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Bringing It Home Design as Self-Portrait
A firefighter builds his own shipping container home in Colorado.
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November/December 2018 “New forces bring new ideas. I was happy to see architecture I did forty years ago rejuvenated by new blood.” Ferdinando Fagnola, architect Page 96
CONTENTS
features
COVER PHOTO BY
Benjamin Rasmussen ABOVE:
One of the many outdoor spaces at a multipart dwelling in Sardinia, Italy.
72 Swedish Bliss
80 Making a Splash
On the island of Tjörn off the coast of Sweden, a family builds a vacation retreat attuned to its natural surroundings.
A couple return an unusual Austrian home by a modern architect to its former ’70s glory. TEXT
TEXT
Sonia Zhuravlyova
Tiffany Orvet
PHOTOS
PHOTO BY
PHOTOS
Jason Larkin
Julian Broad
Birgitta Wolfgang
88 Adjusted for Inflation A midcentury aficionado and self-taught designer builds a budget-conscious dream house in Nashville.
96 Italian Unification Past meets present in Sardinia, as an architect, joined by a new team, melds three Brutalist villas he created decades ago into one spectacular home.
TEXT
Ryan Burleson
TEXT
PHOTOS
Shonquis Moreno
Pippa Drummond
PHOTOS
Julian Broad
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Spider Pendant by Studio Italia Design. Register as a trade member for exclusive discounts: Lightology.com/Trade
November/December 2018 44
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CONTENTS
62
Manufactured in Minnesota, the Lollygagger bar cart from Loll Designs is made of recycled material (mostly milk jugs). For more American-made items, see p. 31.
departments 15 Editor’s Letter 18 Community
130 Sourcing See it? Want it? Need it? Buy it!
132 One Last Thing Jennifer Siegal reveals the significance of a little tin toy.
31 Modern World
44 Process
62 Small Spaces
Despite challenges of cost, supply chain, and competition, a host of designers and manufacturers old and new remain committed to producing domestically. We celebrate home-grown design with a look at some of the best product introductions for 2018; insights from seven companies that have been in business for four to 155 years; and spotlights on classic items (like the box cheese grater you probably have in your cabinet) that always have been, and continue to be, proudly made in the USA.
French Paper Company in Niles, Michigan, takes us onto the factory floor to see how its “black licorice” paper is made.
Dotted with color and enlivened with art, a compact apartment in Brooklyn Heights is just the right size for a pair of creatives and their growing family.
TEXT BY
Dora Vanette Peter Oumanski
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
Get a full year of Dwell at dwell.com/subscribe
TEXT BY
Lindsay J. Warner Jamie Chung
PHOTOS BY
TEXT BY
Julie Lasky Stephen Kent Johnson
PHOTOS BY
50 Conversation Maia Smilow Schoenfelder, granddaughter of midcentury furniture designer Mel Smilow and head of the company that bears his name, talks reissues and relevance. TEXT BY
Tim McKeough Sam Kerr
110 Interiors Unwilling to settle for bland, a transplanted California couple turn to a New York design firm to upgrade their Brooklyn condo. Tim McKeough PHOTOS BY Mark Wickens TEXT BY
ILLUSTRATION BY
56 Prefab Nine shipping containers form the basis of a warmly industrial residence outside Denver that welcomes friends and community. TEXT BY
Ray Mark Rinaldi Benjamin Rasmussen
PHOTOS BY
116 My House A painter and avid postwar furniture collector transforms a 1963 Gene Leedy house in Winter Haven, Florida, into a showcase for art and design. TEXT BY
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Matthew Williams
PHOTOS BY
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editor’s letter
Bringing It Home
Ideally our homes should evolve in tandem with our culture. But lately they’ve been lagging behind. In a sense, we all are. Technology has us struggling to keep up as we encounter a firestorm of useful, entertaining, addictive, inspiring, and time-wasting images and messages daily. Meanwhile the continuing damage to our environment—something architecture can and must address—puts our very future at risk. How can our homes be a place of calm and rest in a turbulent world, while still engaging us in culture and community? I believe the answer is in building for our time. Today American homes are rife with copies of what I call “grandma’s kitchens”—spaces that nod stylistically to the humble traditions of the past but fail to capture their magic. Drywall is substituted for plaster, country-style cabinets are paired with yards of counter space, and crowds of dormers spring up in place of pitched roofs. That kind of detailing can feel inauthentic when imitated today. It’s from another time, another culture. In a way, I understand this impulse. Uncertainty pushes us to reach for the familiar. But instead of trying to replicate our grandmothers’ kitchens tile for tile, perhaps it is better to think about what feelings those spaces stirred in us. Maybe she had windows to the north, providing a gentle, cool light that you really loved. Perhaps you remember the smell of her bread baking in a generously sized oven. Or maybe you liked the layout, how people came in and out so openly. Seeking these emotional connections to the past will help guide your design decisions in a way that is more meaningful than choosing a similar molding. Authenticity is a core value for so many of us, one that can be applied in the home. Whether you are working with an architect or just want to personally imbue your dwelling with more of yourself, everyone can benefit from thinking deeply about houses that have the power to both engage us intellectually and provide us with comfort. We believe that design and architecture can be used more sensitively and experimentally to create lasting and inspiring moments on this earth. We hope you will join our community in discussing how we can further advance these ideas at large and within ourselves.
Lara Deam, Founder, CEO lara@dwell.com / @larahdeam
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Dwell Editorial Executive Editor Luke Hopping Managing Editor Camille Rankin
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Editorial Fellow Maxine Richter Creative Director Rob Hewitt Designer Alyssa Chavez
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Photo Director Susan Getzendanner
Founder / CEO Lara Hedberg Deam Investor / Board Member Dave Morin Investor / Advisor Jennifer Moores CRO Nicole Wolfgram Chief Digital Officer Kellie Gould
Article Reprints Send requests to: reprints@dwell.com
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Executive Editor Jenny Xie Lead Developer Jim Redd Creative Director Ashley Pfahler Director, Product Management Daniel Miesner Community and Social Media Manager Erin V. Mahoney Editor Kathryn McLamb Editorial Assistant Samantha Daly
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FAST AS THE LEXUS HYBRID LINE Climb into the sumptuous cabin of the RX 450h or RX 450hL. Rev its 308-total-system-horsepower1 3.5-liter V6. Bury the pedal. And smile. Switch it to Sport mode. Sink deeper into its 10-way poweradjustable driver’s seat. Grip its leather-trimmed steering wheel tighter. And smile. Pass a gas station. And another. And another. And smirk. Because when you choose the eiciency of a hybrid and get all the performance and luxury you want in return, it’s smart as h too. The Lexus Hybrids. There’s more to h than just hybrid. INSTANT ACCELERATION2 LUXURIOUS INTERIOR
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letters
I love everything about the Girard house. I hope I get an opportunity to bid on it, should the owners ever want a new curator!
COMMUNITY
Jenny Cook
From Dwell.com I read your interview with Dan Maginn on Dwell’s new podcast, RM-3, and I have to say, if I were steel, I’d be pissed. To see this podcast come to fruition sparked joy within me. And I love the idea of covering one material “three ways.” But to say steel is “basically processed dirt”—this is an insult to any metal, really, and misdirects the potential of dirt. Steel was born from
the belly of the earth, trapped for hundreds of years surrounded by dirt in the form of iron ore. Steel is not dirt. And this isn’t to undermine dirt, which in and of itself is fascinating and a true chameleon of materials. —Diana Giulietti Thanks for the letter, Diana. I hope steel isn’t pissed at me and understands I was being cheeky
when I referred to it as “basically processed dirt.” I’ve relied on this noble material for every building I’ve designed since becoming an architect. I wouldn’t want to offend it. Dirt, however, is kind of pissed at me for being too general and suggested I do a podcast called “Dirt 3 Ways” to dig deeper on the subject. I agreed, so stay tuned. —Dan Maginn
Correction: The article “Landmarks & Engels” in the September/
October issue incorrectly stated that Belgian architect Lucien Engels created the master plan for Expo ’58. We regret the error.
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“Their Own Girard” SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER
I love everything but the metal roof trusses. Pleasing proportions and scenes from every angle, indoors and out. The glazed brick, wood paneling, corrugated glass, screens, fireplace, built-ins, clerestory windows... all add up to perfection, in my eyes! —CAROLYN A. “Garage Scale” SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER
Only great artists could have the vision, the patience, and the knowledge to reclaim
that [garage] and make it so beautiful. The red car is the perfect surrealist touch! If I go to San Francisco, I would love to take a walk on that street.
Always happy to see gallery/homes. How does one live without art? I hope the owners will participate in the SF Open Studios. Congratulations!
—HÉLÈNE VOLAT
—COLLEEN MALONEY
Congratulations on such an incredible home and reuse project. That was five years very well spent.
“Mod Side of the Barn” Baie mooi. [Very pretty, in Afrikaans.]
—JAMES
—KERNAN COLEMAN
Wow! And perfect spot for the red Fiat. The kitchen nook is a dark space for art, but I love the sleek, white, minimalist kitchen and seeing art on the wall.
Absolutely love the design and finishes, but I foresee a maintenance nightmare with those exterior window projections!
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER
—GW FOLEY
NOV E M B ER/DECEM B ER 2018
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PHOTOS: BRIAN W. FERRY (GIRARD) ; CESAR RUBIO (GARAGE ); GREG COX/BUREAUX ( BARN)
Clockwise from above: “Their Own Girard” featured the last standing residence solely designed by Alexander Girard; a 1965 Fiat was a surprise decorative touch in “Garage Scale”; and “Mod Side of the Barn” captured a family retreat in South Africa.
We’re honored to win the 2018 National Design Award for Product Design.
NYC | SAN FRANCISCO | LA | CHICAGO | AUSTIN | SEATTLE | MINNEAPOLIS | SYDNEY | MEXICO CITY | MONTERREY
BLUDOT.COM
Explore the inspiration for Amy Kehoe’s own kitchen remodel at dacor.com.
Authenticity. AND ALLURE .
Amy Kehoe x The Heritage Collection
“ O F T E N , W H AT G I V E S A N O B J E C T AUTHENTICIT Y IS THE ONE WHO IS BEHIND T H E O B J E C T— I T S M A K E R — A N D I T S F I N I S H , I T S TO U C H . A N A U T H E N T I C P I E C E I S N ’ T “ O F T H E M O M E N T ” O R TO O C O N T R I V E D. I T ’ S S I M P LY S O M E T H I N G YO U N E V E R T I R E O F. ”
- AMY KEHOE Interior Designer/Co-Founder Nickey Kehoe
N E W YO R K | C H I CAG O | LO S A N G E L E S Opening Winter 2018/19
dwell.com
Dive into the digital world of Dwell, where there’s much more to discover—and lots of ways to get involved.
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HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDES Take the stress out of holiday shopping with our curated gift guides. Whether you’re looking for stocking stuffers or cool new finds (like the levitating Flyte LED lamp, above), you can cross off everyone on your list by heading to www.dwell.com/shop.
PHOTOS: DREW KELLY ( MINIMOD) ; CASEY DUNN ( INSTAGRAM)
VACATION RENTALS Minimod, originally designed by pioneering Bay Area architect Joseph Esherick, is a compact, three-level cabin in California’s famed Sea Ranch community that’s been lovingly restored by Framestudio to accommodate up to six guests. Book your stay at dwell.com/minimod.
The Sea Ranch rental (above) includes a modern kitchen, an office nook, a sleeping loft, and built-in bunks.
TOP INSTAGRAMS A revamped 1955 home in Austin (above), an off-grid retreat in Australia, and a renovated London townhouse were among your favorite recent posts. Add more inspiration to your feed at instagram.com/dwellmagazine.
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POLL:
72
%
of readers say they would not put a television over the fireplace.
NOV E M B ER/DECEM B ER 2018
DWELL
dwell asks
If you could change one thing about your home, what would it be?
COMMUNITY
Offered a magic wand to make any home improvement, our online community told us about the top items on their to-do lists—as well as some loftier ambitions.
Turn my San Diego cookie-cutter condo kitchen into a “wow” moment. Goodbye countertops and cabinets that everyone used in 2006 during the peak flip years. @joshnsd on Instagram
The kitchen. The germophobe in me hates the tile countertops. But the thing about kitchen remodels is that you never know how much it’s going to
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cost or how long it will take, especially in a 103-year-old house. Not sure I wanna open Pandora’s Box. @karenarman on Instagram I would add a ton of hardscaping to our very wooded yard to help keep overgrown weeds at bay. @suerissab on Instagram
The back of our house is almost all glass, which gives amazing light, but I sometimes wish we had more wall space for art. @lisasadd on Instagram A new kitchen. I still have the original 1972 Harvest Gold Formica countertops. Janette Niwa on Facebook
This is not a very sexy response, but more storage would help in ways that would be life-changing. @frankpphillips on Instagram I would split the lot and create an accessory dwelling unit— do my part to mitigate the housing crisis in California. @gigi_flrs on Instagram
Update the floor-toceiling windows that were put in in 1959 and make sure they can open to get more air in our midcentury modern. Michelle Mendenhall on Facebook
ILLUSTRATION: RAYMOND BIESINGER
Rewired electrical and new lighting. Oh, the difference better lighting would make in a 1949 bungalow! Stacy Bartko on Facebook
My dark green malachite bathroom with small diamond details. It looks like something out of a hotel in Vegas. @manuhasanaccent on Instagram
I’d remove my neighbors via kinetic projectile. And then add some windows for more light. @mpkelley_ on Instagram
NOV E M B ER/DECEM B ER 2018
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houses we love
Spartan Queens An ascetic-minded couple take a New York row house down to the studs.
German architect Julian von der Schulenburg did a complete overhaul of a 1901 townhouse in Ridgewood, Queens.
TEXT BY
PHOTOS BY | @KAUFMANPROJECTS
Camille Rankin
Dean Kaufman
The kitchen is part of an “inhabitable wall” that holds the master bath, a mud room, a toilet, and a small tub,
You can count on one hand the pieces of furniture in the apartment Julian von der Schulenburg shares with his wife, Min, and their year-old daughter, Miru: bed, dining table with benches, console, daybed, chair. Everything about their home is ultra pared back, down to the lighting, which consists of LED bulbs in simple porcelain sockets. The sparseness fits the couple’s minimalist lifestyle, but it also emphasizes the raw beauty of the loft-like space. 26
accessible through a raised door (above). The floor is made of plywood scored in a triangle pattern (right).
When Julian and Min purchased the yellow brick building that houses their apartment three years ago, it was totally run down. Their gut renovation, which also included an upstairs rental unit and basement studio, was “largely a process of subtraction,” says Julian. Out went the fake wood walls. Out went the dropped Styrofoam ceilings. The design took shape as demolition progressed. When they were tearing down the walls, for example, they
“I didn’t want to fake a perfect turn-of-the-century Ridgewood house. It’s contextual, but it’s a conversion.” Julian von der Schulenburg, architect and resident
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Julian, who grew up and is licensed in Germany, worked with two Pritzkerwinning architects—Peter Zumthor and Rem Koolhaas—before starting his New York– and Munich-based practice a decade ago, but he feels a greater connection to the former. “Zumthor’s philosophy is about the atmosphere of spaces, and looking for some kind of ‘magic’ through material and light,” says Julian, who worked his own kind of magic on a quiet block in Queens.
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discovered a lining of tar-covered bricks that became a key element of the project. Uncovered remnants of tin were melded into a new floating ceiling. Pipes, like the bricks, were left exposed. To keep an open flow, Julian recessed the kitchen along one wall and tucked the master bath behind it. Doors in the wall hide storage, a washroom, and a cleverly placed soaking tub. Except for the light gray floor, everything inside that wasn’t brick was painted white.
