warm and modern

the dweller of this apartment is a ceramics artist and teacher who transfers her skills as an artist to creating a warm and inviting space. She also makes a mean chocolate chip cookie and a gentle bar of soap and is consistently rated a "chili pepper" (hot!) on ratemyprofessor.com. Much of the furniture is actually 1960s industrial office furniture that she obtained through a university surplus program a few years ago. Seems they had better taste in furniture in the 60s than they do now.

It's built on a base of 60s modernism but strays from there into the realm of the lived-in, where the clutter is always creative. Who couldn't love a bookshelf crammed with books books by Tolstoy, Thoreau, Kafka and Flannery O'Connor, and also Love Signs by Linda Goodman (which is always the book that gets passed around when people are over).

I always appreciate a real stereo, with a turntable of course, which here she runs through a vintage tube receiver. The print on the wall was created by her uncle in 1967, and the collaged Victoriana is a testament to the height of the 60s.

If there is a theme to this project, the terms that would come to mind first the Dutch word I've already metioned "gezellig" and also "warm and modern". Not "warm but modern" but "warm and modern" because the first implies that there is or should be something contradictory about those terms. This little apartment, a dwelling in the Heideggerian sense of the term, perfectly fits that description.

'Shroom

This is probably the oddest piece of furniture I own and I love it in all its 70s-ness. It is a footrest I affectionately call the mushroom. The top is that 70s goldish green (or is it greenish gold?) and the bottom was a heavily lacquered thick wood, probably oak, that a former girlfriend painted green. The top of the 'shroom has lost of bit of its verve, as the stuffing has become dry and over the years has begun falling out in powdered form from holes (?) in the underside that I've had to cover with packing tape. Now it's a bit lopsided and the more charming for it.
It's really a key part of the old and new, warm and cool dichotomy that runs this place. Too much like it would look like the Brady Bunch, but a couple things like this gives the place a warmth and eccentricity that I like. It's small but because of its general oddness, people really notice it and a) like it or b) hate it. It's also a reminder of what the 70s were really like for most people, that is while there was a lot of Danish modern around, even in the 'burbs, there was also this, and so it's my way of keeping something real. It brings to mind a word like coziness, but since that has schmaltzy connotations, the Dutch word gezellig is better; it's a warmth, a coziness that lacks the bourgeois stuffiness usually associated with either of those words. Gezellig (roughly pronounced "heh-zell-ick") is the coziness of a Amsterdam coffee house (where coffee is the last thing on the mind) or the music of Erik Satie. It's comfortable but not banal, warm and friendly but not naive. By itself, the mushroom stool may scream kitsch, but in a room with contrasting shapes, colors and sounds it's another texture that adds interest and a soft place to put one's feet.

Ambient Introduction

This blog is about making creative spaces - the kind of interior and urban spaces that foster creativity and well-being in people. These spaces can be rooms in houses or apartments, artists' spaces, recording studios, almost anywhere and with any purpose. I'll talk about and show the use of architecture, urban planning and interior design in everything from a room to a neighborhood to a city to a natural ecosystem as a study of values and economy – economy as in how to get the most out of a space, but going beyond efficiency and utility into getting the most quality of a space; how that quality of space affects people and how they live their lives. How we inhabit space and the choices we make determines much about how we live – how much we spend, consume, energy usage. Getting the most out of a space the most efficiently means making a place as good and humane and interesting as possible, getting the best “feeling” and “energy” out of a place with available resources. How this affects people’s moods, psychologies, drives and shapes values and enhances the imagination.

I think too often architecture, and especially interior design, is thought of as fluffy or insignificant, that caring bout such things is only for the rich and shallow. From what I've noticed, the smartest people I know put a lot of energy and thought into designing the spaces they live in, and it shows. The idea of living in a stylish manner is not mutually exclusive with the idea of being an intelligent, socially engaged individual. More frequently than not, those with intelligence and grace care a lot about their living situations.

I'm a graduate student in architecture, and what I'll be doing at first is collecting pictures of my own and others' apartments. Being a grad student, as are most of my friends, we're more likely to have style and taste than money. No matter what field the the dwellers of the places I'll focus on are in, there's a common thread of creativity in the design of their living quarters. One thing I find interesting is that even though there is a great deal of individuality in the design of their spaces, certain similarities come through, reflecting an absorption of ideas through a cultural osmosis.

On the stereo

One of the sad things about the iPod/MP3 revolution is the loss of the stereo as an interior design object (not to mention the loss of sound quality). Different stereo components seemed to have peaked in different eras -for instance, amplifiers from the 1960s have both powerful sound and excellent style. Here, I have a 1960 or 1961 Sherwood S-5500 II, a 64 watt tube amp. It was built in Chicago in a factory on north California street in a building that is now a Korean Cultural Center. The turntable is a Harman Kardon T60 from the early to mid-1980s. The matte silver finish is still remarkable, and the timelessness of the designis reflected in the fact that there is a T60 used as a design prop in the current CB2 catalog. The speakers come from the mid 70s, an era that my rose tinted glasses tells me was a time when no bachelor pad was without speakers like these, when turning on the stereo pushed the listener and his long flowing hair back into his chair. These Infinity 4000s are from my uncle, who bought them
in the mid-70s and used them until the early 90s when he replaced them with smaller, probably more practical, satellite speakers. I got them a few years later after they'd been sitting for a while and the speaker cones were dry rotted. The brown tweed grilles are still like new and are really beautiful, which is good because these do take up quite a bit of interior real estate and something tacky might be a little hard to live with for long, even if they sounded great.
The cabinet is the only thing I own from IKEA (I think). I bought it in 2001 and have since seen the same one in apartments and houses in the design section of the New York Times as well as in the homes of many people I love and respect. The red gives the room a bright spot and the color is one of strength and vitality. Red brings a lot of life to a room, but it can be overdone easily and more might make a room look cartoony. The rug is a wool oriental that I bought some years ago from the Brown Elephant in Chicago, a nice unpretentious rug that balances out the minimalism of the IKEA cabinet. Mixing a little old with a little new gives any room a personality as individual as the owner.

vignettes

I love my apartment and the opportunity it gives me to create little vignettes in spaces, such as this, the small dining area. I like the backdrop of white with different tones of wood and small hits of bright color in the lamp, dishes and the teapot. I also like the combination of the French-country style dining table with the 60s Danish modern side table next to it and the recent Danish-Arneson-inspired chairs.