SHANNON
SCOTT
DESIGN
“I
decided when I was fourteen years old this is what I was
going to do when I grew up,” Shannon Scott, founder
and principal of Shannon Scott Design, says during
our interview at her studio office. She says she is one of those
rare people who knew at a young age what she would be when
she grew up. “I’d been changing my bedroom around every
few weeks since the fifth grade,” she explains. “One day, I was
standing there in my bedroom; my stepdad had taken pictures
of the funky stuff I’d done, and I was looking at them saying,
‘I’m going to be an interior designer.’ That was it. I never veered
off that course.”
Shannon’s studio office, tucked away off the main
thoroughfare in Los Olivos, is a rustic yet sophisticated
mix of corrugated metal siding and reclaimed wood.
Handcrafted desks line the front room where her team works
on drawing and drafting, accounting, procurement, business
development, and project management; a door opens up
to a huge warehouse-style workroom chockfull of projects
in various stages of completion. Walls are lined with shelves
stocked with material samples featuring fabrics, woods, tiles,
and stones. “This is where we lay everything out and have
fun,” Shannon says, picking up and admiring the quality and
texture of a piece of reclaimed French limestone that will be
repurposed for a new project.
Shannon’s body of work spans a full range of projects
that include fine hotels and spas, resort golf clubs,
restaurants, wineries, contemporary beach homes, rustic
villas in California, and a 10,000-square-foot castle in
Newfoundland.
“My focus is about creating very intentional
design,” she says. “I’ve had this quote on my computer
forever. It’s a Cherokee quote and it says, ‘One cannot
have a true sense of self without simultaneously having a
true sense of place.’ At the end of the day, what matters
most is that sense of place and how we feel in our
surroundings.”
“This is my dream; this is my passion,” she says.
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