Business
& Labor
Architects, Decorators, Artists Stop Being Polite on New Show
(archrecord.construction.com - 07/26/2006)
By David
Sokol
A flamboyant artist, a former Miss Utah
turned decorator, and three Harvard GSD graduates, among others.
Their worlds collide on the new “HGTV Design Star”—and
it turns out that these reality-show participants aren’t
so different after all. They’re all competitive, self-promoting,
and have that certain telegenic something.
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The new eight-installment series is
“Project Runway” meets “Trading Spaces”:
Ten designers, formally educated or self-proclaimed, compete
in weekly residential design challenges that force one elimination
per episode (expect double slaughters in the show’s third
and fourth installments). The panel of judges includes In
Style executive editor Martha McCully, fashion designer Cynthia
Rowley, and TV design personality Vern Yip, and audiences
will select the victor, who lands her own HGTV series, from
the final two. “This is a huge commitment for the network,”
says James Bolosh, vice president of original programming.
The channel is distributed to approximately 90 million American
homes.
Competitors were chosen from 1,500 submissions.
Was HGTV hoping to engage mainstream Americans in a dialogue
with academic architecture? Or cut a few highfalutin architects
down to size? Bolosh says it was pure coincidence that yielded
Crimsons Joseph Kennard and twin brothers Teran and Teman
Evans. “I think they bring something very different to
the table,” he concedes. In that spirit of variety, the
competition’s challenges will range from decorating to
large-scale projects. “They do everything from ripping
out cabinets to adding walls to fish-out-of-water situations.
It’s not just paint and fabric swatches.”
As of the July 23 premier episode, with
viewers wondering whether Donna or Ramona would get the ax,
the trio of architects seemed destined for a future in television.
And so does the program itself. The second season of “Design
Star” is already in the works.
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