Met with my architects on Friday afternoon. Sooooo cool. Picture, if you will, a two bedroom condo with a balcony and a western view on the second floor. Walls are painted white. Powder-blue carpet in the large bedroom and the (absurdly) small bedroom. Cheap looking tile in the living room.

Enter the contractors.

All the bedroom walls are taken out, leaving a large room with three big windows. The floors are stripped down to concrete, sanded and glazed. A steel beam with a gentle serpentine curve is suspended from the ceiling. A t-shaped partition divides the bedroom end of the loft-like space from the rest of it. The wall over the bed is covered in corrugated aluminium. Transluscent sliding panels replace the doors going to the walk-in closet and the bathroom. The interior walls are painted a vibrant orange. The exterior wall (with the windows) is painted a pale yellow-green. Then ensued a discussion of what the t-shaped partition thingy would be painted. There's room on either side of it, and it doesn't go all the way to the ceiling. So I want it to be something of a sculptural object, rather than... y'know... a wall. I said, "I know! I want to paint it the same color and hue as the steel beam!" My architect, Johannes, said, "Since thin sheets of cold rolled steel are very inexpensive, why don't we just clad it in steel?"

At this point, I broke a sweat. A big steel monolith. Johannes said that the disadvantage of steel as a material you come in contact with is that it is very cold. In the winter, you would find it particularly annoying. But of course, in Fort Lauderdale, it's never winter. So I think a steel platform will be coming off the back of this thing to serve as a desk. Oh, and I'm going to wrap christmas lights around either end of the steel beam, illuminating the 'living room' and the 'bedroom.'