Category archive: architecture

February 8, 2012

Bricked Out Lego Loft

Finally, some more data on building with Lego. A while ago, we had a new radiator cover made for the kid's room, and I had a mind to cover it in Lego bricks, like Simon Pillard and Philippe Rosetti's insanely...
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February 6, 2012

Infantcore

Last fall, artist Nate Page pulled the windowed facade of the Echo Park gallery Machine Project back 25 feet into the space, creating a temporary "sidewalk alcove" he called Storefront Plaza. Which turns out to be the perfect place...
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February 3, 2012

Metamorphokit (1971): Build It Yourself Modular CalArts Dorm Furniture

Good googly moogly, all this work on DIY/modular/industrial/plywood/Bauhaus bedroom furniture and I'm only finding out about Metamorphokit NOW?? I am clearly doing it wrong:Dubbed Metamorphokit by the designers [CalArts faculty member Peter de Bretteville and Toby Cowan], it was...
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January 16, 2012

Specific Kids' Objects

Last Summer, David Zwirner Gallery screened a couple of documentaries about Donald Judd, including The Artist's Studio, a 2010 remix of vintage 1970s footage by Michael Blackwood. Blackwood had filmed Judd and his family both in Marfa [in 1975]...
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Laser-Cut Steel Dollhouse By Bunker Hill

Though he's mostly into Swedish pine and plywood lately, in the mid-to-late 2000's, Stockholm architect Daniel Franzen definitely had a laser-cut steel phase. One result is this awesome steel dollhouse inspired by the barn house he designed for Swedish...
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January 12, 2012

Future Systems For Kids: Hauer-King House

From the way she and Jan Kaplicky divvied up the projects post-divorce, it looks like Amanda Levete got one of Future Systems' first, widely published projects: the 1994 Hauer-King House in Islington, London. It's so funny, I remember totally...
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January 5, 2012

LAT: Schindler With Kid

I would guess that when you marry an architect's daughter, you're not going to be fazed by your father-in-law's inserting himself in your househunting and remodeling projects. In fact, you might even welcome it. Especially if you've got a...
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January 1, 2012

Future Systems For Kids: Dinghy Sofa & Josef's Bed

Until I just reorganized some shelves and went through my stash of their 1990s architecture books, I guess I'd forgotten how utterly awesome Future Systems was. The London firm comprised of Amanda Levete and Czech emigre Jan Kaplicky was...
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December 8, 2011

A Brief Gingerbread Occupy Roundup

Unfortunately, the Gingerbread Occupy camps I've found so far have all the ramshackle visual blandness of the originals, without the political electricity. In other words, they need some gingerbread geodesic domes! Two lonely white chocolate Occupy tents at a gingerbread...
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Gingerbread Geodesic Dome Kit By Scout Regalia

Look, I'm as stoked as the next guy for a gingerbread geodesic dome. And while I was gonna grouse about how Scout Regalia's $25 dome kit is pretty much just two pieces of cardboard, and how, really, the gingerbread...
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November 28, 2011

Scrapwood Playground At Tule Lake Internment Camp

In WWII, Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from the west coast, stripped of basically everything they couldn't carry, and imprisoned in inland internment camps, rows of tarpaper barracks in the desert surrounded by barbed wire fences and guard towers....
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November 2, 2011

We May Now Rebuild Enzo Mari's Big Stone Game Playground.

Thanks to a DT operative who presumably had the good sense not to overpay for his copy of the small, 1969 book, I Giochi per Bambini di Enzo Mari, I think we have enough information to proceed with the...
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October 17, 2011

Get Into Godzilla's Belly: Exhausted, By Simparch

Simparch is an architecture-flavored artist collaborative run by Steven Badgett and Matt Lynch. So naturally, when they built a giant, barebones Godzilla collapsed on his side in 2009 for their exhibition at Open Satellite in Bellevue, WA, they had...
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October 8, 2011

DTQ: Supergraphic Play Cubes In A Modernist Maine Cabin?

