Table of contents for November/December 2018 in Dwell

Turn my San Diego cookie-cutter condo kitchen into a “wow” moment. Goodbye countertops and cabinets that everyone used in 2006 during the peak flip years.@joshnsd on Instagram Rewired electrical and new lighting. Oh, the difference better lighting would make in a 1949 bungalow! Stacy Bartko on Facebook The kitchen. The germophobe in me hates the tile countertops. But the thing about kitchen remodels is that you never know how much it’s going to cost or how long it will take, especially in a 103-year-old house. Not sure I wanna open Pandora’s Box. @karenarman on Instagram I would add a ton of hardscaping to our very wooded yard to help keep overgrown weeds at bay. @suerissab on Instagram The back of our house is almost all glass, which gives amazing light,…

When James Geiger was leafing through the pages of Dwell in 2011, he made an illuminating observation. None of the stunning images he saw included window shades or blinds. It was in this revelatory moment that the concept for Geiger’s innovative shading company was born. An alternative to dated, visually distracting window coverings, J Geiger shading systems would instead be streamlined, minimal, and modern. J Geiger was the first to offer elegant, motorized shading solutions with no visible wires or screws. Traditional shading products “had function, but no aesthetic,” says Geiger. Instead, he wanted to create something with a clean profile that would “become part of the architecture.” Geiger also developed a unique two-step installation process for his revolutionary shading systems, and that process has proven to be as crucial…

The ideal recessed light is simple and versatile. The new Architectural LED luminaires from WAC Lighting are exactly that, combining modern design with excellent performance for the ultimate function and flexibility. For over 30 years, WAC Lighting, a family-owned manufacturer, has specialized in integrating technological advancement with forward-thinking design. The newest addition to their award-winning Oculux Downlight series are the Architectural LED luminaires. With 50,000-plus hours of rated life, Oculux luminaires offer the longevity of energy-efficient LEDs while effortlessly imitating the warmth of incandescence. Dimmable fixtures are essential to creating ambience, inside or out. Thanks to the Dim-to-Warm function, Oculux luminaires provide pure white 3000K light for task lighting, then dim down to a warm 1800K to create the perfect mood for cozy living rooms or romantic restaurant seating. Additionally,…

“We’re not going anywhere,” declares Luise Stauss, a freelance art director, photo editor, and soon-to-be mother of two as she rubs her six-month baby bump. Despite the tight proportions of her two-bedroom Brooklyn apartment, she has no intention of trading up for anything bigger. Fourteen years ago, Luise and her husband, Nicholas Blechman, now the creative director of The New Yorker, pulled up stakes in Williamsburg, when it was still kind of edgy, and moved a few miles south to comparatively comatose Brooklyn Heights. They had fallen for a 1948 building designed by architect A. Rollin Caughey. The matchmaker was their friend Christoph Niemann, an illustrator best known for his New Yorker covers and children’s books. Niemann was born in Germany (as was Luise) and lived with his family on…

Dappled sunlight dances on a pathway of wood planks, coaxing visitors up through a narrow forest passage. The endpoint is obscured by a stand of tall pines with swimsuits dangling from their branches. It could be the entrance to a treetop walk or a path to a secret swimming hole. In a way, it’s both. The passageway leads to the retreat that Tomas Haeger, a management consultant, and Tina Linde, an organizational psychologist, share with their two children on the island of Tjörn off the west coast of Sweden. The home, located within an hour’s drive of their primary residence in Gothenburg, is a cross between a tree house and a beach house. “We wanted it to look summer, breathe summer, and feel summer,” says Tomas. Although the Swedish coast…

