Me: This video isn't about anyone in particular... Also Me: Clearly has it in for Tan France's Tudor mansion in Utah.... For the record he seems lovely, I just I filmed this 20 minutes after watching the AD video... Oh! Check out my newsletter here! ➡ bitly.ws/3dpKu
But Nicks so right about all the points he made. It’s more a critique of AD than Tan. Exactly what Nick said - tell it like it is: I have lots of money and I can build exactly what I want! And what did Tan say “sorry I’m The star of the show” not his giant mantle above the stove. AD is not about Architecture it’s about celebrities - and they shouldn’t promote themselves as such.
What we need to have is an AD celebrity house tour bingo card. Sustainability, wood history, humble beginnings. What else? We could turn it into a drinking game!
As a seasoned designer(40 yrs), I respect and agree with about 95 % of your opinions and observations. Sincere praise!! The sad thing about our industry is it is now so monetized that actual good design takes a back seat to celebrity, trend, $$$ and throw away materials. 😢😢
If you really care about sustainability regarding your home, you would a) limit your square footage because of heating/cooling, and b) buy a home that already exists and remodel/renovate it. This is the most sustainable you can get when it comes to housing.
Our home is larger than we were looking for (but certainly not as big as the homes Nick was talking about). Unfortunately, we weren't able to find a home in our city that was new-ish AND small. We had a baby and pets and wanted something new enough to be lead paint free and asbestos free. Anything new enough to fit those criteria was larger than what we wanted. We did put up solar panels and we do try to make other sustainable choices, but I wish newer construction wasn't always ridiculously huge. (Or insanely small-- tiny house living, at the other end of the spectrum -- is also not for me.)
@@acaciawilliams9015but these are all opinions that you have. .. I. E. Older homes are full of lead paint, and that your family cannot live in them..... Just other people. As nick says, just own the choices you've made and be done with it. You don't want to live with the smallest carbon footprint. Got it. No point lying and trying to convince ppl otherwise lol
@@anyaboscovich7938 lady, I don't wish for ~anyone~ to have to live in a home with lead paint. I was lucky enough not to have to. Many people would give anything to have any roof at all over their head. I get that. But my baby was crawling around on the floor while my cat clawed my door frames and paint chipped off everywhere. I prefer not to lead poison my family if possible and I wasn't about to re-home my cat. I'm not sure who crapped in your coffee. 🙄
My philosophy (as a professional who makes reaction content about their profession) is that it's ok to react when you are punching up and not down. Celebrities who hire professional designers/architects and open their house to show the world are absolutely fair game. Also, another weird thing about Tan France's out-of-place home is that it wasn't built using the state-of-the-art construction materials/infrastructure. For example, he used loose Tyvek for the WRB; that's going to be a leaky, inefficient house. If you spend that kind of money -- in a climate like SLC -- with a really out-of-place style, you'd think you'd design it to be completely bulletproof. Weird. Not my style but arguably well-designed; just not well-engineered.
Thanks for your perspective on reaction content. I do roast my subscriber videos on my channel and I'm usually a lot kinder in those videos as they are regular folks opening up their homes to my audience - not an easy thing to do. So I do approach those videos differently than I did this one.
Ooh, he is going to regret shoddy construction. I live near Salt Lake and in the last few years we've had summer get as hot as 107F and winter lows down in the negatives. If your house isn't insulated well, you're going to have approximately 2 months of the year when that isn't a big deal. But I guess they built the mansion, they're happy to take all the resources to heat and cool the place and water that not at all desert friendly landscaping.
@@paveladamek3502 if salt lake gets up to 107 in the summers like the other commenter said, then they'd boil alive in the summer with traditional British building techniques. Those houses are ment to keep you warm year around. The massive heat waves in the UK the last couple years haven't gotten much above 90, but it's caused so many issues because the buildings trap heat so badly (plus no ac)
I agree with all of your points! I would like to add one of my pet peeves about these celebrity home tours: it seems like every single kitchen is equipped with a $100k French stove which the homeowner has absolutely no idea how to turn on because of course they don’t cook! 🙄
Ok I literally filmed that and it had to be cut because the sound was doing weird things! YES! The crazy appliances that will never get used except by the private chef!
