Category: Architecture
Schindler Beach House in La Jolla With an Ocean View
| November 11, 2012 | Posted by naturally modern under All Posts, Architecture, Beach Houses, Houses We Love, Indoor-Outdoor, Interior Design, Naturally Modern, Notable Real Estate Sales, Outdoor Design, Vacation Homes |
Modernist architect Rudolph Schindler used movable concrete forms to create El Pueblo Ribera Court. This concrete, glass and redwood unit is one of six with views of legendary surfing beach Windansea.
Location: Windansea Beach, La Jolla 92037.
Year built: 1923
Architect: Rudolph Schindler
House size: Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, attached 2-car garage, ocean-view deck, bonus studio suite. 1,400 square feet.
Features: Redwood-beam ceilings, 1,500-square-foot deck, roof deck soaking tub, San Diego historic site designation, Mills Act property tax reduction. (via In La Jolla, a Schindler with a view – latimes.com.)
We love the way Rudolph Schindler designed this home for indoor-outdoor living. The home is U-shaped around the patio/courtyard with all the doors and windows opening up to truly experience the outdoors as an essential part of living in the home. The polished concrete floors shine with the overhead tech lighting system “floating” in between each of the redwood beams overhead. This house was definitely modern in 1023 and it is still modern by todays standards. The owners did an amazing job of adding their design sensibility with the furnishings (Kenneth Conbonpue) while letting the house itself continue to be the star.
(Photos: Jason Michael Lang Photography)
Pin of the Week: Indoor In-Ground Concrete Hot Tub
| November 6, 2012 | Posted by naturally modern under All Posts, Architecture, Home Spa, Interior Design, Naturally Modern |
Here is our pin of the week! The indoor, built in-ground, concrete hot tub. We love how the rim of the tub is seamless with the floor. It looks like you could walk on water. And the horizontal fireplace built into a wall of stone the length of the tub is perfection of design.
(Photo via Naturally Modern Architecture Pinterest Board, source here)
Modern Mountain Architecture in Tahoe and Truckee
| November 6, 2012 | Posted by naturally modern under All Posts, Architecture, Naturally Modern, Vacation Homes |
Love seeing modern architecture and design find its way into mountain homes. SFgate.com just published a story highlighting the trend in modern design architecture in the small community of Martis Camp in Truckee, California.
Contemporary designs are gaining ground in several Tahoe locales, from Incline Village to Alpine Meadows, from Tahoe Donner to Tahoe City, but they are most abundant in Martis Camp, the new gated community near Truckee. Forty to 50 percent of the more than 100 homes under construction or finished at Martis Camp speak the visual language of the early 20th century International Style: flat or low-sloping roofs, short or no overhanging eaves, open floor plans, and long spans of steel. Exterior ornament has disappeared, and plate-glass walls reveal wide vistas. Lightweight, steel-supported roofs seem more related to sky than earth.
Inside, ambience is achieved through the infiltration of light and the arrangements of space and materials, rather than with the applied ornament of wainscoting and trim.
“In our area there has been a preconception that peaked roofs and multiple layers of details were requirements of mountain architecture,” says architect Clare Walton of Walton Architecture and Engineering in Tahoe City. “Recently we have seen success in utilizing clean lines, especially in the roofscapes.”
via Modern architecture gets foothold at Tahoe – SFGate. Photo credit: Vance Fox Photography / SF
Historic Nepenthe in Big Sur, Ca
| November 4, 2012 | Posted by naturally modern under Architecture, Beach Houses, Houses We Love, Indoor-Outdoor, Naturally Modern, Restaurants, Travel, Vacation Homes |
Just came across this amazing historic photo of Nepenthe restaurant in Big Sur, Ca, one of our most favorite places in the world! This amazing place is perched high above the Pacific Ocean, constructed of redwood and glass. It has an amazing front patio with a sculpture of a Phoenix rising from the ashes as you walk up. The windows throughout the structure drown the space with natural light. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starred in the classic movie “The Sandpiper” which was famously filmed here. ”Nepenthe” means “no sorrow.”
(Photo via www.lokiloos.com)
Design Ideas to Bring the Outdoors In All Year Long
| October 21, 2012 | Posted by naturally modern under All Posts, Architecture, Decor, Indoor-Outdoor, Interior Design, Naturally Modern |
We will never be able to get enough of architecture and design that brings the outdoors in. The indoor-outdoor lifestyle may not work all year long in some parts of the world, but nothing beats it when the weather is temperate. The rest of the time we settle for just seeing it…. walls of glass do that perfectly.
Here are some of our favorite design examples of how to bring the outdoors in all year long.
Floor-to-ceiling windows in kitchen
- (Poliform kitchen promotional photo via Frenchbydesign.blogspot.com
Solarium in center of the home – Photo from Homedsgn.com via NModern Pinterest Board
Breezway / Hallway with invisible walls via glass siding. Photo from TheCoolHunterUK via NModern Pinterest Board
Living room interior design incorporates large indoor plant and crossed steel structural beams to mimic and compliment the trees and natural environment outdoors. Photo from Mobile.Bebitalia.com via NModern Pinterest Board.
