Displaying posts labeled "Modern"

The rain is bucketing down here. A month’s rain will fall in one day as an ex tropical cyclone winds slowly down the coast. Schools are closed and even the government has sent non essential staff home. (I can’t complain as many to the north of me have lost houses and livelihoods as the cyclone made landfall.) There is a silver lining to all this water falling from the skies. My garden will drink it in, the grass will turn green and my water tanks will overflow. With all this promised bounty to come I’m daydreaming of stylish urban gardens like this new design in inner-Sydney Leichardt by Adam Robinson Design in collaboration with Garden Society.

Photography by Natalie Hunfalvay

I love a door, don’t you? It swings, it folds, it slides, it hides. The joy, the serenity of closing off the cluttered, the dirty, the ugly with a well designed door. Not that there is anything but a calm, almost zen-like quality to this contemporary mansion flat by London-based extrArchitecture. It’s like a beautifully crafted puzzle box.

I do like a hidden kitchen, everything behind a bank of doors. Clean lined and contemporary. Take a closer look at this garden pavillion extension to a post war bungalow. Can you see it? Yes there it is. Hiding. House Au Yeung by Tribe Studio Architects.

Photography by Katherine Lu.

Just had to share one more project from Johannesburg-based Tonic Design. Is that a bar room I spy? Yes please!

What to do when the house you are refurbishing is perhaps the most beautiful example of Le Corbusier-inspired architecture in Johannesburg? How to breathe new life into an iconic building by local Modernist hero Rex Martienssen? Keep it true, keep it real and let the owner’s personality shine through. I’m green with envy over that verdant entry. Greenside Residence by Tonic Design.

Photographer: Elsa Young