Saturday afternoon: Painting, tea and reading!

So, with the time change, Saturdays are so short!  My kitchen makeover is moving slowly along and my "volunteer" staff has been AWL (absent with leave) for the last couple of weeks, so I've been on my own. I've done a lot of painting and today I finally tackled the backside of the cabinet doors. The front sides are all done (the big reveal to come soon!). With the light rapidly going away, painted (Ben Moore Black Forest Green) away outside on my back deck.

It's quite chilly today so by the time I was done, I was ready for a little pot of tea and warm apple spice bread.  I also got caught up on some reading. I've never heard of this Luxe Interiors + Design magazine, but it came in the mail today, so I flipped through that, Elle magazine and the new book Flowers for the Home by Grayson Handy. Totally gorgeous!

The nice folks at Rizzoli had sent the book several weeks ago and I've been drooling over the cover alone!

I've done some floral arranging, but I'm hampered by the complete inability to remember flower names and how they need to be treated. So, while I know what I like, I really do leave the work to the professionals. If I need an arrangement for a client or a shoot, I describe what I want in terms of color, texture and size. 

"Flowers for the Home" isn't just a picture book with pretty photos of pretty flower arrangements - although Handy's arrangements are beautiful and Ellen Silverman's photography is to die for! The book is broken down into locations that have inspired the author: China, England, France, India, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, the American South and Tropical Rainforest. He then breaks down each section into regional inspirations, a color palette, a signature arrangement (with instructions in the back of the book for how to make that arrangement - flower by flower) and a resource section.

Of course, France always inspires me.

Okay - all together now: awwwwww  (btw - Mr. Handy's dog Romeo is the spitting image of my dachsund, the late, great Tiny from my childhood).

This is an excellent book for anyone interested in floral arranging, or even just beautiful photography!



 Subscribe to ::Surroundings::

Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Book Signing

Last night there was a fun event at DC's Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams - a book signing for their new book, The Comfortable Home. Here's the talented Leah Moss of Apartment Therapy having her book signed. Standing between Beth of Chinoiserie Chic and Stefan of Architect Design is co-author Mindy Drucker. It was great to meet her! Mindy had been quite thoughtful to make sure local bloggers were included on the invite list.
Here's Leah with her sister Nicole. Nicole's coat was the hit of the night - a vintage 70's piece from Ireland.
The store did a great job with the event - the red velvet and lemon bundt cakes (for those of us who tried both) were delicious.
Here's color guru Annie of Bossy Color. Annie has the best dresses - love this black and green one.

I'm really looking forward to reading this book cover to cover. A quick look at it last night revealed alot of practial tips and how-to instructions, along with inspiring pictures. One section of the book focused on gallery-style montages. The pic below is a gallery wall from the DC store.

One of my favorite pieces in the store is the Lillian Console in white lacquer. With a depth of 14", it would be a great solution for a small space.
Vintage bottles; love the dark green one. This weekend I'm taking my daughter to Williamsburg for a ballet weekend and am very excited that we will be stopping in Richmond to visit Linda of Haven on Hanover. Have a great weekend!

A Creative Hero: John Saladino

Via Saladino Style

As I was scrolling through the 1st Dibs' site this morning, I found a great article written about John Saladino's most recent book; Villa. In it he describes the arduous but heartfelt process of renovating an amazing Italinate villa. For all die-hard design lovers, this is a book that must be seen!
Saladino holds a very special place in my heart. He was the first designer I knew by name as a teenager, and his work awakened my true love of design. The photo above in particular stands out in my mind. Its been published many times over, I know; but its so timeless and beautiful. The color palette, mixture of textures, and use of antiques in an otherwise minimalist space influence the way I think about design almost every day. Ahhh, I could go on and on; but maybe the photos speak for themselves;)

Via 1st Dibs

Thriller

Ok, so I'm happy to admit to being really quite inordinately thrilled about this. The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson (Zero Books) is available for pre-order at Amazon. I have a contribution - about correlations between the design of Neverland and the transformation of Michael Jackson himself- in this collection of essays about MJ. Much more excitingly it includes contributions by Ian Penman, Barney Hoskins and Chris Roberts, as well as a host of excellent writers from the blogosphere including Dominic Fox, Evan Calder-Williams, Robin Carmody and Sam Davies. You could even buy a copy.

Many thanks to the editor Mark Fischer and to Owen (also contributing) for including me in such a fine array.

Ok, gush over. Back to business. (Straightens tie. Goes back to reading RIBA Standard Terms of Appointment).

