Painting in Primary Colors: Bright, Simple Interior Design by the Esteemed Pedro Gadanho
As this unusual residence by Pedro Gadanho (images by Fernando Guerra) reveals, complexity does not have to mean using unusual colors or complex color schemes – highlighting already-unusual architectural elements in primary colors calls out the function of each place and the connections between internal spaces.
Inspired by Pop Art and the Transformers, Gadanho gives an incredibly life to the various geometries that come together to form this interior living-and-dining set of spaces. Red, the color of passion, takes residents to the master bedroom. A mellower blue connects the living area to the kitchen.
So what drove this angular and offbeat design? The family within is not quite nuclear: it consists, instead, of a father and his children. And what does that mean for the home’s design? That it must double as a kind of bachelor pad and a playful set of spaces for the kids – a combination of single adult and child aesthetics and functions.
Once one moves beyond the common areas, too, the colors dwindle in favor of a more light and bright white for personal spaces (such as bedrooms) that are more designed for rest and relaxation
“The man whose head in fact exploded captured the meager and eager attention of local and regional sensationalist tabloids in the early eighties. He was an unbeknownst artist, until he alleged that he had been a minimalist, a conceptualist and a pop artist, all simultaneously, and before their due time. His wonderful and frightening story gained him a place in the history of alternative pop music around 1982. As the song that immortalized him went, the scriptwriter would follow him around, the soap opera writer would follow him around, and use his jewels for t.v. prime time.”
“As he confided to his pub companion Jim Ballard, by the age of 12 he asked his father to build him a giant version of the pills he took for epilepsy so as to remind him of ever-eminent seizures. This he installed in one corner of his room, later to be converted in one of his many custom-made toilets. The expanded object was cast against a large polyhedral suitcase that he used as a fit-in-wardrobe-cum-miniature-museum for his earlier sculptural upshots. This was the beginning of a strange universe that unfurled inside an otherwise unremarkable late 19th century townhouse.”
“People passed the street where his house anonymously sat and remained unaware of the strange experiences conducted inside. He made large things that he installed in manically chosen spots according to his growing imaginary needs. He duplicated stairwells and created whole new floors. He excavated new underground rooms and created a thin, long swimming pool. He turned rooms into amphitheaters that would then be transformed in libraries. He converted empty elevator shafts into monstrous one-string guitars. He replicated spaces into ghostly, endless perspectives.”
