My Big Obsession with Tiny Houses

Don’t tell my wife, but I’ve recently stumbled upon a new obsession.  One might argue, a big obsession, with tiny houses.  Why would my wife care?  Can you imagine telling your wife that you are selling everything and moving your family of five into what amounts to the square footage of a camper?  Yeah, like I said, don’t tell my wife.  She already thinks I'm a bit insane.  Her shoe collection alone wouldn’t fit in 100 square feet.  So, potentially disapproving wife and all, what is so interesting to me about these tiny houses? 

Much like the grungy Seattle Sound of the 90’s prompting the response of Britpop, I can only assume growing cultural interest in tiny houses is directly tied to the gross prevalence of the McMansion of the pre-housing crisis bubble.  What is a tiny house?  You said it, its a tiny house.  Usually, big enough for one person… (maybe two if bathing is a frequent occurrence.)  But the tiny houses that really interest me are the ones built on a trailer.  It’s the best of both worlds.  Tiny character filled houses.  Hand built, but portable, like a camper!  They don’t come with a mortgage, or even yardwork if you don’t want.  Physical and financial independence?  I can see why this “trend” is gaining a mainstream following.

From a practical standpoint, my family of five could never live in a 100 square foot dwelling… We live on a five acre farm and our house is considerably bigger than that… and there are days where we feel like we are on top of each other.  Five people? 100 square feet?  Is that even sane?  Sanity is relative.  Cleaning, maintenance and yard work can all make our expansive abode feel like a prison work detail.  But just imagine, in its simplest form, having a house that you are able to hook up to and move to a different part of your own five acres?  Closer to the road in the winter to avoid plowing so much driveway.  Closer to the creek in the summer to take advantage of the cool water and views.  Closer to the shed when I wanted to have family over for a birthday party.  Now that is taking advantage of owning five acres! 

Maybe it is the feeling that you could pick up your house, like a turtle, and move where a whim might take you.  Maybe it is the sense of independence it appears inhabitants of tiny houses enjoy every day.  I know I love the details and character one can pack into the framework of 100 square feet.  So, is there a tiny house in my future somewhere?  Sadly reality is knocking.  Three words: Family-Of-Five.  In the meantime, I’ll have to live vicariously through the internet.  Dreaming of the day when my kids have driver’s licenses and can join me in pulling their very own tiny houses to our next port of call.

The unofficial voice of the tiny house movement:  www.tumbleweedhouses.com
A like minded blog on tiny houses:  tinyhouseblog.com
Documentary on tiny houses, "We the Tiny House People":  YouTube Video
I just like the look of these architect designed "pod houses":  Greenpod Intelligent Environments
Nice aesthetic, using reclaimed materials in a tiny house format:  Reclaimed Space

My Quest for Easy Green

About two years ago, I was really into a show called, "It's Not Easy Being Green". It was about the experiences of the Strawbridge family, located in Cornwall, in England. (I know, I sound very American.) Anyway, it was on the Green channel, when the Green channel actually played shows about green living. I moved, canceled the Green channel and stopped following the show. Recently, I was surfing the internet and decided to look the Strawbridge family up to see what they've been doing. While it appears James and Dick have gone on to make additional seasons of the show for the BBC, the two ladies of the household have decided to pursue other endeavors. I found the show to be charming, and frankly, their quest to live a greener life on a farm was an influencing factor in my decision to move to a farm. It just looked so fun and interesting.

I don't regret the decision to move to a farm, but, I will admit I haven't had time to pursue some of the cool projects they have tackled in their time on their farm, which they call Newhouse Farm. I suppose I'm writing this to add a reminder to my written documentation that I do need to renew my efforts to look at things like solar power, wind energy, greenhouse gardening, etc. So there you have it. Abrupt huh?

My Plastic Heart

Check out My Plastic Heart.com to buy all kinds of fantastic wanna be pop culture items. Make a wall of shelves and buy a bunch of figures. Relive your childhood, only in a less wholesome way. Go there... you know you wanna.

Buy Prints. Save Cash. Help Charities.

Continuing on this vein of art for the masses... everyone has them, prints. They are an easy way to add art to your space, right? Monet's Water Lillies, Edvard Munch's Scream, Van Gogh's Starry Night... on and on, college dorm room staples. The problem is, everyone HAS THEM! Prints are great, but do you want a print that is just like everyone elses? NO! Check out the artists featured on BlueFlip Art. There are a couple reasons, they are cheap, they are good quality and they give the artist's the option to donate to charity with each purchase. Wow! How economically and socially reasonable!

From their site: (Blue Flip Art was created to help bring the work of amazingly talented artists into the hands of an adoring public without charging an arm and a leg. We believe that great art should be available to all, and that it should enrich people as well as the pocketbooks of charities. What's this about charities? Participating BlueFlip artists get to donate 10% of the sale price of their prints to a non-profit charity of their choice. The artist gets compensated for their work, the customer gets a high quality print, and charities get a generous donation. How cool is that?)

