via abitare (italian) and brelli
i just think this is the coolest. it is just an umbrella, and a biodegradable umbrella, why? because umbrellas break and get weak and we get rid of them probably more frequently than we imagine. i think it's great. not to mention they have rain and sun umbrellas. :) love it.
via the cookery
this thursday kicked off the 36th annual door county antique show in fish creek, wi. my mom, my grandmother, my sister, and i all went to check it out. and it was a fine little show -- full of fine things that only fine people can really drop any serious cash on. a lot of other dealers, i imagine, dealing to dealers. i mean, i can't afford vintage chanel jewelry, maxfield parrish prints, or a $1500 stoneware rolling pin -- can you? but it was still a lot of fun to look around. i could have spent more time there had i been convinced i could afford any one single thing. our modest purchases included a postcard of marshfield, wi, and a an art deco-esque (bakelite?) button.
but then it was onto what i always consider the highlight of any daytrip -- lunch. we decided on the cookery in fish creek, which has recently been rebuilt after a devastating fire that ruined the existing building. it is now modern and refurbished, and is quite nice -- although it was busy lunchtime there when we were there. the food was excellent! i had the grilled wild salmon filet sandwich off of their lunch menu. i wish the mayonnaise had been a little zestier, but it was still quite a lot of yum.
more importantly, though, and believe me, i stressed about this for a little bit when we first arrived -- they have a very sustainable/green attitude toward their business. not to mention local and organic! i was THRILLED to see the list of producers and suppliers from wisconsin that they used for their food. i did not choose a local fish sandwich, of course, being salmon. but i guess i put faith in the fact that they're making a concerted effort to be sustainable and healthy, and hoped that the salmon was considered likewise...
it was very good. thumbs up; i would recommend it.
via the daily mail
a few weeks ago i happened to be totally enamored with ben eine's store shutter alphabet paintings in london (see them at art of the state), and it turns out that a ben eine painting has been gifted to the obamas from england's new prime minister, david cameron. supposedly his wife has experience in luxury goods, and ben eine -- a street artist! who has been arrested a few times! -- was the creator of the chosen work, entitled 'twenty-first century city". eine himself declared that he wouldn't have allowed the painting to have been given to bush, though. ;) very cool. not something one would expect, but i love it.
and then of course, i'm starting to feel as though no little red fish blog entry would be complete with some new residential architecture that i find fascinating for one reason or another, so here it is:
via contemporist
i found a renovation that just thrills me, too! i love renovations and makeovers -- who doesn't? but this one is intense, and super, super awesome. the finished product is above -- more pictures at the contemporist link. the iowa city home renovation was done by substance architecture, which i think boasts a pretty serious portfolio... the original house was built in the 1940s and though quaint, definitely was bettered tenfold by the redo. i have to say i was actually quite shocked to see what it looked like before -- i half expected it to have been a remodeled barn, but i was obviously wrong. the covered walkway/quasi-wrap-around porch they added is GENIUS! i love it. the house wouldn't be complete without it. it's so much larger; it looks as though they did add some on, but even then, the covered walkway adds a new dimension, giving it the illusion of even larger size without seeming bulky or overdone. the lighting is spectacular inside and out of the house. it looks like such a fun place -- mysterious and yet bright, modern and yet rustic. i want to see it in person. i want to stand under those skylights. :)
i got my hands on a few records the other day.. a couple were some old gary numan albums, another was a double-vinyl compilation called low country, and finally, the go! team's 2004 release, thunder, lightning, strike. i had never paid much attention to the brighton, u.k. band before, but here was this lovely record for the purchasing, and i couldn't pass it up. i can officially say im a fan of the go! team now. :)
the go! team mashes up samples -- things like double-dutch chants, hip hop, and 1970s soundtracks -- and then adds live instrumentation. there are a couple great horn sections in the sampling on side a of this record that really get the whole album off to a fun start. it's a happy album, which is always the first kind i'll put on.
and they use every instrument known to man... it's a sextet so they've got the hands. there are two drummers, and then members play the harmonica, banjo, tambourine, glockenspiel, and other various instruments other than the typical guitar and bass. and then there's all the samples and synthesized greatness which adds a sort of schizophrenic feeling to some of it. it's hard to pass up double-dutch chants with a hip hop beat and horns!
so now, i have to go check out their more recent album, proof of youth, from 2007.
via inhabitat and anderson anderson architecture
my primary architectural interest lies in residential architecture. i love historical residences, but what really excites me is new, contemporary design. further than that, i love small houses. the bigger they are, the more ostentatious they feel -- and less like a home than a show piece. i don't like show pieces, i like houses. furthermore, prefabricated houses are basically the coolest idea ever. from shipping containers to jay shafer at tumbleweed tiny house company (which i first heard about when my dad met up with him in california and talked with him about these houses -- i suppose maybe some of my enthusiasm for this sort of architecture came from my dad) ...prefab is absolutely the way to go. if it's not the way i end up building my own house, the only other way i'll do it is from salvaged material and from scratch.
