Harry and Sal's Design Blog

HARRY There's a Jorn Utzon house for sale. The architect behind the Sydney Opera House built this concrete and glass 6-bedroom home in the UK (West Common Way, Harpenden Herts to be exact). It's selling through The Modern House for a whopping 2.5 million pounds. Do check it out online - there are lots more pics and some really great interiors.

Labels: Architecture, Harry

posted by cerentha harris at 2/03/2008 0 Comments

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HARRY: I'm getting into knots. I wrote a story recently for Belle magazine about a house in Queens Park - it was the home of Liane Rossler and architect Sam Marshall. A great house but the thing I keep thinking about was the pine cladding. It's a sustainable timber but very knotty - and they relished the knots. Instead of hiding them they made a feature of them. There's a sense of wabi sabi - beauty in imperfection. I love it. I was checking out Dwell's site when I came across this kitchen in a Thomas Robertson house in LA. It's got that same feel. Modern with a twist. Long live the knot.

Labels: Architecture, Harry

posted by cerentha harris at 1/17/2008 0 Comments

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HARRY: I'm on a terrible hotel connection so this will be brief. Just got back from a very inspiring tour of Venice's architectural gems with architect David Thompson of Assemblage. Yes, I'm in Los Angeles. Just for the week. Slipped away from Sydney with the husband. A very pleasurable work trip! David, who is designing Sal and Stephen's house, was kind enough to take me around Venice for a piece I'm working on. We saw some great houses...including one of my favourites - Steven Ehrlich's own home with its luscious steel cladding (above). I'll blog more about it when I can get online more easily. Also found some cool new design stores...more to come very soon!

Labels: Architecture, Harry

posted by cerentha harris at 12/04/2007 0 Comments

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HARRY: And if the Wired House Sal just posted is a bit out of your price range check out these images. You can't buy the houses but you can buy the photos. Julius Shulman's iconic images helped define a generation of buildings. They are $4000...so they aren't cheap. Still a bargain when you compare them buying a house. I do love how spending on art can be justified.
Enjoy!

Labels: Architecture, Art, Harry

posted by cerentha harris at 11/13/2007 0 Comments

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SAL: If you're in LA this week and you're interested in architecture, I strongly suggest you take advantage and go on a tour of the Ray Kappe designed Wired Home, currently on the market for a cool $4 million. It's open to the public until Sunday - you can buy tickets online at Wired's website.

Some of you may already be familiar with Kappe through his work with the Living Homes prefab folks. I like his style - modernism with warmth. In this house, fly ash concrete floors combined with cedar ceilings, bring a rich inviting feel, despite being very contemporary.

Wired mag have done a great job of the website, you can browse by category or room, and find out where to buy many of the products from the home. The kid's bedroom (below) I loved. Great wallpaper - although of course I can't find that listed!!

Labels: 711, Architecture, Green, Sal

posted by Sal Taylor Kydd at 11/13/2007 0 Comments

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HARRY: My friend Karen McCartney, who edits Inside Out magazine, has just launched her book: Iconic Australian Houses: Three Decades of Domestic Architecture. The book launch was held last week in leafy Castlecrag. We all piled into the extraordinary home of Hugh Buhrich (pics of the house below by Martin Van Der Wal). The home graces the book's cover. There was a great feel to the whole evening. A mix of young architects and designers (Liane Rossler and Sam Marshall were there along with Phil Moore and Caroline Quaine and Andrew Stanic and Andy Harding) plus a good group of architectural luminaries whose work was in the book including Russell Jack (whose houses I have always admired). Karen gave a funny speech, we all drank champange and ate delicious food and wandered through that brilliant house (you'll have to buy the book to learn more about it). I don't think anyone wanted to leave. And if you are stuck for a Christmas present - this book is perfect. It's insightfully written - Karen visited the 15 houses and interviewed clients and architects - and beautifully designed. She offers a rare peek inside what are some of Australia's most important homes - which all sounds rather worthy. But there's also a wealth of inspiration for anyone thinking about building or renovating (I love the cherry red carpet and charcoal wall in Robin Boyd's home...)

