Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan talks

In 2001, Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan and his brother Oliver founded Apartment Therapy as one of the first interior design sites online. Ten years on, it remains one of the most popular design sites out there, combining fascinating insights and tours of real-life apartments across New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, DC and Boston with a buzzing online community. But what is Maxwell's own home style? Where does his love of design come from? And who are his influences? We caught up with the design guru himself to find out more.

If therapy is the place where you achieve internal integration… home is the place where you can achieve external integration. I was a teacher for seven years and the idea was to start a design service that would help people in their homes, not just in the way that things looked, but in the way that things felt, with an emphasis on functionality, organisation and health. So it really was Apartment Therapy.

I grew up in a house where my parents were divorced, so we had two homes… My mum's house was very feminine and my father's was very masculine and to a certain extent they were both uncomfortable! Growing up, I think I was looking for a way to put these two pieces back together. I was often drawn to friends' houses where - not just because the parents were married - there was a sense of completeness, integration and comfort.

Apartment Therapy is a business… but we really run it as an editorial project with a strong emphasis on community. Reader generated content makes up 50 per cent of what we do, so we are really hosts of a community experience.

We didn't really make money for a number of years… we ran it as a resource and guide for people and even though we've grown our advertising, we still operate that way. We treat our advertisers as part of the community too. They offer solutions to some of the readers problems, so we work closely with them to integrate them on the site and involve them in the community spirit.

People didn't want to share their homes with us in the beginning… there was a real reluctance - they didn't even want to put their name or their picture online! People were scared of the web - there was a sense of invasion.

People are more trusting now… When people come to our site, they get great ideas from others and are so inspired by them that, when it comes to sharing their homes, they feel like they're giving back to the community.

Our apartment is... quite stripped down: we don't try to fill spaces; we don't try to put a lot of decoration on stuff; we don't have a lot of frills. We have a relatively small apartment, so we don't want it to be visually cluttered or full.

At the same time… everything that we do have, we've gravitated to really rich, warm, natural materials. So our table is oak, our rug is all wool. If anything, our guiding principle is to try and steer away from anything that is overprocessed or not natural.

If my house was burning down, I would rush to save… my computer. Beyond that I probably wouldn't care too much about anything other than a few paintings, which have been done by me, my mother and a really good old friend. First I'd take my mothers, then my friend's, then my own. The rest isn't really important.

You might not know this, but… I started a collection of clocks a long time ago. I used to have a ton of them - table clocks, wall clocks and watches. My timing was very bad and I was always late, so I thought it would be a good start if I at least had some clocks to look at. It worked pretty well, but the more you collect them, the fewer you find that are really good in terms of design.

The best piece of advice I've ever been given was… by a product designer friend - she's Dutch - who I lived next door to when I first moved back to New York. She said that the real challenge of design is not to fit everything in, but to leave space empty so that it can breathe. If there's not enough breathing space, it doesn't matter how well organised something is, the space will strangle you and make you anxious.

If money was no object… I would buy a home - an apartment or a house in a location that was beautiful and had a lot of sunlight and the right amount of space. The ultimate thing you can spend money on is where you live. If that's well done, it doesn't matter what you put in it. I'd be happy to spend all my money on a great home and have nothing left over.

The European style is something I gravitate towards...They work out of very traditional, old-fashioned 19th century homes or apartments with large windows and parquet floors and into that shell they put contemporary, modern and colourful designs. That's the mix I like and you don't see it much in the United States.

You never want your bookcase to be full… you always want it to be slightly empty. The same things go for clothing, art on the wall, your desk. You can apply that advice anywhere.

If I could have a look around anyone's apartment, alive or dead, it would have to be… the Eames's, who are very famous, but on a personal level, I don't really know the messy day-to-day. I just think there is a tremendous richness in their life and I would love to visit their home if they were alive.

I love the fashion and unpredictability of... The Sartorialist. I also like Emma's Design Blog - it's a woman who lives in Sweden and she just puts up lots of beautiful pictures and I love going there.

IMAGE CREDIT: Reprinted from the book Apartment Therapy's Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces by Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan. Copyright © 2010 by Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan. Photographs copyright © 2010 by Jim Franco. Published by Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House, Inc.

Interview by Emily Jenkinson

9th September 2011