Today's New York Times Home & Garden section felt a little bombed-out this morning, what with bleak topics such as an abandoned town in Colorado, a threadbare home in Paris, and super-spare artists' residences in far-off Newfoundland. A piece on designers who witness the marital spats of their clients offered a few chuckles, but overall: middle gray, middle gray, and more middle gray. We pulled whatever highlights there were to pull and compiled 'em here:
· Geekiest: Besides, he loves to prune, so what’s not to like?
· Wittiest headline: Marital Issues Buried in the Sofa
· Most depressing series of captions: See text blocks, above.
· Most awkwardly posed couple: See photo, above.
· Best designer tale from the trenches: “We did a client who in the middle of the meeting just went off on her husband, accusing him of all kinds of things, having been with prostitutes, as though no one was in the room.”
· Wait, scratch that: “One time, I’d met with the wife to go over some plans,” he said, “and then later, I was going over them with the husband, and explaining, ‘Well, your wife wants the two kids to go into this one bedroom to make room for the baby.’ And he said, ‘What baby?’”
· Most Parisian moment: Ms. Carmignac, 28, an actress and writer, often works at home, in a tiny room off the kitchen, where the sloped glass ceiling offers a view of the sky. “I love writing in this little room when the rain taps the glass,” she said.
· Most cliched quote: “I like the idea of transforming a space in a dramatic way through lighting..."
· Most egregious price point: $5,500 for a lamp.
· Best naming convention: The door is called Uptown, Midtown or Downtown, depending on the materials chosen.
· Artsiest fartsiest: The Long Studio is the first of six modern artists’ residences to be built in what some might consider an unlikely location — on Fogo, a 91-square-mile island off the coast of Newfoundland. Designed by Todd Saunders, a Newfoundland-born architect based in Norway, and financed by the Shorefast Foundation, a local charity, the studios will range from 200 to 2,000 square feet.
· Runner up: The Spun Chair, pictured, is made from spun carbon fiber — a material used in helicopters and medical prostheses—and weighs just 2.2 pounds.
· Yuppiest: When Jaime and Isaac Salm, the brothers who run Mio, a design firm specializing in sustainable home furnishings, moved their studio into an old fortune cookie factory in Philadelphia, passers-by didn’t know what to make of it.