Dwell的March/April 2023目录

Hard no. White gives me a sense of security that it’s clean. It’s so ingrained in my brain that if it looks clean, it must be safe, that I cannot imagine not having pure white surfaces in areas that come in contact with usually covered parts of my body. @olga_bukur We did that. It was called the ’70s. @dfalliers Lived with a black toilet for seven years and I can tell you, it is weird. @k_bentley So are the ’70s dethroning (sorry, couldn’t resist) mid-century modern? @sondraville I have my original pink toilet, and I love it!! It totally makes the bathroom. Everyone wants to see it when they come over. It’s joyful! @laurenwstead Had a chocolate brown one in a rental once. Upside: can’t tell when it’s dirty.…

For artist Lizzy Plapinger, the apartment was kismet. She’d almost given up hope of finding a suitable spot for her needs and aesthetic—a within-budget space big enough to create her work in and enough of a blank canvas to put her stamp on the interior (plus an amenable landlord). But the way she got her floor-through, 1,000-square-foot railroad-style rental was the stuff of New York legend. “I got a text out of the blue from my friend Kelsey, and she sends me a picture of the outside of this house,” says Lizzy. The photo showed a townhome on a block of otherwise unassuming row houses that stood out for its electric-blue facade with yellow-painted window trims and blocky, hand-painted sign reading, SKEWVILLE. “I go to Instagram because I’m curious,” Lizzy…

Audi Culver and Ivy Siosi had never built a house before, but as the founders of Siosi, a decade-old furniture company known for its use of domestic, sustainably sourced hardwood and simple, Scandinavian-influenced forms, they weren’t novices either. The couple based their business in a range of rentals in Bloomington, Indiana, over the years—including a warehouse, an old church, and an industrial park—but they dreamed of settling into a countryside farmhouse where they could both live and work. “There were a lot of ranch homes and dilapidated barns, but nothing quite fit the bill,” Audi recalls. “The only way we could get what we were really looking for was to purchase bare land and do it ourselves.” A large parcel a few miles from downtown caught their eye, and when the…

Modular Modern Farmhouse by Hoke Ley Made of four prefabricated modular shells that were crane-set in eight hours, the 3,300-square-foot home that Hoke Ley principals Jared and Katie Hoke created for their family of four (and two dogs) in Lawrence, Kansas, balances local vernaculars with Danish design—a nod to where the couple first met. “It’s a simple and highly functional layout,” Katie says, adding that the open-plan kitchen, living, and dining room “acts as command central,” with sight lines across the ground level to the wraparound porch and outside neighborhood. A goal for the home (constructed for $150 per square foot) was to “create an example of what can be achieved with energy-efficiency design methods that were not exorbitant in cost,” says Katie. “Though prefab housing has been around for…

“We made a commitment to a handful of materials that have some richness to them. That’s what really makes the place sing.”BRYAN RIDLEY, ARCHITECT When the pandemic took hold in 2020, Ash and Niroupa Shah purchased their second Paso Robles, California, vineyard for $1,550,000. “We were holed away, looking on Zillow,” Ash says, and they found the 22-acre property up for sale. In 2016, Ash, a former independent movie producer, began branching out from the film business, opening Trejo’s Tacos with actor Danny Trejo, and Friends & Family, a now popular bakery and café in East Hollywood. Since then, he and Niroupa were often eager for more projects. On their new property there was a 1,600-square-foot double-wide trailer that needed renovations before it could be inhabited again. The Shahs—including their…

After staying in a tree house listed on Airbnb, Remo Kommnick, a product manager for a software company, and Emi Moore, owner of the homeware e-tailer Casa Shop, wanted their own getaway in the woods. “It was amazing being up in the trees,” Remo says, “and so I bought a lot and thought I’d build a tree house.” A forested four-acre property just outside Front Royal, Virginia, that the Richmond couple bought for $10,000 was the perfect setting for their future fort. But then they found out that neighborhood bylaws required a structure’s first floor to be at least 500 square feet. “I started looking into what it would take to build a cabin,” Remo says, “and I knew I needed help.” A local firm connected the couple with architect…

About six years ago, architects Claus Benjamin Freyinger and Andrew Holder of Los Angeles firm The LADG hired Danielle Rago’s PR company, This by That, to lead their media communications. The three developed such a good working relationship that when Danielle was ready to build her dream home, the two sides reversed roles—she hired The LADG, and suddenly she was their client. Starting with a mundane 1929 bungalow in L.A.’s Larchmont Village, the three worked together to design a one-of-a-kind three-bedroom house and accessory dwelling unit for Danielle and her family, including husband Darren Hochberg, toddler Oliver, puppy Melrose, and newborn Julian (who was still in the works when Dwell photographed the family in January). The recently completed home is distinguished by its light palette, unique blend of forms, and…

Back in August 2020, Josh Pritchard put down a chain saw after doing some clear-cutting on land he had bought for $101,000 earlier that year in rural New Gloucester, Maine. He felt defeated. How was he going to manage what he and his wife, Natalie, envisioned: a cozy home for themselves and their five children where they could host friends and family? Even though Josh was president and partner of a successful design and marketing firm with clients that ranged from restaurants to credit unions to glove manufacturers, the sky was decidedly not the limit. He and Natalie had already hired top talent, the architecture firm Woodhull (formerly Caleb Johnson Studio) and landscape architecture firm Richardson & Associates. And the project’s scope was by no means small: two gable-form structures…

Eric Waldman and Judy Tyrus’s journey to a life together began a long time ago. They both grew up in Northern California, attending high school in Richmond, where they knew each other but weren’t close. After graduation, Eric got a degree in environmental design at UC Berkeley, then worked in Silicon Valley. Judy’s path took her to New York City as a ballerina and principal dancer with the Dance Theatre of Harlem for many years before she returned home to the Bay Area. She and Eric reconnected through mutual friends, fell in love, and are now partners in life and business. Together they started the nonprofit ChromaDiverse, which “helps performing arts organizations preserve, protect, and present their historical legacy online,” Judy says. “This type of archival support, particularly in dance,…

On a single night in January 2022, 582,462 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States. Sixty percent were staying in locations like emergency shelters or in accommodations provided by transitional housing programs, and 40 percent were living on the street or somewhere similar, according to an annual U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development report. (The pandemic impacted the accuracy of homelessness data collection in 2021, however, and the number of people without a home is likely far higher.) Meanwhile, across the country, many housing advocates and government officials are embracing a practical short-term solution to the homelessness crisis: the rapid construction of tiny-home villages—some with upward of 50 units, others with just 10 tiny homes, or pods. The hope is that with access to a personal, lockable shelter…

Jai Kumaran and Lindsay Merkle wanted to go home. Not to the redwoods of California’s Santa Cruz Mountains, where Jai, cofounder and partner at the architecture firm West of West, grew up, or back to the pines of Mercer Island in Washington State, where Lindsay, who works at a telemedicine start-up, spent her childhood, but to a setting that felt just as familiar as the places where they were reared. So after moving from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon, in 2016, they began a search for land outside the city where Jai could experiment with design ideas and where they could make a creative compound for themselves, their two vizsla dogs, and visiting friends and family. After months of touring properties, Lindsay and Jai became enchanted with a 20-acre ridgetop…