It has been an exciting couple of months. Refurbishing has started. All I seem to do these days is drawing and eating, eating and drawing.
Thus far, we are still re-arranging furniture and have managed to kit out the basics for the master room and bathroom (laminated floors, painted walls/ceiling). Onto the next project!
My first room as a kid had navy blue and dark green tartan wallpaper with matching curtains so forgive me if I have never been friendly towards wallpaper. That is until I came accross Minakani Lab and Cole & Son Designs. Their most contemporary lines have me drooling over their geometric patterns.
Which means that I am either finally acquiring my mother's good taste or her absolute lunacy.
There is a lot to learn from well designed small hotels. Here is a sample that could easily be applied to everyday living and not just holiday dreaming.
A very simple backyard in Palm Springs, nothing over processed and it even looks a little dated, but I would swap in a heartbeat. I am not exactly sure why our backyward can not look like this. It seems pretty simple to me. A couple sunloungers, some rocks, cement, a few pebbles. Just add water, right?
'Rose Delight' is a mid-century modern home designed by William Kriesel and it is also a vacation rental in Palm Springs, nestled at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountains in the Vista Las Palmas neighborhood.
One cannot go wrong if one's project begins at Scandinavian's most western fjord. Architects Widjedal Racki Bergerhoff were commissioned to tear the existing house down and adapt a practical design to the environement and the client.
There is a fantasy house perched on a hiIl in a town east of Stockholm called Ingaro-Evlinge. The steep of the slope was the starting point for the project. The Architects, Widjedal Racki Bergerhoff focused thoroughly designing with all Nuance Black, White and minimal space.
Designed by Richard Neutra in 1946, his concept was to build a “machine in the landscape, juxtaposing a foreign-made construct onto a wild, unrefined, natural setting”. In the years since, Palm Springs growth has destroyed his vision and the area’s desert landscape has been invaded with non-indigenous plantings.
An integral aspect of the restoration of the Kaufmann House was the recreation of the tension between house and landscape. Using plants native to the Southwest desert, the surrounding residential environment was obscured and the sense of the home extending through the raw desert was re-established.
I can certainly say that this is not something we can attempt in our backyard, but if there is one thing to learn from this, is to keep our yard 'desert'. As God intended.
We feel very lucky to have a studio each after a conversation I had with our neighbour. Working on his sculptures out of his garage is not ideal considering the temperatures are still in the triple figures. He is considering adding a little structure to the far corner of his yard.
So here are some I had on file.
B.
Please feel free to add crediits in the comments box, I archived those a while ago and I have no idea where they came from.
There are some, very lucky people, who happen to live in Joshua Tree, Steve Halterman is one of them. And looking at their perfect desert backyard I had to dedicate it to my favourite Cherokee.
'Modern' nowadays comes in all shapes and forms. A friend of mine has just returned from Morocco with very exciting ideas for our patio, and off I went digging deep into Lonny Magazine achives. Considering most of the interior of our house is white, black and wood, I would love for the patio to have a wider bracket of ethnicities. I would be very happy with Ibiza meeting Casa Blanca, of course my favourite Cherokee is pulling towards Western tribal.
Coming up is the home of Adam Levine, a spread I came across in Architectural Digest magazine a while ago. In a nutshell, it is the kind of home that I admire, not just because of the bones, it is after all a refurbished 1940 ranch in the H'wood Hills, but also because there is a great balance between personality and design.
Not even the classics by Jean Prouvé, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Arne Jacobsen, Philippe Starck and artworks by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Shepard Fairey, Mark Seliger, Andy Warhol and the rest take character away from the owner.
And that's pretty special.
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Design credit Mark Haddawy, serial MCM collector and designer extraordinare.
Dream inspired because this is the stuff of my holiday dreams and not something I could do to our home.
This house may not be MCM per se, but it is Modern, and it applies many of the highlights of MCM philosophy.
Casa Messico is a vacation home in the Pacific coast of Mexico, designed by artist Gabriel Orozco and architect Tatiana Bilbao. Set on a rocky plot, this unusual home is a 1:1 scale replica of the Jantar Mantar observatory in New Delhi.
Notable too for its simple materials and technologies, this example of modern Mexican architecture is made of simply cast concrete, precast blocks, lime plaster, joinery and wood floors. This unusual house plan consists of just two rooms: a living room and a kitchen, which open to the outdoors.
Considering how everything feels like a mini holiday snap under Californian Light, I thought I would show a few hotels every now and then.
There is plenty of MCM to choose from in Palm Springs, however I would like to introduce the Avalon in Beverly Hills as it used to be our local Sunday brunch place when we lived in LA and the dyptic in the Penthouse office and the single abstract in the principal boardroom used to be mine. We have never stayed in any of their rooms, I simply find it interesting from a Design point of view.
I have to admit, I am more about the lounging space by the pool on this one.
I love those cabanas. The rest reminds me of a screaming lovechild between Art Deco and Mid Century Modern.
This could only work in LA!
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Lobby
Beverly Tower (Dark) Rooms
Penthouse
Boardroom
Bar and Restaurant
I could only find Kelly Wearstler as a credited designer for the main Lobby, but why would anyone need more than her! I find her rather brilliant.
Summer is still going strong in California so no back to school for us just yet, I thought I would post some colour to match the weather. Or maybe I just want to get rid of loud rooms in my archive.
I have been painting all day and Mr. has been composing all day (with the luxury of - finally! - a studio each) it may be time to meet up in middle ground.
After 15 years in London I moved to the Mojave Desert in California via a couple of years in Los Angeles. I love all MCM related design and architecture and here I can join together all the images that are helping us make our house a home and the Interiors I have photographed myself. Thanks for stopping by! BB
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Lobby
Penthouse
Foto Credit 
