QRM wrote:The recent double page spread showing the interior of St Regis Hotel It looked like collaboration between Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, and a mainland China karaoke bar owner.
I know one mans food is another poison but what’s the logic behind those houses with fake roman columns, chandeliers so out of proportion they almost touch the floor.
I'm a little confused by this, first you're talking about the St. Regis (which I've been in a few times, and thought it was lovely) and then you're talking about private 'nasty homes'? Do I have that right? The two are not really related are they?
To answer your question (what’s the logic behind those houses with fake roman columns, chandeliers so out of proportion they almost touch the floor):
I can tell you only that logic has nothing to do with it. I have been told so many wild stories by
property agents and the owners of the architectural frankensteins that seem to flourish here (can anyone say nouveau riche?) -- that I stopped asking.
How can you plausibly explain why someone would line the soffits of the formal living room with a row of a dozen identical ceramic bunnies, mount the projection TV in the foyer, so you have to duck upon entering the house every time, put the swimming pool in the one place in the garden that can not be seen from any window, put in a lift that can't hold a wheel chair, etc...
At least these features, while stupid aren't dangerous. We had one of those hideous da vinci chandeliers in a house we lived in which came crashing down over our dining room table and did about $10,000 worth of damage. I asked them to check the installation of the others in the house and 18 months later an even bigger one fell two stories in the foyer. Thank goodness no one was hurt.
New money and sophistication rarely go hand in hand.