I don't give a rat's tutu about how celebrities live. I prefer seeing regular people's homes, and the possible transformations with a modest budget. In essence, people living in the "real world". Nick, thanks for keeping it REAL.
@@vg7985Does it though?There is a fallacy here somewhere. You are equating regular peeps with boring and celebrity with interesting. But as so many AD tours have proven by now celebrities don’t necessarily have things that are stunning or interesting; they just have things that are costly. If it is stunning and interesting we want I think we can find plenty of that with regular people who care about design and have put thought into designing their spaces.
I’m glad u spoke about celebrities and sustainability bc I’m quite frankly sick of them acting like they don’t do anything wrong and rest of us r huge polluters.
“This guitar was crafted from Jimi Hendrix’s grandma’s old bungalow” 🤣🤣🤣. I am going to think of this and laugh every time I watch one of those videos from now on.
I love Tan and I don’t have an issue with his chosen house style but yes it REALLY bugged me when they talked about travelling the country to source out the brick and had the gall to say it was a “sustainable” choice
The overtone window for most famous people is so shifted compared to the rest of us that he probably honestly thinks it is "sustainable", because relative to taking a private plane to pick up a small décor piece in another country, it is!
Omg THANK you for the sustainability conversation! Don't ever be convinced that anyone making millions of dollars and is flying around the planet constantly gives any kind of damn about you, the planet, or anything other than making more money and maintaining that wealth.
I don’t think these celebrities don’t care about sustainability at all but we have to see that the entertainment industry itself is unsustainable for the environment and it’s probably not changing too much or too fast. So if someone is surrounded by that all their life, making sustainable(-looking) choices are a bit different for them than for an average person.
@@nineteenfortyeight6762I was trying to put "caring" into perspective. It's a very subjective term, and no one except the individual knows what it means to them. Basically, it's not up to you to say if they care or not. From a zero waste person's perspective, nobody actually cares except them. Does that really mean that others don't care at all? Don't gatekeep words that have subjective meanings, it leads to a very divided society. Sure, celebrities might have a responsibility to be role models but they can't be all be role models for everything. Calling them out as a singular group is extreme. Dolly Parton is famous for her charity, she's done undeniably incredible things for people in need. If her house doesn't run on 100% renewable energy and she flies everywhere by private jets, does that make her a pos person? Perspective, people.
Yes to all of this! Especially the sustainability stuff. There's nothing sustainable about gigantic houses. Also, it's not sustainable to reuse materials if you have to ship them across the country.
Sustainability Specialist here. Depends on the material. With metals, using recycled ones makes all the difference, even if you ship from China. I wouldn't say so about bricks though.
Holy crap Nick you knocked it out of the park with this one, especially the sustainability and privilege sections. Thank you for making your videos with such intelligent considerations and integrity.
And the “vintage” car collection of twenty V8 muscle cars? We have a McMansion going up next door and the garage for their car collection is bigger than our house. We call it the Garage Mahal. So sustainable!!!
@@strawberrydialectics, slightly random comment and also something of an exaggeration? I, in no way, support Churchill’s actions in India, but to say he CAUSED a famine is over egging it a little. He did not start the Second World War (we can thank Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese for that) and neither did he cause either a drought, or the effects of the Second World War. I know it’s unfashionable to stick to the facts nowadays, but let’s try and keep the 2 + 2 = 12 stuff to a minimum
Orville Peck has my favorite AD tour and I feel like his home is the antithesis of all these points. It is unique, warm, and filled with character that reflects him so well. UGH I love it.
I completely agree. I have 20 year old AD mags at home and there were so many interesting homes featuring the designers or the architects’s perspective on why they built what they built and their use of materials. It was so much more inspiring then a celebrity telling us that they got that cool thing that once belonged to someone cooler than themselves.
I lived in a historic district for many years, and we gave house tours. It was common for docents to make up stuff. About the house, Maybe they weren’t necessarily lying, but they greatly embellished certain stories and quasi facts.
