Home and Garden Awards 2020

BUILD 2020 Home And Garden Awards 26 Jan20230 t SM Design Associates, every project is unique. It’s one of the many things that sets them apart from other firms. Often working with demanding clients who live busy lives, this boutique agency offers the opportunity for them to have something constructed specifically to their needs. It means that this is a team that gets things done and gets them done to an incredibly high standard. The unique nature of each project comes from really studying the client and working out what they want most of all. Digging deep into the head and heart means that a style can be created that perfectly matches who the client is in every respect. This means spending a lot of time really trying to understand a client, including the way in which they live, how they want to live and their taste. The team always starts with plenty of questions, then uses extensive experience built over years of projects to narrow down the best way to bring this vision to life. The details are, of course, crucial to this success and the team, led by Principal Shanna Kerr, spends a great deal of time getting them perfect too. An example of this can be seen in one of the firm’s latest projects, a large custom house in an exclusive area of Los Angeles. While the scale of the house was to enable large numbers of people to be entertained, the clients wanted a house which they could live in comfortably. The difference between creating spaces for people to be entertained and spaces for people to feel cosy and comfortable is stark indeed, not just aesthetically but functionally too. As a boutique firm, it is possible for Shanna to meet with every client and work on every project personally. While able to draw on an impressive body of international expertise, the service continues to be exceptionally personal in its attitude. This comes from an enormous passion for the work that is undertaken at SMDA and the experience of handling so many projects. When working on a large-scale project, drawing together elements from different companies, businesses and industries, SMDA’s experienced team bring an intimate knowledge of the process, of the level of detail required and of the difficulties that lie ahead. It also means that the team is fully capable of accounting for these complications, collaborating architects and contractors, organising the necessary paperwork and making sure that the finished product is the exceptional result that their clients expect. One of the challenges that the SMDA team face is California’s water conservation laws. As they are incredibly strict, it can be A difficult to create luxury bathrooms without the necessary fixtures. In many ways, this simply allows the designers the chance to demonstrate their ingenuity, still managing to create results that cannot be described as anything less than the height of luxury. Moving forward, the simple intention is to continuing developing the sort of amazing projects that have made the firm such an incredible success. Instead of getting bigger, this is a business that is continually looking at improving itself in order to provide the best possible service to its clients. It’s this focus on making the dreams of their clients come true that has allowed Shanna and her team to achieve so much over the years. Contact Details Company: SM Design Associates Contact: Shanna Kerr Website: www.smdainc.com Residential Interior Design Firm of the Year - Southern California High-end residential and hospitality projects can be a great challenge to complete, often going over-budget and missing deadlines. A partner capable of keeping up with the demands of these highly detailed, often- demanding projects is not easy to come by, but the team at SM Design Associates, led by Shanna Kerr, has proven more than capable of turning their hands to the task. We caught up with the firm to find out more.