October 20, 2009 – Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA: Although the firm of Olson Lewis Dioli & Doktor Architects (OLD&D) has had an interiors team for several years, it has primarily served the company’s biotech, commercial, educational, and hospitality clients. Now the firm is embracing this full-service approach for its residential clients as well. It is naming Amanda Greaves as its first Director of Residential Interiors and creating an in-house residential interiors team at OLD&D.
Honestly, a homeowner’s day-to-day quality of life may be more intimately affected by the interior of the house than by the walls outside. Says architect and partner Art Dioli, who oversees a majority of the residential projects at OLD&D: “Many of our clients want interiors advice, design and plans. In fact, it was a client who originally put us in touch with Amanda. They thought we’d work well together.” With Greaves’ presence on staff, the
firm can now offer a range of enhanced services, including interior design, space planning, color consultation, decorating, procurement and installations of furniture and furnishings, and interior project management and coordination.
Both Dioli and Greaves are quick to note that there’s a third component to the firm’s residential design team: the client. “The client is the most important part of the design team,” says Greaves. “All good design stems from observation, listening and understanding.” In the end, the house should evolve into what she calls “an expression of the client's lifestyle and needs.” Working closely with a homeowner to interpret their personal tastes and patterns of living, their rhythms and preferences, OLD&D’s residential design team helps the client create a meaningful palette that will color and shape the spaces in which they live.
Greaves has been consulting with OLD&D’s residential team since November 2008, and together the staff has built communication, rapport, and a synergy of aesthetics and styles. Now it is a formal collaboration of architecture and interiors as she joins the staff and leads the residential interiors initiative.
OLD&D’s architects and interior designers use a similar conversational prompt when working with new clients. Says Greaves, “I ask clients to do some preliminary research: bring in photos, magazine clippings, and other images of rooms or elements that make them feel comfortable or somehow speak to them.” It’s OLD&D’s job to help clients translate the pictures into an interior vocabulary of spaces, finishes, colors and furnishings, creating themes that will bring each homeowner’s ‘sense of self’ to life. This exercise works for architectural discussions, too. Dioli states, “It’s easier for people to start by showing us what they like. Then we help them learn how and why they connect with some of these images.” Before long, each homeowner has helped to develop a portfolio of preferences that is tailored to their own history, personality and sense of aesthetics.
Prior to developing a portfolio of residential projects in the New England region, Greaves worked on high-end homes in locales such as Aspen, Colorado and McLean, Virginia. Her professional background also includes commercial, restaurant and hospitality interiors. Greaves holds a Bachelor of Arts in Interiors with a focus in fine arts and painting from Marymount University in northern Virginia, and has passed the NCIDQ (National Council for Interior Design Qualification) exam. She has focused primarily on residential interiors since 2000, and resides in Topsfield, MA.
Located in centuries-old Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA, Olson Lewis Dioli & Doktor Architects & Planners Incorporated is a full service, multi-discipline architectural firm whose design process is a collaborative one. For over 25 years, their award-winning work has been notable throughout New England and other regions of the United States, as well as international locales. Responding to each project’s location and setting, the firm is known for creating culturally and ecologically sensitive design solutions. Their in-house teams focus on specific disciplines: biotechnology, commercial, hospitality, education, and residential. For more information about the firm or to view OLD&D’s portfolio, visit www.oldarch.com.