Manolo for the Home

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.

Walking into most campers is like taking a time machine back to the 70s. I won’t lie — I’m a huge camper fan. I love the crazy old school ones that look like silver pill bugs! But unless a camper has been redone or began its life as a custom job they’re usually filled with bad upholstery, horrid colors, and cheap laminates. Bleah.

TerraCross vehicles are more than a little different. For one thing, they’re designed to stand up to harsh conditions and look good doing it. When you buy a TerraCross, you choose between upholstery made of fabric or leather, parquet floors or kautchuk, kitchen counter tops made of wood or stainless steel, cabinets with laminate or real wood surfaces, and more.

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Before I could even imagine buying a house, I was quick to profess my love of small houses. Cottages. Bungalows. Whatever you want to call them. After all, they’re cheaper to heat and cool, they’re cute, and they kind of force you to prioritize your junk. Then I actually bought a small house and realized just how much junk I really had!

Figuring out what to do with my small spaces was a challenge. I had more space overall, but the individual rooms in my new house were smaller than the corresponding rooms in my apartment. What that meant was that I had to prioritize when choosing my furnishings and decor, find creative and aesthetically pleasing ways of packing everything I wanted in, and make as many pieces as possible do double duty.

What do I mean by double duty? Take a plain kitchen window, for example. Demesne suggests you turn that window into:

• A plant window with glass shelving for indoor plants or garden starts. A narrow bookcase with attractive baskets for holding garden books, planting tools, and a covered bucket for potting soil could turn this into a mini-plant care center.
• The perfect cat zone by adding a somewhat wider shelf to the typical sill, then topping it with a home-made cushion (with a washable cover).
• An entertainment bar with a drop leaf shelf mounted at bar height under the window for extra eating or serving space. When you need it, it’s there, but for convenience it can be left down. Camouflage it as part of a built-in if you’re ambitious.
• A breakfast table. An eastern exposure combined with a small drop leaf table and a couple chairs is a natural solution. The leaves can be left down to facilitate flow through except when having that morning cappuccino.
• A mud space. If it’s next to a door, a narrow bench with cubbies for outdoor shoes, boots, and a bin for hats and gloves provides a good spot to catch family clutter. Put a couple heavy duty hooks nearby for backpacks or purses. Voilá. If you can train your family to take their shoes off, you’ll cut down dramatically on the dirt that gets tracked in.

And so on and so forth. Little niches can become mini offices, prettied up storage nooks, or entertainment areas. Ask yourself: Where can I fit some additional seating? How can I display my stuff to its best advantage? How can I make my spaces feel bigger without sacrificing comfort? If you plan carefully–perhaps using some of the software readers recommended here–your small spaces will pop.

Now you tell me…what have you done lately to maximize the appeal of your small spaces?

Caravans aren’t just for gypsies, according to a certain Daphne. They can be retreats, guest quarters, studios, sheds, playhouses, and more, provided you have somewhere to store them when they’re not rolling on the open road.

You can even live in a caravan as Daphne did if you’re ready to eschew some of the comforts of home–heat and indoor plumbing come to mind. Apparently, the popularity of traditional caravan living is undergoing a resurgence in the UK.

If you’re in love with the idea of having a house that you can hitch up to your car, there are DIY caravan kits for sale at The New Gypsy Caravan. At around $500 for the double bed model, it’s a rather budget-friendly way to roam if you can turn a blind eye to the inevitable increase in gas expenditures.