A quick note of introduction for new readers: I am Kelsey Keith, a longtime editor-turned-creative director and former New Yorker. I run brand creative at Herman Miller, where recent work has involved things like a redesign of the brand’s graphic identity, the introduction of a vintage program with Wright, a collaboration with a textile artist for holiday windows on Park Avenue, shooting retail campaigns at some very special spots around the Bay Area (we are hiring for this position now, btw), and putting together a print magazine for spring 2024. I edited the HAY monograph for Phaidon and recently worked on another Phaidon book, also coming out this spring. I have two young daughters and live in Berkeley, California, where my husband grew up; we spend a lot of time at The Sea Ranch. This Substack is a compendium of my design-related interests, which hopefully piques your own. This week: architecture on the brain.
Unpacking the Forest House
The Forest House—an 1800-square-foot cabin in the woods designed by Peter Bohlin for his parents in the early 1970s—is, I’m confident, the internet’s favorite house.
Fans include people who like stuff on Instagram and actual architects alike. I include myself in this cohort; those red steel windows make their way onto every reference board I’ve ever put together.
Let us analyze what’s at work here: For one, it’s deceptively simple, meaning archetypal enough to appeal to lots of people (capital-C Cabin with a shed roof) but chock full of architectural sleights-of-hand you won’t find in just any old cabin. The cedar siding is stained green. The concrete columns that support the structure are painted red to match the steel window sash in the living room, also painted red, as is the nearly-cute oversize lamp on the exterior. It’s sited precisely where the property’s evergreen grove and deciduous forest meet, and accessible by footbridge.
Second observation: There is some interesting psychology at work in this very category of “early career architects designing a domicile for their parent(s).”* Think Robert Venturi’s house for his mother… and keeping the nicest bedroom in it for himself. It’s Le Corbusier designing a house for his parents, complete with a stair for the dog and a viewing platform for the cat, before finding a site to put it on. It’s Charles Gwathmey’s masterpiece, his first built project, for which he was given complete creative control when he designed it for his parents at age 27.
In 2020, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson posted a current-day interior shot of the living room (in which a crime has been committed on that poor fireplace wall). I checked in this week but alas, their commission to restore Forest House never came to fruition. At least we have GA Houses.
Sidenote
All that industrial sash calls to mind the book High-Tech: The Industrial Style and Source Book for the Home, which if you know me, you know I am obsessed with. And any time I dip into the High-Tech well, I spend some time splashing about in the archives of Alan Buchsbaum. Buchsbaum, for those unfamiliar, was the preeminent designer of downtown lofts during the heyday of Manhattan’s downtown lofts. Picture a grittier Canal Street in the 1970s and ‘80s, a low bed on a mezzanine, a restaurant-supply-sourced kitchen mixed with lacquered antique furniture, sexy carpet, exposed ductwork, editor and actor clients** who would go on to become very famous.
Mentioning Buchsbaum is an excuse to run a few of my personal favorites from his archive, starting with a carpeted breakfast pit in his own loft. Or the conference room swaddled in navy, punctuated by electrifying red (it only works because the chairs are not some chic Italian design, but the staidest possible Bank of England chairs), all surrounding a slab of marble on—count ‘em—nine legs.
To quote the Buchsbaum monograph published in 1996 by the Monacelli Press: “Anything goes, and everything goes together.”
Everything but the…
Y’all want to see the best sink ever made?
I was reminded of this serpentine double-basin design recently c/o @korprojects, who posted a shot of the vintage sink at the Will Rogers ranch in Pacific Palisades. This is an old sink style—“old” meaning 1910s—that was originally made by Elkay, Inc, using lead solder (an alloy of nickel, copper, and zinc) that predated stainless steel. There are two places in the US that did make this sink until very recently: German Silver Sink Co. in Colorado and Fine German Silver Sinks in Illinois. However, the former is out of business and the latter can no longer get the materials… especially tragic because these are very rare on the antique market. There are none on 1stDibs and literally ONE on eBay. It is not cheap, but it is, as previously mentioned, the best sink ever made. Your move!
Odds and ends
Edith Zimmermann on her “diet of a media diet” (we stan Edith wherever she appears—last week, a guest stint on Kottke.org)
FOR SCALE on red interiors as “divine sabotage”
The critical body of Mark Lamster, Alexandra Lange, and Carolina A. Miranda on their 14th annual architecture and design ‘awards,’ which bestows dubious honors and true praise alike on the built environment of 2023. Come for the pithy titles, stay for the cheat sheet on new buildings and their critical reception.
This interview with Icelandic artist Loji Höskuldsson, who embroiders fanciful renditions of quotidian scenes onto burlap canvases. (The work functions as a “Where’s Waldo” for Nordic signifiers: a grocery basket from Netto supermarkets, an Arabia label, a súrmjólk carton, an empty bucket of Flutex matte wall paint, an Aalto vase.)
Of course the most rigorous design-y menorah is available at Lichen. It’s milled out of stainless steel and available in an edition of 25.
I’ve mentioned the gift guides written by Broccoli magazine editor Stephanie Madewell before, and this year, as ever, they are thematic par excellence.
Forgot to include this in my rules for gift-giving last week, but: Pleats Please for smol bods. Also, a humble request to stop using the word “gift” as a verb.
Thanks for reading (especially you, newcomers via Kottke and Puck)!
Until next time,
Kelsey
I am so delighted that you enjoy the gift guides; thank you for mentioning them here! Sidebar: I would totally read a book on the homes architects build for their parents; I can imagine something amusing and witty like EMINENT VICTORIANS digging into all the details of why things were built just so.
I think you'd like Julie's post about Ledge House: https://open.substack.com/pub/buildinghope/p/obsessing-over-details