Thank you thank you thank you, Nick, for calling out the UNsustainability of giant homes for a family of three or four people. I will never forget when I had a young woman as a guest in my house. She was from Calgary and I live in Toronto in a post-war four bedroom house (that we tacked a fifth bedroom onto when I unexpectedly became pregnant again). I am also very privileged to have hooked my wagon to a star in the accounting (yes a star!) industry who made buckets more money than he felt he deserved. We were (are) not poor. And not that everyone who lives in Calgary lives in a giant mansion, but she was an only child and she had expectations about how people were supposed to live and she expressed alarm and disgust at the fact that five of us shared one bathroom on the second floor. I just shook my head. We never had any problems living in our smaller house. We were lucky enough to have a finished basement and we all were able to carve out our own space whenever we needed it and, contrary to the Hollywood trope of a family with three girls always banging on the bathroom door and screaming at one another to get out, our second floor was quite civilized and tidy. Although my husband made buckets of money (I was paid minimum wage), we didn't feel the need to throw it around on increasing our carbon footprint. I think I have a somewhat stylish and well appointed home and I am proud that we don't have a giant house (less to clean, amiright?) and I raised daughters who are grateful for what they have, are not spoiled and know how valuable it is to live within a smallish footprint. I suppose this rant was a little off topic, but just your inference that "just because you have a lot of money doesn't mean you shouldn't care about actual sustainability and carbon footprints" reminded me that we live that motto.
When you apply Nick's natural sass (which we all love) to calling out hypocrisy, what you get is so good and so accurate that it just makes me go "YES, YOU TELL 'EM!!!" But seriously Nick, I love interior design, but sometimes I just come here to listen to you talk about whatever, and I always leave thinking, "Ah man, he's a gem!" So thank you and much love from the UK!
Haha, you haven't missed much to be honest. Just a bunch of spoilt, virtue-signalling celebrities showing off their ginormous mansions on Architectural Digest.
One of my favorite architecture channels is Never Too Small--tiny apartments. Honestly, I don't like most of them but I find it fascinating all the same, and the biggest bonus is that I don't have to see some celeb talk about their wallpaper.
Simply said. I love it “I bought it at crate and barrel” . You nailed it. FYI I rather watch restorations of old homes that are reclaimed and restored by ordinary people with amazing talent. 😊
As a realtor, I have seen so many regular homes that is more stylish and tasteful than celebrity ones, big or small. Nick just pushed the interior design to a different level! Thank you!
Agreed. Money cannot buy taste. When I watched the Tan France home tours, I thought about how much money he spent to get such mediocre results. I wish he had used those resources to hire a talented architect, interior designer, and landscape designer, and then let the experts take the lead.
All these things are subjective. Just because you think you have good taste doesn’t mean you do, other people might think your taste and style is garbage. If these homes were so bad they wouldn’t be selling for $80 million and above. lol
The house that we now own is a cottage style. The previous owner was a “designer “ and redid the entire interior of the house in a combination ultra modern and mid-century modern. It was very jarring to walk inside. When we bought it it had sat on the market for over a year despite being in a very desirable location. We also paid substantially less from the original asking price. We spent the first year undoing everything he had done .
I know exactly what you mean. I would love to own an old townhouse, but they all have been redone so that ALL of the historical features were demoed instead of retained. They all look like brand new condos. It's a real shame.
I watch the AD RU-vid channel, but not the celebrity house tours. I like two of their series: 1) when they have a space and ask three different designers how they would remodel it. You get to see the designers’s thought process, ideas, and aesthetics l, and the results are so different. So much fun to see different possibilities when creative people are given free range. 2) I like the series where they have architects break down famous architectural features in movies: the architecture of Disney castles, the architecture of Hogwarts, the architecture of the big house in Hitchcock’s psycho. You can learn quite a bit about history, culture, and architecture from those.
I do miss the Architectural Digest I grew up with in the 80's. I don't remember there ever being a celebrity story, it was simply about good design. It was aspirational... but readers were aspiring to beauty and functionality of design not aspiring to shallow celebrity culture.
Unfortunately you can’t escape it. I remember being at some marketing conference at the very end of 20th century ( yes, I am old) where presenter argued that if you would not build strong brand or trademark in the next 20 years, you’re toast. All celebrity brands and influencers is just way to survive in the world with huge income inequality. There is no middle class anymore, so you have to target upper classes.
Nick, you are so darn funny! That's why I can listen to you talk for 25 minutes about Ikea or anything. Love your channel and I agree with you 99% of the time.
