La Fabrica

Architect Rocardo Bofill has been transforming an old cement factory, La Fabrica into a residence and workspace for the past 45 years. Spoiler: It's gorgeous.

(via Carl Wykaert)

HP26: Devil Wears Prada Loft

Yes, I will take this loft featured in The Devil Wears Prada for only $5.2 million, thank you for asking. Everything a loft should be.

 

 

 

I am also willing to accept this fine house in Los Angeles. Whichever.

Wade Davis' Writer's Cave

Travis Price Architects built Wade Davis an enviable office, featuring its own library dome, The Kiva of Knowledge. You probably know Wade Davis as the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow and other books, or as National Geographic's Explorer in Residence.

Wade Davis has one of the most coveted jobs in America – Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. A cross between your favorite professor and a modern day Marco Polo, he spends of his time with his fingers in the dirt, traversing the globe as an anthropologist, ethnobotanist, photographer, and writer. When he’s home in Washington, he escapes to put pen to paper in his Travis Price-designed study, overflowing with books, manuscripts, artifacts, and inspiration.

“Travis did a studio on M Street in Georgetown for me,” Davis says, noting that in his current home, zoning prohibited a detached building. While many need light-filled rooms for inspiration, he wanted to avoid large windows opening onto a residential neighborhood and sought a cave-like atmosphere to disappear into his work. Subtle light was brought in by other means when the architect built a dome above his client’s desk (which Price describes as similar to the rotunda of the oracle’s temple at Delphi) and filled it with the books he uses the most. Davis whimsically calls the space his “Navajo kiva of knowledge.”

-Karin Tanabe,Washington Life Magazine

(via boingboing & bookshelf)

Previously: Best Thing of the Week: Wade Davis and the shit knife

Haut Nerd Home Design

Author Christopher Paolini lives with his family, collects swords and makes chainmail in his spare time. In short, he's a champion fantasy author and he lives it. Good for him.

Here's his house, dragon sculptures and all.

House Porn 21: The Cement Factory

Ricardo Bofill remoldeled an abandoned cement factory to house himself, his architecture practice and pretty much anything else you can think of. For the family that really needs big spaces. More shots here.

House Porn 20: The House that Blues Clues Bought

Steve Burns (Steve of Blues' Clues, and also a sometime rock god) had Eric Lifkin of Mesh Architects refurbish a former woodworking shop into a cool Brooklyn modern residence, featuring something called TheSpecialWall.

House Porn 19: The Industrial Loft

A 3,200 sq ft home built into a 300,000 sq ft complex outside of Cologne by Tilman Paas, with the help of a foundry and woodshop built into the factory's smokestack.

Click through for more.

House Porn: The Selby's Favorite Images

The Selby's favorite images of 2010. I have envy for Karl Lagerfeld's library in particular, but there are many fine interiors to be seen.

House Porn 17: the Carriage House

From Apartment Therapy, a house in St. Louis. Lots and lots of lots. Tim Tucker, the owner, says: "My male friends say they would love to live like this but their wives would not let them. And my female friends say, “it’s cold in here!“"

House Porn 16: The Smith Tower Pyramid

Michael Tortorello and Stuart Isett of the NYT visit a pyramid-shaped apartment located on top of Seattle's Smith Tower. I love these apartments that have very specific architecture, and that aren't part of a big residential development, but it's got to have taken a lot of work to fix up. Fortunately, that seems to have paid off:

the main attraction of a night at the top of Smith Tower must be the Imax-strength views: Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains to the west, the Cascades to the east and, below, thousands of people doing the things they do when they believe no one is watching.

From the apartment she calls the “Lighthouse,” Ms. Franklin can see almost the entire city. But the city cannot see her. So the residence on top of the tower has taken on the status of an urban legend.

The tour guides around Pioneer Square can be heard to claim that “there’s a shut-in who’s lived up there for 80 years and has 200 cats,” said David Lahaie, 51, an energy and recycling executive. Mr. Lahaie is skeptical, to say the least: he lives in the apartment himself and is Ms. Franklin’s husband.

Stephen Willis, the Smith Tower’s docent and de facto historian, has encountered many odd theories in the 10 years he has guided visitors through the building. “I heard the other day that it’s still family owned by the Smiths,” the heirs of the Smith Corona typewriter fortune. “They haven’t had a stake in the building since the mid-1920s.”

