René Stoeltie

This book seemed to promise so much. I skimmed it at a homewares outlet and it looked really good. Lots of nice photos and bright Mexican colours.However, I was a bit disappointed when I actually came to read it. There is a sameness about the style of houses that have been selected. Most of them are of the bright colours, slightly worn, or rubbed-colour-effects style of house. This is ok as far as it goes but it not really representative of the range of styles in Mexico. The low point really is with the homes in Costa Caryes..towards the end where we are presented with six separate houses ..but they all seem to be from the same development...Casitas de Las Flores. And there is certainly a sameness about the selection.
In fact, the one stand-out review in the whole book is a couple of pages on a traditional Mayan house. And this is clearly a very poor cousin to all the other houses represented. This was very different ..so different that one might be forgiven for wondering why it was included and was it just because the authors were driving past and were able to take a few photos?
Many of the homes appear to be renovated by artists...a lot of them ex-pat artists. Nothing wrong with this but then their taste often runs to what they regard as uniquely interesting in Mexico.
My own experience in Mexico ...even including the houses in the area where I lived was that there is a lot more interesting decor than we see in this book. Ok they can't cover everything but the over indulgence with infinity pools and bright pinks, yellows, reds and orange colours seems slightly overdone. Also, one of the things that i don't much like about some of the Mexican architecture is the use of uncut and undressed wooden supports. This book features a lot of them...a special feature being those which have been parasitised by strangler vines. Yes they are used in some Mexican architecture but they are certainly not universal...and personally, I don't much like them.
The photography is great. The descriptions are brief but enough to get the gist of the scene (and it's in multiple languages ...so i guess that this restricts things a bit). It's not a bad coverage of Mexican homes...just a bit restricted and I was expecting more.… (más)