During the past decade or so, interior decorators have been successfully lobbying to upgrade the nomenclature of their trade: they now insist on being called interior designers. Which is fine, except that for all the nominal professionalism, interior design remains for the most part a trivial pursuit that prizes fancy blandness above all. While the other design professions at least aspire to greatness, and even encourage their innovators to provoke the rest of the field, most interior design wants to be pretty and profitable and make no waves.
But not Scott Strasser. At 35, Strasser is a thoroughgoing anomaly. His $...