Reading List: Beyond No. 1

Perfect airplane fare, on a recent trip I had an opportunity to borrow Beyond No. 1, entitled Scenarios and Speculations, featuring a range of short stores on the 'post-contemporary', edited by Pedro Gadanho. An interesting idea, the slim volume takes a different tack: "...dedicated to new, experimental forms of architectural and urban writing, a bookazine in which, amidst other goodies, an extended network of young and upcoming writers are given the freedom to survey the outline of themes and things to come."


:: image via boiteaoutils

The inaugural volume includes a range of work from authors both known and new, opening up a new wave of potential future reading. Some highlights from my reading were from included 'The Last Market' by Antonio Scarpini, (p. 50) Scenarios and Speculations' by Lara Schrijver (p.12), and an inventive graphic novel by Wes Jones on 'Re:Doing Dubai' (p.88) all offering some specific commentary on our current contemporary life.

Also notable is the humorous short story by Gilles Delalex entitled 'Ventolin, Inc.: A Diary of a Voluntary Prisoner of the Motorway' (p. 36) offering a meditation on a life on the road from a mobile photo diarist/social narrator that spends days on the road and eventually is enveloped into the movement, unable to reconnect with the non-mobile counterpart of dead suburban normalcy.

He heads for home, then is overtaken: "As he approaches the last ramp leading to the familiar suburban streets of home, a cold wave of doubt sweeps him over. Exalted by the sensual freedom of the flow, Maitland wonders about the static nature of his home town and the ostensibly stable and local meaning of his old suburban life. He slows down as if to enjoy a littler longer the addicting feeling of his new nomadic life. Will I ever be able to return to my old suburban streets? Or is my real community here on the motorway? Maitland misses the exit deliberately. He knows that the motorway has become his new home, and he may never come back." (p. 41)

This suburban escape is appropriate as well to my favorite essay, from Bruce Sterling, in a story entitled 'White Fungus' which extrapolates on the life of a fictional architect and his work in the anywhere locale, which is the title of the story: "...the edge city. Semi-regulated, semi-prosperous, automobilized expanses of commercial European real-estate. Mostly white brick, hence the name. White Fungus had paved the region, which city planners were bored, or distracted, or bought off." (p. 19)

The story focuses on place as a major character, showing off the non-place that exists in the non-architectural, and looking at the social constructs that exist (or lack) in what is left over. There is also the hope, through the work of a series of builders that addressed a 'new vernacular' that used ephemeral materials and styles - hovel-like parasitic buildings that were dangerous but at least real.

Another aspect is the reinhabitation of junkspace: "Traffic islands. Empty elevator shafts. Gaps within walls, gaps between administrative zones and private properties. Debris-strewn alleys. Rafterspace. Emergency stairs for demolished buildings. Nameless spaces, unseen, unserviced and unlit. They were just - junked spaces, the voids, the absences in the urban fabric." (p.26)

Essentially a meditation on a new architecture - it seems apt giving the economy and the need to reinvent the role and relevance of the designer in this brave new world. As stated by the narrator: "Our architecture did not 'work.' We ourselves were no longer 'working' as that enterprise was formerly understood. We were living, and living rather well, once we found to nerve to proclaim that. To manifest our life in our own space and time." (p.27)

The fiction of Sterling is apt, along with the similar pomo sci-fi of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson (prior to going all historical on us) - of envisioning not a fantasy world, but something maybe happening next year, but giving it a reality that we can grasp and possibly imagine. What is that if not architecture, creating utopian visions of a new, possible, world that reacts to time, capitalism, and culture and reflects it back on us - both good and bad.

The summarizing quote is from Aaron Betsky, in his essay 'The Alpha and the Omega' which shows the power of both the media and the message: "Architecture is a fiction... Some of the most powerful pieces of architecture do not existing in buildings. We inhabit them through stories, whether they are myths, fiction or poetry. Fictional architecture moves us beyond buildings, in time and space, as well as in possibilities non-built buildings can offer. It shows us a wider range of possibilities and evokes spaces impossible (for now) to inhabit."

And Beyond No. 2, focusing on Values and Symptoms, is soon going to be out, and worth checking giving a look with essays from Douglas Coupland amongst others. This is the kind of reading that gives you a bit of a break from heady volumes - but still provides a way of engaging urban thought in new ways.