Wherever possible, the couple saved original elements, like the hallway staircase and banister (above left) and sections of tin ceiling (above right). They redid the electrical and plumbing, but kept the metal radiators, which were painted silver (left). The space can be divided into three sections, thanks to sliding panels that hang from channels in the floating ceiling, all done in Decorator’s White by Benjamin Moore. A Wishbone chair by Hans Wegner for Carl Hansen & Søn sits in the bedroom area.
More at Dwell.com Do you have a project you’d like to see published in Dwell? Share it at dwell.com/add-a-home 27
®/™ ©2018 KitchenAid. All rights reserved. The design of the stand mixer is a trademark in the U.S. and elsewhere.
WEARING YOUR HEART ON YOUR SLEEVE
THAT’S THE MARK OF A MAKER
Everything you do in the kitchen makes a meaningful mark. So each KitchenAid® product is designed with the maker in mind. Designed with features crafted to bring all your ideas to life. No matter what you create, you’ll have appliances that open up a world of possibility in your kitchen. And that’s the mark of a maker.
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TIF ER IE
AFT MA S
Presenting our annual survey of what’s new—and what’s stayed the course— in the quest to uphold American crafts and manufacturing. TEXT BY Dora Vanette
P RO D U CT S
EX P E RI E N C E
C L AS S IC S
A region-by-region roundup of our favorite furniture and accessories, all new for 2018.
Companies of various sizes and ages weigh in on domestic production issues big and small.
A spotlighted selection of some of the greatest hits in the history of American ingenuity.
Modern World
open call for designers put a new spin on their namesake material, like Alvaro Uribe’s Small Elemental top.
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MADE IN
EXPERIENCE
AMERICA LESS THAN
Y E A RS OLD
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FLOYD Detroit‚ Michigan E S T . 2014
Direct-to-doorstep furniture wunderkinds
Shipping Manufacturing in the U.S. allows us to offer things like same-day shipping. If we were to outsource, the product would spend at least six to eight weeks on water. When you think about the footprint of shipping uct like a sofa across wasted cost and the environmental impact are immense.
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Tariffs Policies that are meant to protect manufacturing can sometimes be detrimental. Before our bed frames are built in Virginia, we have to import a particular kind of to source in the
were recently implemented did impact
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REJUVENATION Portland, Oregon Taking its cue from the sweeping curves of medieval flying buttresses, the O&G Ames floor lamp features a cast base in brushed or burnished brass and is topped with a linen shade in white or black.
IACOLI & McALLISTER Seattle, Washington Composed of brass and powder-coated steel tubes that range in size from three to 18 inches, the Acis No. 7.1 hanging light system can be arranged in almost endless configurations on a 60-inch-long mount.
CROFT HOUSE Los Angeles, California Nestled in an ultra thin steel frame with the help of sturdy jute webbing, the Leather Sierra chair’s seat is decidedly cushy. Like every piece made by Croft House, the lounge chair has many customizable options.
BEND Los Angeles, California Bend’s wire furniture is all hand bent and spot welded using recyclable metals. The same is true of its custom macramé wall hanging, which combines wire with woven yarn in a range of bright, ’70s-inspired colors.
JACOB BROMWELL
Los Angeles‚ California
We launched on Kickstarter, so we were immediately accountable to our backers. Later, when we decided to design a sofa, we sent out a survey to our customer base and received 1,400 responses in the first 24 hours. We were able to integrate a lot of insights about what people wanted in terms of comfort, material, and color into that design.
DESIGNED IN 1819, THE JACOB BROMWELL CHEESE GRATER SET THE STAN DARD FOR ALL SUCCESSORS. TH E BOXY STAI N LESS STE E L BODY INCLUDES THREE GRATING SURFACES, PLUS A SLICER. THE COMPANY,
ALEX O’DELL Cofounder and COO
WHICH MANUFACTURES IN MULTIPLE STATES‚ ESTIMATES THAT ONE IN FOUR AMERICAN HOUSEHOLDS OWNS A BROMWELL GRATER.
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ILLUSTRATION: PETER OUMANSKI
our product.
living room, reinvented.
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resourcefurniture.com New York | Los Angeles | San Francisco | Washington D.C. | Toronto | Vancouver | Calgary | Montreal | Mexico City
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STUFF BY ANDREW NEYER Mason, Ohio Andrew Neyer designs whimsical lighting fixtures that can be grouped to form sculptural constellations. Together, the powder-coated aluminum shades of Dune, available in three sizes, mimic a rolling landscape.
BRUSH FACTORY Cincinnati, Ohio In a nod to Danish midcentury design, the Seb credenza features a rounded-edge profile and mortise-and-tenon joinery. Handmade from sustainably harvested hardwoods, it has a hole in the back to help with cord management.
MISEWELL Milwaukee, Wisconsin Founded by brothers Vincent and Paul Georgeson, Misewell manufactures its furniture and lighting fixtures in seven states. Its simple Wave coat rack combines a solid ash frame and powder-coated steel wire chassis.
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LOUISE GRAY Minneapolis, Minnesota A smaller version of Louise Gray’s signature throw, the Ida Little quilt is nonetheless big on visual impact. Handmade in Minneapolis, it can be used as a baby blanket or displayed as a work of art.
CORBÉ Detroit, Michigan Designers Kaitlyn and Ryan Lawless of Corbé craft all their porcelain wares by hand. Their Medium planter comes in a rounded or angular silhouette with several glaze options, including a rich satin-matte orange.
BLU DOT Minneapolis, Minnesota The sheltering high back of Blu Dot’s Bloke Velvet lounge chair forms a comfortable nook. Part of a collection that also includes a sectional, the seat rests on a hardwood frame and powder-coated steel legs.
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ILLUSTRATION: PETER OUMANSKI
MIDWEST
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EXPERIENCE
10 -25
Y E A RS OLD
DAVID WEEKS
THOS. MOSER Freeport‚ Maine E S T . 1972
Independent downtown design studio
New England woodworking revivalists
Small Business When you build something from scratch, there’s this weird moment when you realize, if I walk away, this would just be gone—it would be like dust. Until you reach a certain scale and there is significant equity and several partners, a business is actually very ephemeral.
Word-of-mouth Our customers-inresidence programs allow people to come to Maine and participate in the making of their piece. Repeat business and referral work is probably our single largest market segment. Our customers’ living rooms are some of the best showrooms we could possibly create.
Knockoffs You want to be bitter about it, but to go after anybody takes an incredible amount of effort. In the end, you’ll spend more time dealing with legal issues than making. For me, the reason I got into this industry was not to spend my time in court, but to come up with new ideas.
DAVID WEEKS Owner
AIRSTREAM
Y E A RS OLD
New York‚ New York E S T . 1996
Competition All the retail is going to Amazon, so manufacturing is one of the few opportunities left to create something. In the past, everyone used to think they had to compete with IKEA. In the end, there’s no point. The best thing to do is just to find your own market.
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Digital The online world is the ultimate equalizer, since it is easy from 10 feet away to make any table look beautiful. We want to use our online platform as a place for people to read stories—the idea of knowing not only where your furniture came from, but also who made it for you. Craftsmanship Some of the best woodworkers we have, and I’m sure this applies to many other companies, live woodworking. When they go home on the weekend, what do you think they do? They do woodworking. It’s part of their DNA. AARON MOSER President and CEO
Jackson Center‚ Ohio
MORE THAN HALF THE AIRSTREAMS BUILT SINCE WALLY BYAM DESIGNED THE FI RST TRAVEL TRAILER‚ IN 1929‚ ARE STILL TAKING TO THE ROAD. LIKE ALL AIRSTREAMS‚ THE ICONIC BAMBI‚ INTRODUCED IN 1961‚ HAS AN AERODYNAMIC SHAPE AND LIGHTWEIGHT ALUMINUM CONSTRUCTION THAT MAKES IT A BREEZE TO TOW. ELEMENTS OF ITS DESIGN LIVE ON IN CURRENT MODELS.
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EXPERIENCE
50 – 75
Y E A RS O L D
HEATH San Francisco‚ California E S T . 1948
Champions of handcrafted ceramics
Scaling When we first bought the business 15 years ago, it was hard to find people who were interested in working for us, let alone who had the right experience. It still remains challenging. This does limit the size of our operation. If there are only six people who are good at something, then why would I hire someone who isn’t good, just to have a bigger business?
SOUTH
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Knockoffs Initially it was hard to resist reacting, but when we stepped back we realized our only competition should be ourselves. You need to push and make yourself better and make your product better, because that is what will make you original and keep you ahead of the game. You need to keep on striving for your own level of greatness. 2
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ELIJAH LEED Durham, North Carolina Constructed of etched walnut and brushed brass, the elemental Ada pendant features a pivoting arm that can be adjusted into a slanted or perpendicular position from a drop of 16 to 48 inches.
EAST FORK Asheville, North Carolina While its warm rust color makes the Utah line of dinnerware perfect for display, the collection is also strong enough for everyday use. The hand-glazed pieces are made from regional materials and are dishwasher-safe.
ORBIX HOT GLASS Fort Payne, Alabama Husband-and-wife Cal and Christy Breed create colorful handcrafted glassware in Alabama’s Appalachian foothills. Caelum is a series of blown vessels with carved surfaces that resemble chiseled wood.
SKYLAR MORGAN Atlanta, Georgia The sinker cypress Hillock armoire uses that most basic of forms—the half moon dowel—to great visual effect. The six-foot-tall cabinet is lined in maple and outfitted with leather shelves and a hanging rod.
CAPEL RUGS
E-commerce Online, we try to replicate what makes our products feel special in stores. Although nothing can take the place of picking up a bowl and feeling its heft, we try to mimic that simple, expressive feeling on our website.
ROBIN PETRAVIC Co-owner
Troy‚ North Carolina
I N 1917‚ ANTICI PATI NG TH E I M PACT OF M ECHAN ICAL TRACTORS ON H IS BUSINESS PRODUCING COTTON ENDS FOR PLOW LINES‚ A. LEON CAPEL SHIFTED GEARS. INSTEAD OF MAKING ROPE FOR MULE REINS‚ HE BRAIDED THE COTTON INTO OVAL RUGS. THEY WERE PICKED UP BY SEARS ROEBUCK AND JC PENNEY‚ AND THE NOW 100 -YEAR - OLD BRAND TOOK OFF.
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ILLUSTRATION: PETER OUMANSKI
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Theodore Alexander / Selby Chair
FI N D YOU R SEAT.
W I T H OU T G ETTI N G U P. Shop thousands of premium home furnishings from the design world's most trusted brands, all online.
P E R I G O L D.C O M
MADE IN
EXPERIENCE
AMERICA 75– 10 0
Y E A RS O L D
FIESTA Newell‚ West Virginia E S T . 1936
Purveyor of collectorfavorite tableware
SOUTHWEST
Outsourcing So many companies have left the U.S., and there’s only one reason for that: It’s cheaper to make products somewhere else. But we’ve always been committed to keeping jobs in our community. In the late 1970s, when many jobs left the upper Ohio River Valley, we chose to stay and keep the doors open for the people
need to be able to pick it up and hold it.
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PFEIFER STUDIO Bernalillo, New Mexico Each La Cueva table is a unique artwork. The cubes— perfect for a nightstand or side table—are hewn from Ponderosa pine wood and handpainted by New Mexico artists in abstract, modern shapes and bold colors by Benjamin Moore.
DOUBLEBUTTER Denver, Colorado The backless Roadrunner bench has an ergonomic seat that’s higher in the front, following the angle of the thigh. Available in oak, walnut, and maple, the bench is assembled using traditional mortiseand-tenon joints.
MODERN FOLK WARE Santa Fe, New Mexico Ceramicist Jennie Johnsrud likes to finish her handmade wheel-thrown pottery with a simple clear glaze, and her teapot is no exception. It comes with a builtin strainer, a loop under the lid for hanging a tea ball, and a sturdy oak handle.
MODFIRE Phoenix, Arizona A “regal” midcenturyinspired firepit, the Royalfire measures 30 inches in diameter, with an interior channel that can be filled with decorative rocks or fire glass. Fuel options include wood, natural gas, and propane.
IGLOO
Katy‚ Texas
BECAUSE IGLOO BEGAN AS A METAL SHOP‚ ITS FIRST BEVERAGE COOLERS‚ INTRODUCED IN THE 1950s‚ LOOKED LESS LIKE PLASTIC CARRYALLS AND MORE LIKE INSULATED STEEL DRUMS. IT WASN’T UNTIL 1971 THAT THE COMPANY HIT ON ITS SIGNATURE ITEM: THE PERSONAL- SIZE‚ SWIVEL-
come to tour our plant in West Virginia, and they hold a convention that revolves around the brand. They always give us wonderful feedback. They share ideas on how to decorate with Fiesta and post pictures on social media. People love taking pictures of their tablescapes. They’ll set their tables with different Fiesta colors and vintage tablecloths. It’s remarkable how creative they are.
LIZ McILVAIN President, Homer Laughlin China Co.
LID PLAYMATE. IT’S BEEN A PICNIC FIXTURE EVER SINCE‚ OFTEN IN RED.
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ILLUSTRATION: PETER OUMANSKI
meets annually.
DON’T HIDE. GO SEEK.
Play just got serious in the all-new Toyota Avalon. Every road is a playground in the Avalon Hybrid Limited. With an impossible-to-miss available Cognac Leather-trimmed interior and a 14-speaker JBL®* Audio system, it sounds as good as it looks, no matter where the road takes you. Let’s Go Places.
NORTHEAST
MADE
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ALLIED MAKER Glen Cove, New York A collaboration between the lighting studio Allied Maker and ceramic artist Michele Quan, the Mquan Circle sconce pairs simple hardware with hand-painted stoneware backplates that resemble celestial bodies.
CULINARIUM Portland, Maine The newest version of the Module 6/6 stacking salt and spice cellar is made from a patented concrete mix that’s impervious to water and oil and resistant to chipping and scratching. (The company is soon to relocate to South Carolina.)
SIMON PEARCE Queechee, Vermont Part of the Woodbury collection, which includes pitchers, glasses, and coasters, the cocktail carafe has a slim, angular profile, its silhouette broken only by an elegant spout and an indentation that takes the place of a handle.
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O&G STUDIO Warren, Rhode Island The austere, Shaker-style Athenaeum settee, designed by Andrew Mau, is built of maple or ash and comes in four sizes, up to nine and a half feet. It can be finished in any of the woodworking studio’s many signature stains.
VERMONT FARM TABLE Bristol, Vermont The slight upward curve of the nesting Modern Wooden dishes, handmade in white oak or walnut, makes them ideal for serving appetizers, salads, and pastas. The largest of the three pieces measures 13 inches square.
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ILLUSTRATION: PETER OUMANSKI
CAROLINE Z HURLEY Brooklyn, New York Inspired by the colors and textures of the Southwest, the Overlapping Dashes pillow is made of fabric block-printed in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a once-thriving textile hub that Caroline Z Hurley is helping to revitalize.
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EXPERIENCE
10 0 -150
Y E A RS OLD
MORE THAN
Y E A RS OLD
BERNHARDT
PENDLETON
Lenoir‚ North Carolina E S T . 1889
Portland‚ Oregon E S T . 1863
Not-so-small family furniture business
Spinners of iconic Americana
Supply Chain There are so many furniture parts that you can no longer source in America. That supply chain is gone, so you have to go offshore. But an even bigger challenge is finding people, particularly talented craftspeople. When so much manufacturing left the U.S. 20 years ago, many young people saw their parents lose their careers, so the idea of working in manufacturing became undesirable. This generation has opted to do almost anything else. So the problem is, you have an aging workforce and no one coming in behind it.
Efficiency Having a mill in the U.S. means we can turn things around quickly. We just finished a blanket project that we took from concept to delivery in three weeks. We wouldn’t have been able to do it if our mill was in Asia. Brick and Mortar Online retail has increased our focus on stores. They’re not as important as they used to be for storing inventory, but they need to be better than they were before at telling stories. There’s a lot to be said for somebody who is walking down the street and looks in the window and decides to come through the door.
