Manolo for the Home

The Beard has been my linkman lately, and he did not disappoint today. His latest find was a pictorial tour of Mike Tyson’s former home on Illicitohio, an awesome (AWESOME!) site that documents the adventures of one anonymous urban explorer. The home has apparently been empty since the 90s and is mostly empty of furniture. It’s fun to look at what Mike Tyson’s decor guru thought was hot and what was left in the house after he decided to leave.

The photos speak for themselves, really. There’s commentary over at Illicitohio if you’re interested in anon’s take on the house and the decor, but I’ll leave you with this thought before presenting a selection of photos: Everything you see, from the furniture to the rugs to the faux plants, was someone’s idea of a real stylin’ pad.

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For some reason, these stacked apartments bring to mind a mainstream version of the redneck manse, but the reality is a touch more upscale than that. Habitat 67 in Montreal was built by architect Moshe Safdie as a prototype for affordable modular living spaces. Alas, the individual units–situated as they are on the Marc-Drouin Quay on the Saint Lawrence River–are now quite expensive. Pity, that.

This snapshot of Habitat 67 comes from a slideshow of gravity defying structures on PointClickHome. My favorites are the Cactus House in Rotterdam, Netherlands and the extreme tree house in Irian Jana, Indonesia. I should add that I wouldn’t even know about gravity defying houses if it weren’t for a wonderful blog that everyone should be checking out regularly, A Daily Dose of Architecture.

(I’d say more about everything and anything, but I’m tremendously sick. Bleah.)

I remember once joshing on trailers and trailer parks in front of some future in-laws. My then soon-to-be sister-in-law was the first to speak up, saying, “You know that mom once lived in a trailer, right?” I lapsed into an embarrassed silence until I remembered two things. One, I have relatives who live in what is commonly known as a double wide, and two, my MIL lived in the trailer to better make use of a huge and beautiful piece of unspoiled land.

Just so you know, I harbor no particular assumptions about trailers or the people who call them home. In fact, I wouldn’t mind moving into my own redneck mansion, provided I could paint it crazy colors and overcharge touristy types who wanted to point and gawk. It is for these reasons that I’m sad to say that this lowbrow manse is actually a theatrical set.

After receiving thousands of inquiries as to the whereabouts and existence of this “mansion,” the mystery has been solved. [The structure] is actually a set at the Openluchttheater in Amsterdam where plays are performed in the summer months. This is from the production of Ivanov.

Nuts!

There are few chores sadder than taking stock of the possessions left behind by an older relative forced by circumstance to move into a “home.” The things we gather over time define us in our own minds, but say something completely different to the outside observer. Some people–my mother, for instance–want everything to be new and flashy and modern. To them, anything vintage or outdated belongs in the dumpster.

Me? I like retro anything, even if it’s so kitschy as to be rather…ugly. I wouldn’t want a room full of kitsch, but a few crazy pieces of tacky history here and there can make an otherwise bland a room POP. People who visit say, “Oh my goodness, where’d you get this? My crazy old aunt had one just like it!” A ceramic cat or a crazy lamp really take people back…to spring vacations spent at the houses of grandparents…to their own childhoods. Everyone sees something different.

The story behind this photo and the ones that follow is this: I have a friend whose aunt is moving into a home, and it fell upon said friend to catalog the stuff left behind. His ladyfriend, Jennifer P., took pictures, and I found them to be quite moving.

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…beach huts are going for £60,000.

That princely sum will buy you “The Ark,” which measures a mere 5 meters by 1.8 meters, according to the Daily Mail. For 50 years, the vessel (crafted using reclaimed timber, driftwood, and the upper bits of a grocery van) has stood on the mud flats of Burnham Overy Staithe, near King’s Lynn, Norfolk…and it shows.

Max Sowerby, of Norfolk-based Sowerby’s estate agents, said: “We’re getting strong interest already - generally from people who have second homes in the area.

“Some people who see it say ‘that’s a lot of money for a beach hut’.

“Others say it’s incredibly good value and ‘where else would you find something like that?’. You wouldn’t get permission to build it now.

That’s an incredibly good value these days? Take away the bed and it looks like the inside of my garden shed! Something has definitely got to give and soon.

If you’ve never checked out Prefabcosm, you’re missing out. It’s a resource for pre-fab and modular homes that’s full of cool images (real snapshots and concept designs) and links to manufacturers of slick, boxy structures. I like to browse in case I ever decide to replace my little cottage with something that will be delivered to my property on a series of trucks.

The Loblolly house from KieranTimberlake Associates LLP forces me to sin because every time I look at the pictures I start to covet it. It’s named for the tall pines that sit on and around its site on the Chesapeake Bay, and it’s crafted from pre-fab panels that distribute radiant heating, hot and cold water, waste water, ventilation, and electricity through the house. How cool is that?

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The ever-clever Raincoaster brought an utterly wonderful Mexico City abode to my attention via e-mail yesterday. Looking for a home design that would bring the organic and the inorganic together, a family commissioned Arquitectura Organica to create a house in tune with Momma Nature’s curves.

I’d say they succeeded in spades. From Arquitectura Organica: “Here the plant is the spiral, which was molded to the topography for which outline was sketched the logarithmic spiral.” Spirals and gentle curves draw visitors into the structure like a current.

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The NYT Home & Garden section (a bit of rad I recommend everyone read) had a wonderful piece on Eliphante, a Cornville, Arizona home built by an artist and his wife over the course of twenty-eight years. When the late Michael Kahn and Leda Livant began building on the property Eliphante inhabits, they didn’t even own it. Driftwood, stones, pottery, shards of glass, construction scraps, and even astroturf became building materials in Kahn’s somewhat capable hands.

Was there a floor plan? Did they discuss the number of bedrooms, the layout of the kitchen?

“We didn’t think in those terms,” says Ms. Livant, who is 82. “We thought shelter from the elements and a beautiful place to live in: stained glass and pottery and wood, sleeping loft and a fireplace. Michael had no definite plan except to work and see what the natural shape would be. If you stay with a preconceived notion of what you want, it could be too restrictive.”

There are, of course, more photos under the cut!

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As raincoaster put it so darned well over at Teeny Manolo, we’ve got some technical difficulties going on. But disappearing posts and vanishing comments can be unearthed or reposted…it’s a lot harder to right a house that’s gone wrong!

Actually, the topsy-turvy abode you see before you is actually an art piece located in Szymbark, Poland. After its completion it became a much-visited tourist attraction, bringing throngs of people to the tiny town.

Friends of mine bought a house with narrowest, scariest staircase I’ve ever seen in my life. There’s no handrail because there’s no room for a handrail — as soon as you installed one, there’d no longer be room for people! I’m not kidding you when I say it’s skinny, but that’s not all. Their staircase is also hecka steep. Woe unto those attempting to traverse its angle in the darkness!

If you’ve got no choice but to work with a skinny space (such as one formerly occupied by a ladder) you could do worse from an aesthetic point of view than to install stairs like these. Apparently the whole works was created out of stacked pine boxes — presumably they were anchored to the walls and to each other in some fashion. Or not…some folks do like to live dangerously. Me? I can hardly traverse my normal staircase without slipping and sliding into perilous territory so I think I’ll look into non-skid rugs instead of crates in bulk.