Photograph by Victoriya Knapp
It wasn’t until after we had completed our nearly two-year renovation project that we fully realized what we had done: restored a single story, cement slab, frame house, with cedar roof, designed and built circa 1980s, back to its former glory. Come on, you might say, what glory?
Truth be told, it’s just a run-of-the-mill Florida home, of which hundreds exist in Vero Beach alone, on the cusp, approaching age 50, of needing substantial repairs — or perhaps, better still, a wrecking ball.
I disagree.
Go to California, go to Palm Springs in particular, and what do you find to be the most beloved and sought-after homes? Answer: the mid-century moderns.
For decades they were considered shacks, and nobody wanted them. Worse still, the furnishings and decorating were deemed ugly, garish, laughable, none of it worth keeping. Light the bonfire, honey.
And then people woke up. Try to purchase one today in Palm Springs, or Malibu, or Oahu, or Seattle, to name a few locales. Moreover, go online to find organizations nationwide dedicated to a single cause: rescuing mid-century modern homes.
Photograph by Victoriya Knapp
Now, obviously, our home by pedigree is not mid-century modern. Still, it does embody many of its characteristic architectural elements: flat planes, simplicity via clean lines and low profiles, large windows, wood building material, sprawling open floor plans, integration with nature.
My point is that it’s time to wake up here, in Vero Beach, to the beauty and value of many homes that fit this genre.
Most should not be torn down, but reinvigorated, as we did ours. In short order they will be prized for what they are: unique homes built during a specific period of time in our community’s history, that people once loved and enjoyed tremendously for their innovative and refreshingly simple aesthetic.
I prefer to call our style “later-century modern.”
But it does take both imagination and vision to find gems in the rough. Same for rundown homes too.
Photograph by Victoriya Knapp
Victoriya Knapp
@photography_by_victoria
@victoriya_knapp
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