Table of contents for April 2013 in Dwell

“We are what our environment makes us,” said Rudolph Schindler in 1936, “and if our environment is such as to produce excellent health, beauty, joy, and comfort, it will reflect immediately in our lives.” We agree with Schindler, of course—modern design functions best when it embraces and supports nature. In this issue, we explore this theme from both a civic and residential perspective, incorporating works meant for public consumption alongside projects intended for the inhabitants alone. As always, we hone in on good work that is bold and unflinching and design that is lasting and thoughtful. Always implicit is the idea that in any context, communion with the outside world eases the tension of modern life. Our cities need dedicated green space for recreation, remembrance, and ceremony, and we note…

Boston architects Eric Höweler and Meejin Yoon are internationally renowned for their pioneering architectural and urban design projects, but in their recent concept for Meejin’s parents, Hannah and Jason Yoon, the vanguard couple took a more restrained tack. “It’s a simple house, with a few flourishes,” says Höweler, “less exotic, more practical, a little funky.” One embellishment is a small courtyard, born of restrictions imposed by budget, a narrow site, and strict zoning laws. OUTSIDE “In every project, we try to do one thing that’s handmade, a custom design where the only way we could afford to do it is if we did it ourselves,” says Meejin. They rolled up their sleeves and, with the help of Meejin’s brother and David Costanza, a former student and employee, spent two weeks…

You grew up in the college town of Athens, Ohio. How did your hometown contribute to your creative life? My mother was an English and Asian literature professor, and my dad started in ceramics at Ohio University. So my brother and I would get out of school, and we would go to my dad’s studio and wait until he got off work—which meant my brother and I played with clay our entire childhoods. Even when I got to undergrad, I was making these crazy architectural works carved out of clay, and people thought I was being provocative, but I wasn’t! So you’ve had a long career as a hands-on maker? That’s the way I grew up. My dad made all the pots that we ate out of every day; he…

Spring en Plein Air ‘Tis the season for both lawn parties and afternoon naps. We’ve got you covered, whether your interests lie in the sun (a luxe camping chair) or in the shade (a gabled cabana). A Bistro Bird Feeder in Goldenrod Yellow by J Schatz, $175 jschatz.com • B Cottage by Patricia Urquiola for Kettal, from $19,000 The Spanish-born, Milan-based Urquiola is widely responsible for making contemporary outdoor furniture just as appealing as its high-design interior counterparts. This aluminum-framed minicottage with balau-wood slats is no exception: Urquiola describes it as “the definitive refuge in which to enjoy the outdoors.” kettal.com • C Loll Swing by Greg Benson and Jeff Taly for Loll, $250 dwr.com • D Shallow Root Vessel in Sky by Steel Life, $296 justmoderndecor.com • E Fedro…

When Chris Brown needs to think, he grabs his canoe. For the past decade, the lawyer by day, science-fiction writer by night has found peace paddling down a stretch of the Colorado River that snakes through Austin. The Zen-like ef ect comes not only from the swooping egrets, osprey, and herons that patrol the waterway but also from the geographic history of the area—an industrial-meetsurban edgeland once home to the city dump, the cattle-driving Chisholm Trail, and a B-52 bomber base. “I found it to be a pretty transcendent experience that changed the way I think about the environment in which I live,” Brown says. One afternoon, while searching for more access points to the river, Brown discovered a path that led down to hundreds of cliff swallows and their…

Project: Dialogue House Architect: Wendell Burnette Location: Phoenix, Arizona The first time Thomas and Laura Hyland saw the Dialogue House, an award-winning home in Phoenix, Arizona, was 2004. The housing market was in its zenith in 2007 when the couple toured through “almost as a joke,” says Thomas, a business consultant. “We knew we couldn’t afford it.” The modern three-bedroom, three-bath with a pool is an eye-catcher. By day, the enormous box that forms the second story seems suspended over its corner lot; the floor-to-ceiling glass plane of the living area provides uninterrupted views of downtown Phoenix, South Mountain, and the Sierra Estrella range. At night, with the inside illuminated, and the stucco frame absorbed by the darkness, the focus shifts. Now it’s the activity within the house providing the…

