Holidays At The Mansion
November 2012
In October 2012, our class was assigned a special project in which we would break off into our own groups and design a themed room for the local Barnes-Hiscock Mansion on James Street in Syracuse, New York. This was the first year our program at Syracuse University was invited to participate, so it was very exciting for us. Working with my partner, Meghan Thomas, we designed a festive "Winter Wonderland" room for the current dining room of the mansion. Our goal was to create the feeling of walking through a snow covered forest using white and metallic as our colors and providing a variety of texture, so that our design would work in harmony with the current pink walls and elaborate ceiling in the space.
After drawing up our design, which we had about a week and a half to come up with, I created a few hand-drawn renderings, and Meghan created models to accompany them for an in-class Pin-Up. This was not an ordinary pin-up however, because after pitching our designs, the entire class had to vote on their top 3 favorites, and the winning design would be the one constructed for the show at the mansion. Much to our pleasant surprise Meghan and I won the class vote and we got to work on bringing our winter wonderland to life!
As we went through the process of purchasing materials and constructing our planters, we found we had to alter our original design by removing the columns because we found that there was no feasible way to construct them on our small budget (and we really tried thinking of every option we had too!) The entire process of construction was a stressful one. Both my partner and I found ourselves to be doing about 90% of the work to get this project done, and investing a lot of our own free time into making sure everything was executed correctly (our Halloween was spent making Christmas) especially since we only had about 2 or 3 weeks of time to get everything done and set up at the mansion after the initial vote.
Once the day finally came to set up, everything came together better than we had hoped, although we were both worried at first. After our classmates and professor had left the mansion after the initial set up, Meghan and I spent the rest of the day perfecting and adding finishing touches to the interior up until only an hour until their grand opening! However, once it grew dark outside, and we turned the lights on, it was extremely satisfying to step back and appreciate how well all of our hard work came together.
These photos are from our initial tour of the mansion at the beginning of the project. Although the original use for this room was a formal living room, it was currently being used as a dining room for events held at the mansion.
Original sketches from our Winter Wonderland design. These were column ideas that we presented to the class. Planters and one of the 3 columns shown were originally going to be used in tandem, but eventually the design changed to only needing the planters.
These are the hand-drawn renderings I created for the pin-up to sell our design to the class and the "snow balls" were turned into models that Meghan created. By keeping the color scheme to white and metallic with more emphasis on a variety of textures we were able to marry the original finishes of the interior to our design beautifully.
These are the hand-drawn renderings I created for the pin-up to sell our design to the class and the "snow balls" were turned into models that Meghan created. By keeping the color scheme to white and metallic with more emphasis on a variety of textures we were able to marry the original finishes of the interior to our design beautifully.
Finally, we have photos from the final product! Many of these were taken on the day we finished the project about an hour before the Holidays at the Mansion event opened. Of course, photos cannot capture the true atmosphere of how it felt to walk through the space.
Our Winter Wonderland room was the very first room that guests to Holidays at the Mansion walked through as they began their tour of the building. We were told that opening night there were even carolers in the room!
Our Winter Wonderland room was the very first room that guests to Holidays at the Mansion walked through as they began their tour of the building. We were told that opening night there were even carolers in the room!
We received many compliments on our design throughout the time it was set-up at the mansion, perhaps because of how contemporary and unique it was in comparison to many of the traditional interior designs used in all of the other rooms. At the end of the show our planters were even purchased by a local woman to be displayed at the Everson Museum of Arts' Festival of Trees which occurred at the beginning of December.
This board was created by one of the women who worked the Holidays at the Mansion. It describes the process of how we got from point A to point B for this project, and also includes my initial sketches (which I was lucky to have on hand when we were setting up. Thank god I had my laptop on me!)
A photograph of our room even showed up in the local newspaper! This screen grab is from the Syracuse Post Standard's website, which can be found by clicking the link below:
Holidays at the Mansion: The Post Standard
Holidays at the Mansion: The Post Standard
