Arts
How do you live beautifully? Everyone has different inspirations and details that make their approach to design, life, and beauty uniquely theirs. A single color or architectural element can launch a thousand ideas for a creative person like Laura Hoover, the principal and director of interiors at D3 Studio in Charlotte, North Carolina says she finds beauty in the small details of life. For this new episode of Live Beautifully a HanStone Quartz podcast, host Daniel Litwin sat down with the designer whose work includes restaurant interiors, from small juice bars to high-end dining, as well as commercial and office interiors. Along with her colleague and D3 Studio founder Scott Betzold, the D3 team brings combined expertise from work in branded environments, mixed-used buildings, master planning, and strategic office planning. Hoover has been working as an interior designer for more than 13 years in Charlotte. She says the city's rich history of industry has been an inspiration, but it's a history not obvious to outsiders. "Charlotte really owes its size and growth originally to the textile industry boom in the late 1800s," Hoover said. "We have so many old buildings that are inspiring, but I don't think we have a reputation for that. I think we have a reputation as a shiny new city and we tear down a lot, but Charlotte really has a rich textile industry." As Commissioner & part of the Design Review Committee for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, Hoover is working to save more old buildings and uncover the hidden beauty within them that might not be obvious to the naked eye. In this episode, Hoover discusses how she works with clients who don't know what they want and shares a building's surprising architectural element that was nearly blocked in with walls. "This is stuff you just can't pay for," Hoover said.