CHAMPION OF BLOOMS ROSE STORY FARM Through passion, trial and error, and sheer force of will, Danielle Hahn and her family have helped bring back the kind of roses our forebearers used to grow—garden varieties with full, roman- tic blooms that fill the air with rich perfume, which had been lost on typical commercial farms. Hahn and her husband, Bill, bought their Carpinteria, California, farm in 1990. “We wanted to do antique varieties, and at that time, people didn’t know what we were talking about,” says Hahn. Her first delivery of 10,000 rosebushes arrived two months early, with irrigation ditches yet to be dug and no real plan for planting. Twenty-four years later, Rose Story Farm is a premier source for designers and event plan- ners who appreciate the old-fashioned sensibility of its stock. “We choose for fragrance, form, and color,” she explains. “Scent evokes memories as no other sense does. The first thing people do when they see a rose is bend down to smell it.” Every variety on the property has to be cut at a different stage, and the blooms are snipped to order: “We ARCHITECTURE VISIONARY don’t let them just sit in the cooler for a few days.” Hahn’s entire family has JOSHUA gotten into the act—her sons used to PRINCE-RAMUS work the fields growing up, her sister does the bookkeeping, her mother The former head of ’s minds the gift shop. For Hahn, farm- American office has been gaining ing is a calling. “When we started this, I wasn’t looking for a job. renown at the helm of his own firm, I wanted a lifestyle: family, food, friends, and flowers. The minute REX. Joshua Prince-Ramus’s work it starts feeling like work, I back off.” rosestoryfarm.com on the Central Library, while still under Koolhaas’s aegis, and on the Wyly Theatre in , is recali- brating the ethos of the cutting edge. “Architecture should do things again, not just represent things,” he says. In the case of the Seattle library (above), a purpose-driven approach resulted in a gleaming steel-and-glass struc- ture that seems completely of the future, but is grounded in practical problem solving. “Our biggest discussion internally is whether we’re being critically naive,” he says. “For an incredibly tailored solution, you have to resist the conventional reaction.” The scheme was so functional that it had the full support of the board, librarians, and unions and was completed for $272 a square foot, a feat for a project of that caliber. At the Wyly Theatre, REX repurposed technologies like sports-arena scoreboard lifts to create a glowing performance space that easily and inexpen- sively transforms for different productions in ways that are a million times more versatile—and dramatic—than the conven- tional black box. “In the 25 productions they’ve done in the

building, they’ve reconfigured the space 25 times.” -ny.com HAHN: VICTORIA PEARSON; FARM: DEBRA PRINZING/SLOWFLOWERS.COM;FOR ACTAR; PRINCE !RAMUS: BURAK LIBRARY: TEOMAN. RAMON FOR PRAT MORE DETAILS, SEE SOURCEBOOK

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