Firstly, I have NEVER commented on a RU-vid video before, but I loved this one so much that all I can say is, well done Nick! I agree with you 100% and always find you spot on and so very witty! ❤😂
This has been one of the best commentaries I have heard from Nick for a very long time! I always come here for advice and ideas. However, I totally agree on everything having to revolve around celebrity instead of substance. If you are an architectural type magazine/Internet page why not feature just that. Why do we have to have the cult of celebrity attached to it? Well done, bravo Nick! Microphone drop!
This is your best vid, period! I’ve worked in “Hollywood” for 25 years and have been to these celebs homes. I’ve lived in them. Lol. You nailed it. They generally have no idea what they’re buying nor why, but everyone loves tell a story about their pieces… Hollywood is the land of make believe after all, and is far less fancy IRL verses how it’s portrayed on TV. This vid needed to be made. THANK YOU! I digress… Ps… “Nepo babies” do not get me started on that dirty little secret. Again, nailed it, Nick. 👏🏾
I do think he left out one important point: these homes are not at all "lived in" but are basically display pieces. I find it hard to believe that any of these celebrities get up in the morning and make their own coffee on that fancy espresso machine, let alone do ANY cooking in their fancy, massive kitchens, (except maybe microwaving some organic popcorn or boiling water in an electric kettle).
@@kekica11 Kinda true but not completely. Meaning, some of these celebs make far less than you’d think. True, some are loaded and do have live in caretakers make their food etc. And/or that’s their 10th home and are rarely there. Depends. But the richest celebs I know tend to be down to earth and do normal things like clean their own toilet if that’s in order. It’s the lower level (new) celebs who tend to be the most bougie, entitled, and starstruck with themselves. A lot of the stereotypes are true. Just, they’ll go to the Oscar’s and get Taco Bell on the way home. Best I can describe it.
She has a pretty dry sense of humor, so it wouldn't surprise me if it was a joke. And the lemon/lime thing I think was specifically because AD dresses the homes beforehand so there will be decor items that the homeowner has never seen before and wouldn't ever have in their house. 🤣
oooh noooo. We bought an old house on an existing (bad shape) property in rural Texas. It had an old wooden fence that had one been painted white (but worn out over time). The wood (cedar) was gorgeous .... but, wood fencing is not the best choice for horses (we are equestrians). So, we took down every.piece.of.wood of that old fencing... cleaned it off, removed all the nails... and had it added into the ceilings of the guest suite of our house (it's not as fancy as it sounds). Sadly (now) - we tell the story to everyone that notices and remarks on the ceilings in that area of the house. Now I feel self conscious about it. 😞 But, I agree with you on all the faux braggery (I know that's not a word) of fancy people trying to impress. I'm just a lowly horse owner that lives in the country and has worked her butt off to make the property pretty and functional.
This is by far my favorite video you've done. I know you said that you don't want to call specific people out, but I would love it if you made a reaction videos to AD house tours. You nailed all of these 😂
Yes! Every video is surprising and interesting and the people are just themselves. I know there are sponsors somewhere, but it’s not obvious at all. She features tiny cottages, huge beach homes, East Coast colonials, a big range of styles and people. I think it’s the best one in this genre.
Homeworthy mostly features people and houses that do not fit everyone’s taste, also not my taste in many instances - which is exactly why I watch it. I don’t want to see the 10.000st minimal beige box. I want to get inspired and expand my mind.
Yes for calling out misfit environments! It's a huge issue in the US west for example, aiming for English country garden neighborhoods in the middle of a high desert. Water issues are a major problem, to start.
If I want to get my fix of luxe home tours, my go-to is Quintessence. I may not have the same sq footage or budget, but they feature homes of some really great designers and architects and I love hearing them walk through the process of what they chose for their home and why.
When I was a kid, my father used to bring home those giant wooden spools that were made to hold telephone cable... we used them as backyard picnic tables. Way to up-cycle Dad!! You were ahead of your time ❤
PREACH to building houses that make sense with the location!!!! We have a monstrous English Tudor/Gaines farmhouse mashup going up next door here in Olympic foothills south of BC and it is just tragic.
