Having recently traveled to Georgia by car and, over to Naples a month before that, I got an opportunity to see some recent residential architecture from throughout the state. I’m really amazed and, put off, by how so many new homes in Florida (and probably elsewhere) don’t seem to fit their built locations. Conceptually, many of them are like the realization of Thomas Kincaid’s painted realities (even if he really doesn’t paint them himself). There is something stark about the “modern home” and modernism as spoken about in this article but, it sure is beautiful to me. The clean, crisp lines, open space, light and, graceful furniture would be a reality I would more than welcome. Since there may still be the opportunity to go visit upper Minnesota this year, I’ll get my nature fix then. Besides, the Walker Art Center is one THE best museums in the US.

sightings

What’s So Bad About Modern Architecture?: “Terry Teachout pays a visit to the Gropius House and wonders why more people don’t appreciate midcentury modern architecture.”

“In 1845, Henry David Thoreau built a tiny cabin near Walden Pond in Massachusetts, lived there for two years, then published a book about it. “Most men,” he wrote, “appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have.” A century later, a German architect in flight from the Nazis moved to a meadow a stone’s throw from Walden Pond, where he put up a small house that is as deeply considered a dwelling as has ever existed.” (Via WSJ.com.)