outside
(Video link here.) About 6 months ago, we got an email from Merete Mueller, a friend of a friend who was just finishing up a film about the Tiny House Movement.
The film, “TINY: A Story About Living Small” follows Christopher Smith and my attempt to build a tiny house from scratch with no building experience in the mountains of Colorado. It also explores the lives of other Americans who have downsized their lives into houses smaller than the average parking space.
We’re interested in innovative design and environmental sustainability, but most of all, we’re interested in “Home”—how we find it and how we know when we’re there, the small, strong details that make us feel comfortable and at-ease in a place.
Through homes stripped down to their essentials, the film raises questions about sustainability, good design, and the changing American Dream, and what we REALLY need to live well and happily. It’s also the story of Merete and Christopher embarking on a project without knowing what they were doing; they could LEARN what they didn’t know. And did. (TINY just premiered at South by SouthWest, an independent film festival. Way to go!!!!)
We already love the film for this wise nugget:
For some people bigger isn’t necessarily better. The world gets a lot bigger when you begin to have more cash and time. read more…
03.13.13 |
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in buildings, cheap + great, cool spaces, d-i-y, how-to, paths + processes, people, resources, wheels |
Library of Congress
Found on …Found, the great, full-of-amazing-things National Geographic Tumblr of images from its archives in honor of its 100 birthday: Alexander Graham Bell and Mabel kissing within a tetrahedral kite, October 1903.
It reminded us that kissing is probably one of the most improvisational things there is.
Related posts: a mantra from bill murray
03.13.13 |
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in people, sightings |
rita willaert
In the small country of Burkina Faso near the border to Ghana, it is common for dwellings to be painted with intricate patterns using colored mud and chalk. The patterns tells stories of the community’s culture.
We are amazed at how modern these rustic wall paintings are, and imagine how beautiful they would be adorning the side of a building or a garden wall, a floor, a headboard perhaps.
read more…
03.07.13 |
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in buildings, copy this!, d-i-y, floors, inspiration, sightings, walls + windows |
(Video link here.) We WISH we were the kind of person who just switchrf gears on-a-dime, as surfer Nic von Rupp did to great reward. Having gotten a call about the extraordinary surf in Ireland — IRELAND!!— he canceled the flight to Hawaii he was about to get on, and flew to Ireland instead, into a big unknown.
He found fine surfing and discovered chilly, but deeply warm-hearted, Ireland.
Come to think of it, we USED to do that sort of thing a lot when we were younger – less so with age…h-h-h-mmmmm….OMG!…perhaps we need to shake things up a bit.
With thanks to reader Stacey Covell, a reader who alerted us to the great video she found in Surfer Magazine
Related posts: mental health break: riding teahupo’o waves in slo-mo
vicarious thrill: surfing big by l.e.d + moonlight
new york city beekeeper/surfer
virtual traveler: ‘a day in india’
the sometimes dangerous path to where you want to go
03.05.13 |
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in road warrior, travel, video, why not? |
ellie davies
When we walk through park or woods, we secretly imagine how we would surive there if we had to. What kind of shelter would we devise with what is there? It’s kid thinking, really: of forts and snug secret places, combined with our love of shelters of all kinds. Artist Elle Davies made that fantasy real in The Dwellings, a series of photographs of structures created “using a variety of traditional and improvised building techniques… from materials gathered from the forest floor.”
read more…
02.19.13 |
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in art, materials, nature, paths + processes, people, quotes |
oldworldgrange.tumblr.com
Of the many inspired DIY ideas to be found in the rustic Sunset House we posted previously is a beautiful and rather startling floor made of wood “bricks”. We’d never thought of simply cutting the ends off wood planks to make wood bricks. Industrious owners Lilah and Nick made a pattern of the wood bricks, end-cuts-up, above, and then grouted it with cement, which makes some bricks darker, while others take on a muted silvery sheen. read more…
02.12.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, dream houses, floors, outside, reclaim, resources |
Over our many years of traveling to West Virginia, we’ve admired a number of eccentric, cozy dwellings, including a school bus with a giant stone hearth built onto it, nestled by a river. But this shack we spotted at Cabin Porn incites serious envy.
A couple named Lilah and Nick built the Sunset House using lumber from a barn on their property which was cut and milled from the land by the previous owner many years ago. All the windows are reclaimed from junkyards over their history of thrifting together. read more…
02.12.13 |
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in before + after, cheap + great, cool spaces, d-i-y, diy, dream houses, materials, outside, reclaim |
K
“Rules are there to be broken” is one of our favorite operating principles. We’ve learned a HUGE amount from seeing what would happen if we “broke the rules” and did things differently from the norm. It’s a practice: questioning the rules with a big “WHY?” and then, when we have an idea, asking “Why not?” and trying it out.
About the time we found this great sign from Popular Lies About Graphic Design
, we heard that our friend Tom Ashcraft’s artwork was chosen to be in the illustrious Outsider Art Fair in New York City, which was recently covered by The Wall Street Journal:
Free from the weight of academic study and art history, so-called “outsider artists” operate with a certain cachet: they create in whatever form and with whatever method that moves them. Trained artists may claim to do the same, but they can become jet-setting sensations by breaking rules. When outsiders break rules, they do it without knowing that rules exist.
One essential trait of Outsider Art is that it is created by people read more…
02.05.13 |
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in art, outside, paths + processes, people, principles, quotes, signs |
