Kathryn Litchfield: design sense and sensibility.

• Author: Skoy, Jenie
• Position: Editorial

The world of design is Kathryn Litchfield's oyster, and she has created a pearl in Salt Lake City's Ninth and Ninth neighborhood--a unique two-story art gallery, Thin Air Design--as a way of reconciling her decision to leave her native Menlo Park, California and create a permanent dwelling in Utah. "Most everything I see [in building and design] appalls me," Litchfield admits, "so I decided I was going to build something before I got sick to my stomach."

With a degree in art history under her belt, along with coursework from the University of Utah architecture program, Litchfield designed and oversaw the new gallery's construction, which she labored at for four years. "It was built out of my suffering," she said. She built the gallery as a touchstone in what she sees as a world full of building design run amok. Litchfield had a hand in each detail of the construction; she even attempted to share her building philosophy with the construction crew by scrawling phrases like "Measure twice and cut once" and "Plumb and level" on her T-shirt and wearing it around as a reminder. "I tried to make an impression," she said. "People are not used to building a certain way. [The design] called for more care and less caulk."

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Her knack for design came from growing up with an architect as a father. "I was taught those aphorisms about doing things in a well-thought-out and ordered way, having a system, that less is more. This is the vocabulary I grew up with," says Litchfield.

Inventors also run in her family, and as a child, she wanted more than anything to invent something useful and beautiful. She tried her hand at a hotdog turner and a miniature oven using light bulbs as a heating device. Her childhood inclination took root...