The “attitude” that I had been told about was not in evidence. Rich Roat and Andy Cruz, the co-founders, immediately strike one as unpretentious, intelligent and welcoming. Most of the creative team (Roat, Cruz, Ken Barber, Ben Kiel, Bondé Prang and Chris Gardner) sits together on the first floor, while painter Adam Cruz toils in relative isolation under the attic eaves. The House house is small, but it suits them. It has a strange, bleak, gothic, Mid-Atlantic appeal. Their studio is an austere three-story white clapboard frame Victorian, behind the wan Yorklyn post office and across from a barely functioning paper mill. Rich Roat, Andy Cruz and Adam Cruz grew up in the area, under more humble circumstances. Once a farming community now more exurban, the town is in the middle of Delaware’s lovely Brandywine Valley, home of the celebrated Winterthur Museum and other breathtaking (DuPont paid for) estates. House is now located in non-descript but pleasant Yorklyn, Delaware, a town outside of Wilmington. Everyone knows of them-but few people really know much about them.Īfter five years in a seedy crack-strewn transient district in downtown Wilmington, the House crowd decided a more bucolic setting was more conducive to the new demands of families, work and employee safety. What struck me as the most interesting aspect of House Industries was the fact that heretofore they had never been the subjects of a full feature article in the national design press. Aside from Chee Pearlman and Peter Saville (the soft-spoken British designer who had the misfortune of hosting a talk in the room next door), everyone else loved it. And they did infamously piss-off some AIGA high muck-a-mucks at the 1999 Las Vegas conference by cranking up the volume on the professional-grade concert system the AIGA had graciously provided for their band act. House does offer buyers a lot of stuff: Their Swag Bag makes Jerry French look stingy by comparison. “Great grip,” said one, “bring me some.” “The arrogant asses blackballed by AIGA, right?” asked another. When I mentioned to several friends about meeting the House Industries gang, all immediately knew who they were.
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