Table of contents for 5/1/2016 in Dwell

Artist Yves Klein (1928–1962) is remembered for many things, such as paving the way for French Pop art and patenting his own shade of blue. Less well-known is his turn as a furniture designer, and his 1961 opus, Table Bleue. Topped with a plexiglass display filled with bright, textured pigment, the piece cleverly draws focus inward from its edges. Now, after more than 50 years in the production, the coffee table’s influence is reaching the mainstream in clear and colorful ways.…

RE-DEFINING HOME Dwell is proud to be a leading industry media partner on a new nationwide design challenge entitled Re-defining Home: Home Today, Home Tomorrow. The competition, presented by AARP, AARP Foundation, Home Matters® and Wells Fargo Housing Foundation, challenges architects and designers to create new standards in housing design so people can stay in their home as they travel through various life stages. Monetary awards will be made to three juried winning entries. The first place, winning designs will be incorporated into a real-life home that will be offered to a growing family. Submissions now open! DESIGNED WELL homemattersamerica.com/design BKLYN DESIGNS BKLYN DESIGNS is Brooklyn’s premier design event showcasing a cross section of art, architecture, and design. Founded by the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce in 2003, the fair highlights…

Project Azor Residence Designer Josué Azor Location Port-au-Prince, Haiti “At a certain period it was hard to see hope,” says Josué Azor of Canapé Vert, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he grew up. Once “a very quiet and middle-class neighborhood” full of greenery and scores of homes, it suffered a grievous blow from a 7.0-magnitude earthquake on January 12, 2010. While exact figures remain disputed, estimates put the death toll between 220,000 and 316,000, with more than two-thirds of the capital’s buildings in ruins. More than 170 years had passed since the country’s last major earthquake: lack of building code enforcement, poorly trained engineers, and shoddy concrete and masonry construction had left Haiti vulnerable. “Everything collapsed,” Azor says, and neither his family nor most of his neighbors wanted to return to…

The 14-foot-tall redwood fragment dwarfs visitors to architect Allan Shope’s living room, though its sheer size betrays a different kind of immensity: over 2,000 years of fine growth rings, a humbling reminder of nature’s passage of time. The lesson of the ancient redwood—a pillar of its ecosystem for centuries, quickly felled by humans with little understanding of their actions—is an integral part of Shope’s new home, built with reclaimed materials and filled with wood furnishings made by his own hand. Located not far from Hudson, New York, the dwelling carefully weighs human needs against the demands of ecological responsibility. “I love second lives for things,” Shope says of the salvaged bronze that decorates parts of his home, itself representing a second life for his architectural career. While he’s always appreciated…

Melanie Maher and her husband, David, understand firsthand how the built environment can pose challenges to a wheelchair user. Melanie, who has muscular dystrophy, had grown accustomed to encountering obstacles with her motorized chair both at home and in the community. As the couple began thinking about building a multigenerational house in Northern California’s Livermore Valley, their goal was clear. As David recalls: “We decided it would be nice to design a place that didn’t require us to make so many compromises.” Enter Erick Mikiten. Raised in Texas, the Berkeley-based architect is a proponent of universally designed environments that are usable by all. That Mikiten is also a wheelchair user mattered less to the Mahers than his ability to understand and articulate their vision. Seeking to accommodate Melanie’s disability without…

WESTERN WINDOW SYSTEMS Walls that disappear? It’s true. Western Window Systems’ multi-slide doors feature large, unobstructed rolling glass panels that stack or slide into pockets for extra wide openings that eliminate the barrier between indoors and out. These moving walls of glass expand living space, frame beautiful views, and let in fresh air and natural light. Start by choosing your Western Window Systems multi-slide doors with the modern look of classic aluminum, energy-efficient thermally broken aluminum, or aluminum-clad wood. From there, a vast range of options lets you customize your functional and aesthetic preferences. TO THE TRADE westernwindowsystems.com FERGUSON BATH, KITCHEN & LIGHTING GALLERY Let Ferguson be the solution for your plumbing, lighting and appliance needs. With our wide range of products you can make multiple selections at a single…