Remember when Rachel on friends said everything was from “years of yore” so Phoebe didn’t know she was shopping at Pottery Barn? That’s the old “sustainable” 😂😂
The YT videos of abandoned mansions & buildings throughout the US astounds me. They could be used for so many great & helpful purposes. Many have land for gardens & space for creating sellable beauty (sustainable!). As humans, we have so much creativity, love, care & kindness to share. When ego, fear, me, mine, greed, etc. kick in to drive our creativity, we see & experience separation vs unity, them vs me. Jealousy is a sign of insecurity. I see it in myself sometimes. Spotting the fear in ourselves is a great step towards healing it and becoming a more loving human.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciated this. Last summer my bestie and I binge watched AD celeb home tours and ended up feeling kinda shitty about ourselves. Our favorite was when Rupaul gave the advice to “just be happy” at the end of his insane home tour. I love Ru’s show and I respect how hard he’s worked, but it’s kind of annoying to have a celebrity who has a mega mansion and endless amazing clothes tell those of us struggling in life to “just be happy.” What I learned from these tours is that celebs are even more out of touch than I thought.
RuPaul grew up poor and was abandoned by his father, guarantee you had a way nicer and cushier childhood than he did. He's not out of touch, he worked hard and made it.
@@venom5809 I mentioned that I respect how hard he worked and I am fine with him buying a huge mansion. But telling people to "just have joy" from the comfort of your mansion? That's a tad out of touch.
@@focusedflow5785but you can have joy without being rich. To equal happiness with money seems more like YOUR issue than theirs. These shows are not meant to make anyone feel good or bad. They’re meant to showcase design, creativity, and what people with money could do in relation to design. Even this video missed the point completely and came across as bitter. It’s obvious these famous people ALREADY did want they wanted with their money and their homes so who cares about them justifying anything they did. It’s done. Again, it’s about the design process and the final product, not if they’re sustainable, or if they were poor before, or if the wood should have history or not. All of that is just extra to not make a show flat and boring.
Came here to recommend Never Too Small as well. Sometimes the projects are crazy tiny and about buildings being carved up into micro units that ARE too small but the majority are fascinating and innovative.
Being a Utah native, I’m very much gratified that you pointed out how the weather patterns here mean the Tudor mansion in Salt Lake City (which is absolutely stunning; I’ve driven past it, drooling, countless times) won’t fit in very well. Utah is a high-altitude desert and couldn’t be more different from England. Having a lush, overgrown, green English garden is simply impossible here and IMO that’s half the charm of a Tudor-style home. I had to give up my dream garden ideas when we bought our house and realize the climate here forces a different landscape, and that’s okay. Embrace where you live!
I think this is a really fair review of these tours. I totally agree with all points. I felt that the Kirsten Dunst tour however was actually quite refreshing, as it seems like a real reflection of her style and personality, having collected things and worked with the same designer for years, she's not really following any trends. But yeah, I mean you see celebrities who basically just buy in to current design concept and that's kind of reflecting the society and culture we live in. Another exception was Mandy Moore's tour. She just has great taste and also worked together with a designer. She has a relatively small home as it is a mid-century modern home she renovated, not a mcmansion. So you can tell the fakes from the imposters when it comes to celebrity homes. Most of them are...yeah...whatever money can buy you.
i LOVE how regularly you bring up sustainability and multiple facets of environmental issues!! i work in sustainability and it's really soothing to hear concrete and impassioned points be brought front and center :) thank you!!
Preach, Nick! Finally. Saying it aloud. Success born of hard work is fabulous. The gifts of success are fabulous. But the mega mansions are really quite ludicrous in terms of sustainability and of the owners talking about how "green" they are. No, they are not. I understand the need for size if you entertain routinely, if you have some of your extended family residing there. And of course, in homes that size, you need live-in help, so rooms for them. But it's very wrongheaded all around. Beautiful things can be accomplished in smaller houses with creativity and consideration.
I love Local Projects home tours. The pace is part of their uniqueness and I DON'T think they need to speed it up. The calm, "take it easy" style they shoot in is perfect for the homes they tour. And they actually pick it up sometimes, I feel, if the house calls for it. Local Project, please continue what you're doing. It's great.
