Architect Bobby McAlpine invited us into his personal residence for a conversation on the catalysts behind his work, a tour of his home and insight into this issue’s cover home located at 4371 Northside Drive.
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Brimming with candor and eclectic splendors, guests invited into Bobby McAlpine’s home can catch a glimpse of his soul. Bobby’s curated collections of found objects contrasted among the gilded antiques, and set against a background of rustic modern finishes perfectly encapsulate his iconic style. The story for Bobby is often goes in extremes; a narrative combining modernism and classicism allowing for an exciting and contradictive love affair.
Admittedly a romantic, McAlpine continues to evolve and reinvent ideas, which keeps him on the progressive edge. His personal home in Midtown delivers an engaging modern exterior while the inside breathes the McAlpine style — hence, the creation of romantic modernism. The guest-level’s white plaster floors feel anti-gravity, and the unanchored beds in the center of the rooms offer a uniquely calming experience. McAlpine creates an environment his guests will never forget, just as he does with clients.
In spring of 2021 McAlpine’s fifth book will be released by Rizzoli Publications, taking note of his recent work all over the world. Going forward, we can be sure Bobby will continue to fuse contradictions, and pull clients out of their comfort zone. As he says, “Jump off a cliff with me.”
ON HIS FIFTH BOOK.
I’m working with Rizzoli now on my fifth book. It has been great fun to take notice of what I’ve been doing the last few years and what I’m learning. The act of scrapbooking is essentially my way of recording what I’ve been doing for years, and in this case, since my last book. Where am I going? What am I learning?
ON EVOLVING.
My work has been heavily published throughout my career, and that has given me more than a national practice. So, with the advent of things like Pinterest, my work is getting to the point where it’s so widely copied because the imagery is so available – there is no way to combat that except to evolve. Creating an additional new architecture from the aesthetic that I’m most known for felt essential to me.
ON TAKING RISKS.
Looking at modernism and classicism, neither of which I’m primarily known for (I’m a romantic), has shifted a lot of my work, including my current house, toward creation of a new romantic modernism. I used to love for a house to ramble, be relaxed with the internal symmetries of classicism, but now I’m looking at modernism and classicism through many years of style and genre fusion, which makes me super qualified to do this. Creating a new classi- cism and new modernism will be a piece of the romantic part I’m looking for. It’s been great fun, and at 62, I am asking more of my clients to take a risk and jump off a cliff with me. Let’s do something unique.
ON SOLVING PROBLEMS.
In order to find a solution, I do not look outward for inspiration until I have already identified something inside myself. Once I pull that out where I can see it, only then will I look at the world for elements to mature that vision. Everything is born out of an inner feed. We are lined in facets of everything we’ve ever noticed and treasured. You’re always feeding more facets, and so there may be two things that fire when you’re talking to someone that come together to be the real truth of a solution. Once you identify that, you can use it as a guide to keep yourself from straying too far. You remember that what you first knew is perhaps the ultimate thing.
ON RELATIONSHIPS.
There are 50 of us at McAlpine – New York, Nashville and Atlanta. The studios are bustling with very divergent types of work. Once we form a relationship with a client, they tend to stay with us. What happens to them happens to us. If they get interested in Aspen, or they want to do a winery in California, we follow them. They invite us into their life adventures.
ON HIS INFLUENCES.
I’m just a kid from a sawmill town of 300 people. What influences me is not the world, because that was not around me. I think sometimes the calling comes from exposure, but oftentimes it comes from the anemia of what is not there-and you are called to make something that is the way you feel and what you understand. From that comes a calling to create something that reflects the way you feel, and what you understand.
ON OFFERING ADVICE
Record your attractions, and what keeps you moving. Be curious about why, run it down and try to figure it out for the rest of your life.
ON RENOVATING.
People want to live in open, free flowing homes on the interior, whether they are old
or new. If an old house has that capacity, it’s worth buying and renovating. The truth lies between modernism and classicism. If you can create a scenario where you have both, you will really have a special property with a special pedigree. The contradiction of the two is really a love affair. The more classical and perfect [the original house] is, the stronger it can take the hit of extreme modernism.