Alright, let's figure this one out. Here's a LIFE magazine picture of an otherwise unidentified "Modern Home" in Maine, circa 1969, shot by longtime staff photographer Mark Kauffman. There are a few other images in the set, but no...
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Eames Planking

It's the little metadata differences. Somehow, Andrew from an ambitious project collapsing found this sweet 1948 photo from Google's LIFE Magazine photo archive and sent it along. Maybe if, instead of Rocky Stensrud, Jr., using children's chairs in a...
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October 2, 2011

WTF Cosmo Noah Tsunami Shelter/Playhouse

Oh, man, Shoji Tanaka, the CEO of Cosmo Power, says his company's latest invention, the floatable, fiberglass Noah tsunami shelter [JPY200-300,000], can "also be used as a toy house for children." It says it seats four adults, but I'm...
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September 16, 2011

It's Breathtaking, I Suggest You Try It

Technofetishistofuturistic, shiny, and somewhat ridiculously dread-inspiring, Jean Nouvel is the Mamas and Papas Urbo of architects. [Ha, didn't see that one coming didja?] Which makes it kind of funny that he was DUMBO's Archduke of Gentrification, David Walentas's go-to...
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September 8, 2011

The Big Stone Game: OG Enzo Mari Playground

I'm not finding a lot of details about this, but holy smokes: Enzo Mari playground! Created in 1968 in Carrara for an exhibition of stone design. A newly constructed maquette circulates for years beginning in 2000, part of Aires...
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July 21, 2011

WTFPlayhouses Of The Glorious Revolution

Now I know a thing or two about inordinately expensive playhouses. And I love Houston. And yes, it's true, I was an Internet pioneer-turned-blogger and have posed for Playboy. So you may be thinking it's hard to tell me and...
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July 11, 2011

The Ornament As Crime Nursery

Austro-hungarian modernist architect Adolf Loos is probably most famous for his manifesto, "Ornament as Crime." Unfortunately, Loos had trouble finding a publisher for his sequel, "Non-ornament is Loony Bin." As we can see in the two children's rooms--a nursery...
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June 9, 2011

Mr. Mole's Awesome Attic Playroom

The NY Times goes poking around writer Tom McNeal's house, which has a couple of rather awesome playrooms hidden in the eaves. Their kids are tweens now, but I imagine these were pretty popular back in the day. That...
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May 30, 2011

The Minimii Arne Jacobsen Dollhouse Is A Rareified Object.

Well, it didn't arrive in time for Christmas 2009, but it's available for 2011. And assuming you stopped buying anything else in anticipation of its arrival, you might have enough socked away. Of course, I'm talking about the Arne Jacobsen...
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May 25, 2011

If You Haven't Been Pitched It, It's New To You!

Alright, so this had been bugging me: why Steve Guarnaccia's kind of dopey-yuppie Three Little Starchitect Pigs book just got a promo in the New York Times T Magazine, even though it was actually published two years ago? But after...
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May 18, 2011

Kodomo Bako By Miha Design

In the gut renovation of an older [1977] 71 sq-m condo for a Tokyo family, Naoto Mitsumoto and Naoko Hamana of Miha Design created two sleeping boxes with loft tops for the kids to study and play. While it...
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May 6, 2011

Chupiriffic! Palazzo Chupi Onesies

This is like five kinds of insidery awesomeness, but from Lockhart's twitpic caption, I gather that Curbed account exec @michellecurb whipped up a his&her pair of Palazzo Chupi Onesies for Joey Arak's coming twins. I look forward to seeing...
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May 5, 2011

Is This Chandigarh Playground Available To Order?

This playground structure from Chandigarh, Le Corbusier's planned city in India, is pretty awesome. If you really like it, just wait a while, and someone will loot it and bring it to auction in Paris, New York or Chicago....
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May 4, 2011

A LEGO Room With A View

Yeah, so it's not in a 40-room Georgian country manor in England, just a reno'd rowhouse in Cobble Hill. But at least the New York Times finally came through and showed us the damn Lego Room. Turns out it's...
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April 5, 2011

We Want Lego Rooms, Where's Our Lego Rooms?

