To vacation in architectural bliss, just select a destination with an adequate number of significant edifices. Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville doesn’t count, nor do après ski raised hearths around a cozy fire at the mid-market hotels in Beaver Creek. Any housing development, high rise condo building or shopping enclave built with fake stucco is beneath the pale, architecturally, although pink or salmon colored real stucco in vintage Miami ocean side structures may or may not qualify.

vintage Miami Art Deco, YES!

plastic, pink flamingos, NO!

Residential neighborhoods with extensive yard art, while not necessarily up to the standard of actual sculpture, may warrant a driving tour, if you have time. I once found a series of homes with odd but smile inducing objects, including a pair of six foot tall bowling pins, several old footed bathtubs turned on end to create niches in which brightly painted Madonna’s were displayed, and a tree hung with large globular objects spray painted to resemble oranges and lemons on steroids. Recently, in Ketchum, Idaho I found a house whose side and fence were completely sheathed in skis.

Such kitchy oddities can rise to the level of folk art…. or not… but are wonderful as a surprising collection of happy discoveries – awkward and unintentionally funny but still sort of dear when you consider the intent of the creators.

Like tramp art, pieced together by itinerant hobos, the homeless of a bygone era, it is ever apparent that the full spectrum of humanity bubbles up with creative impulses.

Beauty – such a primal, inexplicable imperative of everyone from cavemen to countesses.

And so, after that little detour, back to architectural bliss, more often associated with countesses than us regular folks. Those aristocrats! They did build some spectacular houses – from the chateaux of southern France to the winding lanes of the Cotswolds to the villas dotting all Italy – whew! Many just drip with history and art and classical details all patinated with the warm sun and hundreds of years.

But hey, anyone with a little cash and some persistence can find a great guide – both scholar and raconteur – who can lead them to the stellar examples of architectural history. And that is a very good way to tour.

But there are smaller moments, like finding the bowling pins on a back street in a small Michigan town, that are delightful partly because they are so completely surprising. I would say they are out of context, but part of the story is wondering why someone would have such an outlandish thing. What does it mean? A national champion bowler lives there? Or a sentimental carpenter whose parents met in a bowling alley? What are the back stories of these oddly amusing objects?

Really, there are quirky things in the most august places. What English Duke was it who held open houses in his great home only to display his pornography collections? And there was that house in Los Angeles owned by some Middle Eastern potentate who painted pubic hair on each piece of his extensive collection of Greek and Roman garden statuary. These things actually happened.

So, I think a nice antidote from scholarly architectural touring can be something more whimsical or at least smaller in scale. Have a break from cathedrals in their immensity and focus on the different ways stars are painted on ceilings: from early Sta. Maria in Cosmedin in Rome to Henry VIII’s chapel at Hampton Court Palace to the Lyndhurst in estate the Hudson River Valley.

Sta. Maria in Cosmedin

Hampton Court Palace

Lyndhurst, the Hudson River Valley estate of Gilded Era railroad baron, Jay Gould.

Or collect images of door knockers you have seen around the world. (Best to refrain from collecting the actual knockers, at least those still attached to doors.)

(this one just happens to be in Barcelona, where we are today!)

Having a theme for your architectural rambles adds a focus to your explorations, much like collecting gives purpose to your early Friday morning yard sale adventures.

It can be very enjoyable to go on an architectural/photographic safari in search of the most picturesque doorways or best examples of Venetian or Roman mosaics or even collect small rocks from the grounds of famous estates – duly noting on each the date and location found. Of course, removing pieces of the actual structure is not recommended. The docents go crazy if you even get close to the building with a chisel. (This last idea, collecting rocks wherever you go, can get out of hand if you travel much. If the samples are too large you end up, Lucille Ball-like, with a heavy load of rocks à la The Long Trailer.) If you travel a lot, even small chunks could overtake you the way corks seem to multiply when you save them – and what do we do with all those old corks!?!

My husband saved a pebble from the grounds at Villa Rotunda in Vicenza, the Palladian masterpiece we visited on our honeymoon. That rock means a lot to me!

Palladio’s spectacular Villa Rotunda

Cole sketching on the steps of Villa Rotunda.

There are other travel related collections. I know more than one person who collects sand. He has jars and jars of different colored sand – samples from countless beaches he has known. But that is a poor substitute for having focused on architecture, in my mind.

After all, scooping up a few ounces of silicate while lazing on a chaise, sipping a Mai Tai and reading a juicy novel lacks the honest rigor of doggedly plotting your trail, squinting for long periods into the sun at steeple tops, studying the tiny print in blue guide books, getting blisters on your blisters after miles of traipsing up one ruin and down the next catacomb.

On second thought, bring me a Margarita!

Comments

October 18, 2010 - 11:12 AM Nicole

This is such a lovely, well-written piece. Thank you for sharing.

You're welcome, Nicole. Thanks for the compliment.

Sherry

September 07, 2012 - 05:38 PM eskorte Norge

exceptional site post. I am going to bookmark www.hayslipdesign.com and check out a lot more often. I really like the website template

Thanks for the kudos!

Sherry's Blog

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