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Lifestyles Profile - Jorge Rubio By Joseph Kandoll Jorge Rubio of Terra Noble says, “It’s not all easy, having a dream and making it come true. Getting there was only a part of it. This all came out of something that I wanted to do, that I wanted to create. When I first built this place, together with Suzy Odom, the architect, we decided to create something that looked like it just grew out of the earth. That’s how we came up with the unusual design – I was in California in the early 90s at a conference for homes built from natural materials.” A Saudi Arabian prince who stayed in one of Jorge’s Conchas Chinas villas took notice (vanilla trees grow out of a space that becomes the ceiling). After seeing a second villa, the prince didn’t hesitate to ask for Jorge. The result is a palace in Riyadh that combines the Southwest with pre-Hispanic Mexico. Dolphins play in a sea of stones below a dining room table and blue-green maguey form the support for the balcony railing. “Sculpture and design grow out of what there is. It is a combination of energy, but we have to be willing to listen.” In Boston, he was given a typical modern suburban house that had nothing to pull it together. Now, at the top of what once were sterile stairs, there grows a profusion of plants that draw the eye to the next level. The bedroom ceiling is the underside of a swath of glowing silk buttressed with birch branches. The bathroom displays a jungle-like 12-foot Mexican-tiled mural. Cacti of varying sizes form focal points near windows to catch and refract the light. The basement is meant for play, and play he did, creating neon sculptures that seem to have been sprayed in place like vines and a bar straight out of Star Wars. A gym, complete with water streams, flashes of color and a vibrant sound system, may keep you there forever. “I work with natural materials, one- of-a-kind, a stump, a stone, something with form that speaks for itself. Each thing I do, whether it’s furniture, a house or gallery, I respond to what I see.”

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