Instincts You have to do what you think is right. You can’t be looking over your shoulder at what everybody else is doing or trying to anticipate what the consumer is going to want next. If it doesn’t feel right and if it isn’t what you stand for, you can waste a lot of energy in the process. If you do good work, people will find you. JERRY HELLING President, Bernhardt Design
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Data We have emotional reactions to products, just like consumers do. But as business managers, we need to watch the data as well. We just marked the 10th anniversary of the Lehman collapse. That was the beginning of a big challenge for us and others. Following the numbers became paramount. JOHN BISHOP President and CEO
Hanover‚ Pennsylvania
DESIGNED TO WITHSTAND SALT AIR AND EXTREME CONDITIONS‚ THE VIRTUALLY INDESTRUCTIBLE 1006 NAVY CHAIR WAS FIRST BUILT IN 1944 FOR USE ON U.S. SUBMARINES. TO THIS DAY‚ THE ASTONISHINGLY LIGHT ALUMINUM CHAIR IS MOLDED THROUGH A 77 - STEP PROCESS THAT TAKES UP TO 14 ARTISANS SEVERAL DAYS TO COMPLETE. THE RESULT IS A CHAIR SO TOUGH IT HAS A 150 -YEAR GUARANTEE.
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P R O M OT I O N
J Geiger Embraces the Understated With Sleek, Motorized Shades When James Geiger was leafing through the pages of Dwell in 2011, he made an illuminating observation. None of the stunning images he saw included window shades or blinds. It was in this revelatory moment that the concept for Geiger’s innovative shading company was born. An alternative to dated, visually distracting window coverings, J Geiger shading systems would instead be streamlined, minimal, and modern. J Geiger was the first to offer elegant, motorized shading solutions with no visible wires or screws. Traditional shading products “had function, but no
aesthetic,” says Geiger. Instead, he wanted to create something with a clean profile that would “become part of the architecture.” Geiger also developed a unique two-step installation process for his revolutionary shading systems, and that process has proven to be as crucial to product quality as Geiger’s patented hardware designs. First, J Geigercertified installers mount the hardware: solid aluminum or Delrin brackets milled in California. Once installed, precise measurements are taken with the hardware in place, so that the shades,
JGEIGER
handcrafted in Charleston, South Carolina, can be custom cut to exacting specifications. This strategy produces a consistently accurate fit because fabric variability is less than one sixteenth of an inch. Thoughtfully designed and meticulously installed, J Geiger shades are intended to blend into their surroundings so that fixtures, furnishings, art, and views stand out. The pioneering, less-is-more look is an ideal fit for modern spaces, but simplicity of design makes these shades exceedingly versatile—they complement any carefully crafted space.
process
TEXT BY
PHOTOS BY | @JAMIECHUNGSTUDIO
Lindsay J. Warner
Jamie Chung
In the Black A sixth-generation paper mill in Michigan endures in the digital age.
Founded by J.W. French on the banks of the St. Joseph River in southwest Michigan in 1871, French Paper is one of the last small, independent paper mills in America— and one of the few still owned and run by the same family. “When I tell people I’m a paper salesman, the first thing they say is, ‘Didn’t the internet kill that job?’” jokes Brian French, J.W.’s great-great-great grandson. 44
French Paper Company’s business is much more than white letter stock. On the factory floor, Sean Penny operates the hydropulper, a machine that is used to make greeting cards, photo backdrops, envelopes, retail packaging, and more.
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process
The master rolls of finished paper are 107 inches wide and weigh up to 8,000 pounds. Customers can buy the product by the roll or have it cut and stacked into cartons. This roll of “black licorice� paper represents just one of 50 shades of black that French Paper produces.
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process BL ACK LICORICE ROLL The French family illuminates the art of papermaking, step by step.
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COLLECT THE WOOD
RECYCLE THE WASTE
French Paper sources bales of virgin hardwood and softwood pulps from various suppliers who handle the tree-to-pulp production process. The packaging used for delivery is made of the same type of fiber as the bale inside.
Recycled fibers—here, leftover scraps from envelopes and other projects—are placed with the virgin wood pulp in a mixer called a hydropulper. The machine breaks the fibers down into a slurry using water and a three-foot blade.
It’s true that digital media—as well as foreign competition—has carved a sizeable chunk out of the print trade. By one accounting, 126 paper mills closed down in the U.S. between 2000 and 2015. But French Paper, last survivor in the city of Niles, which once boasted five mills, is celebrating its 147th year. That could be because the company has always taken a slightly unconventional approach. If there is such a thing as the cutting edge of the paper business, the French family has consistently occupied it. In 1915, Brian’s great-grandfather Frank started investing in hydropower to ensure a steady source of electricity, a decision that has conserved more than a million barrels of fossil fuels over the years. (Today, excess electricity is pumped back to the city grid.) During the Great Depression, the company was early to adopt the use of recycled-fiber paper, and in 1949 it introduced the first-ever animalfree imitation parchment sheet. 46
That spirit of quiet innovation carries on, with fifth-generation Jerry French at the helm as CEO, and Brian, VP of sales and marketing, and his sister Kim, regional sales manager, on board as sixthgeneration operators. “As a small mill, we’re flexible and nimble,” says Brian. “We do a lot of specialty work, from matching a specific Pantone shade for a logo to adding things like grass clippings, coffee grounds, or glitter to paper for a custom touch.” While the factory of about 110 employees still produces “traditional” print products—things like envelopes and standard 8.5x11 paper—it has specialized in custom paper since 1931, when it pivoted away from manufacturing paper baking trays to making premium stationery. (It has never made newsprint.) Brian attributes much of the company’s resilience to its longtime creative agency, Charles S. Anderson Design. From the retro-cool French bull terrier logo to the
quirky promotional materials—including an 18-inch inflatable Jerry French doll— French Paper’s ad campaigns are cheekier than you’d expect from a brand that’s a few years away from celebrating its sesquicentennial. Most important, the Minneapolisbased agency has kept French Paper top-of-mind for graphic designers and high-end retailers looking for packaging with a certain X-factor. “Fun is part of our brand. It helps set us apart,” Brian says. Plenty has changed in Niles since trappers and traders, the city’s first entrepreneurs, swapped goods and supplies on the edges of the St. Joseph. But the city of about 11,000 still thrives on what Brian calls its hardworking Midwest mentality. “We can get a call from a customer and make paper the same week or early the next, while others may not be able to do it for weeks,” Brian says. “Our building is old, but our machines are updated constantly to keep pace with where the business is going.”
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process
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ADD THE DYE
TEST THE COLOR
After the fibers are broken down, the chosen dye is added to the hydropulper, which can hold 5,000 gallons in a vat as large as a swimming pool.
French Paper has its own lab for in-process color testing. Each batch is examined for quality before entering a paper machine that’s the size of a football field.
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REFINE THE PULP
ELIMINATE THE WATER
After it’s screened for unwanted shards of material, the mixture flows through the paper machine, which features rotating discs that cut, fray, and flatten the fibers in preparation for being formed, smoothed, and dried.
The paper machine’s large sprayer, or “head box,” distributes the stock onto a 107-inch-wide wire. As water drains, the wire shakes back and forth so fibers are distributed in random directions, allowing for strong, consistent paper.
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HEAT AND DRY
DRY, SMOOTH, AND MEASURE
The fiber mixture comes out of the head box formed into a sheet, but it’s still more than 99 percent water. To reduce water content to the final 4 percent, the sheet goes through several sets of large rollers, each one hotter than the last.
A scanner, seen here, moves back and forth along the width of the sheet to read its color, moisture, and weight.
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TRIM AND FINISH
Next the sheet receives a starch-based treatment called a “size bath” to make it stronger and more printable. It then goes through a second drying process to reduce moisture, increase sheet density, and smooth the surface.
After being spun onto a large metal spool, the master roll is either sold whole or trimmed into smaller units by the slitter, seen here. The embosser may then add a decorative finish, like leather, linen, felt, or fabric.
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process
“We sell paper to everyone, from a person who just wants a custom ream for a home printer to Fortune 500 companies.” Brian French
In order to reuse water, fiber, and dye, French Paper usually starts the week with a batch of white, and then the colors get darker as the days progress. Once a month the mill does a “dark color week” of deep blues, blacks, reds, and browns. The majority of the paper on this roll will go to a customer that makes packaging for a boardgame manufacturer.
More at Dwell.com Go deeper inside French Paper’s process with more photos and a video at dwell.com/in-the-black
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conversation
TEXT BY
ILLUSTRATION BY
Tim McKeough
Sam Kerr
Until a few years ago, collectors and design buffs had largely forgotten the late American midcentury modern furniture designer Mel Smilow. But in 2013, his daughter, Judy Smilow, reissued 10 of his shapely, wood-framed greatest hits under the name Smilow Design. Since then, interest in the unsung champion of affordable, American-made furniture— who designed, manufactured, and sold his line in Smilow-Thielle stores on the East Coast from 1949 through the late
1970s—has been building. In August, Judy died after a two-year battle with ALS. But Smilow Design, now helmed by her 27-yearold daughter, Maia Smilow Schoenfelder, and Maia’s father, graphic designer Steven Schoenfelder, in New York, is poised to bring even more attention to the modernist whose work was nearly lost to history. How did Smilow Design start? It was always my mom’s dream to relaunch my grandfather’s company. She
Maia Smilow Schoenfelder
Designed in 1950, the Rail Back sofa epitomizes Mel Smilow’s flair for combining sinuous lines, comfort, and American craftsmanship. His granddaughter, Maia Smilow
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PHOTO: NICOLE HORTON
The newly named head of a revived midcentury brand talks about preserving and advancing her grandfather’s legacy.
Schoenfelder, recently took over as keeper of the designer’s flame; she hopes not only to continue the furniture line, but to give it new relevance for a younger generation.
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EXPERIENCE MODERN FIRE | KOMODO CORTEN
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conversation
was a product designer who had gone to Parsons and done freelance work for most of my childhood. When my brother and I went to college, she tried to find full-time work but found it really difficult, as an older woman, to get hired. So she decided it was the perfect time to launch her own company. It started with glass, which she designed, and moved into furniture and lighting, which were reissues of designs by my grandfather. Did you talk with your mom about taking a larger role in Smilow Design? When I started working with her, I was doing freelance social marketing. But soon after she got sick, I started to take on some of her work, like bookkeeping, custom orders, working with salespeople, and really just running the business. I loved working with her. I think she thought I felt obliged, so I made it very clear that it was something I was super interested in doing. In the past six months, my dad started
working with us as well. He handles everything after a sale is made, and I handle everything before that happens. It’s a family business, and not only my grandfather’s legacy, but my mom’s as well. It’s the most meaningful work I’ve ever done. Is the business different today from how it was in Mel’s day? The pieces were originally meant to be affordable. You could buy a lounge chair for $25 in the 1960s. Even accounting for inflation, that’s a lot less than one costs now [$3,460 and up]. When my mom relaunched the brand, she really wanted to stick to well-made American products. So we had to transition from being an affordable brand to a luxury brand, because it’s super expensive to manufacture high-quality products in the United States today. My mom would drive down to the factory in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, once a month to inspect every single item we made. Now, my dad and I do that instead.
The company was relaunched as Smilow Design by Maia’s mother, Judy Smilow, in 2013. Starting with just 10 pieces, the collection has grown gradually, but is still tightly edited. Counterclockwise from left: A sketch by Mel of a dresser, from 1948; a newly made Three Door
credenza (designed in 1950); and a recently reissued Upholstered dining chair (designed in 1956), which can be customized with choice of wood, finish, and fabric. A closeup of the chair, done in Spellbound by Luna Textiles, shows the beauty and craftsmanship of its joinery.
“My mom would drive down to the factory in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, once a month to inspect every single item we made. Now, my dad and I do that instead.”
PHOTOS: NICOLE HORTON
MAIA SMILOW SCHOENFELDER
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P R O M OT I O N
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luminaires offer the longevity of energyefficient LEDs while effortlessly imitating the warmth of incandescence. Dimmable fixtures are essential to creating ambience, inside or out. Thanks to the Dim-to-Warm function, Oculux luminaires provide pure white 3000K light for task lighting, then dim down to a warm 1800K to create the perfect mood for cozy living rooms or romantic restaurant seating. Additionally, Oculux luminaires can be installed with or without trim for a seamless architectural look. The IC, airtight, and wet location ratings equip it for interior and
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conversation
“It was never about my grandfather’s personal brand. It was just, ‘Here, we want you to have these pieces, which are well-priced and will last you a lifetime.’” MAIA SMILOW SCHOENFELDER
Reintroduced in 2017, the Smilow Lighting Collection, which includes the Hanging pendant (top left) and Hourglass table lamp (left), exhibits the same sculptural quality as the designer’s furniture. A front view of the Rail Back sofa (above) reveals its
What’s been the bestselling piece so far? The Woven Rush collection, in general, does really well for us, but the Woven Rush bench is our gangbusters item. How large is the archive of Mel’s work? There are hundreds of pieces we could reissue and, every year, my mom reissued at least a few of them. This year, I think we’re going to do a bar cart, and potentially bedside tables as well. There aren’t many all-wood bar carts similar to the one that we have in the archive. But there’s also an entire outdoor collection, a recliner collection, and full bedroom sets. There’s so much to tap into. 54
Why do you think Mel isn’t as well remembered as, say, the Eameses or George Nelson? It was never about my grandfather’s personal brand. It was just, “Here, we want you to have these pieces, which are wellpriced and will last you a lifetime.” He was designing, producing, and selling on his own. He was never partnering with larger manufacturers or selling out of Bloomingdale’s. Some of the pieces were marked, but many were not, which is a shame.
Do you often hear from people interested in learning more about him? Vintage dealers reach out to me all the time on Instagram, asking if things are Smilow, and our business has boosted the name’s value in the vintage marketplace. Yet there are still so many people who reach out because their parents’ entire house was furnished in Smilow furniture. They ask if we want to buy it from them, and I say, yes, absolutely, because we have the capability to do all the refinishing and reupholstery. I’d love to eventually have some refinished vintage pieces available, at a lower price point, through an online store. What other plans do you have? It would be awesome to do a capsule collection with an exciting textile designer. I’d like to see the Rail Back lounge chair with crazy colored cushions from a designer who speaks to a younger crowd. I’d also love to do a collection with a furniture company that maybe uses different materials, but is able to translate our ethos into something more affordable. I just haven’t had the time.
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PHOTOS: NICOLE HORTON
Is it a challenge to keep all production in the United States? It can be. When we launched the lighting collection last year, the pieces used these tiny birch dowels on the shades. Those were almost impossible to find. There’s one guy in America who supplies dowels at that size. Without him, we would have had no collection.
softer side, and a drawing by Mel from 1954 shows the popular Woven Leather lounge (below). “The archive is wide,” says Maia, noting that bedside tables and a wood bar cart may be among the next items the company reissues.
DESIGNER: TL STUDIO FOR TECH LIGHTING
S H O P N O W: C I R C A L I G H T I N G . C O M S P E C T I C A C H A N D E L I E R I N M AT T E B L A C K AT L A N TA
CHARLESTON
CHICAGO
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GREENWICH
HOUSTON
877.762.2323
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S A VA N N A H
prefab
TEXT BY
PHOTOS BY | @BENJAMINRAS
Ray Mark Rinaldi
Benjamin Rasmussen
In 2014, while recovering from a work-related injury, Denver-area firefighter Regan Foster started exploring the idea of shipping containers for a new house he was planning to build. Two years later, he and his wife, Libby, moved into a home made mostly of the giant metal bins, having done much of the work themselves. They share the residence with their year-old daughter, Evie, and Libby’s mother.
