I am excited to introduce house plans by Andrus Elm and Oliver Kangro of Concept Home, a company from Estonia on the Gulf of Finland with wide engineering, architecture, and development experience across Southern Europe and Scandinavia. Concept Home is the newest member of our International Exclusive Studio, which also includes plans by architects from Australia, Brazil, India, Ireland , and Italy. I’m drawn to Concept Home’s open and adaptable layouts, wide range of plan types, and warm contemporary style. Plan 537-9, for

example, which has 1,487 sq. ft., would work well for a ski chalet or a country getaway, with its strong

indoor-outdoor connections (terraces on two sides) and upstairs balcony leading

to two bedrooms, which lets the upper level share views out the tall living room window wall. Plan 357-13, below, has 4 bedrooms, three baths in 2,300 sq. ft.

boasts a handsome extended hearth in the living area and a generous covered

dining terrace off the kitchen. With its shed roof, vertical board siding, and

window wall, Plan 537-17 recalls classic modern designs like the Sugar Bowl Ski

Lodge of 1939 designed by architect William Wurster (photo courtesy 2729

Hyperion.com) and a mid 1960s house like this one at Sea Ranch by Joseph Esherick (photo courtesy Sea Ranch Escape).The layout of Plan 537-17 is

carefully thought out with a multi-functional island — for cooking and dining –

separating the kitchen from the living area, a large storage closet near the kitchen, and terraces at front and rear on the ground floor and deck above. The aim of Concept Home is to design houses that are flexible, functional, full of

natural light (this is Plan 537-4), and inexpensive to build. They feel natural and warm. And, according to Concept Home: “Most of our houses can be adjusted to passive house principles in a great variety of geographical locations. We believe that a modern house must be energy-efficient.” Bravo.

So welcome home, Andrus and Oliver — or should I say it in Estonian: Tere tulemast kodu!!

I’m always drawn to the orderly, spare, modern designs you see in glossy home magazines and books. But my house is not so spare and not everything is in its place. I’m kind of a pack rat as my wife — and office mates — will tell you. I go through periodic bouts of frenzied cleaning but the tide of newspapers, magazines, and books rises regularly. So I was pleased to come across the ingenious new book by Molly Jane Quinn and Jenna Talbott aptly titled It’s Lonely in The Modern World (Chronicle, 2011), which is an ironic primer on how to navigate the field of architectural minimalism.

These are the people who started the clever blog Unhappy Hipsters, which takes a wry look at ambitiously artful modern homes like this one and the way they’re

portrayed, where the individuals on the stoop seem quite unaware of what’s behind them (or perhaps it’s the elephant on the deck; image courtesy ifound). In these sorts of houses messy realities — like the need for windows and daylight, for example — never intrude, especially in architectural magazines. But spoofs are the sign of a publication’s success. (Remember the Tolkien parody Bored of the Rings by the Harvard Lampoon, and the one of Sunset magazine with a photo of a family picnicking in front of a nuclear reactor.) So I started looking around for ways to be both hip and realistic — i.e hide the clutter in sleek and elegant ways –  like this handsome storage bench from Herman Miller. It would help with all the bags

and blankets at the bottom of our bed. Or maybe we just need a new bed frame that incorporates storage drawers, like this version from Bluedot, which

streamlines a storage idea that was popular in the 1960s and 70s. Then what about a place for charging cameras, iphones and ipads? Bludot’s “Juice box” is

a clever solution in the way it hides the plugs and keeps the wires under control (image courtesy Mashable). This loft bedroom by Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture includes an

especially clever stair/bureau with pull-out storage drawers — though I would

probably need a railing, and I notice that the books seem to be piling up…

So in the end I confess I am impossibly conflicted because I am a huge fan of spareness and the uncluttered look and am always promoting it, while only rarely achieving it myself. Our Plan 491-2 by Braxton Werner and Paul Field

might be one answer to my dilemma — it’s uncluttered but not severe, there is storage, and pillows are scattered on the floor!

