This past holiday season we traveled to Lago di Como in northern Italy and Aracta, California to explore design styles and connect with the outdoors a bit to find inspiration for the coming year.
The Italy trip was fantastic, and we discovered some amazing Italian housing construction styles that we would like to incorporate into coming designs. Beyond the incredible modern styles that Italy is famous for, it's older designs are still quite spectacular. For example, take Como's Villa Gaeta below. Simply a magnificent example of Como's timeless style and in many ways similar to our razor's classic design.
It was a remarkably warm holiday in Como this year... which made our boat trip more comfortable, but scared the locals as "this [was] not normal [weather]." Because it was so late in the season pretty much everyone else put their boats away to hibernate for the winter... We had the lake to ourselves which helped us feel as if we stepped back into time. The solace stirred up many new ideas for us to explore.
From Arcata, CA we explored where the cold sea meets giant redwoods. We walked by herds of Elk. Enjoyed the best Humboldt cheeses. And, found the nicest beaches, vacant of all people, one could ever hope for on New Years Day.
The result of these trips has been a great bonus for our new design year's direction. In both places natural elements and systems were put to good use, very good use actually. And this ability to live comfortably and still well connected to Nature is certainly an element of the Grace we seek to uncover and share with you this year.