You nailed it. Kitchens with eight burner stoves and tag lines staing “I never cook.” Or entrance way tiles from the parking garage of the Egyptian Pyramids. Cuckoo for Coca puffs.
When in interior design schools they teach us to create something that works with our customers' habits. In a way, it's more sustainable than adding things you'll never use like a massive kitchen if you don't cook.
one thing you didn’t mention is showing celebrities homes that they haven’t even lived in yet! it’s all well and good that your designer picked a great wallpaper but if you’re doing a tour tell us about living in the house what you really love about it.
Not only have they not live there yet, they might show up there a couple times a year otherwise they're in their other houses. It's not really their house. On paper may be, but it's not their home.
I love the point about honoring the architecture of where you live! I moved to New England a couple of years ago and one of the first things I noticed was that even newer houses seem to be built to mimic the old style of houses here (there's a thing called "big house, little house, back house, barn" here and you see newer houses replacing the "barn" part with a "garage" and it totally works). It made me so happy to feel that character and that history pulled through to now.
You are correct about Architectural Digest (I'm 70). I bought the magazine even as a poor college kid because the architects they featured (including past architects from the Bauhaus era) were so inspiring. Once I was stuck in Paris during a train strike, so I just walked around going on tours of the homes of artists and semi-famous writers, scholars, etc.. At some point I would get a sort of frisson, feeling almost overwhelmed by a sort of nostalgic sadness, suddenly becoming very aware of the brevity of human happiness. It's all gone now, leaving a sort of creepy, though beautiful, haunted house. If these celebs could experience this, I think it might put things into perspective, at least for a few moments.
At 70+ , I too loved the " old " AD . My first real job while in high school was for a locally owned upscale furniture store w/ professional designers - AD was my bible ! Loved reading ( studying !! ) it & then actually seeing Baker , Henredon furniture , etc. , Scalamandre , Thibaut, etc. , original art , etc. featured in AD in " our " store . Wonderful hands-on education & the designers were amazing mentors ! 💟
Indeed. I’ll soon be 69 and AD was one of my first subscriptions out of grad school. It’s sad when I look back at some of my earliest issues to be reminded of how good the interiors and architecture that were featured used to be. When IG’s Caleb Smith recently gave a tour of the charming, book-filled NYC apartment of the art critic power couple Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith, it was appalling how many people couldn’t get over the fact it didn’t meet their expectations for “celebrity design”, offering in the comments to upgrade their bathroom, re-do their kitchen and so on.
You are SO right about AD, the magazine. It was itself once a collectible. I kept them all until it became celeb-focused. Watching AD house tours is like eating too many Godiva chocolates - feels good while you’re doing it, then comes the shame spiral. Excellent video, Nick!
You cannot eat popcorn and watch this particular segment about a guitar from Jimi Hendrix’s grandma’s old house. I almost choked on the popcorn, laughing. Lordy…
honestly while it is not that bad within the guitar community typically.. One of my close friends is a luthier and you don't even have to be particularly rich to be picky (and proud) of what wood your guitar is made of. That was one of the few issues i could actually understand. I hear him talk about the various types of woods and how it effects the look and resonance as well.
@@ultrakitten674 that I get..I am a music person freak and enjoy the YT sites on guitars, etc. And looking at all the guitars that Tom Petty HB had when they were at the Clubhouse and which guitar was used for its particular sounds..it’s early so this makes nonsense but coffee will help me be semi- nice. Your input on mark. Thx .. peace.
This is by far my favorite episode so far. Thanks, Nick, for pointing out that having success does not automatically bring with it good taste and sensitivity. I live in Kentucky and the wealthy are buying up large tracts of land in Appalachia and building mansions in the middle of one of the poorest parts of this country. It makes you think about how revolutions get started.
Absolutely yes on every call out, especially the first one. I've never understood building a house that is totally wrong for the environment or putting in detail that simply doesn't fit, like extremely ornate ceilings in a 1980's built house.
Nick, thank you. I hate when smug celebrities try to justify a huge mansion by saying they sourced something from an old boat or whatever. And have the audacity to use the word “sustainable.”
In addition to The Local Project, I’d like to add Everhouse, Open Space and Never Too Small to the list of suggested channels. They’re all wonderful, design-and-architecture based channels with a slow, meditative vibe that really focuses on the sense of place and not some random celebrity owner.
