Recently in a wordless post called simply Casa Malaparte, Atelier featured some elegant, elemental tables made by placing a flat surface-on-pillars-or-stones; they reminded us of our favorite Le Corbusier table, a slab of concrete on a concrete block base. It sent us rooting through our file of slab-and-pillar tables, a great formula for oddly chic d-i-y tables. Pillars can mean many things, like the oil drum-and-wood-slab-table we clipped from Style Files some time back: read more…
Benjamin Benschneider/Pacific Northwest Magazine
A few months ago we clipped this picture of Steve Sauer sitting in the 182 square foot Seattle apartment he had renovated, creating three levels, and nooks for different uses, including two beds, a full kitchen with a dishwasher, bathroom with a shower, a soaking tub set into the floor, closet space, a dining table and storage for two bikes. An airplane interiors engineer at Boeing, Sauer cleverly designed his space to accommodate his lifestyle EXACTLY, without a drop of wasted space, which he felt would be the problem with anything larger. Even more interesting than Sauer’s design, is the thinking behind it:
“I wanted to compress my home to squirt me back out to the community. That was one of the philosophical reasons. I want to be able to shop daily, not store a lot and eat really well.” said Seattle’s Steve Sauer.
It one of the most interesting reasons for living in a tiny space that we’d heard: to choose and create a space that would force you to live a certain way. read more…
Always on the lookout for more ideas for impermanent pop-up rooms within rooms, we were taken by a work by Zimoun, a sound artist/sculptor who builds different kinds of white noise into structures.We love his room of interlocking slabs of notched cardboard, made like a house of cards, and imagined building a smaller version that could be stored when no longer needed, stacked and tied in a bundle, in the closet. read more…
For the past few years, we’ve been learning about how beautiful concrete blocks can be as a building material. The latest “lesson” came with a visit to the late Alexander Calder’s home in Connecticut for a birthday party for his daughter, who is a friend of ours. An artist who worked in a wide variety of materials, Calder built several buildings on the property over the years, out of ordinary cinder block. The austerity and simplicity of the architecture, coupled with abundant windows and elegant roof lines (and the fact of Calder having made incredible artworks in them) make the block buildings compelling. They fly in the face of the the notion that cinder block structures are generally nothing but ugly. So we walked around in the twilight and took some photos…
Maria Robledo
The other day we got an email from our friend A.S.C. Rower, President of the Calder Foundation (we know him as Sandy). It’s subject line read: “More Noise Please!” The title of a poem by the late Steven J. Bernstein, a mutual friend, was the go-ahead for ‘the improvised life’ to feature posts about Rower’s grandfather, Alexander Calder, an idea that’s been in the works for a while. Calder, one of the 20th century’s greatest artists, known for his monumental and kinetic sculptures and mobiles, was possibly one of the world’s most inspired and relentless improvisers. When Sandy heard of ‘the improvised life’s mission, he thought it would be a fine fit.
We thought we’d start our ongoing Calder theme by featuring some pictures of the Calder Foundation space, excerpted from the current World of Interiors. They were made by another close friend and frequent contributor, Maria Robledo (who photographed all of Sally’s books, including The Improvisational Cook). The space, in New York’s Chelsea, houses a vast archive of Calder’s life and work including the ongoing catalogue raisonné, and supports the Foundation’s mission to deepen understanding of Calder’s work and scholarly work; it is not yet open to the public. (Note: The images published here are scans of the magazine and hence don’t have the luminosity of Robledo’s originals.)
We got A LOT of inspiration from the article and our recent visit to the foundation which affirmed our central operating principle: that an improvisational environment begets an improvisational mindset… read more…
For some time now, we’ve been mulling the idea of pop-up, temporary “rooms” that we could put in place easily in a smallish apartment. The idea started with wanting to provide out-of-town friends camping in our living room with privacy, and evolved when we were trying to figure out a way to separate our sleeping area off from our office, which shares one big room. Lately, as we’ve thought about the things we could do with one huge loft-like room, we thought it would be great to be able to devise a separate office, without building anything in.
Although this could be done with imaginative use of room screens, we imagine an impermanent structure that would define a space: a moveable, temporary room within an apartment…We found quite a range of possibilities from the seriously-designed and expensive MultiScreen Shangrila, above, with screens that move up and down to Display Hut’s 8′x8′ Canopy Tent. read more…
We stumbled on this lovely 3 minutes with Laurie Anderson, and found it calmed us and made us THINK. (We also loved seeing her cooled out, very real space). It was made by Dropping Knowledge.org, a website that “invites you to question yourself and the world around you. Every time you ask yourself a question, a new dialogue begins…”
Anderson frames her question so perfectly, we won’t give it away. Here’s the book she mentions if you’re interested in pursuing the ideas: Within the Context of No Context
What’s your question?
