Minimalist Interiors: Why They Work – and What Maximalists Think They’re Missing

THE MINIMALIST: Sarah Susman, architect 

My husband and I are both architects. We’ve always been plain in our aesthetic. I love white spaces with lots of light. Life is complicated enough, so it’s nice to come home to something simple. Sometimes, when I walk into a maximalist home, I get a sense of overload.

We were working in Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and when we came back to London, we found this house in Islington. It was Georgian and we liked the proportions. We could only afford a doer-upper, but this was even worse than that. It was in horrible condition and had been converted into two flats. So we stripped everything out, painted it white and got the floors done. That was our canvas.

The funny thing is, my husband, Mark, and I almost did it without discussion. We were always on the same page. We didn’t have much money, but that wasn’t the driving force for the way the house looked. We just like uncluttered space. And a bit of training doesn’t go amiss: you don’t meet many maximalist architects. Form, function, space and light – clutter can get in the way of that. You spend the rest of your life trying to make things as simple as they possibly can be.

Ours is an easy space to live in. We don’t have a lot of stuff, compared to most people. We don’t have knickknacks.

I’ve had visitors in here who have asked if we’ve just moved in. But the upside of that is that you always know what you have, so you use it. If you’ve got loads of things, you can’t find what you need.

You do have to be rigorous. Over the years you amass things, so you need to keep an eye on the amount you have and where it is. But that becomes a way of life – it’s just different from most other people’s. I wasn’t brought up with lots of toys. But books were important.

In terms of furniture, we’ve gone for a mix of midcentury and contemporary: Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman, B&B Italia bed, B&B Italia sofa, Jacobsen Egg chair. When we moved in, we had no furniture on the ground floor – apart from a gallery bench from SCP. It wasn’t terribly comfortable.

We don’t have a lot of paintings, but the ones we do have are important to us. And we’ve got the space and the background to be able to see them. One piece I’m fond of – it’s very simple – is a drawing of a cow. It’s just black and white.

Maximalist spaces can be characterful, but I often think: “What a nightmare to keep clean.” I imagine that there’s a lot of curating you need to do with a place like that. If you have too much, it just looks a mess, as if you’ve just dumped everything. I like to keep things plain and simple.

THE MAXIMALIST: Alice Cicolini, jewellery designer

I would certainly call myself a maximalist, 100 per cent. I used to say that too much is never enough for me. One of my defining features as a jewellery designer is a love of pattern and colour, and that extends from my work into my home. It’s all around me.

When I look at a minimalist’s home, it’s a bit like: “Where’s all your stuff?” I feel like they’re afraid of showing people who they really are. I want to show people beautiful things because beauty is so important. And as a design historian, I need things that tell stories – so the absence of things is telling a story too.

When I visit a maximalist home, I know who lives there instantly, because they’ve surrounded themselves with, well, themselves. They’re not afraid of who they are. I imagine it’s easier to be in a stripped-back environment because you don’t have to live with yourself. I need to see things in order to absorb them into my life. But sometimes I wish it wasn’t such a mess.

I bought my apartment in Omega Works in east London without seeing it. I was at an airport in America when the agent called, so I dispatched a designer friend to look at it. He was convinced it was a great place and I trust him implicitly. It’s now a four-bedroom loft with three bathrooms – that’s a lot of space to fill.

I grew up in a house full of beautiful things: books and paintings, William Morris wallpaper and colourful fabrics. My parents were obsessed with the Victorians. A lot of my stuff I inherited from them.

One of my favourite things is my dad’s desk – he died when I was six weeks old, so then it became my mum’s. Now it’s both of them rolled into one object. It’s heavy, dark wood, with scrolly handles – and I live in a modern loft apartment. One of the things I learnt from working with [the designer] Tom Dixon was that style is often a combination of old and new. My desk is one of the few things that does that job in one.

One of my most treasured possessions is a huge piece by Desmond Lazaro, who is a friend I made in India. It’s a picture of Shrinathji, who’s a Rajasthani version of Krishna. I also love my Tom Dixon paper star lights. They mean something because I worked for him at an important time in my life. And I know what it takes to make them.

There’s something about the creative mind that needs things around it. It’s archival. You’re collecting for yourself as a person, but you’re collecting as a practitioner too. It’s also about what you put next to each other and why. 

Do I ever wish I had less stuff? No, but I sometimes wish I had a few more cupboards.

Alice Cicolini