Brad Pitt has long been interested in landmark residential architecture, having co-authored a book on the Blacker house of 1907 designed by Greene & Greene, as well as having founded the Make It Right Foundation for housing in the Ninth Ward of post-Katrina New Orleans. According to Celebuzz, he’s also a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, at Bear Run, Pennsylvania,

which he visited in 2006 (photo of Brad and Angelina by Cara Armstrong, courtesy Celebuzz). All of which brings to mind the starring roles of architectural elements like the cantilever — which Wright made so famous in his waterfall -lunging design. This is evidently partly why Brad is interested — he’d like to build on a similar site some day. (Maybe we can provide a plan!) Indeed, the cantilever, defined as a projecting beam or member supported only at one end, is very seductive. Alvar Aalto’s cantilever chair for Artek of the early

1930s is a perfect example (photo courtesy Kissthedesign).  So

is one of Marcel Breuer’s famous metal chairs (photo courtesy Factoidz) designed in the late 1920s. The trick is to provide enough counterweight or balance to support the projection. The idea was quickly adopted by the most progressive architects of the 20th century for its expressive quality as a form of  abstract space-shaping sculpture, as Marcel Breauer did in the first

house he designed for his family in New Canaan, Connecticut of 1947 (photo courtesy Archives of American Art). Architect and Breuer biographer Robert F. Gatje, who worked in the Breuer office for many years, told me that the “floating” portion of this house worked well — no posts to get in the way of the carport below it — but that it always had a certain “bounce” to it, especially on the deck. No doubt it gave Mrs. Breuer an extra spring to her step. The cantilever is in fact a space-saver and architects often use it where there is a desire to minimize site disturbance or to take dramatic advantage of a view, as the architectural firm

Anderson Anderson did with this house in the Cascade Mountains north of Seattle (photos above and below courtesy Anderson Anderson).

The architects give a good rationale for this design: “The small ground floor building footprint/foundation reduces the cost of this expensive area of the house, and allows the points of attachment to adapt to varying slope and soil conditions with minimal disruption of the natural topography.” In other words they can use this or similar designs on a variety of rugged sites. With cantilevers, things can get dramatic very fast, as in the “Ribbon House” by the Perth, Australia firm H + AA.

Not only is the  glass-walled living room projecting into the landscape but the roof appears to be rippling into the sky as if caught by a sudden gust of wind.

I think a cantilever is most useful for a house if it can be used in a way to maximize the appreciation of a beautiful landscape feature, the way a great bridge does. So Brad, I hope you find a good site, first!

A Good Idea

With football bowl season upon us — not to mention the second series of Downton Abbey — it’s time to look around for the correct TV remote — now where did you see it last? So here’s an idea that my wife Mary dreamed up: the Multiple Pocket Remote Holster!

Straightforward sewing around a long dowel, from which it hangs. Fabric and pattern up to you. There. Now it’s easier to find the clicker so you can watch the latest Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie film!

Now, during the holiday week, is a good time to dream about rest and relaxation in your own rural getaway. So here’s a short list of architecturally suggestive cabins.

One. The prefab in the trees by Swedish firm Cyrén & Cyrén gives new meaning

to lodging, not to mention lodge-pole pines. It’s a bedroom unit in the Tree Hotel, located in Harrads, near Sweden’s Lule River, and looks like it came from a galaxy far far away (photo above courtesy Inhabitat, photo below courtesy Dezeen). A catwalk leads to the

rooftop entrance (one of the other suspended rooms is a mirror cube). Improbable and delightful — I want to go there! Presumably a gentle breeze will rock you to sleep, but if you hear a chain saw it may be time to check out.

Two. Continuing the rustic theme, here’s a cabin designed by Hans Linberg (of Swedish cleantech start-up EcoSpark) that uses tree trunks as a way of

playing with geometry: more of a log box than a log cabin. In full camouflage mode (the wood covers a prefab plastic and steel frame) with the shutters down, the

logs pile up and the hut disappears — well, almost. “Ceci n’est pas un woodpile,” as Duchamp might say. I like the way the design takes the idea of the duck blind and runs with it (quite far away!). Images courtesy Dornob.

