A Summer of Excellence.

It is not unheard of for those we admire in the fash­ion and design pub­lish­ing indus­try — to take a bit of an unof­fi­cial break each year in the form of their “Summer Issue.”  We all know this and it’s okay by us.  We quickly thumb through our hot weather issues, take in a few pleas­ant pool-side images, which seem all-too quickly fol­lowed by the inevitable block of ads that indi­cate the expe­ri­ence is over a bit before it began. As we file the issue on the table we are com­forted in the knowl­edge that our com­rades will com­pen­sate by work­ing dili­gently to blow our minds with their September Issues. This is not the case this year for Metropolitan Home.

Met Home’s “Cool Summer Issue”  this July/August is full of sub­stance, par­tic­u­larly archi­tec­tural and inno­v­a­tive.  I took it to din­ner with me, din­ing alfresco with my hus­band.  I began to peruse its pages, fully expect­ing to be done before the appe­tizer arrived.  As I got into it, I found that this issue was full of great con­tent. In fact, not only was I not through with it after the entrée, I was so inspired that I asked my hus­band to go through it with me again once we got home so that we might dis­cuss cer­tain ideas that might be rel­e­vant to the design of our new house.

Beginning with a beautifully-captured wooden dock scene dis­play­ing the header “Summer Living” on page fifty-one, Met Home’s sum­mer lay­out of top notch design projects includes get­aways from upstate New York and the Texas Hill Country, to Jackson Hole and Puerto Rico.  Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est was the fea­ture on the acclaimed Hix Island House in Vieques, Puerto Rico… but that’s personal—we go to Vieques every chance we get and have vis­ited this successfully-conceived bed and break­fast dur­ing our time there.

Metropolitan Home July/Aug 2009

Each project fea­tured in this lay­out has some­thing to offer that is stim­u­lat­ing.  The exte­rior shot of a home in New York by archi­tects Joe Tanney and Robert Luntz is a strik­ing exam­ple of excel­lent, mod­ern com­po­si­tion and the inte­rior walls com­prised of hot-rolled steel impress as they set the tone for the well-appointed inte­rior.  At the Texas home fea­tured in the mag­a­zine, an out­door pas­sage­way is indus­trial, fun and func­tional with­out being over­bear­ing, and the bonus of a lake­side nap­ping pavil­ion from the same project is a scene that inspires lazy envy.

Next, a Swedish-influenced bed­room that demon­strates the beauty and value of an excel­lent tex­tile placed in the per­fect set­ting. This spare, pri­mar­ily white retreat offers a refresh­ing respite from the wood, steel and con­crete pre­vi­ously fea­tured.  As you progress, you will encounter the dis­ci­plined play­ful­ness of yet another excel­lent mod­ern project.  The Mondrian-inspired Jackson Hole house designed by Eric Logan deliv­ers a crisp fin­ish that leaves you pleas­antly lightheaded.

You would think there could be no more—and then, crammed in, before you reach the mod­est spread of adver­tise­ments, is an out­ra­geously edgy English gar­den. Both genius and friv­o­lous, it ends this sum­mer jour­ney unex­pect­edly, burn­ing an image of a secret pool into your mind that can­not be removed.

If you have a han­ker­ing to jour­ney through a port­fo­lio of excel­lent American design this sum­mer, make sure to pick up Metropolitan Home.  Bravo.

Leah Spurrier. HighStreet