Hi! I am Kevin Steiner, and this blog allows me to post topics about design, current research, successful projects from former students, and express my thoughts about other areas of interest as it relates to design. For the first entry into this blog, I wanted to explain some of the items found on the shelf at the top of this page. These items represent some portion of who I am. You can read my biography on the right side of this page, but it doesn’t capture things that inspire, influence, and make me tick.
The owl, Pete, represents my prankster side that comes out when I get bored. I have been told that I am too creative to be bored because I make up things for me to do. The light blue shirt in the middle of the shelf represents my favorite color to wear. The button-up style of shirt represents the “uniform” I have given myself to wear when teaching. I wear a button-up blue shirt frequently when teaching, and students have made the comment that when I stray from this combination, it weirds them out.
The tape measure and architectural scale are two things that every interior design must own. Interior designs must measure the size of objects while working with a project. I love to measure things. When I get ahold of a tape measure, I measure the most random things…how far my nose if from the ceiling or my elbow, etc. It is one of my quirks.
The entertainment portion of my shelf holds three of my favorite movies, one of my favorite TV shows, and my iPod. The three movies are, in favorite order, To Catch a Thief, Black Christmas (1974), and The Haunting (1963). Each of the movies has influenced me in different ways for different reasons. I still can remember the first time I watched each one of these and my reaction to each. Black Christmas has the distinction of having the first scene that ever made my skin crawl. It happens at the end of the movie and sets of the climatic chase. The Haunting is made in such a way the forces the viewer to imagine the evil of the house in the viewer’s head. It is not out rightly depicted on the screen. This fascinated me, and since I am a creative person, I am able to see details in depth. All of the movies have significant plot twists.
The iPod. I would be lost without my iPod. I listen to music daily. It inspires me and can affect my mood. If you look closely, you can see what is playing when this photo was taken. It is the score from Psycho. I am amazed that this score is comprised of stringed instruments only, but each instrument is combined in such a way that results in a foreboding feeling.
The final section is books. These range from novels to text books. The light blue book is the Murder on the Orient Express, which is by far my favorite book. This book is a “whodunit” murder mystery. The ending is a twisting, turning plot, and I remember thinking how clever Agatha Christie was to create this book. Shock Value is book that discusses how horror of movies of the late 1960’s and 1970’s influenced the modern day horror movie.
The Codes Guidebook is used in a class that I currently teach. It focuses on the codes that interior designers need to know when creating spaces for commercial settings. People don’t realize that interior design is strictly driven by building codes. Interior designers must abide by the codes when creating these spaces. I am fascinated by building codes, how they were developed, and hot they impact the overall design of the space.