So you read that T Magazine story about Dinder House, that 40-room Georgian manor in BF Somerset or wherever England, and you get to the end, and what is the one thing you want to see?:At Crawford's suggestion, they...
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February 9, 2011

There Is An Awesome Plywood Play Cube In A Barn In Europe Somewhere?

Alright, Internet, we have a job to do. In the NY Times, Berkeley feng shui master Liu Ming talked about the inspiration for the multi-function plywood cube-on-wheels his architect Toshi Kasai made for his loft. And it's not Ken Isaacs,...
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You've Come A Little Way, Baby! Marcel Breuer Coloring Book

The 1962 Marcel Breuer Coloring Book was featured on Daddy Types--wow--almost six years ago, but I'd forgotten about it. And the images on the Smithsonian's Archives for American Art site seem to be a little bigger now, so maybe...
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February 6, 2011

O-House: People, Kids Actually Living In Japanese Modernist House

The annoying thing about architecture porn goes triple for Japanese houses: they're always photographed completely empty, or with like one chair, as if they weren't in the land of the manga-hoarding otaku; there's never a trace of kids or...
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January 19, 2011

The Schachter Shack

For a brief, shining moment at the turn of the century, art dealer Kenny Schachter and I shared an architect. It was not, however, Ab Rogers, son of Sir Richard, who would build these sweet little nomadic, origami-like, bed/play...
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December 8, 2010

Small Child Once Lived In Large Loft

The other day I came across this book, Converted into Houses, from an era, 1976, where the idea of converting a loft or industrial building into a house was still novel enough to hang a book proposal on. Nothing...
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November 11, 2010

But There IS An I In I-Beam

Ooh boy, if you thought the cantilevering was dramatic... The New York Times leaves unmentioned the complicated calculations that went into the creation of Madrid architect Anton Garcia Abril's house for his wife and two kids. And I'm not...
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October 26, 2010

¡Atención, Los Publicistas Del Museo!

I don't ask for much, really. I'm not one of those swaghound bloggers mucking around for free samples. Or blackmailing companies with the threats of negative posts because baby needs a new pair of Crocs. And though I mock the...
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October 21, 2010

Really, What Can I, There's Just, I Mean, Holy S-, I, Wow.

Oh, hi, crazy/awesome Chihuly VC mom who finagled a long-term lease on the caretaker's apartment in the pyramid of the Smith Tower in Seattle and installed acres of salvaged marble slabs and a tire swing zipline! Making a Home...
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September 23, 2010

The World's Awesomest Public Toilets, And Not One Changing Table

In three blog posts, the hyper-sustainable architecture duo Brute Force Collaborative has collected images of the world's most incredible public toilets. Real make-a-day-of-it affairs, every one of them. And yet, there appears to be not a single changing table...
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September 19, 2010

Hans Fischli, Architect, Son, Father

After he'd finished his studies at the Bauhaus under Josef Albers and Paul Klee, the 1933 commission to build die Schlehstud house for his parents helped architect Hans Fischli start his own practice in Zurich. Devised as a three-family...
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September 1, 2010

La Biennale Del Bambini

The Venice Architecture Biennale opened last weekend. It's the first time it's been curated by a woman, Kazuyo Sejima, co-founder of the architecture firm SANAA. And because women are just so innately nurturing, the Biennale was transformed overnight into a...
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August 11, 2010

Prahawesome Crib In A Ramp House

Yes, that is what you think it is: an Ikea Gulliver crib on a little homemade platform on a big old ramp floor in a polyurethane-coated house outside Prague that was built for a psychiatrist who wanted a movie...
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July 22, 2010

BldgBlog On BldgBlocks

Everyone's favorite architopian blogger Geoff Manaugh just geeked out over the massive collection of vintage blocks and building toys in the archives of Montreal's Canadian Centre for Architecture. The primary target of his fascination is Dr. Richter's Anchor Blocks,...
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July 20, 2010

MoMA Mystery Solved: Les Levine's 'Star Garden'

It occurred to me today that someone with a sharp eye, who has lived through New York City's art history as it's been made, might recognize this incredible molded acrylic structure pictured in the Museum of Modern Art's garden,...
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July 14, 2010

Pompidou Skate-Park For Child-Artists

So the Centre Pompidou just opened a new l'Atelier des Enfants, an activity and education center for kids ages 2-12. Core77 has photos and some chitchat with the fashion-y designer Mathieu Lehanneur, whose ideas for the space included "a...
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July 1, 2010

I Give Up, Where's The Retractable Baby Bed?