1 THE NORTH VILLA Approaching by land or sea, one could easily miss these three villas on the northeast coast of Sardinia. Attuned to the environmental sensitivities of the 1970s, when they were designed by Turin architects Ferdinando Fagnola and Gianni Francione, they rise almost reluctantly from the earth, their Brutalist wedges half-rooted and dispersed, woolly with shrubs. This spring, four decades after the villas were built, Fagnola returned to the island, joined by a team of younger architects from another Turin studio, PAT., to finish off a series of restorations—ranging from a fresh color palette to adding new bedrooms—commissioned by the current owners. The result is a single vision refined and elaborated on by two generations of designers: environmentally committed, aesthetically bold, and built to foster a quasi-communal lifestyle.…

I read your interview with Dan Maginn on Dwell’s new podcast, RM-3, and I have to say, if I were steel, I’d be pissed. To see this podcast come to fruition sparked joy within me. And I love the idea of covering one material “three ways.” But to say steel is “basically processed dirt”—this is an insult to any metal, really, and misdirects the potential of dirt. Steel was born from the belly of the earth, trapped for hundreds of years surrounded by dirt in the form of iron ore. Steel is not dirt. And this isn’t to undermine dirt, which in and of itself is fascinating and a true chameleon of materials. —Diana Giulietti Thanks for the letter, Diana. I hope steel isn’t pissed at me and understands I…

You can count on one hand the pieces of furniture in the apartment Julian von der Schulenburg shares with his wife, Min, and their year-old daughter, Miru: bed, dining table with benches, console, daybed, chair. Everything about their home is ultra pared back, down to the lighting, which consists of LED bulbs in simple porcelain sockets. The sparseness fits the couple’s minimalist lifestyle, but it also emphasizes the raw beauty of the loft-like space. When Julian and Min purchased the yellow brick building that houses their apartment three years ago, it was totally run down. Their gut renovation, which also included an upstairs rental unit and basement studio, was “largely a process of subtraction,” says Julian. Out went the fake wood walls. Out went the dropped Styrofoam ceilings. The design…

Designed for a pair of outdoor enthusiasts, this mountain modern retreat in Big Sky, Montana, uses the very landscape as one of its raw materials. Walls of glass allow the enchanting, snow-blanketed surroundings to cascade into the home. In fact, the residence presents views of three nearby mountain peaks—Lone, Pioneer, and Cedar. “With the layout of the house, with all the windows and doors, we feel like we are living in the view, and we love it,” says homeowner Pam Norton. “Kolbe’s VistaLuxe line has clean profiles,” explains architect Jamie Daugaard of Centre Sky Architecture. “The overall opaque edges around windows and doors were less as well, so it allowed for more transparency, more glass.” The expansive window walls also lend lightness to the home. “We pulled away from some…

Werner Weissmann is drawn to audacious works of architecture—style and era be damned. The list of unusual places he’s called home over the years even includes a 16th-century castle. So when he came across an ad for a one-of-a-kind modernist villa deep in Lower Austria’s wine country, right as he was ready to tackle another restoration, he pounced. Designed by distinguished architect Johannes Spalt in the mid 1970s, the home was built for Spalt’s friend and collaborator, handcrafted-furniture manufacturer Franz Wittmann, whose family-owned company, Wittmann, dates to 1896. “In 2015, Haus Wittmann suddenly appeared on the market,” Werner remembers. “We’d always dreamt about renovating a house built by a modern architect. For me, it was really love at first sight. When you compare all of Spalt’s buildings, this is the…

Tucked away in the woods of Kerhonkson, New York, the Tinker Box home serves as a “place to play” for architect Marica McKeel, founder of Studio MM, and her husband Brock. The one-bedroom residence and workshop, the couple’s home away from home, was built with the intention of later becoming a guesthouse for their future home on the same site. A retreat from their hectic lives in New York City, the luxury of more space affords them the freedom to indulge their respective creative passions—Marica’s for designing and building furniture, and Brock’s for working on antique cars. Behind a dramatic, double-height entry, the home opens up to expansive views of the peaceful wooded landscape. It was important to McKeel to “always have a view of outside—to always be presented with…

