Architect Elizabeth Roberts: Working Quietly with a Big Impact (and Sheryl Crow as a Client)

By Sara James Mnookin
November 10, 2010

Architect Elizabeth Roberts wasn't yet 30 when she launched her own firm, though she'd already worked with William Turnbull, one of the founders of Northern California modernism, and helped with the renovation of Grand Central Station while at New York architectural firm Beyer Blinder Belle. Her first solo client? Singer Sheryl Crow, who hired her to fix up a sprawling Manhattan loft. Since that auspicious start, she has designed spaces for actress Maggie Gyllenhaal and various luminaries in the fashion and media worlds and been featured in magazines including Dwell, Elle, New York and Domino. Roberts recently shared some unpublished photos of new work with us and talked about what she shops for on eBay—from objects by female industrial designers to clothes by Isabel Marant.

The Inside Source: Who or what are major influences on your architectural designs?

Elizabeth Roberts: I think actually the two houses I grew up in had a huge effect on me. I'm from Northern California, and my mom lived in a sunny modern spacious house. But my father lived in a much older, cottage-style house in the Redwood forest. I just was so aware of these different environments, and the light in those spaces growing up. I still draw upon that feeling—cozy, damp, dark, vs. bright and open.

The Inside Source: Tell us about some of your current architectural design projects.

Elizabeth Roberts: Of my three most recent projects, one of them is my own house. Another is a loft for a couple in Brooklyn Heights. They're both writers. They were moving out of a smaller space, into a much bigger, three bedroom loft. They needed places to store and showcase their collection of books.

A lot of my projects are for families or couples who've recently been married, and they're buying their first house together or combining collections of art and books. It's not something you learn about in architecture school—the people part of it—making sure everyone feels comfortable in their own home, blending their art and objects together.

The third project is for another couple, an editor and an artist. They bought a very unusual space—the bottom two levels of a pair of townhouses that were connected in a bohemian spirit in the '60s and hadn’t been renovated since. They have the gardens of four townhouses combined. We just tried to clean it up on a tight budget, so had to make very smart decisions about what to keep, and what could be painted.

Recent projects: a NYC loft, a Brooklyn loft, and her own townhouse

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A loft on 21st Street in Manhattan
A Brooklyn Heights Loft
Elizabeth Roberts' own house in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn

The Inside Source: Your design aesthetic is fairly clean and minimalist. Do you ever get the impulse to design a home that's really outlandish?

Elizabeth Roberts: I don't. A big part of the way I design is finding a balance of one thing against something else. What I often find myself doing with clients, if they have an idea for something wild, I try to put it in the context of something quiet. To me, a minimalist and quiet palate showcases things beautifully. I guess because I work on homes, and homes have to last, I don’t want the home to be bigger than the people who live in it. I want the joy and the life to come from them. So I usually encourage people to take their risks with furniture. For one client, we ordered a custom teak bathtub shipped from Scotland, made by a company that crafts whiskey barrels, but put in a room that's otherwise very simple.

The Inside Source: How do you balance a client's tastes with your own design style?

Elizabeth Roberts: I really don't try to sell anybody on a different aesthetic than they already have. What I try to do is quiet it down. I try to remind them of all the things they already own that will go into the space. It’s their choice, the kitchen cabinets and the flooring, but I try to help them see how these decisions will interact with their things.

I am lucky that I get clients with really good taste. I think the similarity, what I bring to all these different homes, is quieting down, so these interesting choices can live within that.

The Inside Source: Is there a dream home design project you're always hoping would just fall into your lap?

Elizabeth Roberts: I don't know if I would say it was something I've always wanted to do, but what I'm really looking forward to now, I'm hoping to work on some country homes for a few of my clients. The process is so intimate. I end up working with people for a year or two on these projects. So I'd love to build on that, take some of the intimacy, and the familiarity, and explore how they want their second home to be, whether it would be a contrast or similar, whether it's a house on the ocean, or in the mountains, or on an island. Big Sur, or upstate New York. There are three projects like that I'm hoping to do next.

The Inside Source: You recently completed a gut renovation on your own house in Brooklyn. What's it like to be your own architectural design client?

Elizabeth Roberts: It's tough! I'm used to interacting with somebody. They give me ideas, and I give them ideas. I found that lack of interaction challenging. Designing a space for my own family, I didn't want to look around and see my hand everywhere. I wanted it to be quieter than that. I also didn't want to look around and regret a choice I'd made. So the challenge was, do I like it enough, but is it also quiet enough that I can put someone else's art on the wall and look at that and not have to see the architecture all the time?

The Inside Source: Coming from a Manhattan apartment, how did you decorate a whole house?

Elizabeth Roberts: It was surprisingly simple. We had to buy a few more beds. But we found that other than extra bedrooms, we basically lived... Our living room and our dining room and our kitchen are the same. I love the fact that there are a lot more walls that we get to fill with art, friend's art, and things we buy when we travel.

The Inside Source: Are you a collector of anything? If so, what?

Elizabeth Roberts: One collection was started pretty intentionally and it's still ongoing: furniture and decorative items by female industrial designers. Several pieces I’ve bought on eBay. Designers like Dorothy Thorpe, Eileen Gray, pottery from Eva Zeisel, Susie Cooper, Kaiser. Scissor and accordion lamps. It was really fun to search for that stuff.

I accidentally began collecting toilet paper holders. I guess because of the utilitarianism of them, and the design. I have five of them on my mantle in my office, and people always ask about them.

The Inside Source: How else do you use eBay?

Elizabeth Roberts: What have I not used eBay for?! One of the biggest pieces in my house, the big rosewood wall unit, it's mid century, Scandinavian. I had been drooling over a friend's and had been hoping to buy a much more expensive, modern piece. But it was the end of the renovation, and I just couldn’t afford it. And it was just before Christmas and I had a dozen people coming to the house. I desperately needed something to hold all the wine bottles and electronics. On a whim, I looked to see if eBay had something similar. I looked once and found this rosewood unit, and the price was a fraction of the other piece, and within four days, I had paid for it, and the man delivered it himself in his truck from South Carolina. And it was so satisfying! He was really proud of it. His mother had bought it in the sixties, and he was so happy to see the house and that it was going to someone who would love it and appreciate. And that's the kind of personal story you don’t get, even buying from a vintage store.

I also got this wacky Chinese clock that's in the dining room. I looked for a wall clock exactly once, and bought it for $60. And it was at my house a week later. eBay is so much easier than traipsing around the neighborhood, looking for a good store that will carry all these wonderful things.

Oh, and one other thing I got… When my old apartment was in Domino—I still get emails all the time about this—that macrame hanging shelf that I had next to my bed. I think it was $9. And I got the giant map, now in my son's room, that used to be above the dining room table. I just typed in "huge map". It's a color print master map of the world. Some guy in the Midwest put it on a greyhound bus. I used to buy tons of clothes on eBay, especially Isabel Marant. I still look at my favorite designers on there to see what pops up.

I often encourage clients to look on eBay before they look elsewhere. I buy discontinued faucets there for projects. You can get them for a fraction of the price, even off wholesale, just because it's discontinued. I got tons of vintage speakers on eBay for a hair salon I did. I coached the owner's personal assistant on how to look through the auctions. He spent weeks, got about 15 pairs, and we mounted them to the walls and retrofitted some to become drawers, while some still boom out music in the salon.