This is artist Donald Judd’s loft in Soho, maintained as a museum but only open infrequently. It was one of the first artist’s lofts in Soho – not to mention in New York – and is now almost the paradigmatic example of loft living. Judd bought the entire 1870’s industrial building for 70,000 in 1968 and moved in with his family. One of the central figures in minimalist art, Judd clearly lived his own aesthetic. His interest in industrial materials and engineering methods is evident here in the lack of any attempt to domesticate the space as well as in the simple, unadorned furniture he built for it. The NYT ran an article a while ago which included an interview with Judd’s son Flavin, who was 6 months old when he moved into this loft and who nostalgically described the Soho of the 60s and 70s as a small town smelling fragrantly of the cigars manufactured nearby. These days there’s a certain huffiness out there about modernism and minimalism’s supposed kid-unfriendliness, but Flavin Judd remembers this space – ground zero of minimalism – happily and even nostalgically (there’s a small image of the Judds at home, below). “There were “the best Swedish breakfasts on the second floor — 50 people would come over — ham, cheese, weird flatbreads, salmon,” Flavin Judd said. “It was a great place to grow up.” To read the whole story, which includes information on the heritage restoration of the whole building, see the NYT. See also this blog’s previous post on minimalism.vs. maximalism in interiors. There’s a good shot of the a reproduction of Judd’s famous daybed on AT , and lastly, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change by Sharon Zukin provides a really fascinating portrait and social history of artist’s lofts, including 101 Spring Street. According to the Judd Foundation website, tours of the Spring St. building and loft are suspended during restoration but will start up again in 2010.

Photos from the NYT and from DiscoContinental on Flickr. Take a fun quiz (is it a Judd or a piece of cheap furniture?) here.

It would be hard to count the number of times I’ve seen a photo of a beautiful minimalist interior in a blog and then scrolled down to the comments to discover that many people find it cold, sterile, clinical, unfit for kids, or equivalent. Oddly, it’s the same thing with maximalist interiors – I see one I like, and then find people saying it’s too bohemian, it’s a hippie train wreck, or the clutter gives them a headache. Recently The Guardian asked the Scottish band Franz Ferdinand to guest-edit the paper’s style section, and interestingly they brought up the question of this exact aesthetic divide by inviting architect John Pawson, a minimalist, and the artist Lucy Orta, whose home is maximalist, to talk about their different aesthetics. As it turned out, their ideas weren’t that far apart, just as the Rem Koolhaas quote in this post’s title suggests. What is Franz Ferdinand’s own aesthetic? “Minimalists and maximalists: as a band, we tend to write from the perspective of the former, but live from the perspective of the latter.” 

Photos: Top: Rooms by minimalist architect John Pawson. Middle: The loft of Donald Judd, one of the founders of minimalism in art. Bottom, room from The Selby, photographer Todd Selby’s addictive blog.  We couldn’t find any photos of Lucy Orta’s art studio/living space, but The Selby contains dozens of real-life, unstyled, unfluffed maximalist interiors of artists and musicians. See also this fascinating NYT article on creativity and mess.

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