Top 10

Where we’ve been this week…

1. Dezeen for its coverage of Casa Puglia, architect Peter Pichler’s amazing update of a 14th century house in Southern Italy. And yes, those red stools pictured below in the home’s new kitchen are by Konstantin Grcic for Magis and we will be selling them come September.

2. LA Weekly for their story on John Lautner. He would have been 100 years old tomorrow.

3. Design Observer for Lorraine Wild’s piece on Sister Corita – an amazing artist and friend of the Eameses. Her posters will grace my new home office – once we get it finished! My grandparents lived in Los Angeles when she was exhibiting her work in the ’60s and I grew up with the print below in our family room. It’s good to have found her again.

4. The New Design Smell is a new online magazine with an odd name, vaguely annoying flashing blue graphics but some interesting stories. It’s heartening to see a new design magazine throwing its hat in the ring.

5. Destined to Design for its flat out beauty. (And that summer salad and ice tea look pretty damn good!)

6. MGB Architecture for this lovely backyard studio (below).

7. The House that Kat and Fred Built for lots of interiors inspiration.

8. The Travel Files. Can you tell I’m gunning for a holiday! Take a break from your work day and check out this site. Amazing places to stay all around the world – including the Moka & Vanille in Belgium (below).

9. Ecofabulous house on eBay because the bidding ends today.

10. Time magazine’s ‘Photos’ for the slideshow of Philip Johnson’s Glass House.

Dwell on Design

After three days of dwelling on design all I can say is that there’s a lot of interesting work out there…and a lot of people who want to talk about it! This year there were 144 speakers split between two stages. Of course, some of those 144 were included in panels. But there was a lot of talking. As design writer Alyssa Walker pointed out the talks (two of which she was giving) were actually one of the shows strengths - it certainly was a point of difference from other shows.

There were also some gems on the floor – David Trubridge’s lights (above) were beautiful and he has figured out how to shrink their carbon footprint by redesigning them so they can be flat packed. Eames Demetrios dropped by the Herman Miller booth after his talk with Sam Grawe on the Eames Aluminum Group and the Miller House legacy. He too was taken by the Trubridge lights.

Another highlight was the Ecofabulous House. The 520 square foot home is part of the prefab pieceHome series designed by architect Jonathan Davis.

The example on show was styled by ecofabulous founder Zem Joaquin. It would certainly make the ideal backyard office and it’s going to be auctioned on eBay - so if you’ve got the room make sure you bid.

I finally I spent Saturday on the Eastside home tours – look out for interviews with those architects coming up in our new Q&A series.