January 9, 2009
The Central Utah Relocation Center near Delta was later renamed Topaz Camp, after Topaz Mountain, which loomed over it to the west. When it opened on Sept. 11, 1942, several rows of tarpaper barracks had been finished and outfitted...
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12:53 PM
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January 4, 2009
The original title of Marcel Breuer's December 1943 article for California Arts & Architecture was "Design for Postwar Living." But he changed it to "On a Design of a Bi-Nuclear House." [Actually, on the typescript, he wrote "By Nuclear," which...
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10:11 AM
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January 1, 2009
So far, I haven't been able to get the LIFE Magazine photo archive on Google to return more than 200 images at a time. So who knows how many photos Ralph Morse actually took of the awesome nursery Juliet...
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8:36 AM
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December 23, 2008
Until the real estate market exploded, modular prefabricated modernist houses that were intended to combine the quality finish and economies of off-site construction, but that ended up costing as much as, if not more than, straight-up custom design were...
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1:44 AM
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December 20, 2008
Uh, wow. OK. Calvin Klein, which is now owned by Phillips-Van Heusen, commissioned Josh Prince-Ramus, the guy who bailed on Rem Koolhaas to start his own firm REX, to design a dollhouse for the Madison Avenue store's holiday display....
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12:08 AM
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December 5, 2008
I'm going to operate on the assumption that some people, somewhere have actually been buying Sirch's Villa Sibi. One possible explanation for the the nearly 50% price increase for new Villa Sibis [from $600 in 2004 to $855 today]...
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11:23 PM
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November 25, 2008
Readers of the previous Ikea post may have the mistaken impression that I disapprove of the "shipping palette aesthetic." Pas de tout. I mean, just check out this insane kids room built by a dad somewhere in France sometime in...
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10:14 AM
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November 9, 2008
Gary Panter was creative director of one of the most groundbreaking children's TV shows in a generation PeeWee's Playhouse. On the heels of that success, he also designed a children's playroom for Ian Schrager & Philippe Starck's Paramount Hotel...
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10:30 PM
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November 3, 2008
Uh, Campana Brothers, can I see you outside for a minute? When Ian Schrager reopened the dumpy Paramount Hotel in Times Square in 1990, it had been redesigned by Philippe Starck. The rooms were still tiny, but the lobby...
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5:50 PM
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November 2, 2008
Ho. Lee. Smokes. Mister Jalopy posted the making of video for Greg Lynn's giant plastic riding toy recycling project. I previously criticized Lynn's project, but I clearly had incomplete information. Lynn is not only off the hook, he is off...
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8:09 AM
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October 30, 2008
Remember last month how I mocked the Venice Biennale-winning installation, Recycled Toy Furniture by blob-loving architect Greg Lynn for being neither recycled, nor toy, nor furniture? I mean, seriously, you expect me to believe there are giant, plastic ride-on eggplants??...
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9:14 PM
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October 26, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } exterior 1, originally uploaded by j&mgorman. Josh's' son Camden is almost two and getting into...
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4:24 PM
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October 24, 2008
Now I like modern architecture and the Dutch and the babies as much as the next guy--probably even more. But it's not the wood stove, or the firewood that looks like it was picked up from the forest floor...
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12:17 AM
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October 20, 2008
I've got to clear these damn browser tabs. Anchor Stone Blocks were created in Germany in the late 19th century. They're red, yellow, and blue cast stone, designed to mimic the brick, limestone, and slate, respectively, of traditional European...
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11:07 PM
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October 18, 2008
Taliesin Architects was founded to carry on the work and philosophy of Frank Lloyd Wright. And while I don't know if Wright ever actually designed a treehouse, I expect if he did, it would have looked a lot like...
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4:26 PM
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It's a small New Jerseymodern design world after all. Did you know that architects Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino, whose EVA Foam kids furniture [above] is produced by Offi, are experts in renovating and modernizing Frank Lloyd Wright's postwar buildings?...
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3:18 PM
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October 4, 2008
Did you know it's actually illegal for a broker to call a building "family friendly"? True. The NY Times has an article with very useful tips for figuring out if you could actually put a kid in the $2.5 million,...
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Posted by greg at
11:08 AM
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Comments (0)
September 24, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } lotfollah mosque, isfahan oct. 2007, originally uploaded by seier+seier+seier. Two Danish architects took their daughter...
