Stick this in your Modern house and light it!

 I actually don't like anything on the horizontal surfaces in my house, (haven't had much luck with that...), but I can't resist these table lamps from Spain's LZF Lamps. This line, called Air, also has a wall sconce sibling – oh so beautiful! The designer at LZF credited with the creation of the line is named Ray Power – what a great name for a lighting designer!

Also by LZF is the wonderful Nut hanging light that I've admired before, and learned something new about on the website today:
"Nut is Greek for “Goddess of the Sky”. Its form and etymology reminiscent of a knot, hence its name, knot in Valencian." – GF

via 2modern

Palm Springs Art Museum to open new architecture annex

I've been thinking for a while that a visit to Palm Springs would be a good thing. Not only to ogle  Modern houses, but to experience the desert and mountain landscape and enjoy the dry air. Now there's even more incentive to realize that trip for late 2013, when The Palm Springs Art Museum celebrates it 75th anniversary and opens its architecture and design exhibition and study space. A former bank building designed by E. Stewart Williams in 1960 will be renovated by Marmol + Radziner Architects  to house this annex of the museum. Read about it here. – GF

The round and the square







These two caught my eye because they were one after the other on Tréndir and they couldn't be more different. I am partial to areas enclosed by walls but open to the sky and as well to skylights – each of these houses has one of these as a main element, yet one is built hovering above the ground while the other burrows into it, like an auger into wood.


The spiral one is the Abalone House in Big Sur, California, designed by architect Thomas Cowen with Rana Creek. The Solo House hovers above the treetops in Chile, and was designed by Pezo Von Ellrichshausen Architects.


It would be really nice to see interior photos of the Abalone house. I looked, but couldn't find any... – GF



Le Corbusier slept here...


 ... well, probably not, but you can. The Hotel Le Corbusier is situated in a residential area of Marseille, and looks pretty interesting. Not luxurious, and I would issue a cement-overload alert here, but it looks like there is a lot of diversity and individual personality in the rooms, although the hotel itself looks to be enormous, which makes sense, as it was conceived as a self-contained village – la Cité Radieuse, or radiant city.

From the website, Sejours et Loisirs:
"The Corbusier hotel opens its doors onto one man’s utopia become reality: the Radiant City of Marseille by Corbusier, a vessel of colours, a perfect parallelepiped perched on its strange pillars. Neither the facades nor the roof covered with the most unusual works of art have been left to chance, everything is the fruit of the 30-year long imaginative creation of a man passionately interested in architecture, art and humanity. The property, listed as a historical building, is the archetype of a town. The apartments have been designed to look like villas, the corridors like streets and a central thoroughfare goes through the heart of the third level where the Hotel and winter garden can also be found. The miniature town has its own mini-swimming pool, open-air theatre, vast gymnasium, tennis court and a cinema."

It would be fun to hunt down and decipher the pictograms on plinths and surfaces, some worn enough to resemble ancient hieroglyphs. Check out google images for more photos GF


From a polemic past, bright Modern apartments now emerge

Despite their difficult history, WWII and Cold War bunkers in some German cities are becoming desirable real estate for apartment living and working. Read this story via Reuters in the National Post.

I love to see the concept of adaptive reuse realized and hope to see more and more of it. And, although there is some controversy over converting these bunkers, I think it is a much better way to honor the prisoners who toiled and died in their construction than tearing them down or maintaining them as depressing memorials requiring expensive upkeep.

There are some 2000 bunkers remaining in Germany, and many are in the centers of cities, making them perfect for conversion to living, gallery and work spaces.

If you read German, here is more information on the architect who first seized on the idea and opportunity with his own living space conversion. – GF

Modestly modernist, Le Corbusier's summer bungalow

Wonderful story from The Guardian about how the architect came to spend 18 fruitful summers living and working in his 12-square foot rustic wooden cabanon on the Côte d'Azurand the plans to preserve it and its sister buildings for use as an open-air gallery of 20th-century architecture. – GF

photo: Inside Le Corbusier's Cabanon. Credit: DACS