The Rewind on Balthazar Korab (In the Modern World, Dec/Jan 2013) reminded me of his photos of the Eero Saarinen–designed Milwaukee Art Museum and Milwaukee County War Memorial Center. In the early to mid-1960s, I attended years’ worth of classes in what was then known as the Milwaukee Art Center’s Children’s Art Program. The building is now in dire need of preservation. Patrick Redmond Saint Paul, Minnesota Editors’ Note: We’re sorry to report Korab passed soon after our recent piece went to print. Visit dwell.com/korab for more on his life. For more on the museum preservation efforts, visit savethewarmemorial.org and mam.org. The prefab issue was terrific, but I have a comment about Simpatico Homes’s “zero-maintenance” product Parklex (Off the Grid, Dec/Jan 2013). A product from Spain that requires “resin on…

When Kim Bannister and Frances McClure decided to build their own “bach” (a Kiwi phrase that refers to a beach house of modest means), they wanted to live as off the grid as possible. For a location, they had settled on a ten-acre parcel of bush on Great Barrier Island, where they had vacationed on and off since 1972. Remoteness is both the challenge and defining feature of the house: There is no electricity, water, or sewage main on the island. Their home is essentially a high-functioning cabin. Architect Paul Clarke of Auckland-based Crosson, Clarke, Carnachan Architects oriented the structure to the sun’s path. He constructed it with natural and recycled materials and plugged in several energy-efficient components, such as a rainwater-filtration system and two roof-mounted solar panels stored in…

When Christopher Berdaguer and Marie Péjus, artists based in Paris and Marseilles, talk about their first public commission, a renovated outbuilding at the Synagogue de Delme Contemporary Art Center, located in the Lorraine region of France, it’s on a spectral level. The art center commissioned the pair to revamp its visitors center for its 20th anniversary this year. The 19th-century structure has served as a prison, school, and funeral home. Berdaguer and Péjus—who say they are “interested in ghosts who haunt the history of architecture”—used the structure’s varied past as inspiration for the white biomorphic polystyrene skin they encased around the facade and onto the surrounding lawn. “To us, a [building] is not just a mechanical construction; it’s an aggregate of emotions, perceptions, and memories,” the duo says. Although the…

If the sign out in front of this aging Toronto facade is any indication—it reads “Star Sheet Metal”—you’d think that it’s just another industrial storefront. But when the blinds are up, you’ll see the couple who lives there making art, designing buildings, or, just as often, making dinner. The century-old structure is the home and workplace of architect Tamira Sawatzky and her wife and collaborator, artist and filmmaker Elle Flanders. In 2011, they were on the hunt for a building big enough to house themselves, their joint art practice, and individual businesses, plus an apartment for a tenant. What they found on busy Dundas Street West offered all of that—and also a chance to try a novel way of living in Canada’s biggest city. Sawatzky: We decided we wanted a…

Project: Hald Strand Summerhouse Architect: Jesper Brask Location: North Zealand, Denmark Danish architect Jesper Brask took his time— three years, to be exact—studying the site before pounding even one nail into the summer home he built for his family: wife, Lene, a doctor; and sons, Kristian, 21; Jens, 17; and Niels, 9. After buying an acre of densely wooded coastal land in Hald Strand—an hour’s drive from the family’s main house in North Zealand, north of Copenhagen—in 2003, he felled 150 Austrian pine trees to make way for what would become the house, to be constructed partly from the lumber. He set up a mobile sawmill and had the trees cut into planks. While the wood was curing, so too was the design scheme. “It took three years to get…

The products, furniture, architects, designers, and builders featured in this issue. 29 In the Modern World Bernard Trainor + Associates bernardtrainor.com Princeton Architectural Press papress.com Höweler + Yoon Architecture mystudio.us Christophe Berdaguer and Marie Péjus cbmp.fr Centre d’Art Contemporain la Synagogue de Delme cac-synagoguedelme.org Charles Luck Stone Center charlesluck.com Studio 2A studio2a.jp Maya Lin Studio mayalin.com Stones by Maya Lin for Knoll knoll.com What Is Missing? whatismissing.net The Contemporary Landscape Foundation tclf.org National Register of Historic Places nps.gov/nr Chelsea Space chelseaspace.org 60 My House Public Studio Architecture publicstudio.ca Construction by Heller Contracting, Inc. hellercontracting.com Custom upholstery by Tina Morgan tinamorgandesigns.wordpress.com Interior finishing and millwork by Wayne Arsenault 604-253-8658 Windows by Inline Fiberglass inlinefiberglass.com Windows by CGA Glass and Mirror 416-534-5835 Windows by Loewen loewen.com Glass and slate tiles by Olympia…

