Via Ancona, Milano

House 1:

House 2:

House 3&4:

Another set of unknown italian 60's residential housing. Italy needs stop taking this unique heritage for granted and promote it better - Milan's the design capital of the world ffs!

Give me big windows and a view, and some mid--century furniture...



...And I'm happy.

pictures by Richard Foulser



Eating Pecan Pie Like a Stylish but Neurotic Texan

Looks like a still out of A Single Man, don' it? Or American Psycho. Whichever.
 
While on the topic of food I couldn't help but to post this picture from Wallpaper*, styled by my man Tom Ford, as well as the recipe for this southern usonian tradition.

1 cup of white Karo syrup
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbs flour
1 cup pecans

Beat the eggs and sugar together, add flour, then syrup, vanilla and pecans.

Pour into a 9in prepared pie shell.

Bake in an oven at 150°C for one hour.

Flöjtblåsaren 2

From the mid 30's to the early 70's, apartment-buildings all over Sweden were being modernised: windows replaced, facade-ornamentations stripped, kitchens and bathrooms installed and floorplans dissected. This was done for several reasons, the most important factor being the Swedish welfare-states ambition of raising the living standard for each and every Swede - if not the largest, then by all means the most successfull such a transformation of an entire nation.

But aesthetics was an important factor too, especially when it comes to the more well-off inhabitants the inner city, who according to the architectural eqiuvalent of Laver's law were bored with the old and yearned for the new.

They still do.

In the pictures below we stumble across yet another document of time: 1968, Stockholm, upper middle-class couple. I am reminded of the Californian house I wrote about not too long ago, but also the office and home of architect Henry Haubro-Nielsen in southern Stockholm, and like the latter, I vow to the new owners to save as much of these wonderfully qualitative detailing as possible. This house has, albeit tastefully, already been tarnished with once, and we have to remember that it was still real craftsmen and carpenters who redid its interiors. This time round I am not so sure it will be updated with the same finesse. Don't get me wrong, renovation may be neccessary, but tossing out the kitchen, bathroom and doors isn't. (And while you're at it, put up some fresh but vintage sea-weed wallpaper from Tapetorama).

Hopefully Roy Andersson will buy it.

On paper Sweden has since the end of the eighties quite strong (too strong at times, not strong enough other times) protection of the built environment, but it is almost exclusively for exteriors. Few interiors, especially ones like these, are being saved.

And they are becoming increasingly rare.

Pork, mutton, lamb roast, ham, game, beef, veal, roast beaf... No teppanyaki as far as the eye can see. You need help with this?

Perstorp-laminate, pattern "VirrVarr", designed by Sigvard Bernadotte in 1958.

See the rest of the photos here, at Fantastic Frank

Casa del Torkel

Pictures from the Swedish tv-show Antikdeckarna, with actor Torkel Petersson showing off his apartment, furniture, ceramics and his shag (rya) carpet.