Via OWI – Office for Word and Image. Photo: Vercruysse Frederik

This Paris loft was renovated by architects Karine Chartier and Thomas Corbasson who trained in the studio of Jean Nouvel (last year’s Pritzker Award winner). The space is an old industrial laboratory – you can see the building’s original freight elevator below. Most of the finishing was done in plywood – a moisture-proof, marine-grade, very low formaldehyde-content pine plywood certified by a European sustainable forest practices agreement. Plywood’s characteristic fat “wild grain” – a byproduct of the veneering process in which wood is shaved spirally from logs in thin sheets as logs are rolled past the blade – adds a lot of visual interest to an otherwise white industrial space. The plywood kitchen islands are mostly on locking wheels, which allows the space to flexibly mutate from small cooking area to larger gathering space. Via ATCasa. See also this great project by Chartier Corbasson.

PS Plywood is something that can really inspire strong reactions – see the comments on the AT post on Chartier Corbasson.

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.

When I moved into this typical 1930s apartment in Vancouver’s east side in 1999, the first thing I did was paint over the kitchen’s dingy gold linoleum flooring. The linoleum was the worst thing about that apartment. Everyone always says not to paint linoleum – or any surface you walk on, for that matter – but the painted floor turned out to be durable, easy to deal with and gave me no end of pleasure. You would think a white floor would really show the dirt, but it didn’t seem to, and the glossy painted finish was way easier to clean than the scuffed, dirt-attracting lineolum had been. You can see the old linoleum below (along with some fake protest signs made by an artist friend):

It’s ridiculously easy to do. Here’s how: Degrease the floor as much as you can, either with a proper degreasing liquid or just some strong soap, let it fully dry and then sand the linoleum thoroughly. 80 or 100 grit is fine – you can go finer but avoid anything finer than 150 because the grit does tend to clog a bit. Buy a couple of cans of a tough, dedicated floor paint. Most paint companies carry floor paint, but I got mine from Home Depot – I can’t remember the brand but it was water-based, not too smelly, and could be tinted any colour you wanted. I used a semi-gloss pure designer white. Between coats and when recoating, make sure you only walk on it in white socks, and follow the recoat times to the letter. Before moving heavier items back in, wait a week while the paint hardens. I didn’t want to move the fridge, so I just painted around (and under) it.

The result was quite interesting, because the texture of the lineoleum showed through in a pleasing way (see photo with the vacuum cleaner). The white floor made it feel much more mod in there, which was was great because all the pieces of furniture I owned back then were worn antiquey items I ended up with when my grandfather’s house was sold. As an aside, that interesting corner cabinet in the kitchen was a typical old Vancouver cold cellar – these were cooled by a vent to the outside and were meant for storing vegetables and cheese etc. Apartment kitchens from this era also frequently had hot water tanks in plain view, because these were added later. Hence the homemade birch screen below, which is a 5′x5′ sheet of Baltic birch cut in equal thirds, sanded and finished with varathane, and then re-assembled with two long piano hinges. All together, this doesn’t amount to a proper kitchen renovation, but it was a cheap cosmetic fix that made the apartment feel so much nicer. The whole job cost about $200 if you include the birch screen.