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9:35 PM
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Comments (2)
September 18, 2008
Huh? CAD monkey/architect Greg Lynn's Recycled Toy Furniture won an award at the Venice Biennale [not the real Biennale, the architecture one, but still], despite the fact that the only "furniture" aspect is the tacked on tabletops; giant plastic...
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11:46 AM
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August 25, 2008
NY Times illustrator and subway fanatic spawner Christoph Niemann is at it again. Last month, it was his awesome story-in-paint, "The Boys And The Subway," which detailed his young sons' fascination with the New York City subway system. Now...
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11:18 PM
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August 14, 2008
The NY Times has a nice-but-crazy story about artist Brad Hwang and his family who live aboard the Odin, a 98-foot barge in Berlin. Hwang built out most of the spaces himself, starting with the playroom for the two...
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Posted by greg at
12:16 AM
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Comments (2)
August 7, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Waiting for The Last Hex, originally uploaded by daddytypes. Alright, I've finally got my photos...
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9:52 AM
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July 21, 2008
So Saturday we flew out from Washington, DC to Utah for a couple of weeks to see various grandparents--and the Spiral Jetty, of course, but that won't be until next week. No matter how many times we do it, flying...
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Posted by greg at
12:14 AM
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July 15, 2008
The nursery in a fastidiously restored, mid-century modernist California tract home. It's the space that launched a thousand trips to Ikea. CA Modern magazine has a story about how kids are not actually incompatible with your Eichler house's modernist lifestyle....
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Posted by greg at
8:44 AM
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Comments (3)
June 9, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Rockefeller Center, originally uploaded by peterjr1961. What My Dad Gave Me by Chris Burden is...
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2:00 PM
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June 7, 2008
I realized this morning as I was showing the kid the NY Times' animation of how the National Park Service is lifting Alexander Hamilton's 206-year-old country house up and over the church next door, then driving it around the...
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12:14 PM
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I didn't think much of it at the time, but once the kid came along, I always wondered where that 1960's Jean Prouvé swing set Patrick Seguin showed at Sonnabend in 2003 ended up. The answer is on art...
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8:16 AM
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May 2, 2008
So this morning Andy forwards me a link to a very promising blog, Playscape, which will focus on the art and science of playground design. And one of the first posts is the Playgoda, an awesome, slot-together laminated plywood...
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6:47 PM
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Comments (1)
April 26, 2008
Daniel Franzen's painted steel dollhouse has serious curb appeal. The shape is inspired by Swedish barns, and relates to a series of cabins Franzen's firm, Bunker Hill, is designing for the reclaimed wood specialty firm Arvesund. It comes with...
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12:21 PM
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April 22, 2008
"'Bye for now,' says the man of the house as he retreats into think tank. Though it dominates a room, it can be quickly disassembled. At [right] Isaacs contemplates interior collage." Ken Isaacs, is there anything modular and plywood...
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9:26 AM
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March 26, 2008
More sweet loft modules cribbed from magazines. I was really digging the Lego wall, so grabbed this shot of Nina Tolstrup's painted MDF kidshouse from her profile in the latest issue of Dwell. Only when I got home did...
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2:17 PM
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Judging by her firm's online porfolio, Merge Architects principal Elizabeth Whittaker has never designed a plywood loft built-in she didn't like. And that apparently goes for her own kid's nursery, too. The April issue of Boston Magazine features awesome...
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1:38 PM
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February 29, 2008
Baby names can come at you in the most unlikely places:Nina Foch married James Lipton, eesh, and also long ago played the woman who found baby Moses in "The Ten Commandments." The kid, Taliesin Jaffe (!!!), went on to be...
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9:07 PM
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Comments (3)
February 21, 2008
Youngblood's an architect who recently moved his family of four into the house they just built in Maine. He blogged about the construction and challenges of the modern project, which was inspired by the traditional form of a Native...
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8:55 AM
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Comments (2)
February 15, 2008
The LA Times has a nice article about a mini-renaissance of interest in the architecture of William Krisel. His butterfly-roofed, open-plan tract homes brought affordable modernism to Palm Springs in the 50's. Now his work is being reissued, so...
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Posted by greg at
9:05 AM
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Comments (0)
February 7, 2008
While surfing around for some kitchen cabinets last night, I inadvertently stumbled upon one of the earliest Landmarks [wait, too early to use that word? No, it is not.] of the Golden Age Of Hipster Parenting: a playhouse dating...
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Posted by greg at
11:18 AM
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Comments (2)
February 6, 2008
Yeah, so I bought the book the Buckminster Fuller Master Index credits Bucky's crib design to: the all-new 1946 edition of Louise Zabriskie's parenting handbook, Mother & Baby Care in Pictures. Sure enough, there's the Kiddie Koop in all...
