New house in an old neighbourhood of Wroclaw, Poland, in the NYT today. Spruce on the outside, particle board on the inside, and the whole thing cost US$80,000 to build. It will fade to grey. This seems equivalent to laneway housing in Vancouver – and memo to Vancouver: modern mixes well with traditional architecture. Take a chance! I just hope they used non-formaldehyde particle board in the interior, because if not that’s a lot of off-gassing. Photos: Olo Rutkowski. See more current Polish architecture here.

This chapel in Tarnów, Poland, is by Marta Rowińska & Lech Rowiński of the firm Beton (photos by Beton) and was completed in 2009. Like so many wooden churches, it feels like an inverted wooden ship. Being a completely non-religious non-churchgoer who really dislikes all the tortured religious iconography and narrative (and could do without the cross), I don’t know why I’m so attracted to all these humble churches (see also here). Maybe because there’s something surrealist or fantastical about their architecture, not just in that they suggest poetical barns or ships, but because their utility is somewhat non-utilitarian and undefinable. Having said that, the design of this church grew out of very practical, material concerns (like so much successful architecture): Via archdaily:

“Building the church had also a “side” purpose: to bring the local community together. It was built by not very skilled workers, so the technology had to be really simple. Concrete slab as a foundation, timber structure as the main “spine” of the building and the wooden cladding. There is almost no detail, no fancy elements. This is also a kind of experiment – how to create a certain quality of space with the use of rudimentary technical simplicity. The investor, who is a quite well-known Polish writer, decided to save this small bit of the Vistula bank from becoming an another wild beach with a cheap bar on the side.”

It’s too early for Christmas, I realize. But this art object has such a pleasing geometry you could actually leave this tree out all year, minus the Christmas decorations. And I mention it know because if you want one for Christmas, you probably have to order it now if you’re outside the USA. It’s called the PossibiliTree. At Christmas if you wanted that Christmas tree smell, it would be simple to get a few boughs and tie them to these branches. I really hesitate to encourage people to buy things on this blog, because I’m anti-consumerist and DIY, but this is one of those objects that’s so well made, so well-conceived, and so environmentally friendly that I think people should have one. It has a midcentury modern feel, and I seem to remember that one of the Eames playing cards had an image of something like this, which is maybe partly why I like it so much. There are different sizes; this is the smaller one which can stand on a table as well as sit on the floor. The largest one is suspended from a hook in the ceiling – very easy to do.  (There are only a few suspended trees left.) There are different colours too – walnut, birch and cherry. The tree arrives in a mailing tube and you assemble it yourself, which is apparently not difficult. If you don’t like chopping down a tree every Christmas, this seems like a great idea, so much better than a synthetic tree. It’s made on this continent, too, out of local hardwood trees. You can order these from Possibilitree.

Thanks to photographers Molly Des Jardin (cat slide), Ethan and Kohmura Masao (Fomal Haut) for these photos of rural Japanese houses. So few materials, so harmoniously put together. Many of the photos are from an open air museum in Japan, where traditional houses from different regions have been transported and reconstructed. The beautiful horse is a straw toy; click on the image for more information on traditional uses of straw, whether practical or ritual.

Alvar Aalto’s Villa Mairea in Noormarkku, Finland, built between 1937 and 1939 as a rural retreat, is considered one of the greatest houses of the 20th century. Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who curated a major retrospective of Aalto’s work at the Barbican in London in 2007, has said that photographs give no real sense of Aalto’s buildings. Short of flying to Finland, though, photos are what we have at this moment. Flickr photos are by  08 ROTCH simoneau, Frans Drewniak (drz image), Siren Fay, Andrew Paul Carr, bttgcm, Ashley Wendell, David Gross and Ettubrutae. For further reading on this amazing house, there’s an excellent article on Aalto and Ban’s curation of his work at designbuild or look at Phaidon’s Villa Mairea Aid. The house shows evidence of Aalto’s various interests in Japanese design, in sustainable architecture, and in simple, natural materials used in an experimental way. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater was also an influence, and you can see that here, but while I appreciate Fallingwater, I love Villa Mairea.

Click below for more photos.

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