The photo above shows the central living area of a rural farmhouse on the border of Tochigi and Ibaraki prefectures. The house was restored by Kenji Tsuchisawa who bought it as a rundown heap when he was only 20, after seeing a photograph of a traditional Japanese farmhouse on a Tokyo magazine cover. He bought the house before realizing it was situated just one village away from the house in the magazine. Many Japanese traditional farmhouses have now been restored and modernized, but the layout of these houses is so clever in terms of use of space and comfort that when they are updated, the original layout is often retained. It’s a house model being studied by North American and European architects aiming to produce smaller but more functional houses. Traditional Japanese houses are not large, but they seem larger than they are thanks to their well-thought-out layout, and their serene, warm version of minimalism makes them comfortable and functional. The use of natural materials and repeated colours makes the rooms feel balanced, and so does the fact that most objects have a real function. Decorative elements exist, but not to excess. When they are modernized, the main alteration is usually the replacement of the original exterior doors and windows, and trading the sliding shoji screen doors and windows for more sturdily framed glass doors, windows and skylights to let in more light and keep out the weather.

Both photos above show the traditional indoor fire pit known as an irori, which sometimes sits on a raised seating platform, though in the photo above the irori has been traded for a more efficient (and safer) wood stove. The beautiful half-frosting on the glass screen doors in the photo above provides some privacy from the fairly public courtyard for people seated inside. Photos are from a book I think is really worth buying: Japan Country Living: Spirit, Tradition, Style, by Amy Sylvester Katoh, photographs by Shin Kimura, Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo, Japan, 1993. Kimura’s work has also appeared in Met Home and Paris Vogue.

Above is a checkerboard textile of indigo-dyed hemp by Hiroyuki Shindo, on the verandah of his thatched house. It provides privacy (it appears opaque from outside, see here) and yet admits light and the view. Below, a functional modern kitchen produced by making only minor changes to the original.

Many people will have probably seen the Magnetic Curtain designed in 2008 by Florian Kräutli. His curtain is not in production yet but will soon be available through Droog Design. Its function is simple – it’s raised, lowered or pulled aside by manually accordioning its magnetic nodes together or apart. It remains in whichever configuration you push it into.

In a recent post on this curtain in the mocoloco design blog, many readers commented that the curtain seemed very reminiscent of an earlier design by Hannah Allijns, a faceted geometric curtain that works via drawstrings rather than magnets but that otherwise looks very similar (below). Allijns’ curtain was featured on design*sponge in early 2007. Her curtain, too, is now in production and will soon be available. Both curtains are interesting, but the question is, is Florian Kräutli’s magnetic curtain a ripoff, a deliberate homage, or just a fluke? While simultaneous, unrelated design inventions do sometimes occur, these two items do seem awfully similar, but does that mean anything? Two things come to mind: first, similar design ideas do often arise around the same time in history, and many have theorized reasons for the zeitgeist effect. Secondly, designers are definitely inspired/influenced by things they see around them, consciously or unconsciously. As a designer it’s easy to find yourself on both sides of this problem. We’re sure that every designer has had ideas scooped at least once – or wonders if he or she has. A similar theft/imitation/fluke happened to us last year, and it was hard to know if it was deliberate or just a funny coincidence. As for the curtains themselves, many people seem to prefer Allijns’ curtain, aesthetically speaking. We like both of them. I love the use of magnets, though I’d prefer magnets in any colour but gold. Black? Silver? White?