Three. Architect David Coleman describes his Hill House in Winthrop, Washington as a “20 ‘ wide x 115′

long stepped platform… sited on a long, narrow, rocky hillside…it reads as a habitable landscape” (photos courtesy David Coleman). I like the way it culminates in the deck with the round fire

pit defined by gabion (rock filled cages) walls on the master suite end, and with another deck and more gabions on the living room end, as if the structure is growing out of or into the land itself (photo courtesy Mocoloco.) This simple serene progression from public to private and vice versa is evocative: home as a short architectural hike…

Four. This urbane floating home on Seattle’s Lake Union by Vandeventer & Carlander Architects puts the main entertaining spaces — organized as a series of framed openings within an elegant

box — on the upper level. The living room veranda is carved out of the rectangular volume to sharpen sight lines across the water. It also cantilevers over the lower floor to shelter the deck off the master bedroom. The design shows how to swim with geometry (photo courtesy Karmatrendz).

Five. “Packed But Never Shipped” might be a good name for this clever cabin by Olson Kundig Architects.

When the window flaps — resembling warehouse pallets — are down they form the surrounding deck platforms so the tiny structure can expand (images courtesy Olson Kundig). When the vacation ends, the platforms fold up for security and the house is effectively crated, to await the next weekend when it can be unpacked and played with again. Take care of your toys and they will last longer!

These design approaches appeal to me because they are all about serious play: taking inspiration from settings, structure, and materials to fashion something unique and memorable. Use them — along with the many serious and seriously playful schemes in our Cottage Plans Collection and One Bedroom Plans Collection, like 479-1 by architects Peter Brachvogel and Stella Carosso (below)

or 517-1 by architect Jonathan Feldman (below);

or 452-2 by architect David Wright (below)

to help you jump start your own getaway cabin dreams. (When you browse these collections sort by “newest plans” to see our latest designs.) Here’s to the comfort and joy of architectural invention.

]]> http://blog.houseplans.com/2011/12/23/dream-cabins-and-cabin-dreams/feed/ 4 Dan The-Cabin-Cyren-Cyren-10-537x357 from Inhabitat dezeen_Cabin-by-CYRÉN-CYRÉN-5 wood log rustic cabin design from world most beautiful houses wood log rustic cabin design 2 3_full 6_full hill_house_david_coleman_architecture-500x376 Lake Union Floating Home fbwc_041111_01-630x486 479-1re-1642_plan-detail 517-1alt1-860_plan-detail 452-2re-825_plan-detail http://blog.houseplans.com/2011/12/16/holiday-bookshelf-on-kitchens-salvage-edward-durell-stone/ http://blog.houseplans.com/2011/12/16/holiday-bookshelf-on-kitchens-salvage-edward-durell-stone/#comments Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:05:58 +0000 Dan Gregory http://blog.houseplans.com/?p=4460 Continue reading →]]> Supporting Ideas

Before I recommend some home design-related books for your last-minute gift list, let’s consider the bookshelf that will hold those new tomes. Thanks to a cool website called The Design Vote, I came across a poetic version: two artworks by Mike & Maike (produced and sold by an innovative design company called Blankblank) that comment on the influence of words and ideas. Each is a cluster of books on a single theme notched into a shelf that’s a piece of reclaimed hardwood.  One, called “Juxtaposition: Religion” holds religious tracts, including the Bible, Qur’an, and Tao Te Ching (according to the company the art piece is one of twelve things Gwyneth Paltrow can’t live without).

