MEET
THE
ARTIST

A LOVER OF
DESIGN IN
ALL FORMS

Outside of his decorated career designing private residences for clients across North America, Jesse has an exciting routine of design in a range of categories that invigorates and inspires his professional development. And while many of these have formulated into formal collaborations with a range of producers, many of these are for his own pleasure.

When you ask Jesse what his hobbies are, he will almost always answer that designing is just that-- a gift he considers to be priceless as he believes that if this was not a present factor in his life, he would not have had the curiosity to explore the range of diverse design styles he is known for. However, as you begin to dig deeper, it becomes apparent that he is a lover of design in all forms.

His interests range from gardening and adding to the complex and lush mixture of his collection of unique plant species, to antique cars, a passion for nautical architecture, antique watches, sculpture, furniture design, and learning about European history. This wide array of interests comes as a result of his fascination in the palaces, monuments, homes, and other items big and small that are are objectively well designed in his eyes. He would identify with collecting or redesigning any number of these items if he believed they would bring artistic inspiration into his working space and life as a function of their sculptural form.

It is with this context that travel stands out among one of his most prominent passions, exposing him to beauty and design in different forms that he can endlessly appreciate. Extensive travel is also what Jesse credits for his deep understanding of European history, with a specific focus on architectural stylistic developments throughout the centuries. He loves travel so much because it exposes him to world history to a far greater extent than his schooling would have ever allowed, and is a staple of his routine for this reason. It is through the experience of natural settings, unique landscapes, and historic structures that Jesse Sahlani continues to hone and develop his craft, as he experiences the scale and grandeur of structures and landscapes from centuries past.

A STUDIO
DESIGNED TO
SPUR CREATIVITY

As you walk up the black steel staircase you will find Jesse’s third-storey loft and design studio, a space that was designed to create as little visual distraction as possible. To achieve this, Jesse designed the room out of stainless steel, featuring a few dark wood accents, a direct inversion of the ground floor gallery in both colour and volume of eclectic pieces.

He designed his office this way so that it offers no contextual link to the materials common in residential design, allowing him to avoid any subconscious influence as he undertakes his more explorative creative journeys within this specially curated environment. This space is also home to Jesse’s unique stainless steel drafting table, a similarly sculptural furniture piece that was engineered to create the effect of it floating within the space, avoiding feelings of heaviness that could feel distracting.

Jesse’s studio was designed as a working gallery, featuring an eclectic collage of art and sculpture, much of which was designed specifically for each space by Jesse and John-Luke personally. Each of these pieces was developed to offer a unique sculptural form to the room in order to serve as a “kick start” to any creative mind who lays eyes on them.

The space features a dark wood panel design that wraps the two-storey massing and loft in a continuous texture. The mirror baseboards that run throughout the space when paired with the refined wood features and diffused lighting are classically elegant, especially when paired with the rustic high gloss concrete floors throughout that they reflect. The space feels like a artistic gentleman’s rendition of an industrial loft, characterized by refined finishes that elevate the space to the point of being experiential and inspiring, similar to that of an art gallery.

Steel features are scattered throughout in both the form of furniture and sculpture, including a large patinaed bronze island massing that was purpose-built for their material storage standing next to a statue of Aphrodite in a similar patina.

This same space is also home to his notable 9-piece sculpture, as well as the duo’s reference library. This collection of personal books has been organically expanded over the years featuring the biographies of the brothers' favourite designers, businessmen, sculptors, historic architectural destinations, favourite hotels, and technical books about their favourite car, watch, and boat designers.

It most notably features the Equation of Time book by Peter Lik, celebrating some of his most famous works that the brothers have great admiration for. This collection of personal books is meant to be accessible to anyone within the office who is looking for inspiration, even if it is an unrelated topic to what they are working on. Afterall, you never know where you will find inspiration when searching for it.

The pair firmly believes that in order to design beautiful spaces, you must be surrounded by beauty within your own space, as it is only at this point that you understand the true impact of your craft. To that end, everything from the lighting to the temperature, to the scent diffused throughout the office is curated by John-Luke to surround Jesse and his team with design inspiration.

A SKETCHING
TABLE DESIGNED
WITH
SCULPTURAL
INTENT

Jesse’s sketching table was designed to create a sense of continuity between his custom designed sculpture that sits on the ground floor of the studio, and his second floor loft style studio that is visible from the ground floor gallery. He designed the proportions of the table and custom engineered it to have two stainless steel plinths for legs, creating two floating corners that making the physically heavy piece feel spacially light. It was approached as a sculpture, meant to kickstart the creative brain as soon as he walks up the stairs each morning.

