In planning for its headquarters and office space, a business thinks of its brand; the environment must correspond to the brand, make a positive impression in its clients and partners, and possibly consolidate its image – maybe even help making it grow.
A private person’s targets are similar; moreover, he wants to fulfil his needs of beauty, pleasantness and uniqueness.
A common factor is that the professional is equal to the role and the confidence he is entrusted by his clients; he must know how to support his clients in establishing and maintaining the status they have acquired in their own social milieu.
In choosing to build one’s own house, all choices are important. To the top-level clients, a house is not just a warm place to sleep. It is self-expression, it tells who they are, what they were capable of achieving.
To these clients, receiving at home is not the same as hosting at their club, or in a public place. Each of these places “talks” about the host; but home is the place that says the most. Guests enter into the host’s life; they get to know him, see him alike to or different from themselves.
All of this goes through a visual language, made of choices of objects, styles, combinations, colours, materials, shapes. Very few clients can manage this on their own: conversely, according to our specific experience, they have a vague idea of what they want, try to explain themselves by examples and analogies; because they do not master the visual language themselves.
The right consultant for such a client is someone who can receive both explicit and unexpressed requests, and transpose them in concrete, valid proposals. To use Socrates’ metaphor, he acts like a mid-wife, helping the client giving birth, not to a child in this case, but to an idea made of shapes, colours, matter: that is, the house especially for that client and no one else.
Doing this takes skills such as personal sensitivity, an outstanding communication capability, a solid professional education, an international culture, knowledge of the past and of predecessors, flair for innovation, a good pinch of self-confidence, and the ability to dig up solutions that join elegance, exclusivity, uniqueness and – where needed – usefulness.
It also takes thinking out of the box, moving out of the comfort area in which everything is granted, tried, and quite often fashion.
Not just anyone is able to take risks boldly, and offer new solutions that are creative and stand away from any possible tedious standard taste.
However, a demanding client, wishing to pick the very best and to make this evident, has little choice: he must choose a “special” consultant.