The archdigest.com website, the official website of the forefront architecture magazine Architectural Digest, offers constant original coverage of the interior design and architecture worlds, new shops and products, travel destinations, art and cultural events, celebrity style, and high-end real estate as well as access to print features and images from the Architectural Digest archives.
On October 2, archdigest.com featured an article of what they call an “Uber-Minimalist Home” in San Miguel, that actually has a 400-year-long history!
It’s pretty much a given that you’ll have to paint your house before moving in. . . except if your house was previously owned by a local artist and therefore the colors are already perfection. This was the (extremely serendipitous) case for Brittney Borjeson when she moved into her three-bedroom residence a few blocks from the heart of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
The ex-pat—she formerly called the Northeast U.S. home—happened to meet mixed-media artist Patricia Larsen just as she was getting ready to sell her historic (read: approximately 400-year-old) estate, once inhabited by Father Antonio Bustamante Montes, a healer and priest beloved in Mexico. “I was the lucky person to get the property next,” says Borjeson, and she left much of the home’s color palette and the structure as is. “I fell in love with her soft earthy tones as a contrast to the bright yellows and reds of San Miguel.”
Borjeson spends her days designing textiles and textile art with indigenous communities in Mexico through her company Evoke the Spirit, and the constant creativity her job requires meant her house needed to be as low-key as possible. “It was essential to me that I not be over-stimulated with too much to look at,” she explains. “It helps me with designing, to keep my spaces simple. It seems like a contradiction, but it is how I can best spend time in my imagination.” There isn’t a rug in sight, furnishings are few and far between, and art—works by either Larsen or Borjeson herself—is hung sparingly.
“This house is so beautiful, simple, and serene,” says Brittney Borjeson, owner of the boutique Evoke the Spirit in Sayulita, Mexico. “The streets of San Miguel de Allende are busy and colorful, but stepping through these doors is like walking into heaven.” Through the archway is where she does her design work for the shop’s handcrafted wares. “I like to keep it very simple: a table and a chair.”
Though undoubtedly minimalist, the house is far from intimidating. “I call it my secret garden,” says Borjseon. “I wanted to blend the feeling of inside and outside.” Plants dot every corner and the windows are always wide open, as is the front door.
Towering Mexican Fence Post cacti frame a doorway.
“The first few rooms of the house are also a gallery for the art and textiles I make for my business,” she notes. “But oftentimes, people do not come simply to see my work, they come to pay homage to the father who is depicted in the mural in the entryway.” Another frequent visitor? Larsen. The house brought the two together once, and continues to do so to this day. According to Borjeson, “We are great friends now!”
“I love the two-toned black walls, as the color is a modern juxtaposition to the antiquity of the building,” says Borjeson. Windows left wide open throughout the home make rugs more of a nuisance than anything. “The dust from the streets comes in all day, so the house has to be easy to clean,” Patricia Larsen explains.
Source: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/