Labels: Architecture, Gifts, Harry

posted by cerentha harris at 11/09/2007 0 Comments

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HARRY: We had the belle magazine architecture award's last night. I was the project director...which basically means I helped organise the judging process. Perfect for the control freak in me! House of the Year went to Jackson Clements Burrows for a home in Perth (it also won that state's top archi award). And the Apartment of the Year was won by EAT architects for their Windsor Loft in Melbourne. Two of my favourite houses - Mark Casham's Melville O'Connell house (see the pic above - it was beautifully photographed by Shannon McGrath) and Alex Popov's at Whale Beach were finalists. Unfortunately belle doesn't have a website, Popov doesn't have his house on his site and Jackson Clements Burrows don't have a website. Extraordinary. Sometimes Australia feels depressingly behind the times.

Labels: Architecture, Harry

posted by cerentha harris at 10/31/2007 0 Comments

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HARRY: Got back from Melbourne feeling very inspired about city living. They really do it so well down south - great cafes, shops and exciting architecture. I was particularly impressed by Federation Square. I'd heard a lot of criticism about the Lab Architecture Studio design - but the scale of the space, the activity it attracts and the building's dynamic forms (see atrium above) all make for a really interesting public arena. So good to see brave public work. We spent quite a bit of time at the Ian Potter Centre which is a branch of the National Gallery and houses a permanent indigenous collection...such beautiful work (see pic below. I forgot to write down the artists name! Hard when you're trying to keep kids from touching the dots). The National Design Centre has a store in the building and are selling great posters from their design competition (see Waiting for a Rainbow by Marie Schultz at bottom). They asked designers to create a poster around the idea of climate change. Timely. And beautiful. They are very graphic and strong. All in all a great trip. Just way too short.

Labels: Architecture, Art, Green, Harry

posted by cerentha harris at 10/29/2007 0 Comments

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SAL: Project 10 represents the first traditionally built (ie not prefab) LEED platinum-certified house built in California. I went on a tour of it today and was very impressed by the design. It's modern, but warm and very spacious. Although they have opted to build to the max of the setbacks and some of the finish work leads you to think they were running out of time to completion, overall it's impressive. The house can virtually live off the grid, emits no harmful gases and uses the latest in recycled materials from insulation, to the lumber to the steel supports. For more information you can visit the Project710 website.

Labels: Architecture, Green, Sal

posted by Sal Taylor Kydd at 10/19/2007 1 Comments

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HARRY: Check out these Polish architects. Very interesting work. And unlike a lot of architect's websites, KWK Promes has great content. You see the house develop from plan to model to finished project. The Aartrial house is one of my favourites, just look at that driveway - OK, so I realise I am getting excited about a driveway but the stonework is amazing.

Labels: Architecture, Harry

posted by cerentha harris at 10/16/2007 0 Comments

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SAL: Speaking of Living Homes, and Ray Kappe, I toured this prefab Platinum-certified LEED house a few months ago. The first Living Home, unbelievably it was installed in just eight hours. It's located in Venice, CA not far from my home and my future home. If you're interested in prefab, Living Homes is definitely a good place to start - but even if you are just interested in green architecture you should check out Steve Glenn's online tour that goes through his house room by room, with entertaining and informative commentary. The tour provides a great source of ideas and resources for all parts of the house - from low VOC paint to energy-efficient LED lights.

Labels: 711, Architecture, Green, Sal

posted by Sal Taylor Kydd at 10/11/2007 0 Comments

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HARRY: First, I love those booties that Sal posted. So sweet. It seems all my friends in Sydney are having third babies so these would make a perfect pressie. On a more grown up note I am obsessed with orange right now. I found orange velvet curtains at IKEA (they now grace our bedroom) and I came across this NYT's story about a house in Los Angeles that recently escaped the wrecking ball (fascinating story on saving modern houses. Stacie Stukin did a great job on it). The colours in this room are just great...not to mention the architecture. It's a Ray Kappe house (Sal will love him - he's a warm modernist).

Labels: Architecture, Furniture, Harry

posted by cerentha harris at 10/10/2007 0 Comments

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HARRY: I'm looking for great examples of green architecture for a magazine article I'm working on. I'm actually having a hard time finding local (Sydney) examples. There's quite a bit of green stuff out there but so much of it is really ugly. If anyone has any leads please let me know! I did come across some cool stuff in my search. Check out architect Cracknell & Lonergan reno of an inner city Sydney terrace. I love the floral fomrica in the kitchen. I've no idea if it's green - but it is cool. There's also a real warmth and intelligence to their work. It reminds me of the Queensland firm, Donovan Hill. They did such a beautiful job on another inner city Sydney terrace - Tibet Sydney, a rug shop and residence. Lots of inspiring work on these two sites.

