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Joe Mortell

@joemortell

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Artist / Designer
💬 [email protected]

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Moodboard No. 51: “Vibes I bring to the function” 👽🐈‍⬛🔮🍁🥑🐆🧲🤘🤎🎃 #moodboard #mood #mewd #octobermood #itsmyvibe

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Conversation pits were a defining feature of mid-century interiors, designed to bring people together in one sunken seating area. Rather than having furniture scattered around a room, everything centred around a shared space for sitting, talking and spending time together. They eventually fell out of favour, but looking at these interiors makes me wonder why we stopped building homes around ideas like this. There’s something about the combination of built-in seating, low tables and the intimacy of the space that feels just as appealing today.

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Explain your style: More personality the better, always. 🫡

Homes with personality, unique home decor, interiors with personality, funky home, eclectic home, unconventional style, unique architecture.

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@joemortell 🤎

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#inspo
Conversation magnets.

A good living space brings people together without forcing it. Low seating, central anchors and sculptural forms naturally draw the conversation in.

#cuethemood #conversationpit #interiorarchitecture #cinematicinteriors #interioratmosphere #interiorinspiration #retrofit

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Sunken seating areas first blew up back in the 50s before becoming a staple of 60s and 70s home design, heavily shaped by visionary architects like Eero Saarinen and Bruce Goff. Instead of angling every couch toward a television, these architectural pits transformed ordinary living rooms into intimate, cozy spaces made purely for talking and hanging out.

Finding an authentic conversation pit in a modern home is pretty rare these days, which feels like a missed opportunity. We really need to bring them back—there’s something unbeatable about a built-in space that brings everyone together into the same circle to actually sit, disconnect, and talk.

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conversation pit in são paulo by @joemortell

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A few gems

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Dm us render for a free quote!!! #architecture #visualsoflife #ig #3d #render

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MERCURYMOOD-002

Hope my future husband is ok with a hot pink listening room in our home 💿💗

Source: @joemortell

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The conversation pit first appeared in 1927, designed by architect Bruce Goff in a home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. But it was Eero Saarinen and Alexander Girard’s 1952 Miller House in Columbus, Indiana — a sunken seating area lined with a single continuous sofa — that turned it into a cultural phenomenon. By the 1970s, conversation pits were everywhere. Featured on The Dick Van Dyke Show, referenced in James Bond films, built into upscale homes across America and Europe.

Then they disappeared. As people began using living rooms as media rooms rather than gathering spaces, the conversation pit started to feel like an inconvenience — a hazard even. Most were filled in. The whole idea of designing a room around conversation felt almost quaint.

#conversationpit #90s #interior #design #homedesign

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The psychology of green spaces

There is a reason people gravitate toward parks, forests and open fields when things feel heavy. It is not just habit or aesthetics. Something about being surrounded by green actually shifts the nervous system. The pace slows, the noise in your head quiets, and for a moment the weight of whatever you were carrying feels a little more manageable.

What is interesting is that the same response can be triggered without ever stepping outside. Green as a color carries something of that same psychological weight into any space it touches. A deep forest green wall, a sage kitchen, a muted olive living room. The body seems to recognize it in a similar way, something familiar and grounding that quietly changes the feeling of a room before you have even registered why.

The spaces that get it right don’t feel decorated. They feel considered. Like someone understood that color is not just visual but emotional, and made their choices accordingly.

@hut

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