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Posted by greg at
9:26 PM
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Comments (2)
December 25, 2007
The Soft City is a Toronto-based artists' collective who have charged themselves with creating and managing a cuddly plush city in miniature. Sort of a Sim City with sewing machines instead of computers:We recognize the mutually defining relationship between the...
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6:50 PM
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Comments (2)
December 20, 2007
Well, if a "concerned" mom who was interested in the tween skankover mall chain Club Libby Lu because her daughter "was considering working there," and who had "read some horrible things online" took time during the busy holiday season to...
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Posted by greg at
11:22 PM
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Comments (1)
December 13, 2007
And this is the Audi TT Roadster that Eric drove from Miami to extensively remodel the house that The Hungry Caterpillar built. And these are the abstract acrylic collages which replaced the white paper on the Ingo Maurer chandelier...
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7:32 AM
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Comments (1)
December 12, 2007
From a photo tour of a Massachusetts family's loft, which is in a converted elementary school, Apartment Therapy, March 2005:That huge cardboard tube is going to be an access route through which the kids will crawl to reach a...
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Posted by greg at
11:50 PM
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Comments (2)
December 3, 2007
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Where are all the hippie visionaries when you need'em? In the 50's and 60's, designer...
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8:27 PM
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November 30, 2007
The kid and I were stuck at the DMV yesterday, so I missed the press preview of The New Museum. [I was just there last week, though, because I had to pick up a new counter for our steel...
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8:22 AM
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Comments (0)
November 23, 2007
I got all excited last night when I saw a big jigsaw puzzle from the Expo 67 in Montreal, which was the overall raddest Expo ever. [Even if there were no Buckminster Fuller sphere, Habitat, or Dutch pavilion made...
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Posted by greg at
11:30 AM
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November 21, 2007
Alright, that's rather brilliant. The new addition this year to Muji's ______-in-a-Bag series of wooden toys is Barcelona. And it includes a little wooden Mies Barcelona Pavilion, along with the Sagrada Familia and La Pedrera apartments by Gaudi. The...
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8:53 PM
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Comments (2)
November 17, 2007
It's like the Farnsworth House without the floods; the Schindler Kings Rd House without the pegboard; the Case Study House No. 21 without the corrugated metal; the Barcelona Pavilion without the chairs [though I guess they're sold separately now.]...
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Posted by greg at
9:02 PM
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Comments (4)
November 7, 2007
Q: Is the obsession with mini-sized modernism that leads someone to pay $790 for a sweet-yet-anonymous, architect-made, Plexi-on-a-lazy-susan, modernist dollhouse on eBay the same kind that leads someone to create a blog devoted exclusively to modernist dollhouses? A: Yep....
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5:03 PM
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Comments (6)
November 3, 2007
From Dan's thoughtful City of Sound post about the implications of suburban planning on the California fires, there's this wire service photo of a young couple and their BOB Ironman. The city as destructive system: wildfires, Dresden and the...
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9:41 AM
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Comments (2)
October 24, 2007
The army of designbloggers is making us wait again, this time for photos and reportage from Dutch Design Week. DDW involves all the design schools as well as Dutch firms, so it should be a source of some interesting,...
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2:59 PM
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Comments (0)
September 27, 2007
How does Joyce Wadler find these people? The NY Times Home section has the renovation fairy tale of the extremely handy drummer Mark Robohm, who gut-renovated his 400-sq ft Chelsea studio for $11,500 while living in it. Now he and...
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8:52 AM
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Comments (1)
September 26, 2007
I don't know about you, but all this copyrighted image outrage just wears me out! Let's take a funbreak--and look at these sweet archival images of Isamu Noguchi's various playground designs which archiblogger Andrew Raimist uploaded to flickr. They were...
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10:34 PM
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September 12, 2007
One of my favorite architecture and urban space bloggers, Dan Hill, of City of Sound, is a new dad [mazeltov, Celia & Dan, hi Ollie!]. [Which means he helped put on the awesome NYC symposium/happening Postopolis! in May just weeks...
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Posted by greg at
7:34 PM
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Comments (1)
August 12, 2007
So an architect-designed playhouse sold for $790 on eBay? Big whoop. For that, you could sink a couple of posts on this wood-and-steel mesh outfit. It's on Long Island--judging by the Lilly Pulitzer and the loafers and the neighboring...
