The images for this post hit my inbox in celebration of Dwell's first Interiors issue, out this month. The magazine includes an especially intriguing feature on a home that was the result of a challenge for designer Barbara Hall; to find a way to finesse and fit the furniture and art pieces that create the overall aesthetic she had previously developed for a family's very modern home in Texas into their current, very vintage 1920s house in Atlanta.
The exterior remains true to its era, with classic Mediterranean lines, but once inside, the modern sensibility is undeniable. It's a unique and beautiful mix of a minimal aesthetic with industrial touches; great (and comfortable-looking!) contemporary furniture and show stopping artwork. The lighting collection is the feature that truly underlines the firmly-in-the-NOW aesthetic for me, which includes pieces from current design innovators Lindsey
Adelman (for Roll & Hill) and Rich Brilliant Willing.
It's heartening to see interiors that prove that one can respect (and celebrate) the good bones of traditional spaces while creating rooms with an innovative forward focus. It's a fitting feature for Dwell's first issue completely devoted to interiors as it evokes the publications concept that "any house can be modern on the inside"!
The Interiors Issue of Dwell is available now.
(Images: Gregory Miller / Dwell)
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Howard Butcher Bloc...
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Recipe: Chopped Brown Rice Salad with Grapes and Pecans
Stunning bright, clean interior and a great contrast to the outside of the house :-)
Like the house, LOVE the greyhounds =).
Epoxy floors?
I too have a modern home in a historic house and love my original wood floors and original wood molding. I suspect that since this house was "Mediterranean", the wood molding was minimal - I hope. I've seen too many vintage homes stripped of their character in order to "gut rehab" them into Contemporary McMansions.
White floors plus dog(s)? Greyhounds are clean, but they are still furred animals. You would need full-time maid service.
Duane, I grew up in a 1920s Spanish/Mediterranean home. It not only had gorgeous wood molding everywhere, but highly elaborate carved plaster molding in the public spaces. I think this must have been stripped.
This is a beautiful house inside and out. I have no complaints about it.
However, I have some trouble with calling it a vintage house with a modern interior, as if to imply that is a surprising achievement. OK, it's probably old enough to be called vintage, and it probably has lots of nice construction details, but it's not really a Mediterranean house, is it? It's in Atlanta. It doesn't even really look like true Mediterranean houses (that is, houses actually in the Mediterranean basin). It is a 1920s American interpretation of certain Mediterranean forms. Therefore, it's actually quite modern in its essence - foursquare and blockish, with a certain spare aesthetic.
So, while I think it's a beautiful interior that is sympathetic to the lines of the house, I don't really see the interior as being that much of a departure from the exterior. Yes, the designer could have gone all faux Mediterranean with cast iron sconces and doo-dads and heavy rustic woods and rust colored velvet sofa in the shape of a gondola and a 'Tuscan' color scheme. She didn't go that route, with beautiful results that have much more integrity than the faux Med. look would have had.
I love the juxtaposition of old and new - 17th century apartments with modern furnishings in Paris or Milan are yummy. But, again, they have a kind of integrity in that they are really 17th century buildings updated with an indigenous modern aesthetic. This is an American house of the 1920's built in a style informed by Mediterranean houses. Therefore, I guess, I regard this interior as a truer reflection of an America style (that is, 1920's Mediterranean style) than a faux Mediterranean decor would be.
This house looks like a museum inside, cold and a bit sterile for my taste but I do love the dogs. ;)
Agree with Nonie. When seeing the outside of this beautiful gem of a home, my mind went crazy with the possibilities of what could lay beyond the door. I understand that clean white is a very popular trend, and I DO like white (specifically I liked the marble tiles in the kitchen and would have liked the white cupboards if they hadn't been contrasted against more white), but this felt like a lab. It felt cold and austere. I would have loved to have seen rich wood floors and heavy drapes and period art work. All we got was a greyhound.
I agree with Nonie and MrsBerg...sterile white homes don't impress me much. Not much to look at which I am guessing is the desired look. I am not a fan of it personally but I do love the dogs!
Those couches in the second picture are modern? Maybe in the sense that someone in the 50s might have designed them as the space-agey prediction of what the 2010's would look like.
OK, OK, I love the architecture, and the art in the first picture, and the ghost-dog that kind of looks like a fox.
I'd like to see a post about fitting a vintage sensibility into a modern house. I'm serious! ANYTHING would look good in a house that gorgeous. OK maybe not late 80s country chic. Almost anything.
The style of this house is Mediterranean Revival. The degree of interior detail looks about right for this style. I'm not a fan of white floors in this case but I don't live there.
The low backed chair and couch in the second photo look horribly uncomfortable to me, unless you were practically lying down on them. I love the huge black chairs? loveseats? in the second last photo. They'd be fantastic set on either side of a fireplace, though they look like they might gobble you up then run off.
The greyhounds really pull the house together!
I think the proportions of the rooms and sizes and shapes of the windows are classic--they remind me of Palladian architecture. That is why you can put just about anything in them and they still look good.
I live in a house on an island with these exact floors and 2 boys...all I can say is good luck. Impossible to keep clean and very sterile and blinding in the sun.
All white interior? It must be a bitch to keep that place clean! Then again if you can afford that place you could probably afford to pay someone to clean it for you.
Some of these photos looked washed out. I would think (and hope!) that there are more subtle changes of color with the changing sunlight. Also, describing a house as vintage is a little weird to me, but that's just semantics. On a lighter note, I'm more of a maximalist (gasp) than a minimalist, but I would want to visit this house.
And visit the pups too!
Yeah, they destroyed a beautiful home to make it look like a surgical suite. I am not a big fan of the all-white, minimalist look in general, although when well done I can appreciate it. I would probably be a fan of the work done on this place if it were in any other place. But I can't imagine that this home had the kind of damage that would excuse not maintaining or doing some basic restoration.
As someone who hopes to one day restore old Victorians... if you look at a well-maintained old home and all you can think is "Wow, if I rip all of this out this place will look amazing!" then Buy. Another. House. There are enough poorly maintained homes out there to rip to shreds and rebuild in a completely different style.
"Hey honey, found a great historic house in a great neighborhood"
"But darling, we're not traditional, we're modern."
"Hey, lets paint everything white and put modern furniture in it."
"oooo, edgy and minimal, love the contradiction between inside and outside"
Unless they have Bauhaus playing on a continuous loop on the home stereo I don't buy it. Not really much of an interior design izzit?