The blog YOU HAVE BEEN HERE SOMETIME does, as its title suggests, provoke an uncanny feeling. If not a feeling of deja vu, then at least a sense of the mysterious life of objects. No snapshots of the blog that I can include here will reproduce the feeling you get from the way David John, its creator, exhibits photographs and information; you just have to go there for yourself. YHBHS’s atmospheric collection of dopplegangers and doubles and triples is part of the effect. How does he find these art and design objects that echo each other in this way? The simplicity is deceptive, and the geometry is mesmerizing. I also appreciate the way he combines design with art – mostly midcentury, 60s and later sculpture. And with lamps, because on his blog everything is illuminated. And the white space, which the internet virtually never allows you. Sometimes when I can’t stabilize my mood, I just go to you have been here sometime and I feel better. David has remarked on the importance of art in a community, and he’s right. YHBHS is from L.A.

The Russian Hall, formerly the Russian People’s Home, consistently produces typography so clear, so straightforward, so capitalized it’s almost a design manifesto in itself. That’s what happens when you try to produce design degree zero: the more you eschew style, the cooler your no-style becomes and finally you’re just rad whether you like or not.

This is the Mi Casa VolB showroom in São Paolo, by Marcio Kogan. I love cast concrete, especially here where there’s no attempt to embellish or hide the structure. Via Wallpaper: “The concrete is visible throughout, free of detailing, with even the construction workers’ chalk markings left intact inside. Outside, one facade is an exposed steel frame, normally used to reinforce concrete. Rough-textured surfaces lit from above and via the low shop window, make the space, as Kogan says, ‘almost an X-ray of the materials’. This may be an elite, upmarket boutique, but the design of the building would not be expensive to emulate considering the simplicity of its shapes and materials. It would be so nice to see something like this in Vancouver.

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.

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.

Birch/Bříza mug by Czech company whitefruits.

It’s from 2006, but seems to have been a prototype only and does not seem to be in production now, which is unfortunate.