Tell us a little about Design Research.

Maynard: We consider it to have been the first significant design store in America. In its heyday, DR had ten stores across the country. It was a fabulous and refreshing place. There were a lot of interesting people who worked for DR over the years—designers Raymond Waites and Joan Behnke, set designer David Wasco, architecture critic Herbert Muschamp, etc.

Lu: The stores were places to hang out, where you could get a feel of what was happening not only in design, but in lifestyle—what was the latest thing in music or clothes even. I know a lot of relationships that began with people meeting at DR. It was an influential place on so many levels.Everyone who worked there really believed in what we were doing—our enthusiasm was infectious. It was sad when DR closed, but there are still so many devoted past customers and followers that it just points to how important it was to the United States’ developing interest in architecture and design.

You opened LyndonDesignStudio in 1983. What’s your favorite thing you’ve produced since then?

Maynard: The Wendel collection, named after Lu’s maiden name. We designed it in 1992 and it’s as straightforward as could be. I still would make no changes even after 13 years of looking at it. The utilization of the engineering principle in the wire verticals now seems common, but at the time it was fresh. And as a system it works so well. We can easily convert the idea into a desk, workstations, shelving, entertainment carts and trolleys, CD storage swivels, coffee tables, whatever.

What’s your favorite design object that you haven’t designed?

Lu: We inherited two Alvar Aalto pieces from Maynard’s family: the early all-wood tea cart and a vintage 1936 glass vase. There is an almost handmade quality to each and yet they were “mass” produced. The quality of the glass in the vase is quite different from the Aalto vases on the market now—cruder and with greater variation in the thickness of the walls of the piece.

Maynard: What pops to mind are several toys designed by German mathematician Peer Clahsen, specifically his Cubicus. It was designed in 1968 and was produced by Kurt Naef in Switzerland. It’s a set of wooden blocks that interlock and construct (and can end up in a cube form) that challenge one’s skills while pleasing the aesthetic senses.

What’s it like to have worked together for so long? Is your work always collaborative?

Maynard: Over the years, Lu and I have often been sur-prised to find that many, if not most, couples we know would not think of working and living together. To us it seems not only natural, but productive and greatly enjoyable. Although we sometimes approach a design problem differently, we merge in our thinking. More correctly, we weave and develop an idea. There is a lot of give and take, a lot of listening. Lu is good at organizing and critiquing and I usually do the drawings and models.

Lu: Maynard is more creative, meaning that he has more original ideas. He is also the one who can struggle through the resolution of an idea. I’m less patient but I agree, I’m a pretty good critic. I can see when something isn’t resolved as well as it should be and offer a solution. For the most part, though, I think we respect each other’s ideas and work together well, which is probably why we’ve been able to do this for so long.

You mentioned that you missed the customer interaction of running a store and how that is so important when you’re designing things for people to use.

Maynard: Exactly. We try to do each thing we do simply, carefully, and with attention to detail. We think about how something is made, where it was made, what it’s made out of. Is it priced properly? Is it appropriate? That’s what we’re trying to do out here with the new Placewares. It’s going to be small, with the two of us initially without employees because we want to hear the feedback.

Lu: I think design education is in our blood. It’s definitely in Maynard’s. His father was an architect and his brother, Donlyn, is one of the original Sea Ranch architects and was chair of the University of California at Berkeley College of Architecture. Design Research, too, was all about education. Because that store was unique in many ways; we really had to explain why something was what it was and what the thought was behind it and why it was the price it was. Certainly, when we

What’s the future of retail? It seems like people are tired of the big-box stores and want products that mean something.

Lu: With the incredible amount of stuff that is out there now, how do you make your space your own? I, personally, am not a shopper. We are still eating off the same dishes I bought at Design Research in 1963 when I lived in Cambridge. There is a certain kind of careful editing and selection, with a love for what we have that makes things special. To know where it came from, as opposed to buying something and three years from now saying, “Oh, I am tired of this” and throwing it away. One of the things that we talked about in the beginning as a focus for our stores is the whole sustainable or green kind of attitude. For me, what that really means is having things that will last, that you will love to use for a long time, and that have a personal resonance.

Maynard: There’s a story to almost everything that we have in our house and our stores. Designers are, unfortunately, not really artisans right now. What we’ve tried to do, though, is—where we could not find things that existed, we made them.