Friday, December 7, 2007

California Dreamin' on such a Winters Day





I have spent a lot of time in Los Angeles the last several years. At my previous job, I was working with our LA office on a building for a community college. Our office was in Century City, so I typically stayed in Beverly Hills. I was able to walk a lot of neighborhoods and found myself drawn to the modern homes (definitely more prevalent in LA than they are in the Twin Cities). When Kevin and I began talking about a new home I started dreaming of a 1950’s LA home….. Neutra, Shindler are inspirations.







Many of the images in my head include a swimming pool and floor to ceiling windows cantilevered from one of the Hollywood Hills. Not exactly practical or possible for a home in MN. So, if we can’t have the swimming pool, the floor to ceiling glass, the cantilever or view over LA, what can we take away from the 50’s modernists and their work in LA?



Simplicity- Rectilinear forms and planes
Neutral Color- the forms speak for themselves, against a blue sky it's beautiful
Connection to Outdoors- balconies and windows connect to exterior space.

It might be a stretch, but having a bit of California in St. Paul in the winter might not be such a bad thing. We might be able to stay warm.









2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder if that is a valid goal for life: living in California. I used to dismiss it, thinking, well sure you can find meaning and hapiness elsewhere in the USA.


But now I'm not certain; have you seen the Disney "Soarin'" attraction about California? And where else is there such a varied climate? And where else is there Palm Springs?


And where else is there the San Francisco of Hitchcock's "Vertigo"? Or the John Muir forest? Or the Mojave Desert? Or the Sierra Nevadas?



And where else is the center of the online universe? And the center of the media universe? And the center of the aerospace universe?

Anonymous said...

Let me ask; once a green house is complete, and one is living in it, and one's concience is not weighed down by guilt, what endevours does one engage in? Does one put up posters of sports teams on the walls? What about the IR night cameras around the perimiter to catch the critters in the act at night and put them on your DVR for viewing throughout the following day as a screen saver? Wouldn't it be cool to have an indoor aquaponics setup so that you could play with your sushi before eating it?