The other,  “Juxtaposition: Power” holds political treatises, from Plato’s

Republic to The Communist Manifesto. By bringing such volumes together and scribing slots for them into the wood so that they all sit at the same level, the artist makes us think about the influence of each book, their competition with each other, and how juxtaposition is important in stimulating curiosity and the imagination itself. The fact that each book has its specific (literal?) slot is also suggestive –

things can get messy — and interesting — when ideas move off the page (out of the slots we invent for them) and into the world at large (a land of many suppositions and juxtapositions).

On a somewhat more practical level, what’s a good shelf that’s flexible enough for changing needs and expanding collections? We used the infinitely adjustable Rakks system of extruded aluminum shelf supports (photo courtesy Rakks),

in the laundry and closets of our Online Ranch House, Plan 508-1 (detail below). The brackets notch into the vertical strips at any point so shelves can be placed

at whatever level you wish. We’ll be using the same system in our Online Country House, Plan 508-2, which is now under construction.

Three New Design Books

Counter Space, by Juliet Kinchin with Aidan O’Connor, accompanied the recent Museum of Modern Art exhibition on design and the modern kitchen – shown below – and offers a fascinating look at how

architects, product designers, and artists re-imagined the kitchen in the 20^th century. For some, such as Viennese architect Grete Schutte-Lohotzky,

it was a kind of laboratory where efficiency, cleanliness, and storage became standard elements. The photo shows the MOMA exhibition replica of her 1926-27 “Frankfurt Kitchen” for affordable public housing. MOMA started collecting stylish kitchen implements in the mid 1930s. Ideas for “Kitchens of Tomorrow” proliferated during World War II. Tupperware appeared in 1958. Television writers and film directors used the kitchen to communicate harmony or chaos. In short, it’s a huge subject – this book just scratches the surface – or should I say, scrubs the sink.

Salvage is always of interest but especially during a difficult economy, so I was drawn to Salvage Secrets by Joanne Palmisano (W. W. Norton & Co.),

which offers a wealth of ideas for using old objects and materials in new ways. She includes a helpful lexicon — for example, recycled refers to items made from salvaged materials whose basic structure has been changed and repurposed means  items reused in a different area of the home or used in a different way — like the antique swing doors adapted as sliders, shown below.

Chapters are on wood, glass, metal, stone/concrete/brick/ceramics, lighting, where to find salvage outlets (a countrywide listing is included), and design concepts. The book shows the wide range of salvageable material available and what to do with it.

Edward Durell Stone was one of the most influential yet least appreciated modern architects. His work was uneven but fascinating. The excellent and exhaustive new biography by his son, architect Hicks Stone (Rizzoli, publisher)

lucidly describes the man, his work, and his contradictions. An abstract modernist, he was strongly influenced by pattern and texture. He developed a form of ornamental grillwork — beginning during his participation in the design of Radio City Music Hall during the 1930s — that culminated in his famous American Embassy in New Delhi,

completed in 1959 (image above courtesy David Cobb Craig blog; below, courtesy Goat Hill Resorts).

Hicks writes that here “Stone had essentially taken a glass building and wrapped it with ornamental screen block.” The interior courtyard is an elegant water garden, expressing — with the screens — not just connections to Indian landmarks like the Taj Mahal, but also to Stone’s lifelong interest in unifying indoor and outdoor space (photo below courtesy Bustler.net).

Stone later used similar concrete block grills on other commissions and then other architects and designers copied the idea and it became a cliché-victim of its own success. (I remember wondering about such screens on dental offices and shopping malls as a boy.) Stone rose from poverty to become one of the country’s most successful architects who counted Eero Saarinen, Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright, and other visionaries among his friends. He also designed some of the earliest dramatically modern American residences,

like the Mandel house at Mt. Kisco, New York, of 1935, with its iconic curving

glass block dining room (photos courtesy Arch News Now). And yet he had a lifelong drinking problem that no doubt lead to his multiple marriages, poorly managed office, and work that occasionally verged on the simplistic and banal. The story brings an important but largely forgotten architect, and architectural culture, back to life. It turns out Stone isn’t easy to pigeonhole — or slip into a notch on a book shelf.