I was so keyed up to the a custom Korean playroom in the NY Times' Home Section slideshow today, that I completely missed this photo, which purports to show "a retractable shelf" which "could be used as a baby...
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June 14, 2010

Awesome OG Playgrounds In Reston, VA

The kid recently had a birthday party nearby, so I took K2 with me to visit Lake Anne Plaza, the original center of Reston, Virginia, a novelty of mid-century modernist urban planning. Reston was founded in 1963, a white...
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June 2, 2010

FOUND: Richard Dattner Made This Mystery, Slot-Together Playground Equipment

It might take some time, but we here at Daddy Types aim to leave no loops unclosed. At least when it comes to awesome-but-obscure playground equipment. Three and a half years ago now, the NY Times ran the photo...
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May 13, 2010

'A Real New York City Kind Of Challenge.'

First off, mazeltov to Chris and Michelle, the proud new parents in the NY Times story about what their designer, Kevin Dumais called "a real New York City kind of challenge," i.e., turning the 2nd bedroom/home office into a...
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May 7, 2010

Frank Gehry Getting Around To Designing A NYC Playground

Big news! Frank Gehry is designing his very first playground! The city has flagged $4 million for the 1-acre project, which will go in at Battery Park City, according to an announcement from the NYC Parks deapartment--dated June 7, 2007....
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April 30, 2010

MoMA Mystery Maze, c.1970

I tried to identify the creator of the incredible molded acrylic-walled structure in this photo before the wife and I headed out of town for a kid-free, backcountry, weekend, but no luck. It's on the wall at MoMA in...
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April 26, 2010

Adventure Playground By Archigram, c.1972

Archigram's massive archive just cracked open all over the Internet. While they're famous for their crazy concept studies and futuristic proposals, one of the architecture collective's realized projects--since demolished--was an adventure playground in Calverton, Milton Keynes, Buckhinghamshire. Which sounds...
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April 8, 2010

The Isabella Boom, Explained

Apparently, if your first name is Isabella, you get free admission for life at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. And if your first name is Renzo, you get free admission for life to every museum with an ill-advised...
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April 6, 2010

Eames X House: Eames House Blocks By House Industries

EAMES EAMES EAMES HOUSE HOUSE HOUSE BLOCKS BLOCKS BLOCKS D'oh! House Industries makes it look so easy, but getting stackable awesomeness by mixing an icon of 20th century architecture with classic fonts turns out to be pretty damn hard....
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March 21, 2010

You Say Donald Judd Photocollage, I Say Donald Judd Dollhouse Schematic

Donald Judd bought 101 Spring Street, a 5-story cast iron loft building, in 1968. He raised his family there and used it as a studio and office space until his death in 1994. The Judd Foundation is closing the building...
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March 15, 2010

Froebel Who? Herzog & deMeuron Condo Model Blocks On eBay

You know how Frank Lloyd Wright said he became an architect because his mother gave him Froebel blocks to play with as a child? Well, guess what, everybody played with blocks as a child Frank, what else ya got?...
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February 26, 2010

Pepsi-Cola Playscape By Jerry Lieberman

Does any headline capture the 1960's ideal playground better than "A Child's Garden of Plastic Delights"? Beginning in 1965, Manhattan designer/dad Jerry Lieberman, under the sponsorship of Pepsi-Cola and the National Recreation and Park Association, worked to develop a...
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February 22, 2010

DT Friday Freakout: Monday Makeup Edition

Tell me why I don't like Mondays? Because they remind me that I have so many open browser tabs left over from the Friday Freakout I didn't do, I start out the week feeling behind. So let's just clear the...
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February 19, 2010

Star Wars Tiles

So I'm coming down a bit from my Neutra bunk bed endorphin rush, still wondering who could tear such a thing out. And then I see the same beds in the same place on architect Emily Jagoda's blog. Now it...
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February 18, 2010