So, go to Blue Flip Art and check out their stable of artists including Brian Taylor who I've been following off and on for some time. I'm planning to do a future post on him and some of his projects. He's a creative guy. (And now I'm realizing his style is like the Dekor guy in a recent post as well.) Now, onward! Go buy a new print for your bathroom wall at Blue Flip Art.

Above art copyright Brian Taylor. Check out one of his web sites Candykiller.com

Dekor? Grudgingly Interested

As a rule, I have an automatic elevated annoyance level for anyone, or company, or product that replaces a letter in a normal word with a different but similar sounding letter in an attempt at being KOOL... (see what I did with "cool" there?), so, when I decided to visit the site of designer, painter, illustrator "Dekor", I was skeptical that I would be interested at all. It just seems that things that are hip, are sometimes too hip, and as a result not hip at all. Know what I mean? Ignorant hip in spite of itself, is way better than "hip because I know how to be hip".

I admit it might be a French cultural thing I'm missing here in his spelling of Dekor, but I doubt it. Poor guy. Regardless, my point is, I ended up liking his work. Shame on me for having preconceived ideas about this designer based on the nickname they decide to go by. (Queue background music for the lesson), "So Michelle, you should never judge a book by its cover."

Anyway, back to Dekor and his work. Good stuff. My gripe with his choice of nickname aside. Gary Baseman-esque with a little dirty Chris Ware mixed in. He's reminiscent of someone else too, but I can't place it at the moment. Regardless, I enjoyed looking at the stuff on this site. Check out Nicolas Tual... otherwise known as "Dekor", [do finger quotes as you say it!] French designer to French stars [who?] and soon... the world! Mu-ah-ha-ha-ha.

Cool Wooden Toys From the Future

"Yosegi-Mokuzougan, or joined wooden block construction, is a craft skill where combinations of original and unique colors and textures of different kinds of wood are utilized to express artistic patterns."

Takeji (Take-G) Nakagawa has taken this traditional technique and expanded on it, made it 3-D, and made it his own. Drawing from tradition and incorporating what can only be asian pop culture into his toys and sculptures. Check out the take-g toys site. This guy is amazing! Warm and futuristic, two words that normally oppose one another exist simultaneously in his work.

Difficult to purchase if you are not in Japan, hopefully, that will soon be remedied. Most of the site is in Japanese, but the work pretty much speaks for itself.

It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!

I hadn't thought about this until just last night, but I think my excitement level over holidays directly corresponds to when the traditional specials start airing on T.V. I had the pleasure of watching the Peanuts classic by Charles Schultz, It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown with my little boy last night. He seemed to get a kick out of it... and I enjoyed watching him be entertained by the same thing that entertained me this time of year when I was growing up. Did you realize it was made way back in 1966! Talk about staying power. Anyway, I'm feeling nostalgic over how excited I used to get for Halloween now... the Great Pumpkin was apparently a trigger. Just like Pavlov's dog! Happy Halloween!

Wikipedia link to The Great Pumpkin
IMDB link to Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin T.V. Special
Amazon link to buy the Charlie Brown video

Thinking about other shows synonymous with holidays... specifically Christmas:
A Christmas Story - (Side note: Ralphie popped up recently in The Break Up with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn!)
A Christmas Carol
It's A Wonderful Life
The claymation Rudolph videos
Of course, National Lampoon's take on Christmas

"Happy Halloween! I'm a Dinosaur!"

In the immortal words of my nephew, "Happy Halloween! I'm a dinosaur!" We've got it on video. Cute as hell.
"Did you know T-Rex's eat guys?"
"Are you sure Ross? They don't eat plants and trees?"
"No. They eat guys."

In the spirit of the season, here are a few sites to get you in the spirit:
Phantoms and Monsters Blog
ExtremeHalloween.com (costumes)
The Best Halloween Costume Ever (YouTube)
T.A.P.S (The Ghost Hunters)

Enjoy! Happy Halloween!

Noteable Other Design Blogs

It occurs to me that there are probably thousands of other design/designer's blogs out there in the blog universe. (I know, its an amazing moment of clarity) Permit me, if you will, to point out a few of my favorite.

design*sponge - Check out the mini-trends page. A daily website run by Brooklyn-based writer, Grace Bonney.
Design Observer - A blog that focuses on design and culture. Often points out the flaws in design and designer's work.
Feed Me Cool Shit - I find the title annoying, but the information spectacular. Great design, great content on design and culture.

