Shabby Chic

In my continued pursuit of finding office space in Atlanta, my friend Kenny stumbled across a real estate listing for a house in my part of Atlanta. Not just any house, but one I immediately recognized, for it was the cover story of Dwell Magazine about a year ago.

Now, normally I wouldn't have looked at residential housing for office space, but the space was very unique. Open plan, wonderful sunlight, concrete floors, and an iconic architectural style that could easily accentuate the identity of a business. While it wasn't necessarily "commercial," it had enough going for it to be considered. Plus...come on! It was on the cover of Dwell! So I scheduled an appointment with the agent managing the property, and drove over to take a look.

Upon arrival I was quite excited, mixed with an awkward sense of deja vu as the house I had looked at numerous times on the front of a small magazine loomed overhead. I simply couldn't wait to see what it was like inside.

When the agent arrived and we stepped through the front door, the first thing I noticed was an odd pile of material on the floor. It was gray, sponge-like, and in long strands. Upon inspection, it appeared to be some type of insulation you'd pick up at a place like Home Depot. The agent confirmed my suspicion, followed by a statement that blew my mind.

"That stuff was removed for a photo shoot."

Turned out the "insulation," if you could really call it that, was some junk that was wrapped around the edges of that giant door you see in the photo above. And the reason why it was removed for a photo shoot was because it interfered with the clean, unfettered lines of the design.

In other words, by design, the doorway was never intended to have any type of weather stripping or sealant; otherwise it would have been a permanent element. The original architect purposely left the door, and for that matter the rest of the house, penetrable by outside elements for sake of design and the photographer's lens.

As I walked through the rest of the house, I couldn't shake what a shortsighted, irresponsible design decision is was. But the doorway wasn't the only problem. There were misaligned windows, floor tile that extended to the wall and then dropped off into God knows where, and incredibly, a sconce on the wall that had a paper cup for a shade.

Then to cap it all off, the upper loft-areas were surrounded by a railing made out of steel pipes with a cherry-looking wood top. They looked rather stylish from afar, but upon closer inspection the pipes were garden variety stuff you'd pick up at Home Depot with the barcode stickers still affixed to every pipe.

Now, seriously folks. I have no issue with someone using inexpensive materials to pull off a sophisticated looking design (as long as the quality is there, of course), but who in their right mind would leave the stickers on? In their own home? I would have gone crazy with a bottle of goo-gone and a razor blade well before their installation.

Dismayed, I said "no thanks" and moved on.

That was all a few weeks ago. Today though, I'm still thinking about the irony of it all. Did the Dwell photographers notice any of this? How much of what was in the magazine was Photoshopped? Did the architect purposely build the structure as cheaply as possible, knowing what would "shoot well" for editorial purposes, purely to bolster his own career?

I personally hold Dwell in very high regard for their design, editorial viewpoints on urbanism and environmentalism, and promotion of a simpler, more sustainable living style that cuts against the opulent, gluttonous garbage perpetuated by McMansions and Frontgate catalogs. But a home is hardly sustainable if it doesn't last. It's simply bad design.

It all reminds me of Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright, in case you don't know, would often times place his windows so that glass panes butted up against one other without any molding or weather stripping. Why? Because the molding broke the visual line of the glass and was less pleasing to the eye. Guess what happened every time it rained.

Fallingwater, Wright's greatest (or at least most iconic) architectural achievement, has problems with its numerous cantilevers jutting out over the hillside, for their weight is too great for their size. They crack, sag, and if left alone would eventually fall off into the waters below. They're constantly being repaired and bolstered to perpetuate the illusion of stability for the throngs of people who now pass through the home's front door.

It all brings me around to my final point. Good design is not just about being pleasing to the eye, but about working within the confines of the materials and technology at hand and making compromises where need be. Few designers (especially 'print' designers working with web developers) appreciate being told that their work requires revisions because of a technical impossibility, and that'll never change. But the mark of a mature designer is not just one who's willing to compromise and adapt when rendering their work in the real world, but one who's responsible enough to police themselves.