Good Price, Bad Karma: Richard Neutra Bunk Beds

How many ways can a bunk bed kick you in the nuts? These incredible, pared down, cantilevered beds were designed by Richard Neutra--excuse me, Richard FREAKIN' Neutra, in 1959. For the Singleton House, a masterpiece of modernist simplicity set...
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February 17, 2010

Playhouse Modern: Emerson House By Brinca Dada

From the twittering sound of things, I am the only dadblogger who didn't make it to Toy Fair 2010 this year. So I'll have to wait to see the Emerson, a new modernist dollhouse by brinca dada [that's day-duh,...
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January 13, 2010

Spiral Staircase Slide

I love it when a plan comes together. A friend had emailed just the other day, asking if I knew of any more awesome slides built into houses besides that underground eco-dreamhouse deal Alex Michaelis built in London. And...
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December 7, 2009

Finally, Secrets Of The Cardboard Play Dome Revealed!

And here, all this time, I thought the secret to making easy, awesome cardboard play domes was the Esko Kongsberg i-XL24 die-less cutting and creasing table. [Actually, I knew that something was missing. Thanks to veteran domologist Tom Camilli's...
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November 7, 2009

T Is For The Tiniest Shoppers

Wow, who at the NY Times T Magazine offices is having a baby? Because almost the entire Winter Design & Living issue is devoted to kid- and family-related design. Some highlights: Fred Bernstein's got a piece about how it's alright...
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November 4, 2009

Alphabet Google Earth By Thomas de Bruin

I've been spending a bit of time recently in the Netherlands version of Google Earth, and the geometry of the Dutch landscape is really distinctive. And educational! Thomas de Bruin has assembled the entire alphabet, upper and lower case,...
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October 27, 2009

What Was The Vienna Kindergarten At Expo67?

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Vienna Kindergarten, Expo 67, Montreal, originally uploaded by Iqbal Aalam. I'll take Impossibly Idyllic Children's...
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October 19, 2009

LIFE Magazine Not Just For Photos Anymore

Sweet digitized Xanadu, Google has released the entire archive of LIFE Magazine--through 1972, anyway--online. It begins in 1936, and the fifth issue, Dec. 21, has this awesome pram photo with the surprisingly creepy caption, "Lord Beaverbrook's granddaughter and friend."...
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Yes, Please, Thanks: Lego Kitchen By Simon Pillard & Philippe Rosetti

Damn, but I love/hate the Internet. How a simple idea, beautifully executed, can race around the world in serendipitous hops and jumps, shedding facts and context along the way. I don't know who Philippe Simon and Pillard Rosetti or...
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October 14, 2009

Conran Nursery At Heathrow Is New To Me, Anyway

When we were flying to Japan with the kid, we'd sometimes stop into the nursery in the Kansai airport. It was the sole pinprick of enjoyment in that desolate, soulless disaster of an airport. [Seriously, Renzo, W. T. F.?] It's...
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October 13, 2009

Holy Smokes, It's The Tyng Toy!

The Tyng Toy was created by the brilliant young architect Anne Tyng in the late 1940's. It's probably the least well known of toy from the Golden Age of postwar modernist kid's design, an era which also saw toys...
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September 15, 2009

Mid-Century Kids Rooms As Photographed By Maynard Parker

Maynard Parker was a prolific architecture and design photographer based in Los Angeles who shot for House Beautiful, Sunset Magazine, Architectural Digest, for decades. Though he died way back in 1976, his massive archive was donated to the Huntington Library...
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August 10, 2009

WTD: The Ford Buckminster Fullerwagon

Don't let the old-timey photography fool you. The Ford Treasury of Station Wagon Living is not an artifact of the past; it is a blueprint of the future. From the foreword:Like most new ideas, the book has been a...
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Lovely Parting Gift: Gerrit Rietveld Dollhouse

I thought I'd tracked down every last kid-related design Gerrit Rietveld ever made, but it turns out I'd only covered the furniture, not the dollhouses [!]. Gerrit Rietveld presented the plans for this dollhouse to the Jesse family, repeat...
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August 3, 2009

