I have long dreamt of shaping Nick Haus into a home renovation blog, but unfortunately that is hard to do without a home! Luckily, I was able to spend a few weeks with Greg this spring, and together we drew up plans for the renovation of the large house that he and his wife bought in their town's historic center. It's a beautiful, very simple adobe structure that was built piece by piece over time -- it has a lovely almost neoclassical facade, made entirely of formed mud:
(the idea of classical works in mud perversely reminds me of the Place de la Concorde in Paris, which at one point in it's tumultuous history had a neoclassical statue of Venus sculpted in terra cotta at its center, wittily termed by critics "Venus in Mud." Another Venus in Mud:
It's best to ignore everything in that video save the first clip.)
Oh, tangents. I have a great talent for losing my point. Getting back to Greg, I've known him as long as I've known anyone ... our parents were friends when we were born, and Greg and I grew up in tandem. Our families are so close that we share a country house (the Red House), where Greg and I ran around together in the woods and built things and made potions and gardened:
Greg grew up and studied agricultural engineering, and has lived, worked and studied all over the world: Spain, France, Benin, Haiti, and now Colombia with his wife. He has his own blog, Agrarian Ideas for a Developing World, which takes on complex, serious matters and talks about them in an informed way. Even more impressive, he often translates his articles into Spanish, French, and Creole. (He is far too modest to mention any of these facts, but luckily can't do much about me bringing them up).
Greg lives a considered life, and the house he is renovating for his family (bambina coming in December) will be no exception: in addition to acknowledging the historical importance of the property, Greg's renovation will bring together a host of green features, and "will incorporate garden and livestock space so [he and his family] can eliminate more pesticides from [their] food." Not to mention that it will be beautiful. There are two courtyards, and you can see mountains from both the front and back of the house:
Excited yet? I am. You will not be disappointed.
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1 comment:
Yes. Excited. (And wishing your home renovation blog could start at our haus, dear sir ;)
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