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2:54 PM
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July 23, 2007
The kids were demanding their own rooms, and Tom Lloyd-Butler and his partner Dan Zelen needed extra space for their surfboards, so they carefully added on to the sweet 2BR mid-century modern house that UC Berkeley architecture professor Ernest...
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9:17 AM
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Comments (2)
July 19, 2007
The visionaries at Pandiscio have graciously provided a color version of Bela Borsodi's portrait of Cuddle Me Condos, and I think we can all agree that One Kenmare has never looked moodier, Urban Glass House has never looked whippier, 40...
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12:54 PM
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No way, how much do I love MVRDV? The Rotterdam architecture firm just won the competition to build an extension to the city's Museum Boijmans van Beuningen that will house some public space, but also storerooms and archives for...
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10:58 AM
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Comments (1)
July 16, 2007
In the 1960's in Japan, when the Maeda Outdoor Art Company unveiled a serpentine mound of polished concrete called "Play Sculpture: Stone Mountain," someone trying to be helpful told the artist, "If you'd just put a head on it,...
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11:27 PM
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Comments (3)
July 2, 2007
That's Dutch as in JD, Juniper's dad, of course, not the country. Though the Netherlands is known for the quality of their kid's design, I'm afraid the whole Bugaboo-pushing lot of them takes a backseat to our Dutch, who...
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12:00 AM
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Comments (2)
June 27, 2007
What becomes a legendary building in an overheated Manhattan real estate market most? Lesser breeds of developers have been known to hire fashion designers to decorate the lobby. To commission Jade Jagger to put her name on the galley kitchen....
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2:57 PM
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Comments (1)
June 18, 2007
Thank heaven New York still has a few flatout crazy people left. And that they don't live on our block. I clicked on the NYT slideshow hoping to see more pictures of the cuh-razy fun real estate battle brewing...
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Posted by greg at
9:10 AM
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Comments (1)
June 7, 2007
As everyone now knows, modernist playgrounds are the new hotness. And as everyone who knows modernist playgrounds knows, during the Robert Moses era, the New York Parks Department suffocated many a sweet modern playground proposal in its crib. Creative...
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12:49 PM
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Comments (1)
Neighbors, friends, and acquaintances of the architect Philip Johnson, whose masterpiece, Glass House, has recently opened to the public for tours, reminisce in The New York Times. Among them, "longtime New Canaan resident" Ms. Ruth Smithers, who took her...
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Posted by greg at
10:31 AM
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May 7, 2007
OK, I am officially in awe. DT reader AJ just sent photos of the freakin' geodesic dome he just built for his 2-year-old daughter. Here are his simple tips for cranking out your very own dome in no time:...
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2:51 PM
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Comments (9)
April 25, 2007
You wanna know the difference between our hippies and the hippies in the 70's? They both lived in lofts on the Lower East Side; they both went on about the environment, and they both built geodesic domes out of...
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1:38 PM
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Comments (2)
April 23, 2007
Holy smokes. Grace at Design*Sponge persuaded Dutch and Wood and Juniper to take pictures of their Detroit townhouse, which was designed by Mies van der Rohe. Though the photos say otherwise, Dutch claims, "We are not designers or artists....
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5:37 PM
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Comments (3)
April 12, 2007
One of the first of [way too] many [I'm sure] warnings I started giving the kid, even before her vision focused more than 3 feet away, was, "Plastic bags, not a toy." Which is funny, because in the late...
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9:51 AM
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February 2, 2007
The kid and the wife built MoMA this morning out of blocks. As she gave us the tour, she pointed out that it has a tower, an atrium, some sculptures, and a garden--with trees and a bridge. And some...
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Posted by greg at
6:06 PM
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Well this is five kinds of cool right here. Designer Richard Hutten gave Dutch TV station KRO a tour of his house in Rotterdam, where he lives with his two sons. The creator of such kid-friendly classics as the...
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Posted by greg at
4:15 PM
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Comments (0)
February 1, 2007
It's what the blogosphere was built for, people. A few years back, the industrial detritus-loving architecture firm LO/TEK remodelled a typical loft apartment in the West Village, replacing the sleeping mezzanine with a factory-style catwalk--and king-sized sleeping pods set into...
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2:16 PM
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Comments (4)
January 30, 2007
The Philip Johnson Glass House mention reminded me of this August 2006 article from Metropolis about Eliot Noyes, who, in his work at MoMA and later at IBM, helped launch the careers of the Eameses and Eero Saarinen. [And...
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Posted by greg at
4:17 PM
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Comments (3)
