Displaying posts labeled "Concrete"

Hooray! Squarespace is working again. For a few hours there I watched a circle go round and round and round while the blog didn’t load. Not anymore. It’s time to stalk a modern home in Kew, Melbourne. I’ve been stalking it for hours… and hours… and hours. Now it’s your turn. A little bit brutalist with hard concrete surfaces but softened with rugs and art and furniture. Soaring ceilings and cosy spots. Love the backyard too. Once again a great campaign by the real estate agents Marshall White including a video that sells the house even better than the photos. Link here while it lasts.

I was super excited to stumble upon the website of Austin, TX architects Andersson-Wise. Why you may ask? One of their projects just may be my future home (the home before the jump….well, a variation of it anyway, and minus the water view dammit). Their homes are rustic and modern and works of art. Each one a dream. Well, my dream anyway. And how cool is that house lined with wood stacks?  

Sometimes less is more. In this case it’s not less house, but less detail. This is the Cube House by Marcio Kogan of StudioMK27. Amidst the lush grennery at the edge of the city sits this cube, and it needs no more. Indoor/outdoor living to take advantage of the views, the pool, the property. Less is definitively more. (P.S. More projects by StudioMK27 here and here)

A Brazilian reader named Mabel was fortunate enough to spend 4 days last month at this magnificent hotel in Porto, Portugal called Casa do Conto. It is a restored 19th-century bourgeois home that has been modernized and simplified. It is stunning. Shades of grey, white and black, concrete and unembellished walls. I would love to stay a while in a hotel like this, to see how I would feel in an environment this modern and minimal, imagining it as my home. I adore spaces like this but am not quite sure I could live like this long term. In any case, if I ever have the opportunity to visit Porto, I would gladly stay here. 🙂

Rising up like a sturdy weed in a pavement crack. A spindly, winding shoot of a building reaching for the sun between the city structures. An ultra-compact concrete vertical house over 3 levels in what was previously a parking space for 2 cars, six by seven metres. And when you have wound your way to the top what is your reward? A perfect small garden with very large view. Small House by Domenic Alvaro.