for the new book:

The introduction from my latest blurb book, the style is a bit wild to go with the architects' over-the-top design:

You know the neighborhoods -- it’s likely you’ve lived in them. They sprawl across countless acres, a giant Lego set of the same houses, the same trees, the same river rock, house after house, block after block of cookie-cutter, watered-down ‘new Mediterranean’ pseudo-oases, graced with generic non-sequitur names like ‘ridgeline crest’ or ‘mountain gate.’

Whether starter homes or McMansions, the approach is usually the same -- cheap materials, faux-luxury appointments, the barest nod to ecology. Your new next-door neighbor, whose name you may never know, still pulls into your driveway twice a week, still confounded by the mind-numbing sameness of it all. He’s the over-stressed, over caffeinated, white-knuckle rush-hour poster boy for ‘there has to be a better way.’

(page)

Thus we’re pleased to say, by way of introduction, welcome to that better way. The loft homes of Canyon Ledge Court -- aptly named Stone Canyon, rising above the residential abyss of western Las Vegas, Nevada.

Stone Canyon cuts an unmistakable post-modern profile under crisp Nevada skies, the fulfillment of 50’s era grand imaginings of a space-age future. It's easy to imagine the rendering in Life Magazine, circa 1959-- the jazzy residents waving as they survey their domain from 3rd-story sky decks. In the background, a flying car zips down the Buffalo Drive airspace...

(page)

Canyon Ledge Court numbers twenty-three addresses in zip code 89117. Among those twenty-three, developer Blue Heron offered just two models, the Indigo and the Sage -- yet with their highly versatile flexplan approach, they've developed a community not of sameness, but on the contrary, of amazing diversity.

In the following pages we'll spend some time in fifteen of these homes, and see how life in the the flexplan looks and works, as well-suited for the family of four as it is for the single man about-town, or the home-office business entrepreneurs. Photographer James Scolari visited the homes over the course of a few weeks in the spring of 2008, and exposed a few thousand frames in an attempt to capture some essence of the savory Stone Canyon lifestyle.

He found, above all, that it's a flavor for the sophisticated palate, often spicy, and
certainly never dull.

Bon appetit.

bon appetit.