Modern and Hippie Modern

In Islamorada. More here and here.
We've always loved that top one, but the wood, overgrown tropicalia, and wraparound porch of the bottom are awesome.
And I'm calling it Hippie Modern, but with boat in the front yard and the Corvette in the carport you could just as easily call it Kenny Powers Modern. Or just Kenny Powers' house, I guess. When did that become my style? uh oh!

related (and on the same street):

The Ghost and Mrs. Snowblood

Squeaky-voiced 1930's actress Jean Arthur's house in Carmel California, 1976.
Equal parts Lady Snowblood and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,
with a little helping of the Mines of Moria and Fangorn Forest.

And that's just the living room.

Richard Scarry's Best Vacation House Ever

At St. Jean Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera.

From the book "The Busy, Busy World of Richard Scarry"

...and the Google Street View is, as expected, incroyable:

also I do believe I can see either Olympia or Fiona getting into her BMW.

Calif.

Chateau Marmont by Jenny Agutter (Logan's Run, An American Werewolf in London) from her awesome book Snap.

Coincidentally Dennis Stock's more awesome book is loaded with photos of ape extras hanging around Los Angeles, taken during the filming of Planet of the Apes, 1968. But I just love these two photos.

Midnight and yellow

Top: Casa Bricall in Vilassar de Mar, Barcelona, 1975, by Studio PER. From habitat: Areas of Communication, 1976.

Above: 11 Harrowhouse-ish 1963 Ferrari 250 LM (with Dubai plates). From the 1980 Octopus book Great Marques: Ferrari.

The 1940 Book of Small Houses

A few pages from The 1940 Book of Small Houses, a treasure trove of International Style. 

Above, for a competition between modern and traditional styles put on by LIFE magazine, Frank Lloyd Wright presents his modern Usonian "good time space" to the Blackbourn family, who, out of four families in the competition, are the only ones to choose a modern house. From the book: 

"The Blackbourns like both houses. The traditional house includes everything they were sure they wanted. They chose the other house. "It is completely different," they say. "It is the only house of its kind in the country. We chose Mr. Wright's design entirely on its own merits." The Blackbourns are now convinced that they want to live not as they have always lived, but in the manner made possible by the modern house." 

Kudos to them. Below are some other designs, including two by Richard Neutra, one which came in second place in a Ladies Home Journal contest, and another which merited only an also-ran in an American Gas Association contest. If you're ever thinking about building your own house, this is an excellent book.

Click to enlarge them all.

another LIFE modern house not chosen, even with the awesome ping pong room.

Brutalism & BMWs

Brutalist pegboard- notice how the lights can be moved to any hole.

Above, from Suzanne Slesin's 1987 book "Japanese Style", including Toyo Itoh's awesome ping pong courtyard, Tadao Ando's supercool partially bermed brutalism, and Kenji Hongo's vertical bunker with its 1978 BMW 530i parked in the rock garden garage.

Below: the cover of next month's Brutus Casa (from Japan). Related? Probably not, but those older BMWs do go nicely with giant slab architecture.

Read more about the cover house above over at What We Do Is Secret

Lynn Chadwick and Lypiatt Park

Our latest guest post at Apartment Therapy documents John Russell's 1963 article for Vogue about British sculptor Lynn Chadwick and his home Lypiatt Park,

"Castle Tomorrow".

style="text-align: center;">Read it here

Willkommen to the Puppenhaus

Having had odd one-of-a-kind handmade dollhouses on the brain since reading Daddytypes' post about the Gerrit Rietveld house, when Linda spotted this "Calif. Modern Doll House" on an auction site we thought we'd query the encyclopediac mind of Daddytypes himself, Greg Allen as to the scoop. If he didn't know anything, we'd assume it was something some Southern Californian dad made his daughter one post-war weekend (or two). But Greg sent word back that this was in fact a Puppenhaus, made in East Germany circa 1960. A quick switch-of-the-gears of our made up provenance had us thinking this was even cooler (colder?). Visit the Puppenhausmuseum for loads of DDR photos. And yes that's a cactus.

Wary Meyers multi-compartmented dresser (in progress), or, What Would Donald Judd Wear?

Inspired by Moshe Safdie's Habitat '67, Donald Judd, backpacks, and cancerous growths on trees. We just needed to decide whether there should be doors or drawers on the added wooden boxes, and unfortunately this indecision kept it from the tight deadlines of Wary Meyers' Tossed & Found, although we did use an unfinished shot as a chapter opening. It's now keeping company with other unfinished projects in our basement, but the plan is to finish it before it gets too cold outside to saw 25 drawers and doors. (We now think drawers up top and doors at the bottom).

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Sunday Linda and I went to a yard sale which was pretty much a small collection of things we didn't have much interest in. However, plunked in the middle of the driveway was a ramshackle wood paneling dollhouse that at least looked older than everything else. Upon closer inspection it turned out to be a groovy little oddity completely out of place and literally out of time. The woman told us her father made it for her back in the 70's, and now her own kids are grown and nobody wants it.  She said her daughter was going to use it in her police work to recreate crime scenes, but then changed her mind. We also passed on it, although we did appreciate the use of surplus materials, the Deborah Bowness-esque taped-on-the-wall furnishings, the inside-out paneling, and the upstairs-downstairs country kitsch theme. But its main appeal was its madcap curtains soul.

I felt a kindred spirit in the father, as I made pretty much the same

 thing (although just a studio apt.) for Linda a few years ago:

World of Exteriors

Biddeford Pool, Maine