“Where’s all your stuff?” might be the first question you’re tempted to ask upon entering Gordon Clay’s U Street neighborhood condo.
But don’t worry about offending him, he’s heard that question before.
“I have had people ask me, ‘Where’s your stuff?’ ” said Clay, who moved into his clean-lined condo in the new Union Row building in December. “I just have a place for everything, and I love to have stuff put away. I don’t like clutter.”
Indeed, that may be an understatement. Clay’s condo, a sleek study in contemporary minimalism, looks as if it hopped off the pages of a modern design magazine — or perhaps out of the Museum of Modern Art.
The two-bedroom, two-bathroom home is a name-dropping interior design enthusiast’s dream with iconic pieces from Knoll — the epitome of clean-lined contemporary living — that include classic Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs in the living room and a Brno chair in the foyer, an Isamu Noguchi table in the dining room and a Saarinen coffee table.
Save Clay’s two whippet dogs and an accessory piece here and there, the home’s furniture stands on its own, giving the condo a showroom feel.
“There is no doubt that this is not a home for most people,” said Eric Kole, co-owner of Washington-based Vastu and Clay’s long time interior designer. “But I knew Gordon and Gordon knew me, and we knew we could get away with this. There weren’t going to be things everywhere. If you’re going to have a very classic iconic Noguchi side table [in the bedroom] that doesn’t have a drawer on it, it’s going to have a couple of great books on it and his artfully arranged glasses. You can’t have stuff piling up because that’s when it doesn’t work.”
Clay, who moved from a Kalorama home to the funkier U Street, started with a clean slate when he moved into his condo. Except for the essentials, he brought nothing with him — no old couches, no artwork, no boxes of books and knickknacks, nothing — giving Kole a blank canvas to work with.
The result? Nearly everything in the home is from Vastu, which stocks a wide variety of furniture (It’s the only store in town with the rights to sell the complete Knoll line) and art from local artists.
“There’s not a whole lot of stuff, but every single piece is literally important on its own,” Kole said of the furniture and art selection. “It’s very nice to have each piece be almost sculptural because there aren’t very many of them. You don’t see a lot of clutter and a lot of competition.”
But lest you think Clay’s sparse space isn’t livable, Kole is quick to point out that the interior design was deliberately done to give Clay both form and function.
“I wouldn’t buy a chair that you couldn’t sit on,” said Clay, a lawyer for the Joint Committee on Taxation for Congress.
The furniture is in fact very comfortable (made clear by Clay’s two dogs sleeping on his living room couch). In addition, Kole created consistency throughout the house with the textures and finishes in an effort to make the rooms all flow together. For example, most of the cabinetry is white throughout the house, and much of the furniture matches from room to room (The Noguchi table in the dining room? There’s a smaller version in the master bedroom. Or that cherry wood light fixture posing as a piece of art over Clay’s bed? The same wood is used on the lampshade in the foyer.).
“If you do like that very modern sculptural iconic look, [it’s important] to build in that consistency so that things are a little bit simpler and won’t compete with the sculptural and iconic pieces,” Kole said. “We built that consistency in, so when you have pieces that are literally of Museum of Modern Art designs, everything doesn’t become too overwhelming. … Building that consistency throughout makes it feel very harmonious.”
That consistency and harmonious feel are what dials back the showroom-ready quality of the space, Kole said.
“If each room was so different from the rest, I don’t feel like you’d be living in a home, I feel like you’d be living in a place that’s almost more museum-like,” he said. “Particularly when you’re going with really classic, iconic pieces. If each one is just standing out, it’s jarring. It doesn’t feel like it’s somebody’s house. It feels like it’s a display place.”
Clay’s space, though, does truly feel like a home, in part thanks to the artwork. All of it is from Vastu, but Clay picked each piece with care to reflect his style, from the Colin Winterbottom photo of Central Park in the foyer to the Brian Petro pieces in the living and dining room.
As for the rest of Clay’s “stuff”? The uber-organized Clay has uber-organized closets in his master bedroom and office and has a small storage space in the condo building.
“To be honest with you … I don’t get particularly attached to things,” Clay said. “Most of this stuff, I like it, but if I had to move and start over, I could do that without any problems.”
Spoken like a true minimalist.
