ Joel Polsky Academic Achievement Award for her outstanding master’s research project, “Transdisciplinary Teams and Aging-in-Place Design: The Interior Designer’s Role.” When former Architectural Digest editor Paige Rense and her staff came to South Florida in 2008, Custy’s work was lauded as one of the top five in an open audition.

Custy is far more than just a designer. She became an architect, general contractor and general project manager with expertise in everything from plumbing to electrical work at age 23.

“I really enjoy going to job sites; places tell you what they want to be,” she said.

A young, attractive woman in a man’s world, she often was whistled at and taunted by male construction workers. She has always loved fashion and remembers the mistake of wearing a knit, pleated mini skirt at a job site. A gust of wind picked up the skirt a la Marilyn Monroe’s famed scene in . The men reacted with whistles and cat calls, but she kept walking.

House Interior Design Styles and Home Interior Designs Ideas | My ...

More than practically any other outward manifestation, house interior design styles can be seen to reflect the world in which they were created. Examined carefully, they will reveal much about the economic state of the people, their aspirations, major scientific developments and even the movement of populations. It is perhaps this fact, together with the amazing standard of craftsmanship and artistry that was displayed so many years ago in early home interior designs, that explains our fascination with traditional house interior design styles.

Researching a particular house interior design style can be a stimulating process in itself. It can involve visits to museums, libraries, historical homes and even trips abroad. A book, play or film might prompt interest in a specific era and involvement with a local historical society could provide valuable background information on the interior design styles you eventually settle on.

The words ‘authentic’ and ‘pure’ are often bandied about fairly indiscriminately when describing historical styles. But just as perfectly matched colors can result in a rather boring scheme, so, by being fanatical about a particular period or style, you may be in danger of creating an house interior design style that is totally predictable and rather lacking in character. Feel free, then, to be creative and, every now and then, to interject an element of surprise or an item from outside the period perimeters. Colors, too, can be liberally interpreted as they were in the past when paints would have been mixed by individual decorators.

Historically, rooms were very much allowed to evolve over the years rather than all the contents being put in place at one specific time and kept as a shrine to their year of birth. Your own modem home may feature an Art Deco wall light, a dressing table in the style of Mackintosh and a chair inspired by the popular designs of the 1950s. So long as the items have a design affinity, there is no reason why they should not be grouped together.

Few styles are entirely new – most borrow from an earlier age, the fashion of furnishings often generated by an influx of ideas from abroad and motifs stolen from a previous incarnation. Take Gothic style, for instance. This was first seen in the Middle Ages only to be revived again in the mid eighteenth century. In Victorian times, it once again became the people’s favorite – a phenomenon comparable on a smaller time scale to clothes fashions, when hemlines and shoulder pads vie for our attention in turn every decade or so.

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