As if Acido Dorado, that dazzling gold-colored desert home created by architect Robert Stone, wasn't already strange enough, Design Boom points out that it has an all-black counterpart. It's called the Rosa Muerta, or "dead rose," and it's got many of the same florid features as its companion piece, including the fake-rose fixtures and the big heart-shaped void in the facade. Its creator calls it as "highly finished as any jewel of modernism," but visually closer to a "burned-out abandoned house."
Stone goes on:
"I think Rosa Muerta gets a lot more interesting once you notice that it isn't just a normal modern house painted black. It is black to the bone. I used black to negate the house as a figure in the landscape. the desert is seen as a void by many—lso the house goes further and voids itself. A desert within a desert—it inverts figure and ground and makes the surrounding desert the focus, the figure, and the color." There you have it: the desert version of the brooding, all-black house is just a desert in a larger desert, on a desertifying planet spinning through a desert-y universe. Both Rosa Muerta and Acido Dorado can be rented on Airbnb, for those who wish to puzzle out their meaning up close.
· Rosa Muerta by Robert Stone comes to life in California [Design Boom]
· Dazzling Gold House Will Abuse Your Retinas Then Disappear [Curbed National]