The Time is Now

Urban Living... it's about the living!

The Portland Home & Garden Show is underway. Months of planning, thinking, creating, and executing are finally on display, now through Sunday at the Portland Expo. A caring collaboration of designers, installation contractors, Crate & Barrel, and the Portland Home & Garden Show has created a truly dynamic display of garden and home. Imagine an urban sized, 50'x100' lot with a very cool house surrounded by four of the city's most talented landscape designers. Add interiors by the designers from Crate & Barrel. The result is stunning, and on display for all to see!

As best I could, I grabbed some pictures in a veiled attempt to capture just how cool the display turned out. We were blown away by the quality and attention to detail each of the installations required - and then remembering that we went from an empty show hall to "this" in less than a week!

While everything was going on all around the house, some amazing things were going on inside too. Our talented craftsman readied the interior, preparing for the design team from Crate & Barrel to do their thing. And what a thing they did. We have long felt that the design direction we strive for with ideabox was in keeping with the quality of design and expression of materials, colors, and textures of Crate & Barrel. Even with that said, the marriage of house and furnishings offers inspirational living, completing our fundamental goal of designing houses that are all about "the living." 

A terrific result of all this great work is the reception by the media in Portland. We spent most of Wednesday with all the local television stations who were all captured by the concept of creating an affordable design solution for smaller urban lots. For me, one of the coolest moments was when after touring the entire display with a TV crew the reporter's eyes lit up, and she said so simply "....you can live in this" Not as in the normal live of keeping up the house and mowing the lawn, but the idea that you can truly live experientially where the house and its landscape are about the interactions of each day. "It's about the living!" It was a great moment.... I hope it came across on TV!

Special thanks has to go out to an incredible design team. Rick Schultz & Teresa Long of Schultz & Long pulled off their ambitious modern architectural landscape of metal, pavers, plantings, fire and water. Truly inpirational. Terry Gibson's landscape as urban garden demonstrates that you can have a designed landscape solution that sustains your stomach as well as your eyes! It's very cool to think you can eat what you're growing, as opposed to just mowing it! Jack Hayes created peaceful serenity with a series of decks, plantings, sculptural elements, and sail cloths. Feeling like a nap just writing about it! And if want a cool place for kids to play, the creative use of rock, sand, and some very cool trees designed by Kristine Hanson of Green Leaf Design is both clever and sustainable!

And special thanks goes to the Portland Home & Garden Show team. They are simply amazing. First for allowing this creative collaboration to come together. And perhaps more than that their tireless efforts making sure everything goes together smoothly. It's a big deal to do these shows, and this one required a lot of attention. Terry and Karin O' Laughlin are incredible, making the work of it all seamless and a terrific job of PR and marketing. Phil Parker was kind of our creative director, seeing the vision and guiding everyone in.

The best thing is to come see it. The time is now! (Well, now through Sunday...) So get down to the Expo. Come by and say Hi!