COMBO OVEN AND STOVE Christopher found the 1962 Custom Imperial Flair combo oven-stove by Frigidaire/General Motors in perfect working order when he moved in—it just needed new burners. The eyelevel dual ovens are fitted with glass doors that open vertically—a bit like the gullwing doors on a DeLorean—while the burners hide in a sliding drawer. With its Howard Miller–inspired clock and cursive labeling, the Flair was the “it” stove of the ’60s, seen in the kitchen of Samantha and Darrin Stephens on Bewitched. BATHROOM TILE The side-by-side bathrooms look out on a private courtyard through floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors. They feature original tile in the sunken showers—one in butter yellow, the other in light gray. “The tiles are heavy, real chunky, and of the period,” says Christopher. He had them…

HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDES Take the stress out of holiday shopping with our curated gift guides. Whether you’re looking for stocking stuffers or cool new finds (like the levitating Flyte LED lamp, above), you can cross off everyone on your list by heading to www.dwell.com/shop. VACATION RENTALS Minimod, originally designed by pioneering Bay Area architect Joseph Esherick, is a compact, three-level cabin in California’s famed Sea Ranch community that’s been lovingly restored by Framestudio to accommodate up to six guests. Book your stay at dwell.com/minimod. TOP INSTAGRAMS A revamped 1955 home in Austin (above), an off-grid retreat in Australia, and a renovated London townhouse were among your favorite recent posts. Add more inspiration to your feed at instagram.com/dwellmagazine. POLL: 72% of readers say they would not put a television over the…

SEAMLESS Samsung’s newly designed SmartThings products transform your home into a fully connected smart home without sacrificing budget or aesthetics. Simple yet powerful, the minimally designed SmartThings Hub, Sensors and Outlet will fit into any space in your home. The non-obtrusive compact silhouette melds into any room without drawing too much attention. SIMPLE Paired with the clean, modern design is increased performance with ultra-streamlined connectivity and easy home automation. Easily SmartThings Hub, you can connect to hundreds of other smart devices that you may already own. With the addition of the SmartThings Sensors and Outlet comes a fully smart home experience that doesn’t break the bank. EFFORTLESS With the SmartThings line of products, you can also set up individualized automations that make your home fully connected and in tune with…

When Rachel Klauber-Speiden and Josh Empson moved from Santa Monica to New York for Josh’s job in finance, they weren’t just changing cities—they were also giving up their modernist dream home, one they and an architect had designed and built from scratch. Well aware that real estate in New York City was a different beast, with fewer opportunities for a single-family home, they looked for an apartment instead and found a new condominium at the edge of the East River in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn. Their 2,600-square-foot three-bedroom unit, which they bought in 2016, offered sunny views over a park and across the river to Lower Manhattan. The only problem was that the developer offered a cookie-cutter interior with almost no options for personalization. “In California there’s so much…

SOCALGAS SoCalGas® is offering rebates to eligible homeowners and businesses that install a solar water heating system. It works with your existing natural gas water heater to help you go green, save energy, and lower your monthly utility bill. Plus, SoCalGas offers rebates that can cover up to half the cost of a qualifying system for your home or up to 80% of the cost of a qualifying system for your business. Invite the strength of the sun into your home or business. socalgas.com/solar | 800-427-2200 CIRCA LIGHTING Introducing the Spectica chandelier in Matte Black designed by Sean Lavin for Tech Lighting. A modern take on the traditional chandelier, this artful and energy-saving piece features a conveniently adjustable look with a swiveling canopy, adjustable arms and rotating head. With a…

I founded my design firm, Office of Mobile Design, in 1998 to work on transportable and demountable environments—what many people refer to as prefab or container homes. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with mobility. As a child, I turned wood blocks and Hot Wheels into cities of flying cars, ran a mobile candy store, and broke my knee while riding my bike down a hill in front of my house with roller skates on. It’s in my blood. On a shelf in my office sits a wind-up metal robot-vendor toy, a gift I received when I was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard. I spent that year exploring the use of intelligent, kinetic, lightweight materials. Today the whirling toy reminds me of when I owned and operated a…