Inside Su Casa

style or design?

By Charles C. Poling
Photograph by Kirk Gittings

This article first appeared in Spring II 2008 Su Casa

At first the words style and design when applied to homes seem interchangeable. Look closer, though, and design suggests creative intent while style denotes a tangible, perhaps ephemeral, and certainly replicable product of that creativity. If we were politicians, we could parse these semantic differences all day, but since we’re homeowners thinking about our place, we might better spend our time thinking about how we can design our intimate world to support the best idea of ourselves.

First I’ll start with the last story in Su Casa, “Cozy jewel” (page 166), our Hasta la Vista column about artist Diane Moreno, who makes her home above the Pecos River in the very shadows of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Nothing here feels styled, yet every square inch exudes an intentional touch, a grand if not fully articulated design. A visitor’s eye can’t help falling on an expression of Moreno’s creativity, from the fence-adorning rosette made of barbed wire to the classic-car grille by the front gate, from the faux-painted “carpet” in the living room concrete to the nicho by the commode. Style? Design? Whatever, it urges you to elevate your awareness. How many homes do that?

You might say that elevating one’s awareness of beauty has become Bay Area designer and part-time Santa Fe resident Linda Applewhite’s calling, her life’s work. (See “Santa Fe calling,” page 68.) I’ve spoken many times with her about why she does interior design, and she always returns to her commitment to bringing beauty into everyone’s everyday world: their home. Beauty, for Applewhite, is a kind of Platonic spiritual ideal: living in beauty steers us toward the transcendent. A similar philosophy underlines Japanese style as explored by Sunamita Lim in her book by that name and our article on page 88, just as it does Christine Mather’s conception of Santa Fe style—and as an author of the seminal book Santa Fe Style, you can bet she knows what she’s talking about. (See Home at Last, page 61.) For Mather, as for Applewhite and Lim, the essence of the “style” is really a stance toward the world that values the human spirit. Santa Fe style has endured not because it’s clever fashion, but because it deeply connects us to a place and to our neighbors.

Our article on hand-crafted furnishings (“Top drawer,” page 78), which focuses on a set of four New Mexico artisan companies, carries that theme into the particular: owning a piece creates a tie to the culture, traditions, and ongoing creativity that’s uniquely New Mexican. Finding a place to put that piece is another matter. Maybe you’ll happen upon it on the 2008 Custom Builders Council Home Tour (page 103); the tour’s 22 houses span a wide range of tastes and budgets. Ron and Chris Escudero found theirs in the Sandia Mountain foothills, where Total Systems Construction designed and built them a just-right house that will meet their evolving needs for years to come. (See “Tailor made,” page 92.) That interaction between homeowner and designer-builder might be one of the best ways to bring beauty home.