“I came to New York City in the early 80s as a professional dancer.” Says Danny Colvin, principal and founder of Colvin Design, who spent 10 years as a Dancer and choreographer before becoming an architect. “When my body started to give out I went back to architecture school.”

“I came to New York City in the early 80s as a professional dancer.” Says Danny Colvin, principal and founder of Colvin Design, who spent 10 years as a Dancer and choreographer before becoming an architect. “When my body started to give out I went back to architecture school.”

Back to architecture school? That’s quite a pirouette to make with a career. “Actually, it’s not as surprising as you would think.” says Mr. Colvin, ”Several of my architecture professors at Pratt had backgrounds in Dance.” Mr. Colvin goes on to observe that like in design, in dance “form, movement, and structure are all taken into consideration.”

Mr. Colvin’s open-minded approach carries into his design process. “I’ve done so many wildly different things.” And this isn’t just referring to the contrast between the Modern, Industrial, and Asian tone of his work in Calm, Warm, and Collected and the suburban traditional, cottage inspired Friendly Neighbors. No, the wildly different projects Mr. Colvin has worked on include a trapeze installation and an 11 million square foot programming project for a corporate merger.

Yet as an architect, Mr. Colvin has always favored residential design. “I spent years in corporate design when I started; doing residential work on the side.” Colvin Design was formally established in 2004, though even with total control over project selection, Mr. Colvin still pursues more than just home design, still dabbling and commercial and notably, graphic design.

One of his projects is a photography series of Christo and Jean Claude’s “The Gates” installation in central park. Each photograph is digitally manipulated to show different versions of the moment each shot was taken. He was inspired by the Akira Kurosawa film, “Rashomon,” which examines the effect of perspective on storytelling. The series, which was exhibited in Chelsea’s Lot Gallery, shows Mr. Colvin’s ability to pool several aesthetic methods into one final product.

With an eye that looks for aesthetic appeal in everything, Mr. Colvin knows the importance of respecting the myriad possibilities offered by perspective in home design. He says with each project “I do different things and reflect the personalities of my clients.” After all, people perceive things in different ways, but Mr. Colvin also knows how to bring out the potential of a site, and how to serve clients’ perceptions and tastes.

An example of this creative site work is seen in Calm, Warm, and Collected, where the exposed brick is actually the outer wall of adjacent building that was incorporated into the space. To maintain the spirit of the site, the brick remained completely uninterfered with. “We didn’t even clean it, there are still bits of string and metal that were there before,” says Mr. Colvin. Not just the brick but also each little scrap that was there before harkens back to the history of the building and the meatpacking district.

Open mindedness is at the core of Mr. Colvin’s philosophy, but his diverse history of artistic endeavors shows that he has the ability to bring out the best in every type of project. As an artistic thinker, however, he is not wholly controlled by circumstance. “If something is left completely up to me, I prefer the clean lines and large, beautiful surfaces of modern design.” admits Mr. Colvin.

In home design, Mr. Colvin has another, more concrete, signature. “I often use millwork raised above the floor and embedded in the drywall.” This propensity for insetting millwork allows for intricate detailing and clean lines to coexist.

Mr. Colvin brings immensely diverse artistic ability to a project. And certainly he commits every bit of this to designing each home. When asked what projects he liked working on best, he replied without hesitation, “It’s like trying to choose your favorite child.” All children of Danny Colvin’s design are created from one of the most varied and creative artistic gene pools in home design today.

-By Luke Thomas

In the top part of this picture, Mr. Colvin’s signature inlaid millwork is displayed.

A piece from Danny Colvin’s series, “Rashomon Gates”