The cradle will rock

Like a lot of design-conscious urbanites with modern tastes, Alberta Chu and Murray Robinson have put a lot of creative energy into decorating their home, a fashionable loft in the South End with 20-foot ceilings, spare white walls, and a spectacular wall of windows.

It's furnished with vintage chairs by Harry Bertoia. An Italian sofa by Massimo Morozzi. A giant minimalist print by Richard Serra. Even their dish rack has a big-name designer: Marc Newson, the Australian superstar.

So when their daughter Kaia was born two years ago, the thought of disrupting their carefully considered contemporary landscape with fussy, frilly baby furniture wasn't exactly appealing.

``We wanted our stuff to go with our tastes and not have this baby room that looked like it was from another planet , " says Chu, a documentary filmmaker.

Chu and Robinson are among a growing and increasingly influential breed of design-savvy parents who are changing the face of the baby furnishings marketplace, determined not to check their well-cultivated aesthetics at the nursery door.

They are parents who believe there should be no disconnect between the rest of their hip household and the room with their Diaper Genie and changing table, who ``don't want their child's Winnie-the-Pooh and Buzz Lightyear setup overlapping into their personal space," as Melissa Pfeiffer, co-owner of Modernseed, a website for children's products, puts it. Parents such as Christina Crawford of East Boston, an architectural designer by profession and mother of a 6-week-old baby. ``I feel really strongly that I didn't want a lot of junky , plastic , tacky stuff which they have at Babies ` R ' Us and . . . tends to be garishly designed," she says.

Not coincidentally, many of these parents happen to be designers who know a viable niche when they see one -- a niche formerly known as the `` baby industry " but now referred to as the ``parenting industry."

In the last two or three years, many of these designers have ventured into the marketplace, launching high-profile children's design firms such as Oeuf and ducduc, and online retail companies such as Moderntots, Modernseed, and Sparkability, all offering nursery furnishings meant to bring an enhanced sense of style into babies' rooms.

``Parents don't have to surrender to the worst whims of the mass market," says Daniel Kron, founder of Genius Jones, a Miami kids' furnishings company that's just introduced a miniature $3,900 version of the iconic Barcelona chair by Mies van der Rohe, perfectly scaled for children ages 4 to 8. ``It is possible to find smart children's products that are so well-designed you won't feel compelled to hide them in a closet when company comes to visit."

``The infant and children's products industry is filled with not-so-inspiring items that we just didn't want around our kids," writes Maine-based retailer Mark Eidsness on the Sparkability website, expressing the kind of parental passion usually reserved for such negative influences as junk food or violent TV. ``Instead of inspiring designs, we found cheap, plastic, throwaway products."

As awareness about modern design has hyper-accelerated, and a new culture of design has become more prevalent among the masses, it's not surprising it would have an impact on the baby market , too, once design devotees started having kids.

Its influence found its way into the baby stroller arena first, according to Yana Drogobetsky, who owns Bambini Design in Brookline.

``I don't think a week goes by when we don't see a picture of a celebrity in a magazine walking around with a Bugaboo stroller," she says, referring to the popular $700-plus stroller with off-road suspension and a built-in bassinet favored by such stars as Gwyneth Paltrow and Liv Tyler. ``It was the first product to enter the market for babies at such a high price point that was actually being bought by average people."

But until very recently, it seemed as though mass marketplace baby furniture -- traditionally styled cribs, plastic high chairs, Disney-inspired designs -- was the prevailing norm for most families. Even design-obsessed parents seemed resigned to the idea that this equipment was an inevitable part of life with newborns, like sleepless nights or teething.

Not all designers, however, agree this trend toward upscale, adult-centric children's furniture is a good idea. ``There is this idea out there that we have to protect our children from the chaos of an ugly world. Well, we'd better not let them go out of the house . . . because that garish aesthetic influence they are trying to insulate them from is ubiquitous," said Steve Portigal, founder of Portigal Consulting, a California firm specializing in research, design, and business strategy.

But that isn't stopping designers and retailers from trying. Now, even the cutting-edge product retailer Design Within Reach has a line of trendy children's products, called DWRjax.

``Before, I think people really wanted to fit into their babies' lifestyle," says Bambini Design's Drogobetsky. ``Now, they want the baby to fit into their lifestyle, and the environment they've created for themselves."

Increasingly, that environment is a place of modernist self-expression, where household products are more than just the sum of form and function, but have a kind of emotional pull and appeal.

These days, ``people don't want to walk in [ to a store ] and see millions of cribs that are very similar," says Drogobetsky, adding her average customers are older parents willing to spend $3,000 to $4,000 outfitting the nursery. ``They want something unique and different and [that] doesn't look like a little prison."

Naturally, much of this comes at a price.

Hot items in her store include Shaker-style $825 Oeuf cribs equipped with a removable changing station, and a wooden $239 Swedish Svan high chair -- Gwen Stefani reportedly has one -- that converts to a chair for older children. ``It's meant to blend in with the kitchen and not stand out as a big plastic piece of something," she says. Design Within Reach sells a $500 ``Nest" bassinet by Ooba with a bent plywood frame, evocative of the iconic Eames lounge chair, and a Stokke changing table ($399) that becomes a play table and eventually a shelving unit for media.

To be sure, this new generation of baby products is about more than just cachet; many of them offer a striking attentiveness to design and context. Fleurville's ``Calla" high chair is covered in nylon neoprene and has a base of powder-coated aluminum ``to match many of the appliances people have, like a Sub-Zero refrigerator," co founder Steve Granville says. At New York's recent International Contemporary Furniture Fair, designer Victoria Petitt introduced a nursing rocking chair that's wide enough for a mother, her baby, and a sibling.

``We believe that by sharing your aesthetics and sensibilities [ with your child ] , you help them develop an aesthetic personality," says Philip Erdoes, CEO of ducduc, a year-old retailer of infant furniture. ``Most kids get their religion and politics from their parents. Why would you believe they wouldn't get anything else from them?"