Containment Strategy A Colorado firefighter whips nine shipping containers into a home for his extended family—and finds a new calling along the way.
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LUMBER BRINGS EVERYTHING TO LIFE.
Naturally stylish. Natural hardwoods. KEEP PIONEERING northwesthardwoods.com
Natural hardwoods offer the sustainability, authenticity and comforting natural beauty of a material derived straight from our soil. The multi-generational staying power of quality hardwoods are a part of our homes and our life stories. We’re proud to be America’s largest and only coast-to-coast hardwood lumber producer.
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The Fosters unwind in the soaring, 960-square-foot great room (below). The family wanted plenty of space for hosting friends and events, as well as lots of bedrooms so they can rent the house to groups on Airbnb if they like. Many of the corrugated metal walls are painted black and white, in shades by Benjamin Moore (below right).
Making a house out of shipping containers sounds easy enough: Just snap up a few neglected boxes from a local junk dealer, rack ’em and stack ’em, and create a bit of old-school prefab magic. But recycling the detritus of global shipping has its complications. Like how to turn corrugated steel boxes that measure an awkward eight feet wide and 40 feet long into something cozy enough to call home. Or how to keep their metal floors from vibrating when you walk on them, or prevent the chemicals they are treated with from being released into the air. Or, perhaps most important, how to assemble it all so it doesn’t look like you live in the storage yard of the local port authority.
Luckily, Regan Foster likes a challenge. He’s an extreme DIYer and, until recently, a firefighter, the kind of guy who is used to working 24-hour shifts and given to starting his day with a plunge into an outdoor ice bath. The house he designed and built with his wife, Libby, located just outside the Denver city line in Adams County, harnesses nine shipping containers into a 3,840-square-foot structure that’s meant to be shared with friends and neighbors. “We believe community and family are a strong part of living a life well-spent,” Regan says. In all, the house has seven bedrooms and five bathrooms, including an in-law suite with a separate entrance where
“We believe community and family are a strong part of living a life well-spent.” REGAN FOSTER, RESIDENT
More at Dwell.com Head online to see extra photos and a video of the Fosters’ shipping container home at dwell.com/containment-strategy
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Libby’s mother lives. Four of the containers are placed on the ground—side-by-side in pairs set 24 feet apart—to form the first floor. Another four are stacked above them, some shifted forward, to create a cantilevered second story. The ninth container sits perpendicular at the back of the second level to form a U-shape. The house is enclosed in front with a conventionally framed wall and on top with a flat roof supported by exposed joists. In the voluminous great room, the ceiling rises to 25 feet. The space feels even larger thanks to a sliding glass wall that connects it to the back patio, which Regan outfitted with a grill, a prep countertop, and benches he built using chunks of concrete slab saved from the demolition of a small house that formerly stood on the lot. Regan acted as general contractor and consulted with architect Joe Simmons of BlueSky Studio on the design. “When we first met, he gave me a diagram,” says Simmons. “He pretty much had it all figured out.” In fact, after the project ended and Regan earned his GC license, he retired from the fire department to pursue opportunities in real estate and construction. Together, the pair solved structural questions. Although shipping containers
Regan worked with architect Joe Simmons and several tradespeople on the home. “One of the great surprises is the acoustic environment,”
don’t really get an echo. It actually has a kind of warm sound.” The kitchen cabinets are from IKEA and the full refrigerator is by LG (above).
Simmons says. “These are all hard surfaces and you get a bit of reverberation, but the corrugated walls help to disburse sound, so you
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Foster Residence ARCHITECT LOCATION
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BlueSky Studio Adams County, Colorado
Entrance Living Area Bedroom Bathroom
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Music Room Dining Area Kitchen Mudroom
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The family dogs, Lola and Nina, hunt for scraps under a dining table that Regan made (left). The sliding door is by Milgard. For the master bedroom floor (below), Regan bought plywood panels from Home Depot and turned the wood distressing process into a family affair.
stack easily and some can handle loads of more than of 50,000 pounds, Regan and Simmons had to reinforce theirs in places where they cut out windows and doors. They also reduced vibrations along the length of the containers by welding additional steel plates to the C-channel base structure to make them more rigid. Regan, whose resumé includes furniture maker, did much of the interior himself. He laid the floors in hallways using various materials, including recycled barn wood and boards he fashioned from a catalpa tree a friend cut down. He turned a walnut slab into a sliding door and built a set of stairs from parallel strand lumber that leads to a cantilevered walkway that runs the length of the second floor. To avoid any eventual off-gassing from the treated wood floors that came with the containers, Regan replaced them with 60
“Libby and I were in there with protective headphones just banging away,” he says. “We distressed it, stained it, and sanded it down.” The bed is made out of a piece of wood Regan salvaged from an abandoned bridge. The tub has a tap by Delta Faucet (bottom).
stained, sealed plywood finish flooring and installed a heating system beneath. But he was careful not to ruin the industrial charm of the containers. The inside faces of the exterior walls are layered with insulation and drywall, but many of the interior walls and ceilings remain exposed, with the painted, corrugated metal showing the inevitable minor dents accrued during the boxes’ previous lives. The house and yard are regularly the site of social gatherings, and the Fosters recently hosted an event for CrossPurpose, a nonprofit that supports career training for those in need. “Every day a voice in my head says, ‘You have one life to live, how are you going to live it?’” Regan explains. “So this house is just another stepping stone in a life full of curiosity and adventure.”
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P R O M OT I O N
SMARTEN UP YOUR HOME SEAMLESS
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With the SmartThings line of products, you can also set up individualized automations that make your home fully connected and in tune with your lifestyle. SmartThings will blend with your daily routines from morning to night. Whether you desire a special light setting, temperature changes, or visitor notifications, SmartThings effortlessly connects all the settings in your home without sacrificing your personal comfort and style.
For more information please visit: www.samsung.com/us/smart-home/smartthings SAMSUNG
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TEXT BY
PHOTOS BY @STEPHENKENTJOHNSON
Julie Lasky
Stephen Kent Johnson
Final Edit A pair of magazine creatives condense a lifetime of graphic art and vintage classics— plus children—into a New York apartment.
“We’re not going anywhere,” declares Luise Stauss, a freelance art director, photo editor, and soon-to-be mother of two as she rubs her six-month baby bump. Despite the tight proportions of her two-bedroom Brooklyn apartment, she has no intention of trading up for anything bigger. Fourteen years ago, Luise and her husband, Nicholas Blechman, now the creative director of The New Yorker, pulled up stakes in Williamsburg, when it was still kind of edgy, and moved a few miles south to comparatively comatose Brooklyn Heights. They had fallen for a 1948 building designed by architect A. Rollin Caughey. 62
The matchmaker was their friend Christoph Niemann, an illustrator best known for his New Yorker covers and children’s books. Niemann was born in Germany (as was Luise) and lived with his family on the seventh floor of the Breukelen, a 12-story cream-colored building on Montague Street. “I had never really imagined Brooklyn Heights as a place I would want to live,” Nicholas says. “I thought it would be off limits, especially because it felt so adult.” But he and Luise admired Niemann’s small yet nicely proportioned corner apartment, with its pale parquet floors
Luise Stauss, a former photo editor at The New York Times Magazine, sits in the living room of the downtown Brooklyn apartment she shares with her husband, Nicholas Blechman, the creative director of The New Yorker. The roughly 1,000-square-foot space feels larger than it is, thanks to high ceilings and bay windows. Twin 1962 Bastiano sofas by Tobia Scarpa are joined by a Cité chair by Jean Prouvé and a wood chair acquired from the New York Historical Society. The floor lamp is by David Weeks Studio.
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sustainably made in the USA
Counter height stools in Classic Walnut
chernerchair.com
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and light that streamed through original casement windows. On the roof terrace, they found heart-stopping views of New York Harbor and the Lower Manhattan skyline. Leaning into the breeze against the thin metal railing, Luise says, was like standing on the deck of an ocean liner. On phone calls with Niemann, they could hear the groaning horn of the Staten Island Ferry in the background. So they moved in, first buying a ninthfloor one-bedroom unit, and then, in 2008, when their son, Anatole, was six months old, taking over Niemann’s apartment when he relocated to Berlin. Downstairs lived other creative friends, such as the well-known graphic designers Emily Oberman and Paul Sahre, and there was a lot of shoptalk and mutual throwing of dinner parties. Now Luise prepares dinner for her family in the hanky-sized kitchen, which has been remodeled by Jan Greben, a New
The coffee table is a Drum pouf with wood tray top, both by Softline for Design Within Reach; the yellow throw is by Raf Simons for Kvadrat (above). On the wall is a silkscreened L’Homme Wiggly poster by Greg
Clarke. A red Crosley turntable sits on top of a custom shelving unit in the living room (left). The use of primary colors, also seen in the yellow Stool 60 by Alvar Aalto, is a nod to the Bauhaus, says Luise.
“We love the heart of the color wheel. I’m drawn to the yellow first—it’s so bright and rich and adds sun to your house—and then it works so well with blue and red.” LUISE STAUSS, RESIDENT 64
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York–based architect and friend. Her interventions—including updated cabinets, floor tiles, and countertops—were simple but effective. A sea breeze floats through a set of windows above the sink, cooling the cook space. “Even on the hottest day you can live here without AC,” Luise says. It is easy to impose visual perfection when you’re a minimalist and don’t have to juggle too many objects, but Luise and Nicholas are eclectics with a sentimental streak and many talented friends and family members. They have stuff. Good stuff. In the L-shaped living and dining room, for instance, a classic Saarinen Tulip table and Prouvé chairs mix with offbeat pieces like Tobia Scarpa’s 1962 Bastiano sofa for Knoll and a velvet upholstered daybed custom made by designer Chris Lehrecke with wood the couple selected from his property in upstate New York. The master bedroom is outfitted floor-to-ceiling with a sleek Vitsœ storage and desk system showcasing framed art and robot toys.
In the dining area (above), Anatole and Nicholas sit on vintage Prouvé Standard chairs at a Tulip table by Eero Saarinen for Knoll. The enamel pendant is by Labor and Wait. The kitchen (below left) features a white
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Corian counter, IKEA cabinets with custom pulls, and geometric floor tiles from a collaborative series by Heath and Dwell. The white clay Kakomi rice cooker (below right) is from Salter House in Brooklyn.
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A Winter Haven in the Rugged West Stone. Wood. Glass. Sky. Designed for a pair of outdoor enthusiasts, this mountain modern retreat in Big Sky, Montana, uses the very landscape as one of its raw materials. Walls of glass allow the enchanting, snow-blanketed surroundings to cascade into the home. In fact, the residence presents views of three nearby mountain peaks—Lone, Pioneer, and Cedar. “With the layout of the house, with all the windows and doors, we feel like we are living in the view, and we love it,” says homeowner Pam Norton. “Kolbe’s VistaLuxe line has clean profiles,” explains architect Jamie Daugaard of Centre Sky Architecture. “The overall opaque edges around windows and doors were less as well, so it allowed for more transparency, more glass.” The expansive window walls also lend lightness to the home. “We pulled away from some of the dark, heavy elements that you see in Southwest Montana,” says builder John Seelye of Big Sky Build, “and brought in refreshing architecture and interior design.” Rustic, modern, and wild at its core, the home accentuates the beauty of Big Sky country.
For more information please visit: www.kolbewindows.com
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Some of the couple’s favorite curios are displayed in their shared workspace, a Vitsœ wall unit (above), including a sketch Nicholas drew of his office at The New Yorker and an illustration of their building by
Christoph Niemann (below). The Tab T lamps are by Flos. Even the bedding adheres to the color scheme, with yellow pillows from Merci in Paris and a red blanket from Best Made (left). The sconce is by David Weeks Studio.
More at Dwell.com For more photos of Nicholas Blechman and Luise Stauss’s art-filled abode, go online to dwell.com/final-edit 68
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As for the walls, an abundance of posters, paintings, photographs, magazine covers, and doodles turn them into giant scrapbook pages. There’s the Pentagram designer Paula Scher’s gift of one of her obsessively labeled silkscreened maps. And a photo of the couple shot early in their relationship by Lee Friedlander. And a depiction of long-tailed rats riding bicycles in a “rat race.” Drawn by Nicholas’s father, the cartoonist and animator R.O. Blechman, this work is dedicated to Anatole and hangs in his room. The layout makes efficient use of the apartment’s approximately 1,000 square feet by dividing it into sections without fragmenting it into shoeboxes. Anatole’s room, which is big enough for a digital upright piano and baskets of toys and is decorated in Bauhaus primary colors, is off a stub of a hallway next to the kitchen and has a tiny adjacent bathroom. The master bedroom and bath are entered from the foyer. And where will they put the new baby? “With us at first,” Luise says. Then they’ll carve out a piece of Anatole’s room. Didn’t they mention? They’re not going anywhere.
In Anatole’s room, a metal Min bed by Luciano Bertoncini for Design Within Reach (left) has storage added underneath it. The desk (above) is actually a shelf by Alvar Aalto for Artek installed upside down; the Stool 60 is also by Aalto. Over the bed hangs a drawing of a “rat race” made for Anatole by Nicholas’s father, cartoonist R.O. Blechman, and a Dodos concert poster by Jason Munn. Above the desk is a 1970s illustration by Jean-Michel Folon.
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The World’s First Smart Printer Strikes a Pose Good design can be hard to define, but designer Ken Musgrave has an opinion at the ready: “Good design fills a need that’s both pragmatic and emotional. When you create a design that addresses both needs, you’ve hit gold.” Musgrave, head of global customer experience and global experience design at HP, has indeed hit gold with the world’s first smart home printer, the HP Tango. Powered by the HP Smart App and able to seamlessly integrate with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana for voice-activated printing, the HP Tango combines superior functionality with high style. With its sleek silhouette and a variety of wraps to choose from, the HP Tango, which is available to purchase at the Apple Store, transcends the office, looking just as chic in the living room or den. From a shipping container residence in Colorado to an eclectic artist’s haven in San Francisco, it even shines in Dwell’s featured homes. To hear more from Musgrave on how the home office is evolving, head to dwell.com/hp-tango.
HP
A casual summerhouse on an island off the west coast of
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Tomas Haeger and Tina Linde’s desire for simple weekend and summer living led STEG Arkitekter to design a multi-volume retreat for the couple on the island of Tjörn. Clad in locally sourced fir, the house perches on pillars directly atop boulders that mark the steep site. “The idea was a place for contemplation and recharging our batteries,” says Tomas.
Swedish
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Sweden peels away the stress of city life. TEXT BY
PHOTOS BY @BIRGITTAWOLFGA NG
Tiffany Orvet Birgitta Wolfgang
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A generously proportioned wraparound porch extends the living/ dining area (above and opposite), which is sheathed on the inside in marine-grade plywood. Clerestory windows tucked beneath the shed roof bring in even more light. A Molded Plywood coffee table by Charles and Ray Eames for Herman Miller joins a Hans Wegner Getama 290 sofa. The Skelder globe light is by Lars Englund for Källemo; the Fox chair by Viggo Boesen and the Monet chair are from Sika Design.