A Painter and a Sculptor

Jason Ruhl is an artist who paints and works in mixed media. His stuff is minimalist with a history. There is often social commentary mixed in, along with the fantastically clever pop culture reference. He uses pink, which is an arbitrary comment by me, but I love pink. Seriously. His mixed media work includes compositions, of amongst other things, vintage ads and comics and medical drawings. I also think his Polaroids are reviving the media, and this new series of buttons has got some serious potential. Who doesn't love a good button.

Jason belongs to an informal artist's collective called No Fun. I don't believe I know any of this group personally, but they all seem to do great, interesting, valid work. Check out a collabrative effort including some of these artists at this blog spot.

Tracey Scheich is primarily a sculptor who's work is plain and simply elegant. The latest stuff I've seen called "Creatures" is elegant, but fun at the same time. I look at these creatures as little action figures in ceramic. And, that is a good thing in my opinion. These characters have a soul, and a back story, and a running narrative, and a future adventure with other ceramic friends. Love this stuff.

Visit their web sites. Get in touch with them. Buy lots of their work.

Images shown belong to their respective artist. Please visit their web sites for more.

The Cool Hunter

I like to think I am cool enough to "give a shout out" to the following site, but now that I think about it, I put quotes around "give a shout out" in addition to using the slang "give a shout out" which is really dated and not cool at all. Oh well. I accept my uncoolness.

Check out the following site if you want to be cool. The people who update this site are WAY cooler than I am:
The Cool Hunter

Picture above credit to The Cool Hunter.net. "Props" to The Cool Hunters, and the designer of the room shown. There I go again with those quote marks.

Hella-of-a Designer

Surfing the internet the other day looking for great designers, and the name Hella Jongerius keeps coming up. Rightfully so. One of a crop of great Dutch designers, formerly with the famous Droog Design, now producing work under Jongeriuslab. A substantial list of collections and design accolades to her credit. This is apparently an important designer for our time. I just like the stuff she designs. Insert description of work here... her work is nice to look at, but have you ever noticed that people who write reviews of things use the same language over and over again? Makes it feel unoriginal. I hate that.

Check out her site. I'm curious to hear what you might think we'll remember Jongeriuslab for in 30 years. What is the icon? Is there one piece? Will the style just get grouped into a big group of Dutch designers with "this style". Write a post. I'm curious about your opinions.

i Robot - i Like

Admittedly, I'm not on the cutting edge of the technology bubble here by talking about the Roomba robot vacuum and its siblings, by the iRobot company, but I do want one. More so recently than ever before. They just keep getting better, doing more and more jobs for us. Actually take the time to physically vacuum or wash the floor? Too easy. NOW, I can even get by without having to actually get my hands dirty cleaning my gutters with their new Looj. This is amazing! Live smart, not hard I like to say.

And, to add to the cool factor, so many people have been "hacking" the Roomba, that the company now offers an open platform model that can be customized. I understand one person was able to program it to retrieve beers from the refrigerator. That is so completely, impractically cool!

Or, they also offer a ConnectR robot, which you can use to interact with your kids, or pets instead of you! How good can it get? "Gee honey, I'm sort of worn down from work today and really need a break. Just send in the robot to talk to little Timmy about how school was today." Alright, I realize I just switched to sarcastic. But there are limits to what duties we should expect robots to do for us. And I suppose it does require some interaction from you... BUT, I digress... Check out the Roomba at iRobot.

My Favorite Designers... Today

I'm going to compile a list of my favorite designers... as of today that is. I reserve the right to drop or add a designer as I so desire. Why is it important that I rank my favorites? Because I can. Why should it mean anything to anyone else? Because they might like these designers too.

Designer for me includes graphics, animation, engineering, furniture... basically anything and anyone that makes something that is visually pleasing to me.

In no particular order:
-Takashi Murakami - I talked about him in a previous post.
-Chris Ware - phenomenal illustrator of Jimmy Corrigan, Quimby the Mouse and other kitschy characters and their comics. Totally retro style, and correct me if I'm wrong, all hand illustrated! Amazing!
-Imaginary Forces - They do all kinds of animation and motion graphics. I like the saying they have on their home page, "At one point in time, everything had not been done."
-Johannes Gutenberg - Arguably the most important figure in communication before Al Gore invented the internet? Known for the Gutenberg Bible, but really, movable type... I realize it is a stretch to call him a "designer," but so much that he did is so important to design. And what design minded person doesn't love the look of moveable type.
-Chank Diesel and his Chank Co. - He's a new breed in type designers. I realize this might be a bit of a stretch, but I like that he doesn't take himself too seriously, and just keeps cranking out fonts.
-Marek Reichman and the Aston Martin Design Team - Responsible for the Aston Martin... a very, hot, production car.
-Frank Gehry - I realize he's become cliche, but you have to appreciate his crazy, computer driven designs for museums all over the world. The firm should disband however, and become architect martyrs...leave us wanting more.
-Antoni Gaudi - The original Frank Gehry