Creative Playthings Store By Studio Works

I'm trying to remember how I found my way to architect Lester Walker's website, but I don't have any trouble remembering what stuck there: the sweet, futuristic retail store that Studio Works designed for Creative Playthings in 1969. Studio...
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July 17, 2009

The Three Little Starchitect Pigs, By Steve Guarnaccia

When it was published in 2000, illustrator and ur-grup Steve Guarnaccia's design snobby retelling of Goldilocks & The Three Iconic Chair-Collecting Bears practically defined the gay uncle gift book genre. Now he's back with another DWR catalogue x fairy tale...
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July 12, 2009

h2o architectes: Ceci N'est Pas Un Loftbed

You may know h2o architectes from such elaborately minimalist children's indulgences inserted into historical buildings as that insane, EUR75,000, 4-level birch ply buildout of that abandoned garden shed for that suburban Paris teenager. Well, they're at it again. A young...
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July 6, 2009

Slides Rule: The 517 Awesomest OG Suberidai In Japan

Andrew posted a few pictures of vintage Japanese slides [suberidai] on his blog, and I realized it's been two years since I visited iharay's amazing online collection. He's up to 517 slides now, and not even half of them...
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June 28, 2009

Midcentury Family Modernism, Ch. 2: The Stahls

Just in time for several busloads of design pilgrims to troop through it during the CABoom/Dwell on Design festivals, the LA Times has a great article about Buck Stahl and his family who still live in Pierre Koenig's Case...
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May 31, 2009

Lord Have Murphy! ECS, Eames Contract Storage

"ECS we hope will help architects, designers and school administrators whose planning and maintenance requirements are extraordinary and multitudinous." In an attempt to expand their reach into the dorm and contract furniture market, Herman Miller launched the ECS, the Eames...
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May 20, 2009

Futuro House, DIY Futuro House

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Why buy a vintage Futuro House at auction for $50,000, which you'd still have to...
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May 12, 2009

Neutraface Blocks: Teaching The ABC's Of Typefaces Since 2009

So awesome. Before House Industries introduced their Alexander Girard-inspired blocks a couple of years ago, the mid-century modernist alphabet block market was in a rut. Actually, it didn't exist, but that's not important now. What's important is that House...
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May 8, 2009

What's Wrong With This Piet Hein Eek Picture?

If you ignore my sloppychoppy highlighting, nothing. But HOLY CRAP, DWELL MAGAZINE! If you're gonna have a fine interview with Piet Hein Eek, and then you add a 27 [!] slide slideshow, DON'T have the caption on the 27th...
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April 22, 2009

Who Makes Those Airbrushed Wrestling Mat Playgrounds?

Did you know that those Habitrail-like indoor playgrounds made out of plastic tubes and padded pipe were invented in 1982 by Jack Pentes? And that his soft modular play [SMP] solutions alleviated baby boomers' fears of letting their kids...
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April 8, 2009

The Egg and Stuff: Mod Swedish Playgrounds by Egon Moeller-Nielsen

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Stockholm - Tessinparken, originally uploaded by jaime.silva. I don't like to get my awesome vintage...
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April 6, 2009

Oh Give Me This Home, Where Las Vaquitas Roam

Because I will not be spending $19.5 million to buy it. New York Magazine cuts a line of pure real estate China White in their feature on this 7,000-8,000 square foot duplex loft atop a West Village garage. But...
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March 27, 2009

Robert Stern Explains Why There Are So Many Male Architects

It's because architecture as a profession is very demanding and involves much international travel. Also, because men don't have to worry about having a family or taking care of them or spending much time with them. Thank you, Dean...
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March 25, 2009

PlayCubes: The Richard Dattner MidCap That Didn't Stick

Along with Paul Friedberg, architect Richard Dattner has been one of the most influential forces in modern playground design in the US. They both championed the adventure playground concept in the 1960's, which called for the transformation of underused...
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March 23, 2009

