Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2021 i Dwell

What makes some places more “livable” than others? The question has a new importance as many Americans, unmoored from the office, decamp for Phoenix, Boulder, or other spots that frequently rank near the top on lists of U.S. cities with the highest quality of life. Our essay “The Ups and Downs of Livability Rankings” (p. 42) and the section that follows examine some of the most common metrics for livability and unpack the values, ideologies, and implicit judgments baked into them. Along the way, we talk with a diverse group in five Los Angeles households who recently switched neighborhoods about the real-life factors that swayed their choices (p. 46), a New Orleans designer and activist about how to prevent gentrification as neighborhoods improve (p. 56), and people whose once high-scoring…

Shannon Maldonado founded her Philadelphia boutique, Yowie, with the goal of giving creatives a platform. “We love being the first to carry a designer’s collection,” says Maldonado, who notes that “the home and furniture space hasn’t always felt inclusive”—something she’s out to change. Perched along historic Fabric Row in the leafy Queen Village neighborhood, the compact shop is stocked with everything from sculptural ceramics by local and international brands, to buttery-soft loungewear by Yowie and an enticing selection of design books. But rather than tightly pack in rows of objects, Maldonado’s curation allows her rotating selections to breathe. Maldonado has been hard at work developing an ambitious project that will combine a new, nearby outpost with a boutique hotel, cafe, and rentable photo studio, set to open in late 2022.…

Red Hook is “the farthest you can get from New York while still being in New York,” quips Anna Clark of the once-industrial waterfront area of Brooklyn. The village-like neighborhood’s sense of remove from the wider city and opportunities for live/work space were part of the appeal when Anna, an artist/book publisher/radio host, and her partner, designer and musician Thanhyen Nguyen, bought a three-story townhouse there in 2019. Located just a few blocks from where the couple had been renting, the 1,862-squarefoot space is one of five that incorporate elements of a large early-20th-century carriage house. When they found it, the double-height ground floor and increasingly compact living spaces upstairs—with setbacks that create a series of terraces—offered an ideal floor plan. “We liked to call it the layer cake house…

Kate Brien Kitz and David Kitz had braced themselves for Los Angeles’s overheated housing market when they set out to buy their first home together. But after purchasing a 1,600-square-foot 1950s bungalow in Mar Vista in 2019, Kate, a stylist, and David, a photographer, soon found themselves renovating in a pandemic, which delayed demolition and hit them with skyrocketing costs for materials. So the couple practiced restraint, working with architect Andrew Hall of AHA Design to rework the low-slung home and its Japanese-inspired features for themselves and their sons, Felix and Sebastian. Here, they recount how that strategy paid off, explaining where they compromised and where they held to their original vision to create a contemporary but timeless family home. FINDING A FIT DAVID: When we were first looking at…

28 Return to Form Cast Architecture castarchitecture.com Construction by dBoone Construction dbooneconstruction.com Structural engineering by Swenson Say Fagét ssfengineers.com Landscape design by Maggie Payne Lighting design by Luminous NW luminousnw.com 29 Walnut flooring from Cascade Pacific Flooring cpfloors.com; Stiletto LED pendant by Sonneman sonnemanlight.com 68 Market Value Joel Contreras Design joelcontrerasdesign.com The Design Office brockoneill.com Construction by Ryan Tyner (Wilde Demolition) Cabinetry design by J Raymond Custom jraymondcustom.com 70 Swivel chair and pendant light from West Elm westelm.com; bench from CB2 cb2.com; sofa from Restoration Hardware rh.com 71 Cloe ceramic tile from Bedrosians Tile & Stone bedrosians.com; office chair from CB2 cb2.com; cowhide from Ikea ikea.com 74 Layers of Interest Opa Architecture opa.space Construction by Delux Construction delux-construction.com Lighting design by Opa Architecture Millwork from Figure Ground igureground.nyc Interior design…

MADE IN AMERICA Independent design shops are hubs for creative communities. Here, we celebrate some of our favorites. View the full list on Dwell.com, and DM us @dwellmagazine with your recommendations. REGIONAL PRIDE We profile five shops from across the country and ask their proprietors to recommend furniture, lighting, and more that show off the best of their neck of the woods.…

The felonious Goldilocks, who broke into an unoccupied home and ranked the temperature of porridges and the comfort level of mattresses, might have avoided a lot of trouble by consulting livability lists, the popular rankings meant to help people decide where to take up residence. Such lists stoke ire, excitement, and debate on social media, inspiring impassioned articles in response. They also provide a boosterism bonanza by bestowing metropolitan areas with lofty titles (like The Best City for Singles) that amp up local economies and real estate markets. Of the many—many—lists claiming which American cities reign supreme, the most anticipated may well be from U.S. News & World Report (overseer of the alluring yet elitist annual colleges and universities lists). The publication looks at 150 of the most populated metro…