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Dappled sunlight dances on a pathway of wood planks, coaxing visitors up through a narrow forest passage. The endpoint is obscured by a stand of tall pines with swimsuits dangling from their branches. It could be the entrance to a treetop walk or a path to a secret swimming hole. In a way, it’s both. The passageway leads to the retreat that Tomas Haeger, a management consultant, and Tina Linde, an organizational psychologist, share with their two children on the island of Tjörn off the west coast of Sweden. The home, located within an hour’s drive of their primary residence in Gothenburg, is a cross between a tree house and a beach house. “We wanted it to look summer, breathe summer, and feel summer,” says Tomas. Although the Swedish coast is known for its rustic red cottages, when the couple began looking for their summer home, they had in mind something quite different—a stripped-down modern space with high architectural standards, plus a jetty
nearby for their boat and a launch for paddleboarding. And they wanted a sea view. The property they found, a steeply sloping section of rock looking out over a forested ravine to the 19th-century cast-iron Pater Noster lighthouse, provided the setting. Two neighboring houses, a pair of simple boxes, provided the inspiration. The adjacent residences were designed by STEG Arkitekter, a studio founded by Jenny Stening and Karolina Hegen in 2010. The two had studied together at Chalmers University of Technology a decade earlier and had then pursued independent architectural careers in England and the West Indies before returning to Sweden. Tomas and Tina eagerly enlisted their help, inviting the duo to walk the site with them. “They wanted the feeling of being up in the treetops and asked that none of the natural landscape around the house be disturbed,” says Hegen. To capture that feeling, the home, built by Joo Bygg, is set atop pine stilts whose
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“We didn’t use too many materials, yet there’s a feeling of refinement and elegance.” KAROLINA HEGEN, ARCHITECT
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A Cassano fabric drape for Designers Guild runs the length of the family’s sleeping pavilion (opposite), one of three volumes that make up the house. Behind it is a storage system by Elfa. The built-in plywood bunks in the children’s room were designed by STEG.
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metal fittings were drilled directly into the site’s highest point, a craggy outcropping. On the south side, it is elevated nine and a half feet above grade. Another of the couple’s stipulations was that the house require minimal upkeep. What the family didn’t want was an ongoing maintenance project. “No landscaping, no paint, nothing that takes time,” says Tomas. “Since it’s a summer house, it didn’t need much insulation,” adds Hegen, “so we could have thinner walls and a lighter build.” The home’s exterior is clad in treatedbut-unpainted tongue-and-groove fir planks, and the interior is composed almost entirely of marine-grade plywood, from the built-in beds to the shelving. Even the shower walls in the bathroom are plywood. “The inspector thought we were crazy,” says Tomas, with a laugh. “He thought at first the builders hadn’t finished the job.” 78
Perhaps the most distinctive feature, though, is the layout: three discrete volumes joined by breezeways and a sloping roof and measuring roughly 900 square feet in total. One unit is for socializing and consists of the kitchen and lounge. Another is the family sleeping quarters. The third houses the guestroom and, in classic Nordic fashion, a sauna. When the large sliding doors between the units are closed, the breezeways can double as covered outdoor rooms. A deck runs around the perimeter, evoking the prow of a ship at one end with its elevated vantage point over the ravine and the water in the distance. Altogether, the terraces are roughly equal in size to the interiors. “The house has the same feeling inside and out,” says Tina. And when all the doors are open, one can walk straight through the house from outside to inside to outside again—90 feet from end to end. Just like the gusts of wind that fly across the island and out to sea.
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In the kitchen (opposite and below left), Superfront and IKEA cabinets are combined with a concrete counter. The table is from IKEA; the chairs are from IKEA and Artek. Breezeways connect the retreat’s separate units (left) and
can function as outdoor rooms. A platform bed keeps things simple in the master bedroom (below). “We said that everything that could be made of wood should be—including the shower stall,” says Tomas.
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Tjörn, Sweden
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More at Dwell.com See more photos and a video of this Scandinavian vacation hideaway at dwell.com/swedish-bliss
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TEXT BY
PHOTOS BY / @MRJASON L A R K IN
Sonia Zhuravlyova
Jason Larkin
An Austrian family embraces a plush ’70s home—complete with sunken living room and indoor pool—in need of a little love.
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Haus Wittmann, a lavish 1975 villa in Lower Austria designed by architect Johannes Spalt, was revived by new owners Werner and Catherine Weissmann. The indoor pool was in need of investment. The couple fixed it up while also adding a heating system beneath the limestone tiles and a metal fountain whose curvature echoes the clerestories. Club 54 chairs by Kare play to the 1970s ambience.
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A ribbed copper roof curls over the top of the 5,000-square-foot residence (above), which previously belonged to a scion of the Austrian furniture company Wittmann. Atop the enclosed pool
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area, a limestone patio flows into the living room (opposite). In the yard, a small pavilion, which resembles a miniature version of the house, offers a place to sit and enjoy the gardens.
Werner Weissmann is drawn to audacious works of architecture—style and era be damned. The list of unusual places he’s called home over the years even includes a 16th-century castle. So when he came across an ad for a one-of-a-kind modernist villa deep in Lower Austria’s wine country, right as he was ready to tackle another restoration, he pounced. Designed by distinguished architect Johannes Spalt in the mid 1970s, the home was built for Spalt’s friend and collaborator, handcrafted-furniture manufacturer Franz Wittmann, whose family-owned company, Wittmann, dates to 1896. “In 2015, Haus Wittmann suddenly appeared on the market,” Werner remembers. “We’d always dreamt about renovating a house built by a modern architect. For me, it was really love at first sight. When you compare all of Spalt’s buildings, this is the masterpiece.” But despite its magnificence, Werner, his wife, Catherine, and their teenage daughter, Leonie, found the Wittmann residence rather down at the heels. The
furniture mogul had lived there with his wife from 1975 until he died in 2012. Not long after, the business and home were divided among their six daughters. The house needed a hefty investment for renovations, including new floors in places and extensive electrical work. By then, Wittmann’s daughters had homes of their own, so in the end it was simpler for them to put it on the market. Werner and Catherine were drawn to the purity of Spalt’s architectural vision— a 5,000-square-foot space sheltered beneath a vast, curved copper roof. A central gridded skylight illuminates the sunken, mahogany-clad living room, which features a handsome travertineand-steel fireplace at the center. A mahogany-topped railing runs around a raised gallery, with small bedrooms off to the side, while the lowest level holds an indoor swimming pool, guest quarters, a large walk-in wardrobe, and, in a rare nod to Austrian vernacular, a hunting room decked out in cherry-wood panels where the Wittmann clan kept their rifles.
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“For me, it was really love at first sight. When you compare all of Spalt’s buildings, this is the masterpiece.” WERNER WEISSMANN, RESIDENT
More at Dwell.com Check out a video and extra photos of this unusual 1970s dwelling in Lower Austria at dwell.com/making-a-splash
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The sunken living room is illuminated by an eight-by-eight-foot gridded skylight in the copper ceiling (opposite). A raised U-shaped gallery runs around the space (above). The house
has a total of four halffloors, which requires the family to do a lot of climbing. “It was modern at the time, but it’s not practical,” Werner admits. The row of paintings is by Leopold Hauer.
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In the master bedroom, the owners aligned “Vegetable Tree,” a 1940s wallcovering by Josef Frank that was reissued by Svenskt Tenn, behind a custom headboard in the same pattern (opposite, top). The table, chairs, and sofa in the living area belong to the Constanze collection, which Spalt designed for Wittmann in the 1960s (opposite,
bottom). The home has more than a hundred mahogany-framed windows—many of which needed to be updated—sheltered by four-foot overhangs (above and right). Werner worked with builder Bernhard Klaffel and some 30 tradespeople to renew the property. The yard was replenished with help from Baumschule Matuschek.
The home is clearly a piece of art—the architect even installed a small pavilion at the back of the garden so it can be admired from the comfort of a banquette—but Werner concedes that at times the residence is less than practical. “It’s a house without compromises,” he explains, citing its grand but circuitous multilevel layout. Werner, who works from home as a consumer analyst, as does Catherine, oversaw the restoration himself, working alongside a team of craftspeople and contractors. For the most part he stuck closely to Spalt’s designs, although he did gut the master bathroom and add some windows. The expanses of mahogany paneling throughout the interior were in excellent condition and the exterior needed only a facelift, with Werner returning the drab yellow facade to its former white. The windows were another story. “You have to understand, it was a huge risk for us,” says Werner, explaining that in order to install insulated glass, each of the home’s 120
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original inside panes had to be removed from its wood frame. “Had the mahogany been damaged, it would have been the end of the project. You cannot rebuy this wood,” he says. “That’s why it was really important for us to find workmen we could trust.” The team also dismantled the original 1970s kitchen cabinets, which, after a thorough cleaning, were put back. In funky ’70s fashion, Spalt had covered some rooms with floral wallcoverings by famed Austrian designer Josef Frank. Werner added even more of the designer’s eye-popping patterns to the walls of the master bedroom with help from Svenskt Tenn, a Swedish company that reproduces Frank’s work. The indoor pool proved to be a major drain on the new owners’ resources. The Wittmanns had used it for some years, but when it became too troublesome to maintain, they had it covered. Werner initially considered demolishing the pool, but he knew that doing so would unbalance the entire composition of the home. Instead,
he tightened his belt and got started, bringing the ventilation and the heating up to date and calling in an excavator to hollow out the foundation and replace the pool’s fiberglass shell with a new steel one. “It was difficult because the task was to retain the atmosphere of this space, so we had to keep or recreate the whole structure, the lighting, the Italian onyx, everything,” he says. For Werner and Catherine, the restoration has been a labor of love. In a country that has existed in one form or another for more than a thousand years, homes from the 1970s—even those as special as Haus Wittmann—are not widely considered to have the same historical value as, say, a castle. “It wasn’t easy to communicate why it was worth putting a lot of effort into the renovation,” says Werner, who has applied, unsuccessfully, for a historical designation from the Federal Monuments Authority. He adds, “Nothing here is typically Austrian. Spalt wanted to create a building where you think and live differently.” 87
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ADJUSTED FOR I N F L AT I ON A self-taught designer in Nashville rolls up his sleeves to create a home that is midcentury-inspired down to the budget .
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PHOTOS BY | @PIPPA _DRU MMON D
Ryan Burleson
Pippa Drummond
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Influenced by Southern California’s Case Study House program, designer Bob Butler conceived a luminous residence and guest house on a sloping lot in Nashville that originally held a redbrick ranch-style duplex.
Western red cedar lines the walkway from the carport to the entrance (opposite). The Globe lights are from West Elm. A General Electric stereo cabinet and a 1950s chair are among the vintage pieces in the living room.
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A double-sided fireplace shared with the living room warms the deck on cool evenings (opposite). Bob sited the house and strategically placed windows to take advantage of shade in summer and solar gain in winter. The outdoor seating is from IKEA. The sunken living room features a built-in sofa and loveseat (above). Bob sits in the entry courtyard with his dog, Goya (above right).
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Almost everything about Bob Butler’s Nashville home is unexpected. Its sunken living room, open beams, and carport hark back to the 1950s, yet it’s barely more than a year old. The breezy, rectilinear residence transports visitors to midcentury Hollywood Hills or Palm Springs, though it’s located in a city known for Craftsman bungalows and the rococo mansions of country stars. Most surprising of all, Bob designed and built it himself, with only a few years experience under his belt and no formal training, and on a budget that would get the attention of many area residents: $115 per square foot. “It was difficult to find builders who wanted to be creative within my budget,” he says. So he hired a variety of subcontractors and ended up doing it all. The road that led Bob to architectural design was also unexpected. Born in New York and raised in Australia, he made his living for many years as a fine art photographer. But in 2011, while looking for a
light-filled home in Decatur, Georgia, he purchased a 1950s ranch and refashioned it almost entirely by himself, on a “super slim budget,” into a low-key modernist haven. His education? Francis D.K. Ching’s Building Construction Illustrated, YouTube videos, and muscle memory from a handful of drafting lessons in high school. His photographic training didn’t hurt, either. “I felt like I was building a 3-D picture,” he says. The legendary Case Study House program also made a strong impression on him when he was briefly living in Southern California. A series of prototype homes commissioned by Arts & Architecture magazine between 1945 and 1966, designed by the likes of Richard Neutra and Eero Saarinen, the Case Study houses were intended to demonstrate that the fruits of modernism could be made accessible to America’s booming middle class. Not all the homes were built, but the belief that elegance and economy can coexist remains strong. 91
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Western red cedar slat panels are paired with a pine ceiling and stained oak cabinets in the kitchen. Model Six Stools by Jeff Covey for Herman Miller line the concrete counter. The master
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bedroom (opposite) features a vintage Danish teak platform bed from Nordisk Andels-Eksport, a Globe pendant from West Elm, and drapes from IKEA. The mount was a gift from a friend.
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“THIS PROJECT WAS ALL ABOUT PIECING TOGETHER EVERYDAY MATERIALS IN A WAY THAT’S AFFORDABLE.” BOB BUTLER, DESIGNER AND RESIDENT 93
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After his renovation in Georgia won accolades in the local press, Bob moved to Tennessee to pursue a full-time career as an architectural designer. He also decided to build a new home for himself that would push the limits of style and affordability even further, one that would create a template for future clients. The site he chose, a three-quarter-acre property in East Nashville’s Rosebank neighborhood, featured another ranch, which he set about razing. Bob started with inexpensive materials. The 1,750-square-foot structure, consisting of a single high-ceilinged story, is rendered in polished concrete flooring, cement-block walls, and stained oak cabinets. What few splurges Bob allowed, he was careful to offset with other savings. Many of the large windows, for instance, are oriented south with large overhangs to maximize passive heating in winter and limit solar gain in summer. The home is laid out in an L that has a limestone-chip courtyard and a Galvalume-topped carport in its nook. The sunken living room juts out from one arm 94
of the L, and the kitchen and dining area are in the corner. One wing houses an office and bedroom, while the other holds the master bedroom and bath. While the atmosphere is no-nonsense, it’s hardly austere. Potted succulents and cacti fill almost every corner of the interior, interspersed with Danish chairs and other midcentury furnishings. Outside, the postand-beam frame extends beyond the home’s envelope, creating a grid of dimensional lumber that is “more sculptural than structural,” Bob says. Bob also looked to Australia for inspiration. “A lot of the architecture in the bush features lower-pitched roofs,” he notes. True to form, the home is topped with a subtle hipped section that meets a sawtooth-like roof, allowing sunlight to pour in through eight-foot-wide clerestories. The detached guesthouse, finished last spring at a cost per square foot similar to that of the house, has three roof components: a flat portion clad in an energyefficient TPO membrane; a low-pitched, butterfly-shaped section covered in fescue grass for insulation; and a flat section
featuring a roof deck, which, because of the grade of the site, can be accessed directly from the ground on one side. Bob often enjoys sitting on the home’s wraparound porch in the evening, warmed by the indoor/outdoor fireplace made of cement blocks. (Brick was deemed too pricey.) The rear perimeter of the property is lined with trees. Within earshot, there’s a creek. “Before I built a fence in the back, I’d get turkeys coming through,” says Bob, who shares the house with his shepherd mix, Goya. “Now I have the best of both worlds—city living and nature.” As for his second career, that’s going well, too. Since establishing his studio, Profile + Principle, in 2014, Bob has undertaken 10 projects with clients and 20 more as a developer. “Most modern homes in Nashville are created piecemeal by a group of designers, builders, contractors, and developers,” he says. By overseeing many of these functions himself, he contends he has a competitive advantage in cost: “I’d like people to know that, with ingenuity, modern living can be achieved on a modest budget using everyday materials.”
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An energy-efficient TPO membrane covers the living room’s zigzag roof (opposite). Clockwise from left: Bob and Goya walk atop the guesthouse,
which nestles into a hill. A George Nelson Cigar wall sconce joins a Crate & Barrel dresser in the master bedroom. Penny tiles from Daltile line a sunken shower.
Bob’s office has a teak wall unit by Sven Ellekaer for Albert Hansen, a 1960s chair by Ib Kofod-Larsen for Selig, and a vintage Nelson Ball clock.
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More at Dwell.com For more photos and a video of Bob Butler’s cost-effective Nashville house, go online to dwell.com/adjusted-for-inflation
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SHONQUIS MORENO JULIAN BROAD
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FORTY YEARS AFTER CREATING A CLUSTER OF UTOPIC VILLAS ON SARDINIA, AN ARCHITECT RETURNS WITH A NEW TEAM TO COMBINE THREE OF THEM INTO A SINGLE RETREAT.