Baby Remember My Name? Mystery Mid-Century Artist Pool

Can you identify the source of this photo and the artist who lovingly decorated a concrete box in the forest for his kids to play with? Andy posted it to his Reference Library flickr stream last spring, but he...
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March 16, 2009

Heavy, Man: Tank Chair Two-Man [sic] Prefab Ply Rocker By Doug Michels & Bob Feild

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Tank Chair, 1968, Doug Michels & Bob Feild, originally uploaded by daddytypes. I found a...
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February 23, 2009

If Built, Beijing's Giant Baby Would Have Kicked Paris's Giant Baby's Ass

Alright, this is the last giant baby post of the day. Probably. I've been sitting on this for a couple of weeks, but now that Paris has upped the giant baby ante, I think it's it's time. This is...
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Buddha Gas Station Baby Welcomes You To Paris

Paris's love affair with giant babies in the windows of shops which aren't really selling anything continues. This one was spotted in the Marais, crammed into the studio of substance, a design firm founded by a former staffer of...
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February 15, 2009

Mad Mod Ply Dollhouse Prototype On eBay

This sweet, birch ply modernist dollhouse just turned up on eBay, where it's described as "one of just a few modern dollhouse prototypes designed and built by an architect-cabinet maker team. Designs were based on modern houses by Le...
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February 9, 2009

Z-Stream: One Slide-Lookin' Zaha Hadid Sculpture Actually Is Slide

Whether it's a modular sofa or a kitchen island or a whole Ideal House of Tomorrow, since every objet that tumbles out of architect Zaha Hadid's studio looks like a piece of retro-futuristic playground equipment, you might be surprised...
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Righter Than I Knew: Rolly Crump's Tower Of The Four Winds

A couple of years ago, when I posted about the Solar Do-Nothing Machine, created in 1957 for Alcoa by Ray and Charles Eames, I mentioned that though the single prototype didn't survive, its spirit lived on in the facade...
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January 9, 2009

DIY Pre-School & Playground, Topaz Internment Camp, Delta, Utah

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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January 4, 2009

Marcel Breuer, The Postwar Man And The Bi-Nuclear House

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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January 1, 2009

Playing For Kepes

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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December 23, 2008

Sweet Modular Prefab Dream Finally Realiz--Wait, It's A Dollhouse

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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December 20, 2008

Calvin Klein Dollhouse By Josh Prince-Ramus

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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December 5, 2008

Modernist Doll Housing Market Bubble Update: Villa Sibi, $10 On eBay

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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November 25, 2008

Fantastique! Papa Built His Kids A Birds Nest In 70's France

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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November 9, 2008

DTQ&A: Gary Panter On His Classic Paramount Hotel Playroom

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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November 3, 2008

Lost New York: Gary Panter's Paramount Hotel Playroom

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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November 2, 2008

Greg Lynn, For One, Welcomes Our Plastic Toy-Recycling Robot Overlords

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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October 30, 2008

Gregslist: Blobby Architect Wants To Recycle Your Toys Into Furniture

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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October 26, 2008

Mini Mies: Dad Builds A Farnsworth Dollhouse

.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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October 24, 2008

Meet Little Jeroen, Dutch Modernist Hillbilly Child With No Pants

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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October 20, 2008

Anchor Stone Blocks Exist, Are Made Of Stone

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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October 18, 2008

Frankly: Taliesin Treehouse By John Rattenbury

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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Tarantino X Frank Lloyd Wright Mashup, Of Sorts

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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October 4, 2008

First, Get Three Million Dollars: NY Times' Handy Tips For 'Family Friendly' Househunting

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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September 24, 2008

Iran So Far Away

.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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September 18, 2008

Needs More Blobwall: Greg Lynn's Recycled Toy Furniture Somehow Wins Venice Biennale

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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August 25, 2008

But There's No P-Train! NYC Subway Map Rendered In German Bathroom Tiles

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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August 14, 2008

Das Boot Mit Zwei Kinder

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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August 7, 2008

Some Assembly Required: The Porcupine Playdome

.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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July 21, 2008

DT's First Class Advice For Flying

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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July 15, 2008

Whew! Kids And California Modern Houses DO Mix

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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June 9, 2008