A DYNAMIC,
SHAPE SHIFTING
SCULPTURE THAT
ALWAYS FEELS
NEW

His exploration of a range of materials through his furniture and sculpture design process has led to the creation of some truly unique pieces by Jesse. This list ranges from couches, to plinths, side tables, totem sculptures, and his most famous piece, The Group of 9. Composed of 9 geometric stainless steel cubes, Jesse designed these to spur the creative side of anyone whose home they grace. These 9 sculptures can be used as stools, plinths, a credenza, stacked as a totem, and laid out in hundreds of different patterns.

He developed this sculpture when seeking to find the perfect piece for the main floor gallery lobby of his three-storey loft office space. The space wasn’t quite big enough for a love seat and chairs, or to set up a coffee station in. He also wanted mobility in the space that he could adjust as necessary. His idea for this stemmed from also wanting something that he could reoganize the draw visual interest and spur creativity for his staff upon laying eyes on it; after all, you can’t design beautiful things without experiencing beautiful surroundings.

He felt the urge to create something like this as a result of an oversized copy of “The Equation of Time” that Creative Director and partner John-Luke Sahlani brought home from a trip to New York. Everyday he walks in, he flips a page to one of 200 works by Lik. The level of dynamic design it brought to the space continues to be one of his favourite features of the gallery.

The idea of being able to reorganize a piece of art to bring a sense of newness, complexity, or simplicity into a space is the highest order of what makes a creative like Jesse tick. It really does spur the creative brain, if not by any other metric than reducing distraction caused by feelings of needing something fresh in your surroundings.

FURNITURE &
SCULTPURE
DESIGN THAT
KICKSTART THE
CREATIVE BRAIN

Jesse’s passion for furniture design stems from having a vision for a space that is highly specific, and not being able to find a suitable piece within his global network of furniture producers. Every piece he includes within his studio, or any private residence he is responsible for designing has to come in a format that supports his design vision, as well as the scale of the space he is designing the piece for. Through this process bloomed a new category of design inspiration that required creative director John-Luke Sahlani to assemble global resources to execute.

HOW
TRAVEL
INFORMS
DESIGN

In our experience, one of the most important parts of developing our style as artists is world travel. By travelling, we not only rest our creative brains, but we also expose ourselves to a unique world of architectural design styles, formats, details, and environments. This is especially true in the context of European travel, where the range of intriguing design inspiration has often been shaped throughout the centuries by world events, zoning policies, or as a function of the local climate, reflecting an unreplicable sense of style that the relatively young North American market often isn't privy to.

It exposes us to a greater understanding of history, a particular hobby of Jesse’s, providing greater context for how these historic events shaped different design styles. Through this process, we have gained a deep understanding of the roots of a range of different design styles, how they evolved through the centuries, and what factors popularized them in the eyes of the monarchy, government, and public. Being able to then see historic examples of these styles from different periods is nothing short of enriching, as it is with this understanding that Jesse is able to accurately interpret these styles through his well-known classically restrained lens.

It also goes without saying that travel introduces us to a range of new artists, museums displaying relics of the past, and historic monuments. The result is the expansion of our vision for how we see ourselves as artists is greatly expanded, further aiding in the development of our artistic stance, style, and inevitably, profoundly impacting our approach. It puts into perspective how small of a role any one man has in the shaping of architectural tastes and building an architectural legacy. This is true no matter how hard you intend on working, as it makes you realize how little time you have on this earth to achieve this goal, and in some way, helps us to refocus our efforts into concentrated, prioritized, disciplined creativity.

By this logic, we see travel as the equivalent of an endless university that broadens our horizons in several ways. It provokes hobby like research into our favourite historical topics all while helping us rest our creative brains and replenish inspiration. As a result, we typically come home with a feeling of “bursting at the seams” with new ideas and stylistic nuances to explore. It is for these reasons that travel continues to be the impetus behind the diverse range of design styles featured within Jesse's catalogue of private residences. Our travels provide fresh perspectives and a deeper connection with the world which directly translate into an invigoration of our design senses, supporting our passion and curiosity as we treat each project we commit to with a sense of creative exploration.