Sills, Huniford & a Terrific Design Book from 2003

I almost titled this post an "...Overlooked Design Book" but then thought maybe it's just me that hasn't discovered Dwellings: Living with Great Style by Stephen Sills and James Huniford until recently. The book was released in 2003 while they were both partners in Sills Huniford Associates. After 25 years together, they went their separate ways in the summer of 2008. I have found myself returning to this book frequently for inspiration and enjoyment.
Side by side marble tubs in a bathroom floored with Moroccan style tiles. Beautiful. I'll let the rest of these photos speak for themselves. (these images via Stephen Sills Associates)






The book is sans dust jacket and has the most wonderful gray linen cover. When you're not reading it, it looks quite lovely left about. For more images of their respective work you can visit Stephen Sills Associates or James Huniford.

Large Parks

In the spirit of one of the finest collections of writing on parks (and landscape urbanism) 'Large Parks' (edited by Czerniak & Hargreaves) a recent post on The Infrastructurist catalogs 10 of the world's greatest large parks. "We thought it would be fun to take ten of the world’s largest, most famous, and most beautiful city parks–some combination of those virtues, anyway–and view them from above, all at the same scale, to get a sense of how they’re situated in the fabric of their respective cities and how they work as a whole." Not sure what the reference of what makes them 'great', not it's completeness - and they admittedly have a Western influence but the idea of parks that are reconciled to a similar scale is pretty cool. Very similar to the graphic in the Large Parks book comparing them in B/W figure ground.

A few of the examples:


:: Central Park (NYC) - image via The Infrastructurist


:: The Tiergarten (Berlin) - image via The Infrastructurist


:: Hyde Park (London) - image via The Infrastructurist

Video: The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

A great video series on YouTube - featuring 'The Social Life of Small urban Spaces' videos (a companion to the book, or is that vice-versa) by William 'Holly' Whyte . The content is kind of late Mad Men era (OK it's the 1970s, but one expects Don Draper to mosey through the shot looking dapper, but with someone other than his wife on his arm) but still fascinating. I wonder why no one is doing this type of urban analysis in our modern times (and please let me if you know some modern iterations of this) as our media-accessible world this seems easy - maybe even through a series of security cameras stiched together.

I've embedded the first installment below... but check out the full series of videos... I'm through a few and they are pretty intriguing.



Thanks @space2place on Twitter for the link to these.

Book Review: The Queen Anne House, America's Victorian vernacular

I picked up this book over the summer, it now has a key spot on my reference shelves. The book covers 22 Queen Anne style Victorian homes in the U.S.

The examples in the book are quite different from many historical home books, the examples are more ornate and lean more toward the darker colors and more masculine styles of the period. The rooms are generally large with emphasis on woodwork and architectural details.

The photography in the book is of extremely good quality allowing for minor details within the rooms to be much easier to see. There is also plenty of historical information on construction, hardware and the evolution of home building during the era.

MODERN VANCOUVER - GASTOWN PART I

Photography by Jonathan Cruz Photography

Geothermal building with a green roof - environmental details in addition to re-using, rebuilding and recreating an amazing interior space, Inform Interiors is a destination retail space and experience that every modern design enthusiast must see when visiting Vancouver.

Gastown is a cool and hip neighborhood filled with great little boutiques, restaurants and shops. None of the expected main stream big box stores ... rather a collection of unique retailers and eateries that set the tone of bringing upscale design to a the less obvious street scape. This little pocket of historic Vancouver offers a cutting edge to building character for the city. The cobblestone roads now meet a new wave of modern transformations which encompass the best of loft living and the design studios of creative minds behind recent face-lift exterior facades. Inform Interiors re-opened their showroom and will re-launch in spring'08 a new flagship B&B Italia and Boffi showroom in their previous location. (stay tuned - the Inform family is cleverly building local pedestrians and design lovers like me into modern addicts anxiously waiting for the big opening)





Images provided by Obakki
Architecture & Interiors by Mcfarlane Green + Biggar4
Historic Gastown is now the home to an A-list of must sees from a cool hip shop for modern mom and pops, visit Modern Kid which offers kid-friendly "easy on the eye" design for the modern novelist while fashion fronts like Obakki (tops as my favorite fashion retail interior for Vancouver) or Hunt & Gather bring a unique collection of one of a kind pieces made right in the store by costume designer atelier.




Images of Obakki above are through my eyes. Some of my favorite details include exposed concrete walls meeting seamlessly with polished concrete floors. The extension of corian meeting reclaimed fir to reverse beveled drywall details lit from behind to give a diffused wash of light to highlight the exposed brick walls. Love, love the architectural detailing. The interior reflects the quality and craftsmanship of the Obakki label right down to each detail.