Chris Burden's Massive Erector

.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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June 7, 2008

D'Oh, They Moved The Grange House Without Us

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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Found: That Jean Prouvé Swing Set

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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May 2, 2008

Playgoda: Slot-Together Playground Nirvana

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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April 26, 2008

Bunker Hill Lacquered Steel Doll McMansion

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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April 22, 2008

Play-Dodecahedron! The Popular Science Meditator By Ken Isaacs

"'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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March 26, 2008

Sweet Kidshouse From Studiomama

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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Built-In And/Or Wheeled Nursery By Merge Architects

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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February 29, 2008

So Let It Be Written

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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February 21, 2008

The Diaper Champ Does No One Any Good In The Basement

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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February 15, 2008

LAT: BREAKING People Buy House, Boon High Chair, In California

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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February 7, 2008

Ur-Hipster Parents Revealed! Silver Lake Playhouse, Neutra-Inspired, Circa 2001!

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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February 6, 2008

Buckminster Fuller's Kiddie Koop Crib Revealed! Or, Uh, Someone's

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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December 25, 2007

Are The Stores In The Soft City Open Or Closed On Boxing Day?

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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December 20, 2007

Saks To Be You: Club Libby Lu Exec Discovers Joys Of Online Sock Puppetry

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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December 13, 2007

This Is One Of The Houses That The Hungry Caterpillar Built

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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December 12, 2007

Wait, So Did He Build The Plexiglass Playhouse?

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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December 3, 2007

It's My Hippie Kid In A Box! Ken Isaacs' Living Structures

.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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November 30, 2007

Hell, Yes! The View Of, From The New The New Museum

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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November 23, 2007

E Is For Expo 67 Puzzle & Coloring Books, Also For Eh

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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November 21, 2007

Muji Barcelona-In-A-Bag, Pavilion Included

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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November 17, 2007

Un. Be. Lievable Modernist Playhouse For Your Rather Spacious Loft

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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November 7, 2007

Found! That Sick $790 Mod, Spinning Dollhouse

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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November 3, 2007

Strollers In The News: Rancho Bernardo Edition

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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October 24, 2007

Richard Hutten Designer Slide At Dutch Design Week

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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September 27, 2007

Manhattan Couple Celebrates The Miracle Of Square Footage

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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September 26, 2007

Copyright Cluster*@&#: Sweet Vintage Noguchi Playground Scans On Flickr

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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September 12, 2007

City of Sound: A Birth, In 13 Places, On One New Dad's Architecture Blog

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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August 12, 2007

Whoa. Sick Hamptons Playhouse

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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July 23, 2007

Mod Dads' Rad Mid-Mod Add-On Is One-In-8*10^7

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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July 19, 2007

Cuddle Me Condos In Color, Also Correction, Also Sibling Names

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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Once You Have Lack, You Never Go Back

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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July 16, 2007

Tako-no-Yama: The Itinerant Octopus Slide Builders Of Japan

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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July 2, 2007

Awesome Dutch Miesian Dollhouse Costs $15 And Half A Day

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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June 27, 2007

Cuddle Me Condos: Residential Starchitecture Plush Toys

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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June 18, 2007

Starry, Starry Nursery By Aguirre, Rath Of 15th St

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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June 7, 2007

New York, New York A Helluva Town For A Frank Gehry Playground

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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Daddy Types Salutes Ms. Ruth Smithers Of New Canaan, Connecticut

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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May 7, 2007

Holy Buckminster Fuller! Dad Makes Playdome At Home

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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April 25, 2007

Welcome To The [Cardboard Geodesic] Playdome, Under Construction

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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April 23, 2007

Sweet Juniper - Mies Mashup

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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April 12, 2007

Kohoutek: The Dollhouse Of The Future, By Ant Farm

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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February 2, 2007

Hey, My Kid Could Do That

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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21st Century Family Modernism By Richard Hutten

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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February 1, 2007

FOR RENT: Repurposed Tanker Truck Pod/Crib By LO/TEK

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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January 30, 2007

Midcentury Family Modernism By Eliot Noyes

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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