High Art Home

Yes this is an abso-stunning, creative house design BUT does it, honestly now, look like anyone could/would live here? This is Staircase House in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo. OK, I say that I can't feature the joint occupied BUT, now that I think on it, I could totally live AND paint here. I’d need handrails on that staircase for houseplants though. PLUS a shitton more of that greenery and a dozen+ indoor trees.

I’m also WAY digging House 77 by dIONISO LAB in Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal. (below left)

Bunny Lane

And Riverside House in Suginami City, Tokyo by Kota Mizuishi looks like it’s right up my Valhalla neighborhood's wee lot size alley.

Have ya noticed that upscale, designer houses are rarely photographed with signs of real inhabitant's stuff laying about?

When furniture IS shown it’s almost never comfy chairs and couches in nice, easy to clean fabrics and colors. Nope! The chairs LOOK slick but, also, desperately uncomfortable and the couches are, generally, sans arms Dunno ‘bout you but I just can’t get all happy, cozy on a couch without nice, low-slung arm action. Also too, seating is usually in black or, more often, white. Who the fuck would ever buy a white couch? Do they not have pets or kids? Are they superheroes of grace – never spilling so much as a raindrop’s worth of red wine?

I  totally get it. Really I do. These residences (AKA homes for the rich) are being displayed as works of art (which they really are). This isn’t your neighborhood realtor trying to sell a dwelling to one of us poor peasants. I imagine all these joints had buyers with buckos well before the architect's pencil hit paper and the first shovel of dirt was dug.

These are pristine objets d'art – museum pieces – NOT homes where anyone would actually live. OK, folks who’re a damn sight tidier, less slovenly than me will live there. 

Also too, if you’re the sort who can afford a high end, creative architecture firm to design and build your family digs, it’s mega doubtful you’re gonna let the paparazzi in to snap pics AFTER you’ve moved in and hung the family pics. Oh please! That’s just NOT done.

And then there’s Bunny Lane in Bernardsville, New Jersey. It was cooked up by Industrial Zombie, a screamingly inventive New Jersey design, engineering and manufacturing concern.

Bunny Lane is a traditional 19th century cottage within a much larger, industrial, shipping container-ish structure. It’s WILD, though it looks much more like an exhibit I’d explore at Mass MoCA than someplace I’d wanna live. Still, within the interior cottage, there’s color and comfortable looking chairs.

Along the same ferociously imaginative line is the Joshua Tree Residence by Whitaker Studio of London.

There are other shipping container homes which seem more on an actual I-could-live-here scale. Like Six Oaks in Felton, California, Container House in Nederland, Colorado and, especially, the Lakeside Cottage in Lakeside, California. This one is a single bed/ bath home and just 800 square feet  – slightly smaller than Valhalla. SURE, I’m always wanting endless amounts of space for painting BIG canvases (and three or four at a time too) BUT I don’t want to clean a 2,000+ square foot spread and I sure as fuck don’t want to pay the heating bill or property tax on a joint that size.