Interior and landscape designer Nick Spain creates spaces that feel evocative of a certain period and yet never bound to an era in a retro or kitschy way. For a 1960s lake house in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Spain — based in the Berkshires and Brooklyn — recently combined various references that nod to the past but live fully in the present. It’s more challenging than it looks, of course, and we wanted to know how he pulls it off. “I once had an astrologer tell me that I’m made up of time, which was very trippy,” he says. “While I’d like to attribute it to that, in reality this [project] was informed by a variety of inputs. The fact that the clients [a 40-something couple in Boston] were married at MassMoCA, where there’s a huge Sol LeWitt collection and an iconic James Turrell piece, was one,” influencing both the color palette and graphic sensibility. The clients also love Sunnylands estate, the pink-roofed midcentury residence envisioned by architect A. Quincy Jones and interior designer William Haines in Rancho Mirage, California. It “helped drive a cleanliness of form,” says Spain. “And then what I love about being a designer is getting to add my own flavor and touchstones to the mix. That’s where Peter Harnden and Lanfranco Bombelli came in since, to me, they epitomize a kind of insouciant, sexy, party-oriented minimalism that was at its height from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, and that would’ve been during this home’s original heyday.” Harnden and Bombelli also couldn’t resist a slanted ceiling, which intentionally slope throughout the Stockbridge house.

“For me, it’s important not to do these sort of literal, copy-and-paste gestures that might be period-appropriate, because it ultimately ends up being pastiche,” Spain says. “It’s not 1970 anymore, so why are you trying to get back to it? Instead, I try to distill the essence of a place first and then consider how you can carry it forward in a way that fits the current (and hopefully future) context determined by the needs of the clients and the way they live. It’s all still viewed through this lens of the past, though.”

With the Stockbridge home, this meant tapping into a “mix of pragmatism and weirdness,” while also keeping things aesthetically inviting. After some structural reconfigurations, the new look includes a serene kitchen featuring Reform cabinets painted a custom olive-green and Volker Haug sconces. In a fireside nook with a Malm stove, there’s a cantilevered loveseat in fabrics by Minna and Blockshop Textiles – it hovers over logs of firewood, a Harnden echo. Painted paneling and curtains contribute to a rustic cabin feel that’s offset by high-end touches, like Robert Sukrachand’s hand-cast brass pendants suspended over a custom Lily and Peter Thorne oak and stainless-steel dining table, whose shape is inspired by an Alexander Calder mobile. (They also made the custom handrail in the entryway). In the main bathroom, green Zia tiles are as nostalgic as they are aqueous. And in the media room, a slipcover, curtains, and wallpaper all done in a plaid by Australian designer Annie Coop are meant to bring to mind an old executive suite.

The primary palette, which reflects the natural surroundings, is where the pragmatism comes in — along with “material selections that are durable and low-maintenance, using finishes that can withstand wet bathing suits or sandy feet, and creating an atmosphere that encourages ease and informality,” says Spain. This also means furniture “that can get beat up, take a stain, and in certain instances are there more out of necessity than desire” — like the very practical Ikea chairs around the dining table. And the weirdness? “Lake houses, at least the ones I grew up in, were where a lot of weird secondhand family heirlooms ended up, so good vintage pieces and texture were crucial.”

Early on, Spain studied to be an actor but ultimately became disenchanted with the lack of agency. After working in the editorial, art, and fashion worlds, he retrained in landscape design. “I really wanted to do something with my hands and help things grow in a more tangible way, but then I kind of fell into interiors.” (Spain’s practice was formerly known as Arthur’s.) “Today, interiors make up the bulk of my business, but I still take on a few gardens each season because I get a lot of joy from them,” he says.

And he still draws on his background in theater and set design, not only as it helps him understand the “fundamentals of how to create a vibe spatially” but in the ways that performance affects his approach. Like his training in method-acting: “A cornerstone of it is this erasure of ego and letting go of things you think you know in order to access emotions in a subconscious, organic way… I try to approach each project’s concept phase as a tabula rasa and encourage clients to do the same. When you forget what a dining room ‘has’ to look like, or try to be open to new color combinations, layout, or material choices, you’re able to arrive at much more inventive solutions.”

An experience at the Lee Strasberg institute as a teen also continues to shape how Spain works with interiors: After overacting a scene, he was instructed to rely on the text, without pushing anything too much, to reveal what was there. “There’s a lot of performative tropes regarding what we think spaces have to be, largely due to the proliferation of social media and this boring idea of luxury that’s been co-opted by capitalism. Instead of using these lazy, often bifurcated modes of assessment like good/bad, right/wrong, pretty/ugly, I try to ask a more worthwhile question: Does this feel honest? Does this feel true? By thinking like this, my hope is that I’m able to have more breadth in my output for clients in a way that also keeps things exciting for me as the designer. How boring it must be to have a singular style! I may not be a Cate-Blanchett-level chameleon, but I think I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve.”

PHOTOS BY JAMES JOHN JETEL