Patrick McConnell

To Patrick McConnell, senior interior designer and former associate partner of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, interior space is not about collections of furniture as objects, but rather the assiduous refinement and discovery of appropriate room proportions, the reduction of elements and colors to produce the ultimate architectural perfection. One of his favorite rooms for its straightforward simplicity, its perfectly scaled proportions and use of light, has always been the penthouse apartment gallery of Banque Lambert in Brussels, designed in 1965 by Davis Allen of SOM.

Mr. McConnell graduated from the architecture school of the Illinois Institute of Technology, under the tutelage of Mies' protegés. This seminal experience trained his eye to see and his mind to refine. He took a job at SOM in Chicago after graduation, working in the interiors department, which, at the time, was frankly of no interest to him. However, under the guidance of Don Powell and Bruce Graham, he quickly changed his mind; interiors were personal, immediate and direct. The GF Furniture showroom in Chicago, Banco de Occidente in Guatemala City and United Gulf Bank in Bahrain are projects that Mr. McConnell worked on at SOM, and which he recalls as the most important of his career, but for different reasons: GF is about proportion and light-a simple sculptured space of white drywall-while the other two projects bring together indigenous cultural and natural elements as well as crafts from the countries that they were created in and for. During his tenure at SOM Mr. McConnell was also an instructor in the interior design department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has received numerous awards.

Although his experience at Skidmore was nothing less than wonderful, he says, Mr. McConnell decided to leave the fold in 1992 in order to pursue a smaller, hands-on career on his own (while still maintaining a consulting relationship with SOM). To Mr. McConnell the business of design has changed over the years, with a greater emphasis placed on marketing and sales. However, the art of design remains the same; it is still about refinement. By going out on his own, he hopes to more intimately pursue the latter. For all the conceptual ideas he may have about design, it is only through his pencil and a straight edge-the actual act of drawing, drawing again, and again and again-that Mr. McConnell makes his way though space.