Yes, I agree with those! In a similar slightly-meditative vein, I'm also quite fond of some of what "The Modern House" puts out - they're an English real estate agency, so there are a lot of not-necessarily-interesting sales listings, but also lots of architects/designers/creative-types talking about their homes (in like 2-10 minute bites).
Thank you for those! Homeworthy is another good channel. Most are definitely on the high end of "upper middle class," but there are more modest homes as well. Gentle pacing, and the homeowners are interesting.
I have never watched AD before until I saw your thumbnail. I had to watch Tan's house tour before watching this video 😂 Everything you said was golden. Love it.
Overconsumption and sustainability, you are spot on. I'm so tired of people being false, all day every day on social media, it's a relief to hear realness, thank you! You do keep it moving, I checked I was watching on normal speed and not 1.25. x
I love the RU-vid channel Never Too Small which focuses on really tiny apartments all around the world. These homes are far more interesting to me and the techniques applied by te designers are both sustainable and clever.
My dad repurposed bricks from old buildings being torn down. This was the 1960’s. I remember many a Saturday when he would come into the kitchen to tell my mom about his great find; then grab us kids-8 in all-to help him unload and stack the bricks on the side of the driveway. He and my brothers built brick walls, half walls, walk ways, floors, and a cool patio. My parents lived there for 55 years and probably tried out a lot of the furnishing styles you have mentioned. One of the reasons I like your show is the ability to say, oh, we had that, and that….love you Nick!
I really got a kick out of your show today. I agree with you completely. Finding an unknown architect that designs a wonderful home for someone who is not famous would be a great change of pace. An architect and/or a designer that isn't afraid of traditional features or color would be refreshing; anything but another "crib". I'm very happy that celebrities are rich and love life but I would rather see real people.
Nick thank you for this video it is my favourite of yours yet. Thank you for discussing the sustainability and overconsumption aspects of society and for holding people accountable! I think it's so amazing that as a society we are starting to have these open conversations and it makes my heart smile.
I met and worked briefly with Tan on a small scale interior project in 2018. He and Rob are beyond genuinely kind. I digress though; the area of Salt Lake where he built is among many other historic homes including a lot of English Tudors. There was a heavy immigration period of English immigrants to SL in the mid-1800s due to Mormon missionary activity in Britain, (British-born people made up almost a quarter of Utah’s population between 1860-1880) so this might explain the architecture that developed here. I agree that a Tudor with a thatched roof would have looked ridiculous (and impractical for our climate), but you might be surprised to see how well Tan and The Fox Group did with incorporating his home into surrounding area and even some of our history, too. 🥰❤
Thank you so much for bringing up the whole sustainability thing. People totally miss the point with this one. It makes me crazy!!! Love your channel. And yes, you do keep it moving. Can't wait to see your newsletter.
Nick, just keep talking. I love you and your opinions! You make me laugh and smile after a long day and make design not so serious. Thank you for your work and insight! ❤
I just spent all of yesterday watching the AD videos on Tan France's Tudor mansion and had a lot of these same thoughts. It's absolutely gorgeous and I love a lot of the design decisions he and his team made...but, yeah...not sustainable, a bit much, so on and so forth. On the other hand, a hundred years from now, it will make for a nice local architectural story. "Yeah, so this guy grew up poor in England and then made it big and longed for the home he couldn't have there and made it here."
The whole sustainability thing, say it louder for the ones in the back 🙌🙌🙌 Not only is having a massive house not sustainable, neither is having almost all of your building material shipped in from all over the place.
I always appreciated Matthew Perry saying, I have this great house because I was on a spectacularly popular show...that's why I have this type of house. YES! Dude owned his success. Didn't make him whole but it did give him a great house.
Spot on! You have a perfect analysis on these tours - especially with regard to sustainability! They throw the word around and have no idea what it really means beyond upcycling a piece of wood! AD should just change its name to CH - Celebrity Homes, then we can revel in it the same way we do People Magazine!
I live in a fairly affluent area outside of Washington, D.C. and there are so many of these homes being built that absolutely do not belong in the neighborhood! Stand-alone, they are beautiful. But amongst the smaller, older, more charming homes they look ghastly!
