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.

This is artist Donald Judd’s loft in Soho, maintained as a museum but only open infrequently. It was one of the first artist’s lofts in Soho – not to mention in New York – and is now almost the paradigmatic example of loft living. Judd bought the entire 1870’s industrial building for 70,000 in 1968 and moved in with his family. One of the central figures in minimalist art, Judd clearly lived his own aesthetic. His interest in industrial materials and engineering methods is evident here in the lack of any attempt to domesticate the space as well as in the simple, unadorned furniture he built for it. The NYT ran an article a while ago which included an interview with Judd’s son Flavin, who was 6 months old when he moved into this loft and who nostalgically described the Soho of the 60s and 70s as a small town smelling fragrantly of the cigars manufactured nearby. These days there’s a certain huffiness out there about modernism and minimalism’s supposed kid-unfriendliness, but Flavin Judd remembers this space – ground zero of minimalism – happily and even nostalgically (there’s a small image of the Judds at home, below). “There were “the best Swedish breakfasts on the second floor — 50 people would come over — ham, cheese, weird flatbreads, salmon,” Flavin Judd said. “It was a great place to grow up.” To read the whole story, which includes information on the heritage restoration of the whole building, see the NYT. See also this blog’s previous post on minimalism.vs. maximalism in interiors. There’s a good shot of the a reproduction of Judd’s famous daybed on AT , and lastly, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change by Sharon Zukin provides a really fascinating portrait and social history of artist’s lofts, including 101 Spring Street. According to the Judd Foundation website, tours of the Spring St. building and loft are suspended during restoration but will start up again in 2010.

Photos from the NYT and from DiscoContinental on Flickr. Take a fun quiz (is it a Judd or a piece of cheap furniture?) here.

Probably everyone and his/her dog has seen this NYC loft apartment by now, and possibly also blogged about it, but this is one of those places that is so hypnotizing I can’t stop looking at it. It’s on the top floor of a former industrial building on Broadway in NYC and not surprisingly it belongs to an architect couple. It is filled with Jean Prouvé and Hans Wegner furniture among other beautiful things, but it’s the beautiful diamond-patterned Berber rug and the striped pillows that make it. There’s something about these minimalist, monochomatic stripes and geometries that produce a mesmerized quasi-autistic trance, while at the same time they are also pleasingly reminiscent of the traditional striped textiles of both Sweden and Greece. Modernism’s long-standing relationship with simple agrarian-based weaving is not surprising. Without the wood and textiles this would just be another cool – even cold – white loft.

Via OWI.

Sorry for the recent blog silence but we’re in the middle of our hectic annual Open House. Here’s a favourite photo to fill in the gap. It’s a San Francisco live/work loft space. We partly love it for the great painting of the burning ruin – the text at the bottom reads “Monument to Frankenstein.” We can’t find the source of this photo so if anyone knows, please tell us. We found it years ago and have given up trying to remember where.

Great loft in NYC designed by architects Fernlund & Logan for themselves. Great striped Swedish pillows – the midcentury and Scandinavian furniture is beautiful against all that white. From here. Some great photos of houses and interiors they have designed for others is here.