The décor was all straight lines and sleek surfaces, like the modern temples that her magazine celebrates, except for a plate of dried figs and garbanzo beans arranged neatly on her desk. She had just flown in from Marin County, Calif., where she lives in a steel-and-glass house, to attend a furniture show and take some meetings.

Ever since Dwell moved its editorial team to New York from San Francisco in 2011, Ms. Deam has become bicoastal, visiting New York almost every month. When in town, she stays in a glass town house in the West Village, part of an exclusive residence club in the shadows of the Richard Meier towers.

“Marin is great but sleepy,” she said. “I love the energy here.” Though shy and reserved by nature, she lit up when discussing the city’s gung-ho networking culture and the reasons Dwell relocated East.

The move has already paid dividends. This fall, Dwell will sponsor its second City Modern tour of Instagram-worthy homes with New York magazine. Dwell also took on its first outside investor, though Ms. Deam would not disclose who or how much. The mystery dollars will go to building an e-commerce site this fall, which will sell furniture and accessories that you might find in the magazine.

It’s a noted shift, considering Ms. Deam has self-financed Dwell for the last 13 years. But if the magazine features chimeras, like the 17th-century mill turned private home in Salento, Italy, in the June issue, it’s a reflection of Ms. Deam’s charmed upbringing.

The youngest of three girls, Ms. Deam grew up in Janesville, Wis., which she said is known for two things: a G.M. factory and United States Representative Paul Ryan. Her parents, Don and Gerry Hedberg, founded Lab Safety Supply, which sold chemistry-class equipment like beakers and Bunsen burners, before it was purchased by Grainger in 1992.

After graduating from Miami University in 1989, Ms. Deam moved to Chicago to run one of her father’s side businesses: selling semiprecious rocks like amethyst. It wasn’t exactly a career track, she noted with a wry chuckle, and she struggled at the business for three years before striking out on her own.

First, she explored nonprofit work, moving to Washington to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. But she soured on the city’s political cynicism. “It just wasn’t me,” she said, wrinkling her nose. So after visiting a friend in the Bay Area, she moved to Mill Valley, Calif., in 1994.

There she bought a sunny property in downtown Mill Valley with a dingy house attached, presumably with family money. (Ms. Deam would neither confirm nor deny her source of financing.) “The backsplash was like plastic, a plastic bag over the kitchen sink,” she said.

She ended up renovating the house twice and with unexpected help. Through a mutual friend, she would meet her future husband, Christopher Deam, an architect and designer known for slick Airstream interiors. Mr. Deam opened her to the world of design, bringing her to the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan and the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York. “I came back, and thought, ‘Oh, my God, I just want to figure out how to replicate that,’ ” she said of her awakening.

She drew up a business plan for Dwell, based mostly on her catalog experience while working summers at Lab Safety Supply. “I had this aha moment as I was looking through Global Architect — it’s a trade magazine — at Chris’s loft,” she said. “It had very high-end beautiful projects. I was like, ‘What if we had a magazine in this country that had really great architecture and design but talked about it really accessibly?’ ”

Several weeks after Dwell started publishing in 2000, she married Mr. Deam in a geodesic dome on Treasure Island. “It was really over the top,” she said, blushing.

Some of the photographs still feel fresh when you flip through the first issue, including a spread on an updated Brooklyn carriage house. “I do believe that architecture that’s done well has a very lasting quality,” she said. While Dwell has generated applause in some circles (it won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2005), it is also the occasional target of satire and derision for its warmed-over interpretation of midcentury modernism. One blog, UnhappyHipsters.com, pokes fun at its unattainable taste, by running snarky captions under the magazine’s picture-perfect tableaus.

But Ms. Deam points out there’s an audience for design gawking. Besides, she’s too busy this month trying to stay off the grid with her husband and their 10-year-old twins at their lakeside property in Saugatuck, Mich.

“There’s a real soulfulness when you’re just there at night,” she said, her blue eyes widening. “No electricity, no road. We’re basically just doing a wraparound porch and two bedrooms.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/fashion/lara-deam-cool-comfort-in-modern-design.html?partner=rss&emc=rss