when one thinks of prefabricated homes, it's easy for the mind to fall straight into "trailer territory," which is exactly what i thought when i first considered the idea. who actually WANTS one of those trailers? you know, the oblong, weirdly-shaped, always 1970s-looking kind that they place around curving drives in what might otherwise be a campground off of a highway? no offense to anyone who actually lives in a trailer park, but aesthetically speaking... let's just not go there.
i'm speaking absolutely of aesthetics. prefab has come a long, long way. inhabitat is a site i follow regularly in their quest to share green and sustainable design. the house pictured below, in new mexico, popped up and i fell in love with it. it's site-specific, resident-specific (they built it with special animal sections so their pets could inhabit the house safely without danger of predators in the desert), and it's absolutely awesome. i love a metal house. i know that might sound strange -- i was raised in a wood-sided, wood-interior old victorian that's about 125 years old. but it might be that very difference that draws me to the variety of materials that are used in today's modern-style construction.
anderson anderson architecture is based out of san francisco -- no real surprise there. it's a hub of prefabulousness. both of the houses i've pictured here are by them. the one below, like i mentioned, is in new mexico. the one at the top of this post is in washington, about fifty miles from seattle.
i'm in love with them both. i love the modular style, the clean metal exterior, the large windows that take in the views, but also the natural daylight. and the one in washington, that hangs over the cliff? yes, please!
via unurth
i couldn't resist one more post tonight -- i've overwhelmed with awesome street art discoveries lately, but i had to share this one specifically because it taps into my adoration of collage. i'm new to the artists ricardo AKN, raul zito, and rodrigo branco -- but i also haven't followed any brazilian street art. i know i should, though -- there's a lot in sao paulo that seems to crop up, and not only in street art. the contemporary architecture is outrageously amazing in brazil. but i'll try not to get ahead of myself.
i was really intrigued when i saw this wall. i wish that i could get a better look at it, or more information. but it looks like a combination of brush, stencil and paste-up, with a little bit of spray. regardless of how it went on, it looks amazing. the colors are really great, and it's elaborate without being overwhelming. it's three distinctive artists with a work that becomes one congruent piece at the finish. it's fantastic, i think. and i'm determined to find out more about these artists.
oh. mr. darcy!
okay. srsly forlz. for years now (since i was probably about 14), i've been absolutely in LURVE with the BBC/A&E presentation of pride & prejudice with jennifer ehle and colin firth. COLIN FIRTH! before or since, there has been no better interpretation of this book, as far as my opinion goes. i thought the kiera knightly/matthew macfadyen version paled in comparison. i've just about finished reading the book for the first time ever, which i have to say is kind of a tedious read, but considering i've memorized much of the dialogue between all of the movies i've seen... it's quicker than it would have been otherwise.
one major reason i'm so into this particular movie is a) it's best, and b) it turned me on to all of the british literary adaptations that the BBC does, which led to all of the other jane austen miniseries, the bronte stories, middlemarch, the tenant of wildfell hall, north & south, and a ton more -- of which i'm still scoping out as many as possible and obsessing over them all. it's the anglophile in me, i know, but there's just something absolutely, girlishly awesome about all of these classic love stories that the BBC manages to put on film in just such a way to make me love them. not to mention that miniseries are like watching really long movies, so they're wayyyy better. ;)
does this make me sound giddy? ;)
not to mention, on a very, very cool note: my little sister is going to england to study abroad in london for a semester in spring! and guess who's going to go visit!
but onto less girly things...
via the cool hunter
let it be said that one is never too old to play with legos. i stumbled across this through one of my numerous architecture/design twitter/facebook feeds, which keep me endlessly tracking down all of the most awesome everything! but this was too rad to pass up sharing. i think the design is pretty great, and the details in the patterns are wonderful, nearly artistic. meticulously done, it must have been, but inspiring! i wonder if i might be able to do something similar with fewer colors... hm..
via contemporist.
(better late than never.)
it's been a while since i've seen a recent house that's really ignited any sort of genuine interest. one thing worth noting is that i've got a clear lean in the direction of australian and european (mostly british and irish) contemporary architecture. i'm not sure what it is exactly -- it's really hard to put my finger on, except for the fact that their traditional architecture is based in the same place -- the british isles, and therefore become branches from the same tree trunk, if you will. this house seems to sort of fit that category. it has a very crisp, clean look with the off-white tones, the concrete, and metal roof. the shape of half the house (not the opening-box part) is reminiscent of old cottages.
i love everything about this home. the more i look at the photos, the more i appreciate it. it's simple, yet there are elements that give it detail so it isn't too minimal. the juxtaposition of the wood with the concrete is awesome -- it's got both an industrial and a rustic feel to it, especially in its location on a bay.
i think a major reason i love this house is because it actually could be a home. so many houses i've seen lately have been gigantic millionaire estate sort of contemporary properties -- not something i can relate to, or necessarily even want to relate to. they get so big that they become monsters, piling all of this state-of-the-art crap together to make something that just looks like crap. this is pared-down, simple, just absolutely beautiful residential architecture. i love it.
heffernan button voss. (i wish there was a portfolio, but there's not. not yet, at least.)
