These photos are from an an article by Terence Conran in UK’s Telegraph online, based on his new Eco House Book(Octopus, 2009). This house is completely off the grid, and was built by one man alone over an 18-month period. Its shape mimics traditional Normandy rural architecture and in many ways its living methods are just as traditional; at night it’s lit with storm lanterns. This may not be the way everyone wants to live, but it’s very comfortable and when the power grid goes out, nothing changes. Its credentials include siting to take advantage of passive solar strategies; minimal foundations; timber structure, recycled timber joinery, cedar cladding; no timber treatment; wood-burning masonry stove; no connection to electrical grid; lighting provided by candles and storm lanterns; and natural ventilation provided by vents and high-level windows. And it’s perfect for anyone who likes the look of wild grain plywood. I’m not sure about the ship-style bunks but the building’s face, at top, is beautiful. For more on eco-building from the Telegraph, which is running a series of these features, start with down on the eco farm.

2thewalls is the closest thing on the internet to the much-missed and now cult-status Nest: Quarterly of Interiors. Finding 2thewalls is a bit like falling down the rabbit hole, and not just because reading it feels like deciphering text printed on a zebra crossing. Like Nest, 2thewalls is concerned with the way people actually live in architecture, and, also similar to Nest, 2thewalls somehow illuminates reality’s tendency to take on an almost Alice in Wonderland quality. In design, reality really is stranger than fiction, and both publications get this across not just through unconventional subject matter and design, but also by providing interesting historical context in such a way that it overturns our more banal assumptions about where objects and styles come from. I find it a welcome refuge from the massive decontextualization of styles and objects that most decor magazines and blogs (tumblr! I’m talking to you!) are guilty of, something that I think flattens our experience of the design around us and converts it into an exhausting avalanche of commodities. 2thewalls always makes me think, and it has the additional knack of somehow digging up things that I’ve once loved but have then lost or forgotten. A long time ago I cut out these two photos (above and below) from a vintage garage-sale copy of Architectural Digest: a blue fold-out writing desk in the shape of a hippo, and an old wooden staircase out of a folk tale, but I lost them and never saw them again until they resurfaced on 2thewalls. I’m showing this work only because it’s a favourite of mine, but there is so much more there to look at on 2thewalls. All of the work shown here  is by Atelier Lalanne, and you really should go to 2thewalls to read the original accompanying text. Photos here, all except for the last two, are courtesy of 2thewalls and were taken from the February 1981 issue of AD, and are by Marc Lacroix. 2thewalls is a project of New York designer Keehnan Konyha.

The table by Francois-Xavier Lalanne, above, is easily disassembled into 5 round bistro tables. Below, Francois-Xavier (inset) and Claude Lalanne. The two pieces at bottom – a frog that opens into a chair and a necklace that seems to have been made in ancient Greece – both sold recently at auction. A comprehensive book on Atelier Lalanne work is Claude & Francois-Xavier Lalanne and see also Claude & Francois-Xavier Lalanne: Fragments.

This disassemblable spiral staircase by French industrial designer Roger Tallon is, not surprisingly, in the design collection of the MOMA. It is both industrially ingenious and ridiculously beautiful. Tallon is one of those wildly prolific versatile designers responsible for a diverse collection of projects. Among many other things these include the Wimpy chair, cutlery, TVs, sinks, France’s streamlined TVG high speed train, and more recently he was the design director for the Eurostar trains as well. Yet oddly he’s not all that well-known outside France – for example there’s no Wikipedia entry for him in English. This is strange when you take the breadth and quality of his projects into account. How does that happen? This 1964 staircase, officially called the “model M400 adjustable helicoid spiral staircase,” has a central steel column on which ten cast aluminum steps, one wide landing stair and spacers are strung. The M400 is still being made, and if you are sitting on a lot of disposable income you can have one. The top image of the staircase is a recent photo by an auction house, and shows a very nice after-market hand rail. The staircase comes with no rail so there were many interesting custom made solutions to the rail problem, not usually as nice as this one. I recently found photos of the staircase as installed in a modernized 60s room in an old Paris house, below, in the 1973 decor book 1601 Decorating Ideas for Modern Living. Closeup photo via stairporn (others here, and see other stairs from stairporn here).

This is the one kind of pillow you actually can’t have too many of. The pillow rocks, called Livingstones, are by Smarin, a French design company named for designer Stephanie Marin. Via unearthedtees.