Villa [Hardcover]

When the songwriter and singer Curtis Mayfield was at a low point in his career, he made sure he went to the movies every day. Why? "It's important to dream," he said.

Wise man. The "reality" we're sold in the media can't possibly define the limits of our lives. To think so is to invite despair. So we look for beauty, for inspiration. But when we find it in museums, in music or in books, it doesn't always speak to us --- it's not immediate enough, we don't have the vocabulary to process it.

A beautiful house? That we can understand. We may not get the subtleties of the architecture or the décor, but we all have walls, windows, floors and furniture --- comparisons are inevitable and immediate.

If you're going to look at a home of a professional, you can't go wrong with John Saladino, America's most gifted architectural designer. (Not "interior" designer --- Saladino has a large, holistic sense of what a house can be, and that very much includes its site.) In 2001, he bought a 2,500-square-foot villa near Santa Barbara that was well on its way to ruin. Four years later, it is a treasure and then some --- it's simply one of the most beautiful houses in the world.

And now it's the subject of a dream of a book.

Villa is 13.5 inches square. It contains an informative and chatty commentary by Saladino, 256 photographs, plans and drawings, and a DVD that gives you a tour of the house and property. Let us hope that Saladino has a state-of-the-art security system, because every page and image is an invitation for you to break in --- not to take anything, just to experience what it's like to walk in beauty.

"Reality is the enemy," Saladino writes, and so he created an environment that might look natural, but is really sculpted. (The project, he says, was "75% construction, 25% decoration".) Set on a hilltop overlooking the Pacific, he first had to shore up the land, so his creation wouldn't go sliding off its moorings in a landslide. Then he had to attack decades of unfortunate decorating choices.

It took six men a year to sandblast the paint off the stone walls. Terra cotta tiles had to be hand-stained, so they wouldn't look like plastic flooring. Beams were hand-stripped. An amusing touch: Saladino asked the workmen to have a few beers before they started to sand the dining room walls --- he didn't want perfection.

This was a giant construction product, with as many as 40 workers on site each day. The transformation took four years --- twice as long as Saladino had predicted --- and cost three times more than he'd budgeted. "I did make it to dry land," he writes, "but only by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin."

Saladino's design truths can be applied to smaller houses --- and smaller budgets. Among them:

"Every home should be a sanctuary: entering it you should immediately feel physically and emotionally protected."

"The most important thing about color is that it cannot be isolated --- every color is only ever seen in juxtaposition with other ones."

"Any fragments from the past, especially those that you can touch, connect you to the makers of those pieces, making you aware that we are threads in a great tapestry of time."

"Make the largest piece of furniture in the room the same color as either the floor or the walls so its bulk doesn't intrude."

This is not stuffy advice. But then the house, for all its beauty, is strikingly relaxed. And there are a few well-placed jokes. On a statue of Sir Francis Drake, arguably the first Englishman to see the California coast, he set a pair of dark sunglasses. And, to puncture any air of self-importance, he named the retreat Villa di Lemma.

There is no dilemma, of course. In his California home, John Saladino solved every design and decorating problem. The only unhappiness he created is on your coffee table --- all your other books will be wildly jealous of "Villa".

Villa

As other readers have noted, this is an attractive book depicting a beautiful property. My comments relate to the things I would like to have known before buying this rather expensive book.

First, there is an excess of outdoor scenes. The garden and surrounding flora, while nice enough, did not seem so remarkable or spectacular as to justify the approximately 95 photos devoted to them.

Second, I would like to have seen more full-room views of the villa's interior. Most of the interior photos were chopped-up views of the rooms and small vignettes. Nevertheless, the photographic quality is excellent.

Third, the villa was much smaller than I had expected and not many rooms are shown. In my opinion, the interiors were DC (Designer Correct) and understated to avoid criticism for any possible form of excess. Nothing to really complain about, but nothing to write home about either.

Fourth, the artsy quality of the DVD was overdone (eyeball-distorting selective focus and lots of infra-red.) The sound balance was poor...when adjusted to listen to the narrator the volume of the background music was ear-splitting. Finally, the DVD content was disappointingly about 90 percent outdoor landscape/10 percent villa interior.

The book probably rates 3.5 stars but that option is not offered. It is a nice book but, primarily because it featured trees and bushes more than the villa, it did not merit 4 or 5 stars in this reader's opinion.

I work in a bookstore and we are all drooling over this fabulous book. I have seen many decorating books but this one is really special. No matter how thick or thin your wallet is anyone could incorporate elements of John's style (get a few grey/green succulents and make a chic planter for under 20$!). If your taste is traditional or modern each is represented amazingly. Must have this book NOW!