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When Ferdinando Fagnola codesigned a series of avant-garde Brutalist villas on the Sardinian coast in the mid-1970s, he had no idea he would return one day with a group of younger architects to transform a trio of them into one home for new owners. Each villa consists of seemingly discrete, half-buried concrete volumes emerging from the earth. A Spun chair by Thomas Heatherwick for Magis is oriented toward the sea.
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Approaching by land or sea, one could easily miss these three villas on the northeast coast of Sardinia. Attuned to the environmental sensitivities of the 1970s, when they were designed by Turin architects Ferdinando Fagnola and Gianni Francione, they rise almost reluctantly from the earth, their Brutalist wedges half-rooted and dispersed, woolly with shrubs. This spring, four decades after the villas were built, Fagnola returned to the island, joined by a team of younger architects from another Turin studio, PAT., to finish off a series of restorations—ranging from a fresh color palette to adding new bedrooms— commissioned by the current owners. The result is a single vision refined and elaborated on by two generations of designers: environmentally committed, aesthetically bold, and built to foster a quasi-communal lifestyle. “New forces bring new ideas,” Fagnola says. “I was happy to see architecture I did forty years ago rejuvenated by young blood.” In 1975, the scion of one of Italy’s wealthy industrialist families commissioned Fagnola and Francione to develop five sculptural villas near the sea on the famed Costa Smeralda. But halfway through, financial pressure led him to sell their naked structures to individual buyers, who finished the construction themselves. The results varied and often broke with the architects’ intent. One villa was subdivided into multiple units and covered in granite, for instance. Fast forward to 2011, when a new pair of owners scooped up three of the villas and nine acres of land. Eager to realize the original architectural vision, they invited Fagnola to restore, modernize, and unify them into a single retreat. Francione had moved to Bali in the intervening years, but Fagnola was still in Turin, where he formed a new partnership with PAT.
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In a guestroom in Villa 1, an original 1970s bed by Fagnola is paired with a new Tab T lamp by Flos and Yves Klein blue walls (above). Opposite, clockwise from top: Canted asymmetrical ceilings and a mix of concrete, steel, and iroko wood define the main living area; a Tizio
lamp by Richard Sapper sits on a custom desk; in the master bathroom, oversized windows and an Agape mirror pull the outside in; the master bedroom features a bed by Antonio Citterio, Papiro floor lamps by Sergio Calatroni, and a Diamond chair by Harry Bertoia for Knoll.
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Ferdinando Fagnola + PAT.
Costa Smeralda, Sardinia, Italy
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The structures are sprawling yet largely imperceptible. Like its counterparts, Villa 2—containing guest bedrooms, a spa, and a network of outdoor havens—extends into the hillside, cloaked in energy-saving green roofs. The new landscaping cuts water usage on the property by 70 percent compared to previous levels.
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T HE SOUTH VILLA
“FOR US, THE ENVIRONMENT WAS PARAMOUNT. WE WANTED THE VILLAS TO DISAPPEAR.” FERDINANDO FAGNOLA, ARCHITECT
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Ferdinando Fagnola + PAT.
Costa Smeralda, Sardinia, Italy
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It was a unique opportunity for the 12-year-old firm to put some ideas of the counterculture back into play, says PAT. architect Andrea Veglia. “In the ’70s, the radical utopian visions of the late ’60s had begun to leave some disenchanted,” he says—but not Fagnola and Francione. “When we first visited the villas, we found an almost forgotten example of an architecture that was able to incarnate those radical ideas in convincing and powerful ways,” Veglia recalls, citing the villas’ total lack of nostalgia for Italian traditions. The team, which called itself F+P, set out to integrate the three structures for the new owners, who have five children and wanted to be able to host large groups for extended stays. The home’s functions are now dispersed over all the buildings—angular steel and concrete structures clad in iroko and cedar—and, in between them, in shared open-air spaces. Under the new layout, each building includes guest quarters and a pool (overall the resort-like complex can accommodate up to about 30 people), with Villa 1 containing the owners’ rooms. A spacious patio built partly into the earth outside Villa 2, along with the vaulted living room in Villa 1, form the social core of a compound whose design is intended to encourage a sense of community. And because private areas can be accessed only through public space, and not all the private spaces have kitchens, guests congregate naturally in common areas for meals and activities. Villa 3 even has a Montessori-inspired playroom where kids can paint, model clay, or, just outside, follow a rope bridge suspended in the trees. Villa 2 is a kind of playroom for grown-ups, dominated by a spa and a Turkish bath. The building is newly bisected by a walkway that unites the three structures, a straight path that the team calls the project’s “urban axis.” Fagnola admits that inserting the walkway would
More at Dwell.com Find a video and extra photos of the Sardinian villas at dwell.com/italian-unification
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A new basalt walkway with iroko decking glides between a waterfall cascading off Villa 2 and a pool with squiggly steps (top). All across the property, blocks of jewel-toned color meet raw materials, like a hot pink concrete wall next to a Cor-Ten
steel door with a rebar handle (above). The sheltered courtyard (left), known as the “piazzetta,� is a favorite gathering spot. The swanky mid-pool conversation pit (opposite) was added by the new owners during the renovation.
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Villa 3, seen here, is newly connected to Villa 1 by a series of stairs and walkways. At the request of one of the new owners, who had previously established a Montessori school, it includes an educational playroom for kids. Like the other villas, it also features guest quarters and a pool.
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“ THE FACT THAT IT IS NOT EASY TO TELL WHO DID WHAT IS A TESTAMENT TO THE FACT THAT ARCHITECTURE IS A COMPLEX AND COLLABORATIVE EFFORT.” ANDREA VEGLIA, ARCHITECT
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not have occurred to him 40 years ago, but it turned out to be a “brilliant” way to resolve the distribution of functions. In many ways, the villas were ahead of their time in their emphasis on sustainability, a term that was just coming into broad use when they were built. “In Italy, 1968 was a defining moment for the architect, who was not an artist anymore, but someone who works in society,” Fagnola recalls. “The message was that respect for the environment was a paramount value for society, and this became the basis for our work in Sardinia.” From the start, Fagnola and Francione embraced passive design measures, like tucking the buildings partly underground and using low-maintenance materials like turf, wood, steel, and exposed concrete. Today, new eco-conscious landscaping— smaller lawn areas, native Mediterranean scrub, and roofs furry with grass-like weeds—takes this principle further, reducing water consumption by 70 percent compared to prior levels. The team also updated the villas by adding high-efficiency mechanical systems, thermal insulation, electronically controlled sunscreens, and low-emission glazing, which earned the project Italy’s highest possible energy rating. The interiors are grand yet inviting. High-ceilinged rooms have a sculptural modern look, while walls cant inward in some normal-height rooms. Furniture from Knoll, Paola Lenti, and Living Divani coexists beside custom pieces, restored from the 1970s or newly designed. The renovation linked certain materials to certain functions: cork for living room floors and children’s rooms but carpet for others; mosaic tiles and Corian for the kids’ baths, wood and stone for the adults’. The team also introduced basalt to the spa’s material palette. “Basalt has a link to an old, noble Sardinian building tradition, from Romanesque churches to the Nuragic architecture of the Bronze Age,” says Veglia. “It seemed a perfect fit in this project, which veers away from the Mediterranean vernacular and its romantic use of pink granite.” That said, the PAT. team did add color as a counterpoint to the existing neutral tones of earthy concrete, grainy wood, and metal beams. “For [Francione and me], the environment was paramount—we wanted the villas to disappear,” Fagnola explains. “I had spent my life looking for the right shade of gray, and suddenly, when they said, ‘Let’s make this wall pink,’ it was a cultural shift.” Spaces inside and out now feature emphatic blocks of color: hot pink painted concrete, aubergine plastered walls, triangular teal paneling, and baths tiled in lilac, blue, scarlet, and yellow. Some reference palettes used by architects Luis Barragán and Le Corbusier. Fagnola, warming to the idea, even surprised the team with an Yves Klein blue guest room. At first glance, it is tempting to attribute the more far-out features—certain colors, a conversation pit in the middle of a pool, an outdoor cinema—to maximalist 1970s tastes, but these were new additions. “The fact that it is not easy to tell who did what,” Veglia says, “is a testament to the fact that architecture is a complex and collaborative effort.” 106
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Ferdinando Fagnola + PAT.
Costa Smeralda, Sardinia, Italy
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The communal area of Villa 3 (below and opposite, top) features slatted iroko walls, a modular sofa by Piero Lissoni for Living Divani, and a coffee table by Studio Guscetti for Fioroni; the patio dining chairs are by Dedon and the iroko wood table is custom. Outside, the limestoneencircled pool (opposite, right)
was updated as part of a broader landscape renovation. The roofs are planted with rosemary, myrtus, westringia, and more (opposite, bottom left). “The way these villas blend with the environment gives a taste of what sensitive coastal development could be,” says PAT. architect Andrea Veglia.
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P R O M OT I O N
A Wooded Retreat for Work and Play In New York’s Hudson Valley
Tucked away in the woods of Kerhonkson, New York, the Tinker Box home serves as a “place to play” for architect Marica McKeel, founder of Studio MM, and her husband Brock. The one-bedroom residence and workshop, the couple’s home away from home, was built with the intention of later becoming a guesthouse for their future home on the same site. A retreat from their hectic lives in New York City, the luxury of more space affords them the freedom to indulge their respective creative passions—Marica’s for designing and building furniture, and Brock’s for working on antique cars. Behind a dramatic, double-height entry, the home opens up to expansive views of the peaceful wooded landscape. It was important to McKeel to “always have a view of outside—to always be presented with the outdoors, rather than confronted by a wall.” Inspired to create, McKeel and team turned to Marvin® Windows and Doors
to help establish this fluid connection to the surroundings. At the back of the home, tall, expansive windows take advantage of southwest vistas, including the sunset and changing seasons. An impressive corner window assembly allows continuous exposure to nature with its unobstructed views of the land, nature, and wildlife. An emphasis on craftsmanship and quality was paramount to the home’s thoughtful construction. The earthy texture and depth of the shou sugi ban cedar exterior connects organically to the tree-filled landscape. Oak, maple, and birch trees that were harvested from the site were repurposed inside—some for the interior stair treads and some for the bedroom’s custom headboard. A white oak window nook beautifully marries pine window casings, adding to the warmth and coziness that permeates the home. Intimately connected to nature, the cozy retreat is a functional and peaceful place to live, relax—and play.
For more information please visit: www.marvin.com
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interiors
TEXT BY
PHOTOS BY | @MARKWICKENS
Tim McKeough
Mark Wickens
Condo Maximum Going from West Coast to East Coast and custom to spec, a couple ask a design team to individualize their standard-issue Brooklyn apartment.
When Rachel Klauber-Speiden and Josh Empson moved from Santa Monica to New York for Josh’s job in finance, they weren’t just changing cities—they were also giving up their modernist dream home, one they and an architect had designed and built from scratch. Well aware that real estate 110
in New York City was a different beast, with fewer opportunities for a singlefamily home, they looked for an apartment instead and found a new condominium at the edge of the East River in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn. Their 2,600square-foot three-bedroom unit, which
Design firm Dash Marshall worked with Structure NYC to customize a spec apartment on the Brooklyn waterfront for Rachel KlauberSpeiden and Josh Empson. Built-ins, multiuse spaces, and clever design details give the couple the flexibility and personalization they sought. The closet wallpaper is Nuvole from Cole & Son’s Fornasetti collection.
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“In California there’s so much space. Here it was, ‘How can we use each space multiple ways?’” RACHEL KLAUBER-SPEIDEN, RESIDENT
For the couple’s shared office, which is windowless, the team installed backlit panels to give the illusion of daylight entering the room (left). In addition to a desk,
there’s a tucked-in bed for reading or relaxing (above). “The idea behind the office was figuring out three tiers,” explains Rachel, “rest, casual, and full-on work mode.”
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they bought in 2016, offered sunny views over a park and across the river to Lower Manhattan. The only problem was that the developer offered a cookie-cutter interior with almost no options for personalization. “Having had a custom house, it was a little hard to go spec,” says Rachel. “I really didn’t want to feel like I was living in a generic unit.” Looking to make the space their own, but without a gut remodel, they called on the architectural design firm Dash Marshall, which had recently completed a friend’s renovation that they admired. 112
D Bedroom E Flex Space F Kitchen
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The light-filled living room (above), with its view of the Manhattan Bridge, gets extra wattage from an Anglepoise Giant lamp. A pair of Talma armchairs by Moroso face a walnut coffee table designed by Dash Marshall and constructed by Harlem Built. The daybed was also fabricated by Harlem Built, from a drawing by Rachel.
The media/guestroom is encased in white oak shelving and features a large translucent glass window (above). When it’s open, the room connects visually to the kitchen. The stools and dining table are by Harlem Built; the Eames Molded Plastic chairs add a touch of color.
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For their apartment Dash Marshall developed a series of elaborate built-ins that fundamentally changed the character of the space. “The idea was to take this unit and upgrade it,” says Ritchie Yao, who runs Dash Marshall along with Amy Yang and Bryan Boyer. “Like ‘Pimp My Ride,’” notes Yang. With custom millwork built by Structure NYC, they added a wall of overlapping oak fins with oversized integrated pegboards for hanging coats in the entrance hall. At one end of the main living area, they created a flexible, multipurpose room with
enormous oak and ribbed glass doors and built-in shelving—when open, the arrangement functions as an extension of the living space; when closed, it serves as a cozy guestroom. In the bedroom for the couple’s son, now 11, Dash Marshall added cabinets resembling stacked boxes for storage and a platform for his bed. Along the wall that separates his room from his 13-year-old sister’s, the designers created interlocking nooks for side-by-side, but separate, desks for the siblings, who can lift tiny screens to pass notes or otherwise 113
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“The kids’ rooms have a ‘confessional talking window’ between them. We almost always propose weird stuff like that, but it doesn’t always get built.” BRYAN BOYER, DESIGNER
What child doesn’t love passing secret messages? Josh and Rachel’s young son and daughter can do just that through the peephole between their bedrooms (above left). In the
boy’s room, Dash Marshall designed a platform bed and multiple storage units, accented with red lacquer and arranged in a playful way (above right). “They’re built-ins, but we
didn’t want them to look like builtins,” says firm principal Ritchie Yao. “They’re more like stacked boxes.” The rug is by Flor and the Real Good chair is by Blu Dot (below).
conspire. Josh and Rachel’s interior windowless office now has backlit glass panels and is furnished with both a daybed nook for a casual work space and a more formal desk. The result is an apartment that not only appears dramatically different from others in the building, but also gives the family an expanded sense of space. “The things they designed for us we use every day,” says Rachel, “multiple times and in multiple ways.”
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Artist Christopher Florentino says his respect for Gene Leedy drove his update of the architect’s 1963 Ellison Residence in central Florida: “Being original is important to me. I don’t want Gene Leedy to come here and be like, ‘Damn, you killed my vision.’” In the living room, George Nelson’s Saucer Bubble
TEXT BY
PHOTOS BY
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Matthew Williams
pendant hovers over Eames classics, like an LCW chair, a Molded Fiberglass armchair, and a Molded Plywood coffee table. Christopher found the lounge, an Eames replica, in a dumpster and couldn’t let it go to waste. A Warhol print hangs from the sandstone block wall; the Ekko mobile is by Matthew Richards.
Artist in Residence Pop Art, street art, and Space Age furniture collide at a painter’s midcentury ranch in Florida. 116
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my house
The living area’s Chicklet sofa by Ray Wilkes is covered in a Knoll tweed (left). Beneath a work from Christopher’s “Something Modern” series sits a record player once owned by his grandfather, which Christopher retrofitted with a Bluetooth speaker (above). A vintage Robie Junior robot vacuum sits atop a modern-day automated floor cleaner. In the master bedroom, the dresser and the bedside tables are by American of Martinsville (opposite, top). An Eames La Chaise lounge occupies a spot near the sliding glass doors.
