“Our lighting is hand-built in Japan from natural materials, including the hand-made paper (washi) of Eriko Horiki, the bent Japanese cedar of Toshiyuki Tani’s Wappa series, the coiled beech wood of the Bunaco Lacquer Ware Company, and the todomatsu pine slats of Takumi Kohgei. The lights are designed by Japanese architects and artisans who strive to create distinctive contemporary designs utilizing traditional materials and production techniques…Typically these lights provide ambient rather than functional lighting, creating that special mood or atmosphere which is best achieved through the use of soft natural materials.” These spectacular Japanese lamps are sold and distributed in North America by Vancouver company Kozai Designs.

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.

This disassemblable spiral staircase by French industrial designer Roger Tallon is, not surprisingly, in the design collection of the MOMA. It’s both industrially ingenious and ridiculously beautiful. Tallon is one of those wildly prolific versatile designers responsible for a diverse variety 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. Yet oddly he’s not all that well-known outside France – for example there’s no Wikipedia entry for him in English, which is strange considering his work. 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 an after-the-fact 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 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 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.