ml | editor’s letter
Small Spaces, Big Ideas PHOTO BY DEBORAH COTA
The small spaces featured in this issue have me thinking about the spaces I’ve lived in over the years: a rambling 19th-century Neoclassical/Georgian Revival with Palladian windows and a third-floor ballroom with a black-andwhite tile floor; a city loft perched just above the light rail line with half walls that allowed all the smells—and grease—from the kitchen to waft right into my clothes closet; and a wood-shingled house at the end of a cul-desac that my family and I shared with a ghost who liked to steal teaspoons and wander the halls at night. But of the 15 or so places I’ve called home, the space I’ve enjoyed living in the most, the one that felt the most “just right,” was by far the smallest space of all: my 80-square-foot room in Sewall Hall, a beautiful old dormitory on the University of Colorado’s campus. Really more of a closet, the room forced me to edit my possessions down to the essentials. As a result, I lived surrounded by my most favorite things. There must be something to that, because when I asked the architects featured in this month’s “The Ones to Watch” feature (on page 25) about their dream project, many described a space that was small. Trey Jordan, a Santa Fe-based architect, explained that small spaces just seem to be more essential. “When you really cook stuff down, the “It seems to me that the structure feels like it’s that way because it’s sup- constraints presented by a posed to be that way,” he says. small space foster ingenuity.” It seems to me that the constraints presented by a small space foster ingenuity. Of course, a big budget and 20,000 square feet offer lots of room for creativity, but I’m talking about the outside-the-box thinking it takes just to accommodate all of the basic functions of a home in a unique, livable and aesthetically pleasing way. The homes featured in this issue are as different as can be, but each one was born of a set of constraints—a floodway, the surrounding landscape, a herd of deer. And while these restrictions may have seemed like problems at one time, today they’re more like gifts, for the homes we get to enjoy in this issue simply wouldn’t be here without them.
CHRISTINE DEORIO, EDITOR IN CHIEF cdeorio@mountainliving.com
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ML | October 2008