The Southern Living Idea house is located within Plein Air Community, a small town outside of Oxford. It is currently used for weddings and special events and is occasionally rented out for the weekend. (Photo by Marlee Crawford)
Plein Air is a small community in Taylor, a small town outside of Oxford, and in the center of that community lies its crown jewel: the Southern Living Idea House.
Southern Living builds idea houses every year, and the house at Plein Air is the epitome of Southern style.
“They kind of explained to us about how they build a house,” said Campbell McCool, real estate developer for the Plein Air community. “They host a tour there, it raises money for charity, people come get ideas, etc. and we said ‘Yeah, it’s something we’d be interested in’ and away we went.”
Many people get to share in the beauty that is the Southern Living Idea House.
It is currently used for weddings and special events and is occasionally rented out for the weekend. The house isn’t limited to one single family.
The entire community has the opportunity to experience the house and take pride in having one of Southern Living’s most esteemed houses in the South in their neighborhood.
For more than 20 years, Southern Living has selected locations around the country to build its idea houses.
In 2008, three locations were chosen to build the houses. Plein Air was one of the neighborhoods selected to host an Idea House.
It is the only Idea House that Southern Living has built in Mississippi and was designed by Mississippian John Tee, an architect based out of Atlanta. The house was featured on the August 2008 cover of Southern Living Magazine.
All of the houses in Plein Air have their own distinct looks, yet they all favor one another. It’s a picture-perfect neighborhood with a cohesive design making the ever-growing community a living, breathing piece of art.
“I kind of became inspired by doing a new urbanist style development focused around the arts,” McCool said. “Our whole theme is centered around the arts and it just kind of hit me.”
Houses in the neighborhood are built very close together with concrete sidewalks lining the edges of yards. There are no garages built into the houses, but there are carports either attached to the house or in the yards designed to match the houses.
“They’re on zero-lots. Each house is so close that you can almost walk between houses and put your hands out and touch. The whole deal is that they’re so close together,” said Sue Cook, long-time resident of Taylor.
The two-story house is 3,100 square feet with four bedrooms and four-and-a-half baths. The home features three porches, indoor and outdoor wood burning fireplaces, hardwood floors and an open floor plan. McCool says that salvaged materials were used when possible, such as reusing old doors.
The Southern Living house perfectly embodies the spirit of Plein Air.
Plein air is a French term meaning “open air.” Plein air is most commonly used to describe a style of art where an artist paints an outdoor scene on location.
“It is a lovely place, I’ll just tell you the truth,” Cook said. “It has the potential to be a beautiful little community.”
