St. Petersburg's Signature is a signature building

A year ago a building down the street from me got its certificate of occupancy after a nearly two year build. I can see over downtown from my living room windows and watching this building rise from ground was two year long thrill. The building is called the Signature and it's a waterfront condominium tower and street-level work/ live space. The building's a stunner and made all the more so when its compared to the usual dreck that gets built on waterfronts in the fair state I call home.

The Signature was designed by architect Ralph Johnson from Chicago's Perkins + Will. I cannot think of a more thoughtful and interesting building on Florida's entire west coast.

The complex is actually a complex of lofts and storefronts that ring the tower and all told the project takes up a whole block of downtown St. Pete.

I see the building from its northern elevation and when viewed from the north or the south it appears to be a monolith ringed with balconies and topped with a true roof.

Seen from the east, the building all but disappears. The leading edge of the tower comes to a perfect, 372-foot tall leading edge that faces the water. The architect designed the building to be an homage to the boat sails in the marinas downtown and his homage works. This is a 36-story building that's 372 feet tall and it appears to be as graceful and airy as any sail could ever hope to be.

In a fit of thoughtfulness, the building's orientation minimizes the blocked water views in the neighboring towers and it leaves a surprisingly small footprint on St. Pete's rightfully bally-hooed, accessible waterfront.

I walked around it the other afternoon and caught some of it's more pleasing angles. Things being what they are in the real estate market here, there are still units available in the Signature and at this stage of the game, the prices start at $185K. That's about a third of the entry-level asking price made available pre-construction. By local standards, that's an unheard of asking price. The building's extremely well-built and the level of finishes the builder built into the units is surprisingly good.

In every way imaginable, the Signature is a signature building for my beloved St. Pete and its place along waterfront marks a real departure from what's expected out of St. Pete. This was after all, once a city referred to as "God's Waiting Room." My how times have changed.

Modern history can be yours for a cool two million

Philip Johnson's Booth House is in Westchester County, New York and it's been on the market since April. The Booth House was Philip Johnson's first private commission and the house was completed in 1946, three years before his iconic Glass House in New Canaan, CT. Johnson lived in the Glass House until his death at age 98 in 2005. He was survived by his longtime partner David Whitney. Upon Whitney's death a few months later, the Glass House was left to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is now open to the public.

Philip Johnson's Glass House

Philip Johnson was the face of 20th Century American architecture. I'm sure some of my architect pals would love to argue that point but in my mind he was. His list of friends, foes and collaborators reads like a who's who of the last century. He collaborated with Mies van der Rohe, offended Frank Lloyd Wright (I think everybody did), and introduced such notables as Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier to the American public. In 1930, he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art and it was at that museum in 1932 he mounted an exhibition called  "The International Style: Architecture since 1922."

International Style and Modernism were American architecture for the next four decades. Like Modernism, International Style believed in simplified form and a rejection of ornament. Johnson's Seagram Building from 1956 is a brilliant example of the International Style.

It's easy to dismiss International Style today but it was very much a product of its time. The Internationalists rejected everything that symbolized pre-war Europe. Ornament and artifice represented the tribal conflicts that plunged the world into first one and then a second World War. The level of disruption of those two events cannot be overstated. In its way, Johnson's Seagram Building is a repudiation of that conflict and an attempt to usher in a new era of cooperation and peace. What happened to Beaux Arts? It rode off on death's pale horse, that's what happened.

Johnson and his contemporaries began to see the Internationalist Style as a dead end and the Post-Modernism that followed began to embrace stylized ornamentation and symmetry. Johnson's AT&T Building from the early '80s with its Chippendale pediment shows his his take on Post-Modernism well.

Johnson was a cultural force in ways beyond his buildings, through his position at MOMA he promoted such artists as Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and many more. Philip Johnson brought world culture to the US and in just as many ways brought US culture to the world.

And just think, for a mere two million dollars you could own a piece of modern history.

Meritalia strikes again

The name of this chair is Origine du Monde, Maybe!

It's upholstered in memory foam and promises to provide a "near uterine sensuality." The Origine du Monde, Maybe! was designed by Italo Rota for Meritalia. I think it's safe to say that theirs is the first time such a promise was made by a piece of furniture. Maybe I'm not in the target market, but near uterine sensuality doesn't land real well over here. Whattya think?

Photographer Len Prince and The Birth of Venus

My great friend Tim is visiting this weekend and he's come all the way from Kuala Lumpur. That's the capital of Malaysia as everybody knows. Right?

Anyhow, yesterday we went to the Museum of Fine Arts here in St. Pete where we saw an exhibition of the photography of Len Prince. Len Prince is a well known editorial and fine art photographer and since 2001 he's been collaborating with his muse Jessie Mann. Mann is an artist in her won right and together, they have been working on a series of images that are at once homages to iconic images and commentaries on the collaborative nature of art and performance. I was transfixed. The exhibition is making the rounds of the country and if you see it scheduled for a museum near you go.

Go for a couple of reasons. The first being that it's a compelling series of images that's every bit as unsettling as it is gratifying and the second being that museums everywhere are screaming for patronage. If keeping The Arts alive means anything to you, please patronize them.

Everybody knows the iconic image of Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus.

In it, Venus arises from the foam of the sea a fully-formed (and sexually charged) woman. She's a Renaissance ideal --blond, fair skinned and a little zaftig by today's standards. She's standing in a classic contropposto pose, though as was often the case with Botticelli, her pose and her proportions are anatomically impossible. Botticelli dealt in fantasy and avoided the realism and deep perspective of his 15th Century contemporaries.

In the hands of Prince and Mann, Venus gets the white trash treatment and I think the image is hilarious and sobering at the same time.

Though hardly a fantasy setting for a lot of people, it reflects a reality most people would rather ignore. Venus steps from a concrete, shell-shaped birdbath and instead of being greeted by the western wind and a shower of flower petals, she's left to her own devices in the overgrown courtyard of a low rent hotel. Great work!

You can see more images from the Len Prince and Jessie Mann collaboration on the Edelman Gallery website. Starting with Len Prince's homage to The Birth of Venus, see what other icons you can name. It's great fun. Really!

Put me in a box on the plains

There is no shape so basic or so elegant as a right angle. There I said it. Compound angles give me vertigo and arcs make me break out in hives.

When I dream about dream houses, the dream houses always come back to basic shapes and of course that most basic of all, the right angle. I love minimalism. Real minimalism. I am up to my elbows in contemporary this and retro that all day every day and that's fine. I channel other peoples' sensibilities for a living. When it comes to mine however, I am most definitely in the school that says less is more. A lot less.

I came across this house on Trendir's Modern House Design site a couple of weeks ago and I keep going back to look at it.

All photography by Kai-Uwe Schulte-Brunert

I did a little sleuthing and the house is a private residence called Sulla Morella in Casina, in the Emilia-Romana Region of northern Italy. It was designed by Andrea Oliva and his studio Cittàarchitettura and I swear he designed it with me in mind.

Minimalism tells me a story of an uncluttered life where I can think clearly and concentrate fully on what ever it is I'm doing. Minimalism sets a tone for intellectual honesty and true relatedness to people and place. There's nowhere to hide in a minimal space and I mean that figuratively and literally. I think that's why some people react to it so negatively. I know that's haughty and inaccurate, I'm just being provocative.

What is it about this kind of real minimalism that just rubs some people raw? Some people can look at this box on a plain and swoon and some people can see the same box on the same plain and be repulsed. Why is that?