Living room with retractable wall. Photo via Cococozy.com
Indoor outdoor pool with retractable door/window by CCYArchitects.com
Enclosable deck area keeping flooring the same through indoor and outdoor. Photo from Ccca.co.nz via NModern Pinterest Boards
The good kind of glass ceiling lets the outdoors in. Photo from Archdaily.com via NModern Pinterest Boards
Private Retreat in Big Sur, CA
| September 29, 2012 | Posted by naturally modern under All Posts, Architecture, Beach Houses, Events, Houses We Love, Naturally Modern, Outdoor Design, Travel, Vacation Homes, Wedding |
Big Sur is one of the most amazing places on the planet as far as we’re concerned. Aside from the spectacular, natural coastline, there is something very modern about this little slice of heaven. Its natural beauty is timeless and, yet, ever changing with the dynamic coastline and free wildlife. Eagles and condors in flight, ocean waves crashing, sun rising and setting…serenity defined. And, without cell phone reception, you’re forced to enjoy it. :)
One of the most exquisite private estates in Big Sur is known as Anderson Canyon. A long time celebrity favorite for weddings and retreats (it is rumored Natalie Portman and Anne Hathaway held their weddings here), it can be reserved for private rental, whether for a fabulous vacation or for a private event. Imagine yourself staying a week, or hosting an unforgettable soiree, at this amazing, natural, modern, coastal retreat.
(All images via AndersonCanyon.com)
Home Sweet Sauna – The Best Modern Saunas
| September 18, 2012 | Posted by naturally modern under All Posts, Architecture, Home Spa, Interior Design, Naturally Modern |
Few things are more relaxing than being enveloped in the heat of a sauna. Whether you’re sweating it out after a work-out or just relaxing your body and mind, partaking in sauna time is good for you. The only problem is if your sauna design doesn’t give you the same peace of mind as the sauna itself. To us design minded folks, it matters. Here are some beautiful, modern saunas to inspire you when you go to design the sauna for your own home.
Houses We Love: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Millard House (La Miniatura)
| September 1, 2012 | Posted by naturally modern under All Posts, Architecture, Houses We Love |
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Millard House (La Miniatura)
( Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times )
By Sean Mitchell
Frank Lloyd Wright’s alluring Alice Millard house, also known as La Miniatura, rises like a Mayan temple from a tree-canopied hillside on Rosemont Avenue in Pasadena. The 1923 Millard house may be less known to the general public than Wright’s other three “textile-block” homes in the region — Ennis, Freeman and Storer — but some architectural historians regard Millard as the finest. So does Eric Lloyd Wright, the architect’s grandson and a longtime Southern California architect who explained the leading reason for critics’ enthusiasm: “The way he set the house in that glen,” he said. Frank Lloyd Wright called for the house to rise above a ravine between two eucalyptus trees, which are still there, forming a cathedral more than 100 feet high over a lily pond.
The Alice Millard house was Frank Lloyd Wright’s first “textile-block” house, the term for the architect’s way of stacking decorative concrete blocks that were knitted together like fabric. In the three textile-block houses that followed Millard’s, Wright used steel threads of rebar, which, before the invention of epoxy coating, rusted and degraded the concrete. The lack of rebar in the Millard house has been a blessing, as the blocks have fared better since construction in 1923.
via Landmark houses: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Millard House (La Miniatura) – latimes.com.
Frank Gehry Designed Hong Kong Apartment Sells for $61 Million
| August 28, 2012 | Posted by naturally modern under All Posts, Architecture, Notable Real Estate Sales |
Frank Gehry designed luxury apartment in Hong-Kong has sold for $61 million dollars, as reported by MSN today. Wow, wow, and wow.
A luxurious 6,200-square-foot Hong Kong apartment has sold for $61 million, making it Asia’s most expensive apartment, and the second-most expensive unit in the world. The unit takes up an entire floor in its building.(via Hong Kong apartment 61 million Popular Pages – MSN Popular Searches )
For Sale: The Walker Residence (1959) in Ojai, CA
| July 18, 2012 | Posted by naturally modern under Architecture, Houses We Love, Naturally Modern |
The famous Walker Residence, built in 1959, in Ojai, CA is listed for sale on the Crosby Doe website for just under $4 Million. We love the natural, modern, indoor-outdoor lifestyle it so beautifully encapsulates. Here are some of the highlights:
Of all John Entenza’s California Case Study Program participants, Rodney Walker was the most hands on designer. … While the designs of Rodney’s three Case Study residences are internationally known and celebrated today, his personal residence in Ojai remains virtually unknown, even though those who do know the work acknowledge the creation as his most significant.
Rodney was not the first to utilize the equilateral triangle in architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright utilized a modular system of equilateral triangles in some of his designs, and John Lautner designed a small residence with a perimeter in the shape of an equilateral triangle like Rodney’s in 1950. Nevertheless, the Walker Residence design, without sacrificing utility, epitomizes the utilization of the form in the creation of an unsurpassed statement of what today has become popularly known as the modern California lifestyle of indoor-outdoor living.
The carefully chosen site is a unique hilltop on the west side of the Ojai Valley which affords 270 degree panoramic vistas while still providing total privacy for the occupants. Curtain glass walls and mobile glass panels are set back beneath the roof eaves and structural perimeter. From the interiors the effect is cineramic. To steal from Wright: from this vantage you don’t just see the Valley and the Mountains, you are the Valley and the Mountains! The experience is transcendent, and not fleeting. Communing with nature here is a moment by moment daily reality.
The site is over 3.4 acres. A gated private drive curves gently up the hill to a generous parking plaza and the residence entry. In addition to the living areas, there are four bedrooms (one of which is currently used as a media room), and three baths.
Source / Read the whole story via Crosby Doe Associates.
