Nicholas Bijan Pourfard is not very good at sitting still. In his home in Escondido, at the southernmost tip of California, the luthier and furniture maker is just putting the finishing touches to a bookcase he built for the space, which he moved into a little over a year ago. And it’s not just any space: designed by architect and industrial designer Walter S. White, the building is considered a love letter to Modernist architecture, pinned to mood boards the world over. It’s lucky, then, to have found a new inhabitant in Pourfard.
His sensitivity in restoring the home’s special details is mirrored in the intuitive way he has designed its interior, populating it with chairs by designers he admires, antique rugs from his father’s Persian rug store, and the odd custom piece built in his workshop, too. The open-plan layout is all warm white walls, honeyed light and organic materials – Nicholas will choose forms and textures based on what he sees, and what’s missing. But underpinning his slow, steady approach is a rigorously honed eye – one attuned by years of creating instruments from reclaimed skateboard decks, and process-driven experiments with furniture-making.
None of which would have started at all, Pourfard explains, if it hadn’t been for an ill-timed accident that kept the student from his skateboard for some six months. Then, as now, he was happy to find that wood could keep him busy.