Alex Bozikovic A Web editor at the Globe and Mail and author of the blog nomeancity.net, Alex Bozikovic visited with homeowners Tamira Sawatzky and Elle Flanders to see how they really lived in a storefront (My House, p. 60). “The first time I was there, we sat at the dining room table and talked with the blinds open,” he recalls. “After an hour it felt natural, even when one of Elle Flanders’s friends walked by on the sidewalk and waved right at us.” Bozikovic lives in Toronto with his wife, two boys, and big blinds on their front window. Dominic Bradbury Though he has a dozen books under his belt, Norfolk, England–based journalist Dominic Bradbury is currently working on a new tome about postwar design: “A subject that crosses over…

Philip Johnson famously quipped: “All architects want to live beyond their deaths.” Given the right scale and materials (think the Pyramids at Giza), that desired immortality can last at least a few thousand years. But designers have another opportunity for lasting greatness that is less reliant on size and slave labor: having their work listed in the National Register of Historic Places. This designation, overseen by the National Park Service, following approval by relevant state offcials, has worked fairly well for modernist buildings, Johnson’s included. Landscape architecture, however, has fared worse. In fact, fewer than 2,500 of the 80,000-plus National Register sites boast any significant landscape design. A few modernist icons have won this coveted consideration—Dan Kiley’s work at the Miller House and Garden in Columbus, Indiana, and Thomas Church’s…

There are certain lost buildings that still resound through the decades. One of Britain’s most famous lost glories is Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, built to house the Great Exhibition of 1851 and destroyed decades later by fire in 1936. Another, the Dome of Discovery—built for the Festival of Britain, a postwar celebration of design and culture—was created on London’s South Bank exactly 100 years after the birth of the Crystal Palace. An extraordinary flying saucer of a building, the dome hovered alongside the waters of the River Thames. It was fresh, original, and engaging—like the optimistic new Festival of Britain itself—and spoke inexorably of modernity. A key part of an escapist extravaganza, encouraged by the Labour government of Clement Attlee, the five-month festival celebrated Britain’s past, present, and future while…

Project: Edgeland House Architect: Thomas Bercy Location: Austin, Texas The street facade of New York City’s first certified Passive House, known as Tighthouse, is clad in pale gray stucco, sculpted with a few historic-looking details. But, if you knock on that wall, it sounds hollow: The stucco is merely the outermost layer in a 20-inch-thick insulated sandwich. The original brick is buried deep inside, where it can do no harm—via chinks, cracks, or settling—to the supersealed box this 19th-century, 3,120-square-foot Park Slope house has now become. The cornice, too, is a lightweight contemporary replacement: a hollow fiberglass shell mimicking a wood original. The smooth, low-maintenance surfaces are a far cry from the derelict three-story row house designer Julie Torres Moskovitz first saw in 2009. The brownstone’s front facade was pocked…

Project: Extension House Architect: dmvA Architecten Location: Brecht, Belgium “W hen the weather’s good,” says Rini van Beek, sitting on the rear terrace of her home in the woods, a 15-minute drive from Antwerp, Belgium, “I practically live outside. Putting this deck down here was actually the first thing I did when I moved in. The house was so awful—but the view was wonderful.” The back of Van Beek’s Extension House overlooks a small lake, the Rommersven, which, in addition to being the oldest documented expanse of water in the surrounding woodlands, was the feature that induced her to take a gamble on her home the first time she saw it. The house itself was “dismal,” an abandoned, barn-style holiday cottage. “No one had lived in it for years,” she…

Trees and small experimental spaces always enchanted Andreas Wenning. In 2003, he launched a company dedicated to building structures in close contact with nature. Today, his firm Baumraum counts over 40 houses, sited in both rural and urban locales, in its portfolio. Aesthetics vary, but, as Wenning says, “the house should always be in dialogue with the tree, whether in contrast or a symbiotic way.” The same holds true for Baumraum’s most-recent project, a 450-square-foot retreat, nestled between the limbs of pine and oak trees in northeastern Belgium. As a part of their green mission, the city of Hechtel-Eksel, the Flemish Forest and Nature Agency, paper company Sappi, and communications firm Proximity BBDO commissioned the structure clad in zinc and larch as a place for businesses to host sustainability oriented…