It's been a rainy, cloudy, wet winter here in LA. Yay for rain, but I jumped at the chance to go to the sunny coast of Mexico. What started as a weekend girls' trip ended up extending into a spring break vacation with my daughter. She's the one who suggested I write about it because we encountered some next level design.
Here she is on the balcony of our room.
Things I learned from our hotel room:
-It's so cool to be able to control all the lighting with one switch. They had one that said "welcome". This one turned up all the lights to a friendly glow. There was also "relax"-just low level lying in bed light. There was a button that changed the LED color on the balcony. That was super fun. Our favorite was magenta :)
-It is very cool to control roller shades with a switch. However, it seemed that they had a mind of their own, or were on a timer, because they would lift at random, precipitating a very awkward moment involving me and a bathtub and a pool surrounded by strangers.
Lighting design was a major factor in many of the places we visited. Our hotel, the Viceroy Los Cabos, has a restaurant called Le Nid, or The Nest. It looks like an overturned birds' nest and appears to float on the water. They keep it illuminated all night. Every room looks out on it, so it's like a giant night light.
Here it is by night and by day.
Honestly, it seemed that every restaurant we visited in San Jose del Cabo had really high level lighting. On our last night, we went to a restaurant called Carbon Cabron. It's in a very unprepossessing strip mall, but the interior is all wood. Rack after rack of firewood for the wood burning ovens and grills. It's also very dark, and yet light enough to see my daughter across the table and our food clearly. This is a tricky thing to achieve-moodiness and illumination. My camera lit it up a little, but here's the interior.
And here's my dinner date:
All in all, I am so glad I got away. I've been very busy with projects, but seeing what designers are doing in other parts of the world is very enlightening. Lots of light bulb moments. I stand by these terrible puns.
All the best.
-Andrea