Hamburg Apartment

There's nothing baroque about the neo-baroque apartment of ad-man Wolfgang Behnken of Young & Rubicam, shown below. It is rather an almost miesian gallery of good design, with pieces by the Eames, Florence Knoll, Milo Baughman and Mies as well as a fantastic coffee table by George Nakashima. There are also many outstanding lamps: especially those by Serge Mouille and Christian Dell.

The apartment is mostly painted white, with few carpets and textiles, which really puts focus on the design pieces.  I suppose it does, however, require a certain type of person to live in this sort of almost barren atmosphere, but that does not change the fact that it looks stunning. Mr. Behnken also seems to have two livingrooms - perhaps one being the gentleman's room?

The kitchen and bathrooms are also very plain with their white mosaic tiles, and chairs by brit minimalist Jasper Morrison. Notice the construction-site-type lamps above the mirrors, which are actually of a quite beautiful design.

from ELLE DECOR italia



Richard Neutra in Europe - Rang Haus







These photos are from Iwaan Baan's series of houses built by Neutra in Europe between 1960-1970, which was showing at the MARTa Herford Museum, Herford, Germany this summer, and the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel this fall.

Richard Neutra's post-war creations in Europe are lesser known than their counterparts in California, but no less fantastic. The house above was built in 1961 in the outskirts of Königstein for a professor at the University of Frankfurt.

In this case, pictures say more than a 1000 words, and Iwaan Baan's photgraphy really makes you feel as if you were standing right there, in the middle of this amazing house.

Man, I wish that was my office in the last picture.

Buy the book here.

If You're Looking to Buy Some New Furniture...

... then now is an excellent time to do so, at lauritz.com. At least if you have, let's say, a liberal budget. Here are the expert's tips:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mr & Mrs Eames

Boros Bunker

Christian Boros is a contemporary art collector who purchased an astonishing nazi-classisistic bunker on Friedrichstrasse in the centre of Berlin, and converted into a musuem of his collection. Berlin is full of these fortresses, with concrete walls several metres thick, making them virtually indestructible. There are, of course, two sides to this coin, and the solutions can be... creative, if nothing else:

Social housing projects built around one of these bunkers

The Friedrichstrasse bunker was previously used as vegetable storage, and later a club, which, in a city where you'll find bars in manholes, comes as no surprise. When it was renovated, REALARCHITEKTUR saved as much of the original planning as possible, adding only a staircase, an elevator and only small amounts of white paint. And a penthouse. 

The cost of cutting through the roof and removing 150 cubic metres of reinforced concrete is unknown.

pictures from REALARCHITEKTUR

 

via obsessilicious

White Bricks I

This couple fell for a falling building, aquired it for land value, and proceeded with the original architects help “restoring it exactly like it was built.” When asked why, he looks nonplussed. “Why would we change something when 50-plus years later it functions beautifully and is part of the architect’s vision? We don’t want the house to look like every other house,” he says, “because it never did.”

“It’s probably a little nutty,” Mandolene admits, reflecting on their insistence on pure preservation (about 75% was salvaged). And yet, he adds, “people think that this style of architecture doesn’t deserve to be landmarked because it’s not old enough, but it is part of architectural history, and it’s slowly disappearing.

1957, Arthur Witthoefft

As one of the comments say "a man and his young son walked by (presumably from a neighboring McMansion). Someone overheard the father say to the son, "Some people like this kind of stuff."

from dwell