In an ancient city, a young family was bursting at the seams of their apartment. Luca Pagnan, a businessman, and his wife, Elena, a lawyer, felt stuck. They had two children—Cecilia, now 5, and Giovanni, 2 (baby Francesco joined the family in 2015)—and barely a balcony to connect their house to the outdoors. So they began looking for an affordable lot in the city’s dense urban core. After a search, they found an enticingly large piece of land. But the parcel’s size made it prohibitively expensive. That’s when Luca had an idea: Why not recruit another family to join the enterprise, and build two houses? When he found a partner for the project through word of mouth, Luca contacted Guido and Martino Pietropoli of Studiopietropoli, and proposed that they design…

Under Cover A level, trellised garapa-wood deck connects the main structure to the pool house. “The arbors near the pool knit everything together,” says Mikiten. “The deck is constructed over a drainage pit so the wood surface can be completely flush with the interior floor and the surrounding yard, which is critical for a fluid experience by someone using a wheelchair.” advantagelumber.com Wide-Open Spaces Twenty-foot-wide doors from Solar Innovations offer easy access to the deck. “Solar Innovations was the only manufacturer at that time that had a pocket multi-slider with a good ADA threshold,” says architect Erick Mikiten. “They almost look like steel, but are thermally broken aluminum.” solarinnovations.com Garden Party Landscape architect Charles M. McCulloch designed pathways of locally sourced decomposed granite that lead to accessible, raised planting beds,…

PROJECT Casa Olabuenaga ARCHITECT Sottsass Associati LOCATION Maui, Hawaii “We had worked with Ettore and all of the Memphis designers since the conception of our company,” says Lesley Bailey, who founded the jewelry and accessories brand ACME Studio with her husband, Adrian Olabuenaga, in 1985. She’s referring, of course, to Ettore Sottsass, the Italian architect and designer who, after more than 30 years of practice, went on to helm the radical but short-lived collective known for its brash, offbeat furnishings steeped in visual irony and colorful, discordant juxtapositions. “At the time, no one else had claim to that but us,” she says, of the Memphis keepsakes still produced by ACME today. Life and business have long intertwined for Lesley and Adrian, who first met at a trade show in Los…

A One-of-a-Kind House by Ettore Sottsass In this issue, we visit Casa Olabuenaga, a colorful abode on Maui designed by the famed Italian architect (p. 50). Head online for a look at more of Sottsass’s models and watercolors of the dwelling, which is one of only a few residential projects that he completed in his lifetime. dwell.com/sottsass-house Universal Design The Makeover Our Spaces Need Architect Erick Mikiten, himself a wheelchair user, designed a barrier-free house in Livermore, California, for a couple dealing with muscular dystrophy (p. 138). On our site, he shares his wish list for modifications to the built environment that would make it more accessible for all. dwell.com/accessibility-wish-list Product Spotlight Amazing Items for Your Dream Home After you find the perfect house, you face the task of outfitting…

A suburb 15 minutes from central Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city, seems an unlikely place to find a house designed by one of Scandinavia’s most celebrated architecture firms. Still, here, Wingårdhs—run by principal Gert Wingårdh—has created a home for a young couple that offers near complete privacy, even though the closest neighbor is just yards away. Villa Kristina rests atop the kind of rocky ground that characterizes much of Sweden’s rugged west coast. Passersby have little inkling of what hides behind the structure; just one narrow window faces the street. Wingårdh cites Alvar Aalto’s summer house on the island of Muuratsalo in Finland as an inspiration for the house’s form. “It is very closed on the outside and it directs the views to where nature is at its best,” he…

Charles and Ray Eames treated their abode in Pacific Palisades, California, as the embodiment of their design philosophies. As documented in The World of Charles and Ray Eames (Rizzoli), the forwardthinking couple, taking cues from the surge of industry surrounding World War II, anchored their design around a prefabricated steel frame. Setting the tone for a new class of residential architecture, the structure—completed in 1949—would prove a comfortable backdrop around which their vibrant home and studio life revolved.…