From a Kips Bay concept to a 44-entry specification, the Omaha duo uses Programa to carry design intent through approvals, procurement and the rest of the studio.
The show house was a sprint.
Their system was built to last.
Kips Bay Decorator Show House Dallas
Omaha, Nebraska
Studio Eckström approached its room at the 2025 Kips Bay Decorator Show House Dallas as more than a collection of objects. Mr. Trotter's Drawing Room was built around a fictional collector: a man shaped by travel, ritual and the social codes of the Gilded Age. A hand-painted wallcovering carried the patina of a room with its own history. Antique silhouettes met contemporary commissions. Even the Made Goods Audin console became part of the character study.
The conceit was richly layered. The delivery window was not.
Behind the room sat the familiar operational problem of interior design at its most concentrated: hundreds of interdependent decisions, custom work, national sourcing, collaborators in several states and a deadline that would not move.
For Studio Eckström, Programa became the thread between the idea and its execution.
“Because the platform allowed us to communicate with remote teams in real time, share drawings and specifications instantly, track revisions, and keep fabricators, vendors, and installers aligned across multiple states, we were able to move with the speed and precision the schedule required. In a project where there was no margin for delay, Programa made seamless execution possible.”
Mikal EckströmStudio Eckström
The show house put that way of working under unusual pressure. The studio's other projects reveal something more enduring: this is not a one-off system assembled for Kips Bay. It is how Studio Eckström turns a design narrative into a set of decisions that can survive the full life of a project.
The presentation gives the project a point of view
Interior design begins with a story before it becomes a schedule. Studio Eckström keeps that early work visual.
In one residential presentation, an informal office is composed from a character-rich wood desk, task chair, lighting and an irregular rug. The pieces are arranged as a scene rather than a catalog. Product pins connect the composition to the individual selections beneath it.
That distinction matters. A presentation needs to make a client feel the direction of a room. A specification needs to tell the team exactly what the room requires. Studio Eckström uses both layers: an image-first view for the idea, followed by structured product information for the work that comes next.
It reflects the wider US interior design lifecycle. Concept establishes the narrative. Schematic design gives it form. Design development is where that direction is tested against dimensions, finish, cost, lead time and constructability. The creative and technical records have different jobs, but they cannot drift apart.
Design development becomes a working specification
The public Programa schedule for Mr. Trotter's Drawing Room contains 44 entries across furniture, art and mirrors, lighting, stone and tile, fabric and paint.
It moves from an Audin console and Maison Jansen tables to Vaughan lighting, Artistic Tile stone, Samuel & Sons trim and Benjamin Moore paint. Each row can carry the details that turn a reference into an instruction: documentation code, dimensions, color, finish, material, quantity, lead time, supplier and status.
The structure is as telling as the individual pieces. A custom banquette sits alongside its fabrication lead time. Paint colors are recorded beside antique furniture and commissioned upholstery. The decorative idea does not disappear when the project enters design development. It becomes more exact.
This is where many interior projects become difficult to hold together. The proposal has been accepted and the concept is clear, but the volume of decisions expands sharply. A single object can affect layout, electrical work, upholstery, freight, installation and budget. When those facts sit in separate files, the team spends time reconciling versions. When they sit against the same product row, the specification becomes a working record rather than a document produced at the end.
Studio Eckström's current projects show the method at a larger scale. One FF&E schedule contains more than a hundred entries, organized into categories and tracked item by item. The number matters less than the behavior: the studio starts with structure, then keeps refining the record as decisions develop.
Taste and commercial reality stay in the same conversation
A convincing room is also a commercial project. Trade price, retail price, discount, markup, quantity, tax, client price and expected profit all affect whether a selection can move forward.
Studio Eckström uses the financial view of its schedules to keep those considerations attached to the products they describe. That means a principal can assess the client-facing price and the studio's commercial position without rebuilding the specification in a separate worksheet.
The benefit is not simply cleaner administration. It protects design judgement. If a lead time changes or a custom piece pushes the budget, the team can understand the consequence in the context of the room and compare the right alternatives. The financial decision stays connected to the design decision.
Approval becomes part of the product record
Approvals are another point where projects lose clarity. A client says yes in a meeting, a vendor responds in an email and a designer marks up a PDF. Weeks later, the team must reconstruct what was approved and which revision the decision applied to.
Studio Eckström's Programa workflow keeps approval activity tied to the relevant items. Products can be marked for review, approved or returned with feedback, while the history remains visible against the schedule. In the studio's projects, that record covers more than furniture. It includes wallpaper, installation labor, electrical work and smaller decorative selections.
For the client, the question is simple: what am I deciding? For the studio, the useful record is more exact: which product, which specification, which response and when? That becomes especially important once an approved selection moves into purchasing or fabrication.
Status makes the schedule useful after sign-off
Approval is not the finish line. An item still has to be quoted, ordered, produced, delivered and installed.
Studio Eckström tracks those states on the schedule itself. Across its projects, products appear as in production, delivered or installed, with lead times and supplier information nearby. A project lead can see where attention is needed without separating the creative specification from the delivery record.
This is the practical value of a live schedule. It does not freeze the design at the moment of approval. It follows the item as its role changes, from proposed object to committed cost to physical thing on site.
The same principle supports distributed work. A shareable schedule or exported specification gives collaborators a controlled view of the current information. Internal project tasks remain internal, while client and vendor handoffs come from the specification built for that purpose.
Every project leaves the next one in better shape
The most revealing part of Studio Eckström's workspace may be the material that is not attached to a single finished room.
The studio maintains reusable schedule structures for lighting, materials and finishes, fittings and fixtures, FF&E and presentations. These are not generic checklists imposed from outside. They are the studio's own categories, fields and habits, captured so that a new project begins with a known framework rather than a blank page.
That accumulated structure changes what efficiency means. It is not about rushing the creative work. It is about preserving the thinking that should not need to be reinvented: how a schedule is organized, which information a fabricator needs, how an approval is recorded and what the studio checks before procurement.
The same pattern appears at studio level. A single management board brings tasks from several active projects into view, with owners, categories, due dates and stages. Time can be tracked against project work. Principals can scan what is in progress across the practice without opening every project separately.
For a two-person studio coordinating many outside specialists, that continuity is valuable. The project remains richly individual. The operating method becomes repeatable.
A system that protects the story
Kips Bay compressed the interior design lifecycle, but it did not change its underlying demands. Studio Eckström still had to establish a concept, develop it, specify every component, secure decisions, coordinate fabrication and bring the room into being.
Programa gave those stages a continuous record. The presentation carried the narrative. The schedule translated it into exact product information. Pricing kept the commercial implications visible. Approval history held the decisions. Status carried the products towards installation. Templates and studio-wide task views returned that knowledge to the practice.
That is the lesson beyond the show house. A good studio system does not make every project look the same. It gives the creative idea a better chance of arriving intact.
See how Programa carries an interior design project from concept to procurement →