Labels: Architecture, Green, Harry, Kitchen

posted by cerentha harris at 10/07/2007 0 Comments

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HARRY: I used to edit the architecture and real estate section of the Sydney Morning Herald. One of the pleasures of that job was spotting great houses as they hit the market. For a brief moment you could actually visit these places (pretending you had enough money to buy). With two kids in tow I now do most of my stickybeaking online at a variety of real estate sites. This Lautner house (they are asking a meager $8000 a month) is exactly the kind of place I'd like to wander through. Warm, inviting and modern. For a roundup of other archi sites check out Gomod.com. They have done a good job of rounding up sites that may interest the modern home buyer (or stickybeak). The ones I visit regularly are Sellmodern (they cover Canada as well) and Paul Kaplan because he has some amazing Palm Springs homes. And after visiting that town last year I have a real soft spot for it.

Labels: Architecture, Harry

posted by cerentha harris at 8/01/2007 0 Comments

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HARRY: Wallpaper* magazine has just posted its list of 101 new architects. Not quite sure how they get away with defining some of the guys on the list as 'new'... Sydney architect Ian Moore has been around for a good long time. But that's beside the point. What you get is an amazing collection - with pics and links - of some very interesting architects. Check out Japan's Takeshi Hosaka for some pure modern eye candy (including the 'Acrylic House' above) . Think of it as an update to The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture.

Labels: Architecture, Harry

posted by cerentha harris at 7/15/2007 0 Comments

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HARRY: Loved reading Sal's shoe adventures. I too have wandered the halls of Zappos and felt completely overwhelmed. But today I wanted to rant about Los Angeles. It's such an ugly city. One vast undisciplined sprawl. The thing that saves it for me are the architectural gems. Think the Eames house, Schindler's house with its outdoor sleeping chambers and the wonderful Arts and Crafts Gamble house. Last night I was reminded that the Hollywood Bowl is one of those gems. (It also helped that we saw three amazing bands, The Decemberists who played with the LA Philarmonic, Andrew Bird and Band of Horses). In 1928 Frank Lloyd Wright's son, Lloyd Wright designed the nine concentric arches that form the bowl. It reflects perfectly that time - unornamented, curvilinear. Modern. And it is still the largest natural amphitheater in the US. For more on the Bowl and other important LA buildings check out the excellent book, Iconic LA by Gloria Koenig.

Labels: Architecture, Books

posted by cerentha harris at 7/08/2007 0 Comments

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HARRY: New York magazine ran the classic 'what will be hot' story a few months ago. One of the things I loved were the great pics. Check out these shots of Domino editor, Deborah Needleman's, home (supposedly Domino is the next House & Garden). I love the high ceilings and those lovely big globe light shades. I like the paper one - a good inexpensive solution.

Labels: Architecture, Dining, Harry, Lighting

posted by cerentha harris at 7/04/2007 0 Comments

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HARRY: I regularly check out the NYT's real estate section online. The page design is not great - way too pretty busy for my taste. But if you scroll down to the multimedia section you'll find wonderful slideshows of amazing homes. I'm lusting after this apartment in Florence. They'll have 36 apartments available in spring 2008. Probably not enough time for us to save up but the interior shots are so inspiring. I like the clever mix of old and new. Also there's a great vineyard in Portugal and a little shingled home on Martha's Vineyard. I love this site!

Labels: Architecture, Furniture, Lighting, Windows

posted by cerentha harris at 6/24/2007 0 Comments

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HARRY I've always admired Philip Johnson's Glass House in Connecticut. And now that it is open to the public I would love to visit it. It's now a part of the National Trust. Since a trip to the east coast isn't on the cards right now this New York Times piece will have to suffice. Todd Heisler's photographs make an interesting slide show. In amongst the standard perfect shots of glass walls and Bertoia chairs you see the frayed edge of a shower curtain and a shot of a kid in sneakers and baggy shorts gazing at the view. Fascinating to see such an iconic house dotted with tourists.

Labels: Architecture, Furniture, Harry

posted by cerentha harris at 6/07/2007 0 Comments

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