The future of urban density

We at Spore are essentially suburban. In spite of our living in and loving our city, we live in a single-family dwelling that has enough room that we can store things we don't mean to keep. We admire the minimalism borne of constraints, and we love what density can do for community vibrancy, as well as for environmental impact. Cities in the United States tend to have codes that prevent developers from building the kind of compact dwellings that are popular in many Asian cities, but some people are starting to explore the "what-ifs." What if there were a viable option for affordable, safe housing for the young and poor in our cities? What if semi-communal options were architectually supported? Today we read this interesting article in the New York Times on a few projects that are considering this, and we were inspired by the idea that we might see something like this in our cities in the next decade. We just hope, of course, that they want lots of doorbells. 

As seen on Decorgirl.net

Thanks to Lisa at Decorgirl.net for the great Spore review earlier this year on Decorgirl.net. Don't forget to let us know if you ever blog about us--we'd love to share your post with our customers. 

A House By the Park: the cost of building modern

A couple of years ago, we began following the blog A House By The Park, the chronology of Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine, on the building of his modern house in Seattle. His goal in writing his blog was not to just show off the progress on his beautiful home, but to precisely document the design choices and their costs so that other people could see what the reality of building custom modern might actually look like. The journey started in 2007, when Mike first started thinking about what he was looking for. In July of 2008 he found his dream property and the process began in earnest. Working with Build, a local construction firm that specialize in modern residences, Mike transformed a property with an early 1950s house into a modern masterpiece.

Along the way he shared his experiences and choices on everything from mortgages to lighting, with information about how he made his decisions along the way. We were pleased as punch that in his second to last post on the process he called out our True doorbell as a favorite find, a great honor after watching his progress for a year. Though the house wrapped up in November of last year, the blog remains an incredible resource and inspiration for anyone who is thinking about building or revamping modern.

Exterior Elements: Modern Planters

While walking around the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle yesterday, we noted these thoughtfully designed corten steel planters. There remains a paucity of good options when looking for locally available planters for modern settings, and the most notable ones we see are site-built custom jobs. We particularly admired the way these were recessed into the spaces between the pillars and used the concrete wall as the back side of the planter. Have a favorite go-to planter? Share it with us--we are always looking for more options!

Favorite Gifts: Drawing a Tree

Every year or so, we find a perfect new gift, the thing we buy in multiples and keep on hand for hosts, loved ones or business associates. A few years ago it was Tivoli radios, then it was tiny hexagonal Japanese bud vases. This year's gift-on-hand is the beautiful little book Drawing a Tree by Bruno Munari. As the cover suggests, this book provides simple observations about the forms of trees and how they can be represented in a variety of media. For days after thumbing through it, one looks longer at trunks and branch forms, and even when sketching with the kids we find ourselves adding more variety to our arboreal efforts. Sweet, meditative and useful: what else could one want in a gift? We stock up on it at Peter Miller books in downtown Seattle.