Most people buy furniture for their house. Christopher Florentino, aka Flore, bought a house for his furniture. The Brooklyn-born painter, whose work draws on graffiti and street art, has had a lifelong obsession with midcentury modern, amassing furniture from the period since he was a teen. His collection finally found a home when he discovered a Gene Leedy– designed 1963 ranch house in Winter Haven, Florida, on Instagram. Leedy, a founding member of the Sarasota School of Architecture, fostered a regional Gulf Coast twist on modernism, defined by courtyards, local sandstone, glass walls, and bringing the outdoors in. It was these features, combined with the home’s pristine condition, that made the Ellison Residence, as it’s known, the ideal habitat for Christopher and his furniture. 118
In June, he closed on the house without having stepped inside. Here, he takes us through his first few months living there. Christopher Florentino: I’ve been drawn to midcentury modern design since I was young—the lines, the materials, the colors. I started collecting furniture when I was 16, and I needed a showcase for all my pieces. The way Leedy designed this house is pretty cool. If I’m standing on one side of the house I can see all the way through to the other wall. It’s so open. Everything is completely symmetrical, and everything has access to the outside. The whole back wall is glass, and at night, when you’re looking from the pool into the house, it looks so big. It’s very Frank Sinatra. The house is all original: cabinets, doors, walls, fixtures, hardware, the cork
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Make It Yours Christopher Florentino talks weekend projects and furniture-hunting scores.
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Christopher found the 1962 Custom Imperial Flair combo oven-stove by Frigidaire/General Motors in perfect working order when he moved in—it just needed new burners. The eyelevel dual ovens are fitted with glass doors that open vertically—a bit like the gullwing doors on a DeLorean— while the burners hide in a sliding drawer. With its Howard Miller– inspired clock and cursive labeling, the Flair was the “it” stove of the ’60s, seen in the kitchen of Samantha and Darrin Stephens on Bewitched.
The side-by-side bathrooms look out on a private courtyard through floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors. They feature original tile in the sunken showers—one in butter yellow, the other in light gray. “The tiles are heavy, real chunky, and of the period,” says Christopher. He had them completely restored, working alongside the tilers and filling cracks with a porcelain paint pen for two days straight. “For something from 1963, they’re really in immaculate shape,” he says.
When Christopher spotted a limitededition polka-dot version of George Nelson’s 1956 sofa on Craigslist, he called the seller and offered her $1,000 on the spot. “She said, ‘If you can be here in fifteen minutes, it’s yours,’” he recalls. Apparently, she was really ready to get rid of it. “As soon as I got there, she pushed it down the stairs,” he says. He had it reupholstered in Alexander Girard’s “Double Triangles” fabric, which, at $1,400 for the total yardage, cost more than the sofa itself.
Some 2,400 square feet of artificial grass provide a maintenance-free landscape for most of the home’s exterior spaces, including its two enclosed courtyards. At close to $14 a square foot, it was a pricey proposition, but Christopher wanted to embrace Leedy’s indoor/outdoor concept by leaving the doors open as much as possible, which would be less pleasant with grass clippings and dirt blowing in. “It cost a fortune, but it was worth it,” he says. “I can watch TV from my backyard.”
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Leedy’s signature precast doubleT concrete beams create overhangs (left). Christopher furnished the patio with a red GN2 lounge chair by Peter Ghyczy and Maya chairs from CB2. The master bathroom
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(above) is mostly original, with new grasscloth paper covering the formerly white walls. Christopher, known professionally as Flore, surveys a painting in his garage turned studio (bottom).
flooring. I did some renovations, but it was mainly polishing. I have the original stove and I make eggs on it every morning. I curated the space as if in 1963 there was an artist who went out and purchased all brand-new furniture by designers like the Eameses, Alexander Girard, and every single person who worked under the Herman Miller brand. I look at everything like a painting. I wanted the house to be a palette dominated by primary colors, like a Picasso or a Miró. Keeping that palette very “period” was just as important as the pieces I chose. Everything is color-blocked. I have an orange Knoll Womb chair next to a blue Ray Wilkes Chicklet sofa, a yellow velvet lounge chair next to a bright red George
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my house
An Eames lounge chair covered in Alexander Girard fabric from Maharam sits near a Girard Model 108 coffee table for Knoll (right). The floor tiles are marble. A Jeff Koons lobster joins a float by the artist KAWS in the pool (below).
More at Dwell.com Find a video and extra photos of Christopher Florentino’s refreshed midcentury modern home at dwell.com/artist-in-residence
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Nelson Coconut chair, a yellow Andy Warhol flower print on one wall and a red one on the opposite wall. I source pieces mainly on the internet— eBay, Craigslist, 1stDibs. I get pretty creative. There was this lady selling a mirror on eBay and I saw, in the corner of the photo she posted, an Eames “surfboard” table in the reflection. I emailed her and said, “I’ll give you $600 for the table right now—I’m sending an Uber to your house.” If you can find a great upholsterer, you can bring pieces back to life. I found a reproduction Eames lounge chair outside an apartment building in Miami. It was upside down in the trash and in bad shape, but I was like “I can’t walk past this.” I had an Uber XL pick me up in the alleyway and I threw it in the back. I took it all apart, polished it, sanded it, and had it upholstered in yellow velvet. Now it’s pretty sweet. Collecting is sometimes about luck, but mainly about persistence. In the kitchen I have an original, limited-edition Andy
Warhol “Flowers 1967” rug. I’d been hounding this lady forever about it. She finally emailed me, “Listen, you’re the most annoying-est young man I’ve ever met in my life. I will sell you the rug for $450.” You’ve got to be super annoying, but polite, because this is their holy grail. They’ve held on to it for so long and now they’re finally ready to sell it. Now that I have this house, I send photos of it to sellers, saying, “Look where it’s going to go. You have it in a warehouse, but I’m going to sit on it. It’s going to be among friends, in a house.” Living here is like living in a piece of art. I find myself walking around a lot, sitting in different rooms, experiencing the light in each one. The shadows that the roof casts when the sun is going down, the way the rain draining off it sounds like waterfalls—all these little components that went into building it are special to me. When you wake up every day in a place where you have to live and create, why not make it somewhere special?
NOV E M B ER/DECEM B ER 2018
DWELL
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modern market The product-packed Modern Market section of Dwell is a highly shoppable section where you are guaranteed to discover that one unique item or special gift that makes you feel at home in the modern world! For more products and services, visit us online at dwell.com!
Konzuk Diamond dust rings Concrete-and-diamond dust jewelry Shop: konzuk.com
Smart Homes For Smart People evoDOMUS builds custom designed, ultra energyefficient, healthy prefab homes throughout the US. We love modern design and take pride in our unique all-inclusive approach. Our standard R-33 walls, triple-glazed German windows and passive solar design principles are just a few of the benefits we have to offer. With evoDOMUS your beautiful, sustainable, custom dream home, with a refreshingly contemporary design, will become a reality.
LéAna Clifton Cloud Train, Series I This body of work was photographed in Marfa, TX in 2017. Abstract images of speeding trains and sky-scapes. Archival prints available in various sizes. Work with the artist to create your own unique series
For more information visit our web site or call, Tel. 216-772-2603 evodomus.com
leanaclifton.com
Looking for Your Next Great Escape? Dwell is now curating vacation properties for the design-obsessed adventurer, allowing you to browse a catalog of visionary homes. From Scandinavian-inspired cabins and beachfront villas to midcentury time capsules and contemporary bed-andbreakfasts, Dwell brings you the best of design and travel. Do you have places to share? Add your rental today to connect with an ever-growing audience of modern travelers. dwell.com/stay
Charles P. Rogers & Co. Beds Classic beds. Oh-so comfortable mattresses. Online and direct from our NYC factory showroom. Free delivery to most US addresses. Tel. 866-818-6702 charlesprogers.com
modern market
Modern-Shed Not only the originator of the backyard modern shed craze, but innovators of style and simplicity. How will you use your new space? Art Studio Home Office Man Cave She Shed Guest Suite Download our brand new catalog. Toll-free 800-261-7282 info@modern-shed.com modern-shed.com
Raydoor The Art of Division At Raydoor we like to think of art and functionality as one. Not only can our systems add to the look and feel of your space, but also create new areas of function and purpose. Raydoors do not require a floor track, allowing you to divide space intelligently without creating passive barriers. Opening the existing space as is or allowing it to transform into a completely new space. Tel. 212-421-0641 raydoor.com
The BioGS 2.0 Air Purifier Recipient of the Red Dot, G-Mark, and Chicago Athenaeum Good Design awards, Rabbit Air’s quiet and impeccable BioGS 2.0 HEPA air purifier improves your environment by stripping it of harmful particles and pollutants. Four stages of filtration and deodorization, a five-year warranty, and lifetime 24/7 tech support will have you breathing a clean sigh of relief. Toll-free 888-866-8862 rabbitair.com
Flatfire The Gas Fireplace in a Frame A dramatic fire with tall mesmerizing dancing flames can be enhanced with the new Flatfire Tree-line silhouette. The direct vent gas, award winning Flatfire fireplace is about 30”Hx42”Wx7”D, and is available with a black or silver gray steel frame and accented by a distinctive inner frame of silver gray. Crushed glass lines the base. Propane or natural gas. Heats to 20,000 BTUs; about 1,100 square feet. Wittus - Fire by Design Tel. 914-764-5679 wittus.com
Site Specific Art Glass by Gil Reynolds “Timeless Flight” – The Allison Hotel and Spa in Newberg, OR. Custom art glass designed and fabricated for your location.
gilreynolds.com
GelPro Elite Comfort Mat
Modern Shelving Keep your books safe and on display. Modern Shelving for your life: Aluminum or wood shelves, poles, and cabinets. Order online or consult with our designer. Toll-free 877-477-5487 modernshelving.com
Indulge in the luxurious feel and deep-cushioned support of the world’s most comfortable floor mat. GelPro Elite’s exclusive Dual Comfort Core of patented gel and energy-return foam provides maximum support and ultraplush comfort so you can stand for extended periods of time without experiencing discomfort and fatigue. The stain-resistant top surface is a breeze to clean and available in hundreds of designer patterns and colors. Made in the USA with phthalate-free, imported fabric. 5-year warranty. Toll-free 866-435-6287 gelpro.com
Great Homes Happen By Design Stillwater Dwellings
Veldt Marfa Conceived by an artist and an industrial designer. Veldt Jewelry is crafted with love in Marfa, TX. Wear your art. Titanium Pillar on fine box chain.
Rooted in a contemporary aesthetic that is inspired by master architects of the past, Stillwater Dwellings’ homes are built using a systemsbased, sustainable construction method that provides design flexibility and cost predictability. The Stillwater team is comprised of highly skilled architects and project managers to guide you through the entire home design and building process–from determining site feasibility to hand-selecting finish options. Start with one of twentythree floor plans and three finish packages upon which to shape your vision, or have us design a completely custom home just for you. Toll-free 800-691-7302 stillwaterdwellings.com/dwell
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Michael Larry Simpson Panel Series One-of-a-kind, oil on birch panel paintings with red oak frames. Work well leaning or hung vertically or horizontally in multiples or as individual pieces. Panels shown measure 65” x 13” x 2” each. For more designs and sizes, visit darcysimpsonartworks.com.
Stahl Firepit Flame meets function. Our firepits are designed with simple functionality and timeless beauty in mind. Choose your size and material. stahlfirepit.com @stahlfirepit
Tel. 201-452-7101 darcysimpsonartworks.com
Lindal Cedar Homes
modern market
Dowling Studios for the Lindal Architects Collaborative The spirit of innovation is an important Lindal tradition. For over seven decades, our collaborations with independent architects have broadened the appeal of our product, inspired new material options, and supported the ongoing refinement and modernization of our legendary homes. We offer efficient, predictable and caring local service and the industries’ only lifetime structural warranty. Our homes are easily shipped worldwide. View free home design plan books online.
Konzuk Continuum collection
Toll-free 888-4LINDAL lindal.com/ebooks
Diamond dust-and-concrete jewelry Shop: konzuk.com
Bartels Doors & Hardware This stylish custom ladder by MWE is the designer feature that will bring your design together. Ladders are provided with everything you need to create the state of the art look. Suitable for loft spaces, kitchens, wine cellars, closets, and so much more. All of Bartels ladder hardware is made of quality stainless steel available in satin, polished, carbon black, copper, or bronze finishes to compliment your home’s distinct style. Ordering your custom ladder is simple, contact Bartels to learn more or hear about our many other hardware solutions. Bartels Doors and Hardware is the choice of educated consumers, offering luxury interior doors, exclusive door accessories, designer MWE library ladders, and up-scale barn door hardware. Toll-free 866-529-5679 bartelsdoors.com/dwell
Wetstyle The Straight Bathtub Straight’s dimensions are ideal for small spaces and its rectangular, contemporary look, softened by its curves, lends an elegant feel to any bathroom. The bathtub’s subtly inset base adds an extra touch of refinement. Made in WETMAR BiO™, a robust, non-slip, thermo-insulating eco-material, Straight is available in True High Gloss™ or Matte finish. Handcrafted in Montreal, Canada Toll-free 888-536-9001 wetstyle.com
Liza Phillips Design Hand made rugs for floors, stairs, and walls. Our Water rug, shown in wool and silk, is available in 6x8 feet and custom sizes. GoodWeave certified. Tel. 845-252-9955 lizaphillipsdesign.com
Method Homes Down to Earth Prefab Method Homes builds healthy, beautiful, high-performance prefab that is unmatched in quality. Whether you are looking for an efficient cabin retreat, a modern family home, or a fully custom option, Method can deliver. Visit our website to explore all eight series of architectdesigned homes and limitless custom options. Tel. 206-789-5553 info@methodhomes.net methodhomes.net
Konzuk Stellar collection Concrete-and-diamond dust jewelry Shop: konzuk.com
Kül Grilles Modern Grilles for the Modern Home Your design is a reflection of your personality and style. We want our floor and wall grilles to be one of the many inspiring details that complete your modern home. See our gallery and finish options online! Discount code: dwell0118 tw: @kulgrilles kulgrilles.com
Duda Stool Sinuous Brazilian design meets easy comfort in modern stool by Aristeu Pires. Select finishes delivered within two weeks. Hand finished of solid wood in counter or bar height. Toll-free 800-242-6903 sossegohome.com
Contact Our Advertisers When contacting our advertisers, please be sure to mention that you saw their ads in Dwell. All Modern allmodern.com
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Modern Digital Canvas Transform your space today with one of our super-cool jumbo canvas prints just $499. A modern digital canvas is the affordable, strong, art solution for any interior. With over 2,000 exclusive images created in our Hamptons design studio, we use latex inks printed on rich archival canvas. Everything arrives fully and stretched and ready to hang and ships in just three days. Jumbo $499, Large $399, Small $249, Sized 3' to 5'. Get a solid wood floating frame for just $59 on any size! Let an "m-dc" canvas occupy an important space in your modern life.
Kolbe Windows & Doors kolbewindows.com Lexus lexus.com Lightology lightology.com Lindal Cedar Homes lindal.com
Celebrating 16 years of happy customers. Shop 24/7 on our secure website.
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Minted minted.com Modern Forms modernforms.com MRail mrail.ca
Don’t Miss Dwell’s First-Ever Podcast RM-3 traces how raw materials go from their most elemental forms—a hunk of metal, a conifer tree—into the extraordinary objects and buildings that shape our lives. Fair warning: you might not look at homes the same way again. dwell.com/raw-materials
Western Window Systems westernwindowsystems.com YLighting ylighting.com
sourcing The products, furniture, architects, designers, and builders featured in this issue.
