The six principles the firm uses to describe a home, from its shape to its garden.
The Design Fundamentals are the six principles Meridian Atelier uses to describe and design a home, plus The Feel of the result.
The six cover its shapes, surfaces, colors, light, architecture and garden. The Feel describes what the finished home is like to see, touch, hear and smell.
Each principle asks questions about a home, and each question has three named answers. The firm matches a client’s words to those answers; together, they point to a style.
What the client asked for
“I want it modern but not cold.”
What the firm reads in it
How is each piece built?
Monolithic & Seamless
One piece, with no visible joint or seam.
From “modern”
What is the surface like up close?
Soft & Hand-Formed
Smooth, yet gently uneven, like troweled plaster.
From “not cold”
Which way do the colors lean?
Warm-Leaning
Taken together, the colors lean toward red and yellow.
From “not cold”
How does the light fall?
Soft & Diffused
Light scattered or bounced before it reaches you, so shadows are gentle.
From “not cold”
The style it points to
One of the firm’s twelve complete styles, called Aesthetic Compositions
Organic Contemporary
It pairs seamless, one-piece forms with hand-finished surfaces and a warm palette.
What the client asked for
“I want it calm and uncluttered, with craftsmanship you can see.”
What the firm reads in it
How is each piece built?
Articulated & Detailed
Parts and joints left in view, like fine joinery.
From “craftsmanship you can see”
How bold is the pattern?
Minimal & Subtle
Quiet pattern that looks like texture from a distance.
From “uncluttered”
How strongly do the colors stand apart?
Tonal & Serene
Colors close in tone, with little contrast between them.
From “calm”
How does the light fall?
Soft & Diffused
Light scattered or bounced before it reaches you, so shadows are gentle.
From “calm”
The style it points to
One of the firm’s twelve complete styles, called Aesthetic Compositions
Japandi
It pairs visible joinery with quiet pattern and a palette of close, calm tones.
What the client asked for
“I want it classic and dramatic, with moldings, Persian rugs and chandeliers.”
What the firm reads in it
How is each piece built?
Ornamental & Intricate
Decoration beyond what the structure needs, such as carved moldings.
From “moldings”
How bold is the pattern?
Ornate & Complex
Intricate pattern, dense with detail, that rewards a close look.
From “Persian rugs”
How strongly do the colors stand apart?
Rich & Saturated
Deep colors set against pale ones, with strong contrast between them.
From “dramatic”
How much of the light fixture shows?
Decorative & Expressive
A fixture on show, chosen for its form, like a chandelier.
From “chandeliers”
The style it points to
One of the firm’s twelve complete styles, called Aesthetic Compositions
Transitional Classic
It pairs carved detail with intricate pattern and a palette of deep, contrasting colors.
None of these requests changes the house itself or its garden, so each needs only four of the six principles; the next chapter shows when the other two apply.
The six principles sit in four groups: Matter (shape, surface and color), Light, Architecture and Landscape. Which groups a project uses depends on the work it includes.
On every project
On nearly every project
The lighting the design adds to each room
When the house itself changes
New construction, an addition, or a remodel that moves walls or windows
When the work includes planting
The garden and its plants; a pool on its own needs only Matter and Light
On every finished design
What the finished home is like to see, touch, hear and smell
When a client returns for more work, the new work adds the groups it needs, and every earlier choice stands.
Each principle describes one aspect of a home and has its own page. Turn a card to see the principle drawn.
Matter is what makes up a design: the shape, the surface and the color of everything in the home.
Form & Geometry describes the shape of everything in a home, a dining table as much as the house itself. A table can be square or round, one solid slab or a visible frame, sharp-edged or softened.
What shape is it?How is it built?What are its edges like?
Pattern & Finish describes surfaces: the pattern they show, and their finish, which is their texture, their shine and how they age. The same marble, honed to a soft glow or polished to a mirror, keeps its pattern and changes its finish.
