Architectural InDigestion

I haven't blogged in a while and despite the endless daily fodder for political commentary, I am very tired and weary of politics and the warnings about the impending end of times.

So I will talk about my ordinary life in Cochiti Lake, and my always astute observations about class and wealth.

Every now and then, someone drops off old magazines at the mail room in the village. I welcome the donations to my bathroom library and scoff them up whenever I see them: The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Time, National Geographic, New Mexico, and this past week, for the first time, several hefty editions of Architectural Digest.

So, as usual, I grabbed five or six of the magazines and took them home to leaf through them.

Now, I can appreciate interesting architecture - maybe not as much as some people - but I have an artistic gene, so I do take notice of form and color and design. I would argue that I have an innate sense of  Feng shui - without resorting to metaphysical explanations - and I appreciate the orderly placement of objects to please the eye and to create a comfortable, calming space.

But there was very little in AD to peak my interest. Architectural Digest seems to be more about over the top opulence than architecture.

The editors must feel obligated to display the most hideous, uncomfortable furniture, irritating patterns, ill-colored decor and useless objects known to man, just because the furnishings, designs and items carry a pretentious, hyphenated Franco-Italo-Espanola name of some "famous" artist, company, or designer I never heard of.

One article touted a wall covering made of concrete and "authentic" banana tree bark. (Like, beware of any designer who uses "unauthentic" banana tree bark in their concrete wall coverings.)

But it was one particular article that made me laugh, mockingly, and made me realize what different worlds we peons live in.

I will quote, emphasis in Bold is mine:

Standing in the soft glow of his perfectly pastel two-story waterfront home in Florida George Lindemann says "I didn't want a white house. I have two young girls whose favorite color is pink and because they live with two dads and two brothers I am always looking for ways to empower them. So I made pink my favorite color too." 

After local architect Ellen T. Shulman completed the 7000 square-foot tropical modern home on one of Miami Beach's Sunset Islands, Lindemann the son of entrepreneur George Lindemann, turned to his neighbor and close friend, Susan Bell Richard, who advises an impressive list of artists and designers, to zero in on the precise shade of pink. "She's a brilliant colorist," he explains, "and she knows the light on the island, having lived here for 30 years." Together they spent two years reviewing exactly 74 samples of pink paint. "We painted swaths of the house with different shades and drove the boat by throughout the day to see how it looked at every hour." The resulting hue is not unlike the sand on Harbor Island in the Bahamas. 

Our entry "Courtyard" - a very fine architectural feature of our 1100 square-foot home.

It took us 5 minutes to pick the perfect shade of sunset
when we had our stucco painted and sealed.
The resulting hue is not unlike the hue before it was painted.
Four-piece outdoor furniture from ALDI's Supermarket
$199.