Images of the Week

Neutrino image of the Sun, taken through the Earth.

Biedermeier secretary from Colombo Mobili. The world's most awesome piece of furniture. Look at it. It's got colonnades and roundels and marquetry and decorations that were most likely modeled on narwhal tusks. I must possess it.

Rollout of the last space shuttle mission. Click to embiggen. (via cousin Steve)

Punk Frog

House Porn 14: Martin Gee

Sarah Rainwater of Apartment Therapy Boston found these photographs by Simon Upton of Martin Gee's very blue apartment. The apartment is decorated as a man's house should be: with collections of strange scientific apparatus, religious paraphenalia, vintage military clothing and architectural building blocks. I am positively agog with envy.

Links for Later

1. Stanley Seeger and Christopher Cone collect houses and goods. Come sit in Winston Churchill's armchair.

2. Eat, Pray, Love's Elizabeth Gilbert has a store in New Jersey.

3. Neal Pollack tussles with a Jivamukti yoga instructor.

Links for Later

Jan Willem van de Wetering bio, obituary, summary of work, review of Alexandra David-Neel biography. I hadn't heard that he'd passed a year or so ago.

A little house porn entry, of a guy who keeps a lot of religious artifacts, and at one time collected jobs (39?) and names(44?). More here.

"This isn't about health care." Tea Partiers shout n-word, f-word at members of Congress, threaten violence, revolution.

Kohle Yohannan interview. I wish he'd do a book on home restoration about Greystone Court.

House Porn 13: The Treehouse

The Wilkinson residence in Portland, Oregon is an example of a house purpose built to be non-fungible. The architect Robert Harvey Orchatz built it around the clients pastimes: the viola, choral singing, friends who enjoy gourmet cooking, and a desire to make ice cream on a large deck.

Apparently, it was constructed largely with intern labor.

Often, these organic buildings look too hippy-dippy or overly conceptual to be really comfortable, but I could imagine living here.

House Porn 12: The New Antiquarians

Brooklynites use taxidermy, silversmithing, sculling equipment and old cabinetry to feather their nests. My house looks like this, but not on purpose, so I don't get an NYT article.

I am, however, finally reading Against Nature, which provides some really great decorating ideas. Now, I'm off to encrust my toroise in jewels.

House Porn 11: The Firehouse

From this: To this:

House Porn 10: Golden Gate Lutheran Church

I'd like to live in a decommissioned church. The found nature of the architecture makes it feel like one is camping out in a monument.

Lucky me, for only $10 million I can have the house of my dreams in San Francisco's Mission District.

Formerly the Golden Gate Lutheran Church, this stunning Gothic Revival style building is now one of the most extraordinary and largest single family homes in San Francisco. This one-of-a-kind property features an enormous living area that includes the original sanctuary with soaring, coffered and hand-painted ceilings, arched windows framing Dolores Park as well as most of the original stained glass windows, custom mahogany wood finishes, four fireplaces (2 wood-burning & 2 gas), a new chef's kitchen and a spacious dining room. The Master suite level features a marble Roman tub room, dressing room and incredible 360 degree views from the tower meditation room and deck. The home includes an expansive ground floor level that could be used as exhibition space, recording studio, gym and/or home office. There is also a garage that accommodates 4-6 cars.

House Porn 9

New York Magazine has released its annual design issue, which always showcases surprisingly industrious people in their self-designed habitats. Of the half dozen represented this year, my vote for best pad goes to Maximillian Sinsteden's Drew University dorm room, which he's apparently redecorated three times since the article was written. Any man who paints his room Ralph Lauren Tapestry Green gets a thumbs up from me. He also has a vast collection of ascots, an eye for thrift shop bargains and forthcoming decorating contracts.

House Porn 8: The Ramp House

Archivirus Architecture and Design built this skateboard-ramp-based house by building the curves into every part of the house:

The architect wanted the ‘skateboarding’ element to be more than simply putting a mini ramp in the living room. Rather, the ramp, the bowl and all the interpretations of those terms would actually become the building elements for this space. It is intended to be a ‘ramp house’ and not a ‘house with a ramp’. Straight lines are curved and the flat surface becomes a ramp or a bowl. Basic house elements such as the fireplace and storage units are hidden inside the ramp forms.

(via boingboing)