Part Deux: Electric Boogaloo
First I want to thank you for your warm emails and words of encouragement. They helped me to realize I made the right decision to start this newsletter. I am extremely grateful and I appreciate all of you who wrote.
We’ll start off with two homes of architects on opposite US coasts - the 1950s home of architect Jean G Killion in Pasadena, California and a home in the Catskills of NY owned by the couple behind IdS/R Architecture
Next are two minimalist homes - the Gjøvik House in Oslo, Norway and Casa Ter in Baix Empordà, Spain
Lately I’ve been coming across lots of examples of secondary homes and I can’t decide whether I’d rather live in an a-frame cabin, a treehouse or on a boat
I do know I want to spend at least a day in a floating sauna before I die
I mean those a-frames are cute and all but I think I prefer a full-size cabin like this 1930s cabin by Olson Kundig in Washington or this tree-house cabin in Australia
But since accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, are the most popular home addition of Covid-19, maybe it’s time we learn about them
Here’s an affordable ADU that was designed by a woman who started her own company after designing a tiny house village for Seattle’s homeless after stumbling onto the construction site when her husband suggested she take a walk after she was let go from her architecture job during the pandemic
Funny how things work out sometimes
Stanford University found that walking improves creativity so there’s reason enough to go outside
Just make sure to wear a mask on your walk please
In 1959 Issaac Asimov wrote an essay on creativity that still holds up today
One of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott, on why perfectionism kills creativity
British photographer Rankin on why boredom is key to creativity
Offering a nostalgic glimpse of Britain between the mid 1940s and '70s is Lee Shulman’s collection of Kodachrome color slides that he bought on ebay
Another bored photographer found a 70-year-old roll of film in a vintage Leica camera, decided to develop it and has since become the obsession of other bored people trying to learn about the couple in the photos and their travels through Switzerland and Northern Italy
Northern Italy is coincidently where you can find the newly completed Hotel Milla Montis
And Southern Italy is where you can now own a home for $1
I can’t find a way to segue into the next story but this art mystery is way more entertaining than that monolith in Utah
On the topic of public art, I’d like to share a new project called Talk To Me by my friend Jordan Seiler who’s been leading guerilla initiatives to cover up and swap out corporate street advertising with actual art ever since I met him 20 years ago
PBS just debuted a documentary on the life and work of Keith Haring (Thanks Jeanne!)
I’d also like to recommend a great new documentary on the Hungarian-born artist, László Moholy-Nagy, who founded America's most influential midcentury school of design, the New Bauhaus in 1937 which is now the Illinois Institute of Technology - the first institution in the United States to offer a PhD in design
Also, don’t forget your $340,000 painting in an airport or it may end up in a dumpster
Well that just about does it for this week. We actually made it to a second newsletter. If you’ve been here since the first one, thank you. And if this is your first, welcome. Tell me what you like/don’t like and what you want to see more or less of. As always, talk to me at capa@bloodandchampagne.com
Thank you,
Thomas