Where does the pattern come from?How is it laid out?How bold is it?How rough or smooth is the surface?How much does it shine?How does it age?
Color & Tone describes color: each color the firm uses, the palettes that combine them, and the color of the light. It also says how a palette looks as a whole: how pale, how warm and how bold.
Which family of palettes suits the client: The Calm (close, quiet tones), The Authentic (earthy, balanced tones) or The Drama (deep, high-contrast tones)?Which palette, and where does each color go?What color is the light?
Coming soon
The firm plans the lighting room by room; daylight from the windows comes under Architecture.
Light describes the lighting a design adds, room by room. A ceiling cove that hides its lamp and a chandelier on show are the two extremes of how much a fixture shows.
How bright should each room be?How does the light fall?How much of the light fixture shows?
That means new construction, an addition, or a remodel that moves walls or windows; even when nothing changes, the firm studies every house from its plans.
Architecture describes the house itself: its plan, its rooms and its openings. A kitchen open to the living room and a dining room behind its own doors are opposite ends of how open a plan can be.
How open is the plan?How tall are the rooms?How much daylight comes in?How much of daily life opens onto the outdoors?
Coming soon
The firm describes each plant by its shape, its pattern and its color, the way it describes any material or product.
Landscape describes the garden and the plants that fill it. Its layout can run from a formal garden of clipped hedges to a loose meadow.
How is the garden laid out?How close does the planting sit?How much of it is stone, and how much is plants?Which palette of plants fills it?
Coming soonThe Feel describes what a finished home is like to see, touch, hear and smell.
The firm assesses it on every finished design
It follows from the design itself, from its colors, light, materials and the size of its rooms, so nobody chooses it. Each style sets two targets: how its rooms should sound and how strongly they should smell; the firm checks every design against them.
An example room, not a finished project; the firm assessed it by eye from this picture.
How does the room look?
Sight has no measure of its own. It brings together four answers from Color & Tone and Light: how pale the colors are, how much they contrast, how bright the room is and how the light falls.
The colors are mid-toned and sit close together, the room is evenly and comfortably bright, and daylight falls softly from the windows.
No single measure combines how pale, how contrasted and how bright a room is, so the firm keeps the four answers side by side.
What are its surfaces like to the touch?
Touch has no measure of its own either. It brings together the texture and shine of each surface, from Pattern & Finish, and how warm each material is in the hand.
The plaster walls show a gentle hand-worked texture and, like the sofa and the rug, are matte; the oak floor is warm underfoot, the stone table cool to the hand.
Stone and metal draw heat from the hand faster than wood, leather or wool, so at the same room temperature they are cooler to the touch.
How does the room sound: hushed, good for conversation, or echoing?
The firm computes Sound from the design: how long a sound takes to fade away, from the size of the room and how much its surfaces absorb.
The rug and the upholstered sofa absorb what the oak floor, the plaster and the glass reflect, so speech carries clearly.
Voices and footsteps die at once.
Speech carries clearly.
Voices carry and footsteps ring.
The firm uses Sabine’s method, which compares the room’s volume with how much sound its surfaces absorb. The same finishes echo longer in a taller room.
How much does the room smell of something?
The firm assesses how strongly the room smells, from its materials, any plants by a door or window and any added scent.
Nothing in the room gives off a smell anyone could name: no candle, no scented wood, no flowering plant.
Nothing anyone could name.
People notice it close to its source.
It fills the room; people notice it from the doorway.
On this scale 0 means no smell and 5 an extremely strong one; a strong scent, 4 or 5, is never the aim.
These names apply to every design the firm makes and to each of its styles.
On Sound’s scale, 0.7 seconds is the limit for clear speech that ANSI S12.60, the US standard for classroom acoustics, sets for a large furnished classroom (the Acoustical Society of America’s guide (source, opens in a new tab)). The scent scale comes from odor research (Higuchi and colleagues, 2018).
Aesthetic Compositions combines the four parts below into complete styles.