26 Spartan Queens Julian von der Schulenburg vschulenburg.com General contracting by Andy Lalman 347-323-8288 Structural engineering by Prudigm Engineering prudigm.com 26 Cooktop by Bertazzoni bertazzoni .com; oven by Whirlpool whirlpool.com 27 Paint by Benjamin Moore benjaminmoore .com; Wishbone chair by Hans Wegner for Carl Hansen & Søn carlhansen.com 56 Containment Strategy BlueSky Studio blueskystudio.com 56 Staircase by Regan Foster fosterdesigndenver.com 58 Coffee table by Regan Foster fosterdesigndenver .com; blue chair and gray sofa from IKEA ikea.com; leather couch by Soft Line afw.com 59 Cabinets from IKEA ikea.com; refrigerator by LG lg.com; pendants by Regan Foster fosterdesigndenver.com 60 Dining table, bed, and chandelier by Regan Foster fosterdesigndenver .com; faucet by Delta deltafaucet.com; bathtub by Maax INC maax.com; sliding door by Milgard milgard.com 62 Final Edit Jan Greben Architecture jangreben.com
General contracting by Roco G.C. Group 347-329-5802 Cabinetry by James Hegge jhworks.com 62 Bastiano sofas by Tobia Scarpa, vintage; Cité chair by Jean Prouvé vitra.com; Tripod lamp by David Weeks Studio davidweeksstudio.com 64 Drum pouf by Softline for Design Within Reach dwr.com; throw by Raf Simons for Kvadrat kvadratrafsimons.com; L’Homme Wiggly poster by Greg Clarke gregclarke.com; turntable by Crosley crosleyradio.com; Stool 60 by Alvar Aalto for Artek artek.fi 66 Tulip table by Eero Saarinen for Knoll knoll .com; Prouvé Standard chairs, vintage; pendant by Labor and Wait labourandwait.co.uk; counter and sink by Corian corian.com; cabinets from IKEA ikea.com; floor tiles by Heath Ceramics and Dwell heathceramics .com; Kakomi rice cooker from Salter House salter.house 68 606 Universal Shelving Unit by Dieter Rams for Vitsœ, vitsoe .com; paper flower by John Derian johnderian .com; Tab table lamp by Edward Barber and Jay Oserby for Flos flos .com; pillows from Merci merci-merci.com; blanket by Best Made bestmadeco.com; Two Arm sconce by David Weeks Studio davidweeksstudio.com; Singer sewing desk
STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION (required by Act of August 12, 1970: Section 3685, Title 39, United States Code). 1. Dwell. 2. (ISSN: 1530-5309). 3. Filing date: 10/1/2018. 4. Issue frequency: Bi-Monthly. 5. Number of issues published annually: 6. 6. The annual subscription price is $28. 7. Complete mailing address of known office of publication: 595 Pacific Avenue, Floor 4 San Francisco, CA 94133,. Contact person: Kolin Rankin. 8. Complete mailing address of headquarters or general business office of publisher: 595 Pacific Avenue, Floor 4 San Francisco, CA 94133,. 9. Full names and complete mailing addresses of publisher, editor, and managing editor. Publisher, Lara Deam, 595 Pacific Avenue, Floor 4, San Francisco, CA 94133; Editor, Luke Hopping, 60 Broad Street, Suite 2428, New York, NY 10004; Managing Editor, Camille Rankin, 60 Broad Street, Suite 2428, New York, NY 10004. 10. Owner: Dwell Life, Inc.; 595 Pacific Avenue, Floor 4, San Francisco, CA 94133. 11. Known bondholders, mortgages and other security holders owning or holding 1 percent of more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or other securities: ; ,
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chairs, vintage 70 Min bed by Luciano Bertoncini for Design Within Reach dwr.com; Stool 60 and shelf by Alvar Aalto for Artek artek.fi 72 Swedish Bliss STEG arkitekter AB stegarkitekter.se General contracting by JOO Bygg AB joobf.se Civil engineering by Projektsystem i väst AB 74-75 Eames Molded coffee table by Charles and Ray Eames for Herman Miller hermanmiller.com; 290 sofa by Hans Wegner for Getama getama.dk; Skelder globe light by Lars Englund for Källemo kallemo.se; Fox chair by Viggo Boesen for Sika Design and Monet chair by Sika Design sika-design .com; Circus hanging light by Innermost innermost.net; Tab floor lamp by Edward Barber and Jay Oserby for Flos flos.com; cabinet fronts by Superfront superfront.com; cabinet bases, kitchen table, and dining chairs from IKEA ikea.com; chair by Alvar Aalto for Artek artek.fi; stove by Nordpeis nordpeis.se 76 Drape by Cassano fabric for Designers Guild designersguild .com 78-79 Concrete counter by Betongdesign betongdesign.se; cabinet fronts by Superfront superfront .com; cabinet bases, kitchen table, and dining chairs from IKEA ikea
.com; chair by Alvar Aalto for Artek artek.fi 80 Making a Splash Werner and Catherine Weissmann hauswittmann.at General contracting by Bernhard Klaffel Landscaping by Baumschule Matuschek die-baumschule.at Pool work by Polytherm polytherm.at 80 Club 54 swivel chair by Kare kare.de 86 “Vegetable Tree” wallpaper by Josef Frank from Svenskt Tenn svenskttenn.se; Iris bed by Wittmann with custom headboard wittmann.at; Constanze table, leather chairs, and sofa by Johannes Spalt for Wittmann wittmann.at 88 Adjusted for Inflation PROFILE + PRINCIPLE profileandprinciple.com 88 Globe pendants by West Elm westelm.com 89 Ceiling fans by Westinghouse westinghouselighting .com; sofa by West Elm westelm.com; safari chair by Kai Lyngfeldt Larsen for Bovirke, vintage; stereo cabinet by General Electric, vintage 90 Chairs and table from IKEA ikea.com 91 Custom sofa by J&J Upholstery 615-415-0815 92 Model Six stools by Jeff Covey for Herman Miller hermanmiller .com; refrigerator and cooktop by Whirlpool whirlpool.com; cabinet
. 12. Tax status: Has Not Changed During Preceding 12 Months. 13. Publisher title: Dwell. 14. Issue date for circulation data below: Sep/Oct 2018. 15. The extent and nature of circulation: A. Total number of copies printed (Net press run). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 271,619. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 267,892. B. Paid circulation. 1. Mailed outside-county paid subscriptions. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 186,614. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 182,811. 2. Mailed in-county paid subscriptions. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 0. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. 3. Sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors and counter sales. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 34,999. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 34,850. 4. Paid distribution through other classes mailed through the USPS. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 0. Actual number
bases and drapes from IKEA ikea.com; countertop by Counter Couture countercouturetn.com 93 Platform bed by Nordisk AndelsEksport, vintage 94 Outdoor furniture from IKEA ikea.com 95 Cigar wall sconce by George Nelson, vintage; cabinet from Crate & Barrel crateandbarrel .com; Penny tiles from Daltile daltile.com; wall unit by Sven Ellekaer for Albert Hansen, vintage; chair by Ib KofodLarsen for Selig, vintage; Ball Clock by George Nelson for Howard Miller, vintage 96 Italian Unification Ferdinando Fagnola PAT. patdesign.it General contracting by C&P Costruzioni 39-0789-209062 Landscaping by Tecnoverde tecnoverdegardenolbia.it Structural engineering by Buonomo Veglia buonomoveglia.com Electrical engineering by Studio Forte Pool and spa by Sainte Claire 97 Spun chair by Thomas Heatherwick for Magis magisdesign.com 98 Bed by Ferdinando Fagnola, vintage; Tab table lamp by Edward Barber and Jay Oserby for Flos flos.com 99 Custom pillows by Paola Lenti paolalenti.it; custom coffee table by Ferdinando Fagnola and Lualdi lualdiporte.com; Papiro floor lamp by Sergio Calatroni for
Pallucco pallucco.com; Tizio lamp by Richard Sapper for Artemide artemide.com; custom couch and desk by Ferdinando Fagnola; Groundpiece bed by Antonio Citterio for Flexform flexform.it; Diamond chair by Harry Bertoia for Knoll knoll .com; carpet by Van Besouw besouw.nl; mirror by Benedini Associati for Agape agapedesign.it; faucet by Cea ceadesign.it; iroko flooring by Lualdi lualdiporte.com 100 Armchairs by Paola Lenti paolalenti.it; iroko deck by Lualdi lualdiporte.com 103 Basalt floor and pool cladding by F.lli Catella catellamarmi.com 104-105 Chaise lounge by Francesco Rota for Paola Lenti paolalenti.it 106 Outdoor chairs by Jean-Marie Massaud for Dedon dedon.de; flooring by F.lli Catella catellamarmi.com 107 Modular sofa and footstool by Piero Lissoni for Living Divani livingdivani.it; coffee table by Studio Guscetti for Fioroni fioronidesign.it; outdoor couches by Rodolfo Dordoni for Kettal kettal.com 110 Condo Maximum Dash Marshall dashmarshall.com CODE LLC codenyc.com General contracting by Structure NYC structure-nyc.com 110 Fornasetti Nuvole wallpaper by Cole & Son
of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. C. Total paid distribution. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 221,813. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 217,661. D. Free or nominal rate distribution (by mail and outside mail). 1. Free or nominal outside-county. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 565. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 307. 2. Free or nominal rate in-county copies. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 0. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. 3. Free or nominal rate copies mailed at other Classes through the USPS. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 0. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. 4. Free or nominal rate distribution outside the mail. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 0. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. E. Total free or nominal rate distribution. Average number of copies each
NOV E M B ER/DECEM B ER 2018
DWELL
cole-and-son.com; pegboard paneling designed by Dash Marshall and made by Structure NYC structure-nyc.com; 265 wall lamp by Flos flos .com; Eames Molded coffee table by Charles and Ray Eames for Herman Miller hermanmiller.com; pendant light by Roll & Hill rollandhill.com 112 Desk and daybed designed by Dash Marshall and made by Structure NYC structure-nyc.com; Real Good chair by Blu Dot bludot.com 113 Eames Molded Plastic chairs by Charles and Ray Eames for Herman Miller hermanmiller.com; dining table, bar stools, and daybed by Harlem Built harlembuilt.com; coffee table designed by Dash Marshall and built by Harlem Built harlembuilt.com; Giant lamp by George Carwardine for Anglepoise anglepoise .com; Talma armchairs by Moroso moroso.it; side table by Blu Dot bludot.com 114 Rug by Flor flor .com; Real Good chair by Blu Dot bludot.com; 116 Artist in Residence
PHOTO: PIPPA DRUMMOND
Christopher Florentino thatartistflore.com 116 Eames Molded coffee table, LCW chair, and Molded Fiberglass chair by Charles and Ray Eames for Herman Miller hermanmiller.com; Ekko Standing Circles mobile by Matthew Richards
for Ekko dwr.com; Coconut chair and Bubble lamp by George Nelson for Herman Miller hermanmiller.com 118 Chicklet sofa by Ray Wilkes for Herman Miller, vintage; DCM Molded Plywood chairs by Charles and Ray Eames for Herman Miller hermanmiller.com; Waris wallpaper by Wallpaper from the 70s wallpaperfromthe70s .com; Saarinen dining table by Eero Saarinen for Knoll knoll.com 119 Eames La Chaise lounge chair by Charles and Ray Eames eamesoffice.com; Marshmallow sofa by George Nelson for Herman Miller, vintage; Kite clock by George Nelson for Howard Miller kardiel.com; Platform bench by George Nelson for Herman Miller hermanmiller.com; Left Twist cube by Frank Gehry for Heller dwr.com 120 GN2 lounge chair by Peter Ghyczy for Reuter, vintage; Maya chairs by CB2 cb2.com; 122 Model 108 coffee table by Alexander Girard for Knoll knoll .com; T-Angle table by Florence Knoll, vintage; Eames Lounge Chair by Charles and Ray Eames for Herman Miller hermanmiller.com; Jeff Koons lobster float jeffkoons.com; KAWS float kawsone.com
For contact information for our advertisers, please turn to page 129.
issue during preceding 12 months: 565. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. F. Total free distribution (sum of 15c and 15e). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 222,378. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 217,968. G. Copies not Distributed. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 49,242. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 49,924. H. Total (sum of 15f and 15g). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 271,619. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 267,892. I. Percent paid. Average percent of copies paid for preceding 12 months: 99.75%. Actual percent of copies paid for preceding 12 months: 99.86%. 16. Electronic Copy Circulation: A. Paid Electronic Copies. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 37,253. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 36,991. B. Total Paid Print Copies (Line 15c) + Paid Electronic Copies (Line 16a). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 259,066.
DWELL
NOV E M B ER/DECEM B ER 2018
Adjusted for Inflation
Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 254,652. C. Total Print Distribution (Line 15f) + Paid Electronic Copies (Line 16a). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 259,630. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 254,959. D. Percent Paid (Both Print & Electronic Copies) (16b divided by 16c x 100). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 99.78%. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 99.88%. I certify that 50% of all distributed copies (electronic and print) are paid above nominal price: Yes. Report circulation on PS Form 3526-X worksheet. 17. Publication of statement of ownership will be printed in the Jan/Feb19 issue of the publication. 18. Signature and title of editor, publisher, business manager, or owner: Lara Deam, Publisher. I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material or information requested on the form may be subject to criminal sanction and civil actions.
Dwell® (ISSN 1530-5309), Volume XVIII Issue 6, publishes six double issues annually, by Dwell Life, Inc., 595 Pacific Avenue, 4th floor, San Francisco, CA 94133, USA. Occasional extra issues may also be published. Copyright ©2018. All rights reserved. In the US, Dwell® is a registered trademark of Dwell Life, Inc. Publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited manuscripts, art, or other materials. Subscription price for US residents: $28.00 for 10 issues. Canadian subscription rate: $39.95 (GST included) for 10 issues. All other countries: $49.95 for 10 issues. To order a subscription to Dwell or to inquire about an existing subscription, please write to: Dwell Magazine Customer Service, PO Box 5100, Harlan, IA 51593-0600, or call 877-939-3553. Periodicals Postage Paid at San Francisco, CA, and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement #40612608. Canadian GST Registration No. 82247 2809 RT0001. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Bleuchip Intl, PO Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to Dwell, PO Box 5100, Harlan, IA 51593-0600.
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one last thing PHOTO BY | @MICHAELFRIBERG
Michael Friberg
For 20 years, Los Angeles designer and professor Jennifer Siegal has been pushing the limits of modular housing through her firm OMD, most recently with a series of prefab accessory dwelling units just released this fall. Here, she shares the story of a knickknack that she always keeps nearby.
A tiny wind-up toy keeps prefab proponent Jennifer Siegal’s mind on mobility.
I founded my design firm, Office of Mobile Design, in 1998 to work on transportable and demountable environments—what many people refer to as prefab or container homes. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with mobility. As a child, I turned wood blocks and Hot Wheels into cities of 132
flying cars, ran a mobile candy store, and broke my knee while riding my bike down a hill in front of my house with roller skates on. It’s in my blood. On a shelf in my office sits a wind-up metal robot-vendor toy, a gift I received when I was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard. I spent that year exploring
the use of intelligent, kinetic, lightweight materials. Today the whirling toy reminds me of when I owned and operated a hot dog cart while putting myself through graduate school at SCI-Arc. (I followed in the footsteps of my maternal grandfather, who had a hotdog cart on Coney Island.) My
record-breaking sales day came at a Grateful Dead concert. I ran out of dogs and made do with mustard, sauerkraut, and buns. But most of all, the toy reminds me that joy can be found in simplicity and through living lighter on the land, which remains my true life’s work.
NOV E M B ER/DECEM B ER 2018
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