Video link here. More DroppingKnowledge videos (and people asking questions) here.
Every since we saw the video Andrew Carmellini, mastermind of the great Locanda Verde, made to build buzz in his soon-to-open NYC restaurant, Dutch, we’ve been FEELING the restaurant as it comes together in the crazed couple of weeks before opening. Maybe that’s because Sally actually worked nearby at the old Soho Charcuterie on Sullivan Street; she made pates and terrines all day in the basement prep kitchen and would take breaks in the bocce court next door (now long gone, along with the neighborhood’s Italians). Restaurant memories live in the bones.
Maybe it’s because the video (possibly even better with the sound off) conveys a sort of chef head of late night foraging around town, of all the things that fly IN to that head that end up becoming a dish.
We were so intrigued, we took a screen shot of the quickly uncrumpling blueprint in the video so we could take a closer look at the new restaurant: read more…
A recent issue of New York Magazine featured The New York City Apartment: A Biography, a trove of slideshows and features about the inside of living in New York. We especially love the slideshow called “The Perpetual Garret”, the apartments of some once-not-so-famous artists. Flavorwire took the idea and ran with it, to include the spaces of the acutely famous as well, like Marina Abramovic and Francis Bacon.
Our favorite is Beat writer William Burroughs’, a former locker room at the 222 Broadway YMCA, which he called ‘the Bunker: a typewriter on a table, chair, bed, coat.
We culled some swell decorating ideas, like Karl Lagerfeld showing how to make a HUGE book collection graphic and beautiful rather than overwhelming: read more…
We’ve always loved the white painted floors that are especially prominent on Scandinavian design blogs and magazines, like these from the home of Danish stylist Sidsel Zachariassen. We wondered what the secret is to making them both pristine and durable. We found the answer in a Dwell slideshow about the smart, frugal renovation of a small two-bedroom apartment by two very clever Finnish designers who weren’t afraid to d-i-themselves.
“It took Susanna several layers of sanding—and then finally tossing her water-based paint and selecting the proper oil-based formula—to get the floor as white as she’d envisioned. But she couldn’t be happier with the result. ‘The apartment looks bigger when there are white surfaces for the light to bounce on,’ she says.”
Patient sanding between coats + the right paint are the keys. Add this information to this great how-to from Real Simple, read more…
Dave Lauridsen/Dwell
Faced with the possibility of camping in a kitchenless space, we’ve been thinking about ways to forge a makeshift kitchen. Lately, we’ve come across a number of kitchen islands made out of sawhorses and a slab of wood. Although they have a pleasingly ad hoc feeling, sawhorses naturally seem to possess a low-key architectural aesthetic, as witnessed by our many posts on saw horse tables (more below). Unique slabs of wood make for compelling surfaces, like this massive slab of cypress featured in a recent Dwell slideshow. read more…
Cherry, apple blossoms and dogwood will soon be making their appearance, so Spring is a fine time to practice ikebana, the minimalist art of flower arranging that originated in Japan. As with wabi-sabi, although it looks simple, it has complex philosophical, even spiritual underpinnings.
Ikebana” is from the Japanese ikeru (生ける?, “to place, to arrange, life, birth”) and hana (花?, “flower”… It is a time to appreciate things in nature that people often overlook because of their busy lives. One becomes more patient and tolerant of differences, not only in nature, but also in general. Ikebana can inspire one to identify with beauty in all art forms. This is also the time when one feels closeness to nature which provides relaxation for the mind, body, and soul.–Wikipedia (we wish we knew WHO wrote this)
We thought we’d offer a bit of inspiration: Isamu Noguchi ‘s “Lonely Tower” – Shigaraki stoneware with thin ash glaze made in 1952 – with ikebana by Teshigahara Sofu.
via Mondoblog’s great riff on Noguchi’s cermics…
…where we admired Noguchi’s perfect studio space: read more…
Using sliding panels and walls and consummately clever thinking, architect Gary Chang revamped his tiny 344-square-foot Hong Kong apartment to be able to change it into 24 different designs. It totally challenges preconceived notions of what a space can be, which is Chang’s mission. We are especially inspired by his use of sliding walls, which offers fantastic potential in small urban spaces, allowing them to become mutable and expansive. And we wish there were a place to buy the sleek murphy bed-cum-sofa he designed.
We love this quote from Design Milk’s great interview: “Psychologically, one should ‘maintain’ an open mind on how to use the space and avoid, as much as possible, the pre-conceptions on what a ‘home’ should function and look like.”
You’ll find pictures and floor plans at Architonic. View more of Chang’s interiors here. Video link here.
This cartoon in a recent New Yorker reminds us of some of the interiors we’ve seen on shelter blogs and magazines… read more…