“This was a very free project that allowed me to explore my deep love of vernacular architecture.”BRENDAN RAVENHILL, RESIDENT AND DESIGNER Brendan Ravenhill likes to describe his summers in Maine as half vacation, half working meditation. Most of the year, he’s in Los Angeles, where his design studio is primarily known for lighting fixtures. But when he returns to his family’s homestead on Little Cranberry Island, a short boat ride southeast of Acadia National Park, he tends to personal projects: building wooden boats, a pondside tea house, and, over the course of three months last year, a floating sauna. Brendan’s sister-in-law, Katie Garrison, had the idea first, after seeing similar saunas while traveling for work in Norway. Next, his sister, Amanda, helped jump-start the project by securing three crucial items,…

It’s peaceful and surrounded by nature. @oil.studio.skin North End, Boise, Idaho Walkability. @wenyiwangg Lincoln Park, Chicago Access to the coast. @mcdhaley East Boston, Boston The quiet. @claudz510 Bernardston, Massachusetts It isn’t gentrified by a bunch of midcentury-modern rebuilds. @ilyagram North Beach, San Francisco The quietness and closeness of the park. @gracynraehome Buckhead, Atlanta Sense of community. @ricptel El Cerritos, San Diego Tree-lined streets. @_juliet_o_ German Village, Columbus, Ohio Richardsonian Romanesque architecture. @bjpatch Pioneer Square, Seattle The mountain views. @ancient.now Highland Lakes, Divide, Colorado I love hearing the tamale lady call out at night: “Tamaleeeeeees!” @aubreywould Grant Hill, San Diego Wildflower gardens instead of lawns. @monica_ fitzedwards Loomiller Park, Longmont, Colorado The woods and trails around my house. They are my home. @onica_mae Pound Ridge, New York All the elderly people.…

Currie Person likes Spartan Shop to constantly evolve. Take the pandemic: Person closed the brick-and-mortar location in Portland, Oregon, for 16 months and emerged with a new vision, moving away from her original concept for “an elevated general store” to become a hybrid showroom and gallery. Located in a 1923 bottling facility–turned–airy shop in the city’s Central Eastside Industrial District, the minimalist space features concrete floors covered with glossy white paint to match the window-lined walls. Porcelain vessels dripping with textural glaze and wildly colorful glass vases sit atop sculptural tables placed in careful arrangements near contemporary chairs and couches to show how each piece—some designed locally, others by international brands like Lambert & Fils and De Sede—might appear in a living space. “We’re reimagining the shape of the space…

A chance stop at a Phoenix grocery store checked off an unexpected item on Ryan Tyner and Kim Moellenberndt’s shopping list. It was 2018, and the two were looking for their first house as a couple. They had just viewed a disappointing home in the city’s Loma Linda Park neighborhood and were feeling discouraged—and thirsty—when they drove past Corner Market, a small, freestanding convenience store. They went in for a drink, and then it hit them: “We both looked at each other and said, ‘This would be a cool house,’” remembers Ryan. They admired the simplicity of the structure, a single-story brick-and-concrete-block box with a pair of large windows in front. Inside, Kim photographed the coolers and aisles of groceries as Ryan stood in line to pay for a bottle…

The adage “once burned, twice shy” held no sway for Buttons and Ridgie Barton. In October 2017, the catastrophic Nuns fire incinerated the ’70s-era A-frame in Napa County, California, that had served as a family retreat for 20 years and that the couple, who are mostly retired from a business-to-business marketing company that they ran together, were in the process of turning into their permanent home. When the fire hit, the Bartons had almost finished their move north from the Cliff May ranch house in Anaheim they’d lived in for 52 years. They’d already brought nearly all their family keepsakes and heirlooms, making the loss especially poignant (fortunately, the couple were away at the time). But while rebuilding in fire-prone areas is often controversial, they never even considered leaving. “Nope,…

Smart Shopping For the Design Obsessed. Find what you love in our expertly curated selection of finely crafted home, office, travel, and lifestyle products. More at Dwell.com/Shop VELDT MARFA Wear Your Art Timeless & minimal. Petite Titanium Box necklace on Italian box chain. Veldt is a tiny jeweler based in Marfa, Texas creating wearable art in materials including titanium and porcelain. veldtmarfa.com | @veldtmarfa LifeStraw Home Glass Water Filter Pitcher Priced at $54.95 Behind this Scandinavian eye candy is a pitcher that filters out more than 30 contaminants (including bacteria, lead, microplastics, parasites, and PFAS), a company that fights for the planet, and a give-back program that provides millions of children with safe water. Discover more at lifestraw.com/home. Stillwater Dwellings Great Homes Happen By Design Introducing the new Stillwater Connection…

When I became an adult, my mother passed these gloves on to me. I always knew they were special because of the way she cherished them. They belonged to my great-grandfather, who had a small farm, and these were his working gloves. You don’t see these kinds of things in a museum. They’re not merely decorative or ornamental—they’re actually used. I can imagine my great-grandfather’s hands in them. They’ve always had an impact on me because they are sort of this mixture of beauty and utility. In Indigenous cultures, you would make gloves that are highly ornamental—regalia for ceremonies. And then there are work gloves that you would pick up to dig a hole. These sit in the middle of that. As a designer, I’m trying to do a similar…