Streets to Walls

A client recently asked me to incorporate graffiti into a space I'm designing and my first reaction was "oh boy, how cheesy." Having befriended a graffiti artist or two in my days - both the anonymous law-breaking sort and the gallery-friendly - and being a huge fan of all street art myself, I truly had mixed feelings proceeding with this idea. Earlier in my design career, I did encourage a client to hire an artist I knew to paint some old chairs and the elevator of his loft and everyone loved the appropriately funky results. Regardless of my personal opinions, integrity remains intact when both artist and client are happy about any commission, such as they were in this 2004 project:

As a friend recently started sketching up what I've dubbed "graffiti-inspired signage" whenever I speak about it in my client meetings, I started to see that the results are actually going to be far from cheesy and now I'm really excited. In honor of this internal shift, I decided to sleuth around for other interior graffiti art that I felt was aesthetically pleasing, despite the inherent oxymoron.

California-based Ilan Dei juxtaposes subdued modern furniture with a surprise graffiti piece inside, as found on his blog.

Definitely not something I could live with for more than one night, graffiti artist Tilt was commissioned to do his thing in one of five rooms in France's Au Vieux Panier Hotel that hires different artists to re-do each room annually.