This is sooo interesting! I can totally see how growing up there would affect your adult aesthetic. I certainly see myself decorating like my parents...because it feels like 'home' to me.

Aaron, this is a real treasure! Thanks for sharing. Your parents were (are?) such hipsters.

Kyle

I love this post! My kids are growing up in houses far more interesting than what I had as a child. The older one now has a strong interest in architecture (and especially small-space living), and I'd like to think it's because of the house we live in now.

Very cool indeed and I love their basic design esthetic, a bit mod, yet there was restraint and whole place just looks wonderful and I bet if you parents were still there now, a few minor changes could liven up and bring the house into the present easily as that basic aesthetic to me hold up fairly well over time, like so much that is MCM.

Love this! My first 8 years were spent in a small, modern house that my father built where I learned to tell time on the Herman Miller Ball Clock. My favorite memories as a teen were going to the Design Research store in Cambridge and getting the occasional Marimekko treat. My mother still has her Dansk dishes, too!

Wow Aaron! What great photos and beautiful home/family!
Thanks for sharing. I LOVE the Marimekko panel especially!

I grew up in similar circumstances-- while our house was never featured in any editorials, my architect father had flawless taste and our house was filled with Danish Modern and a smattering of Knoll and Herman Miller.

It was always culture shock for me to visit my friends homes-- full of dreary Colonial repro, French Provincial, and Sears Roebucks. Our next-door neighbors had a rococo-style formal 'living' room, off limits to the kids, but covered in plastic cushion-covers nonetheless.

I knew your parents house reminded me of something I'd seen on Apartment Therapy-- poor Christine's badly considered paint job.

If only she could have seen your parents place, first. This is how you handle such a room!

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/sf/living-room/before-and-after-christines-living-room-by-this-young-house-070544

Wow - I wish my family had been able to occupy such a cool house...

Super cool! Thanks so much for sharing this.

Dentist's offices should only be so groovy, Terrasse.

What a surprise to see the exterior photo! People must have been shocked when they walked in the door. Every once in a while I notice something in my own house (which I designed) that suddenly reminds me of my childhood home. I guess the influence is there even though the similarity wasn't intentional. Thanks for sharing.

Gee Terrasse - are you a celebrated designer/tastemaker with a fairytale childhood whose opinion we should pay attention to or a snarky mean person with a stone for a heart?

Hey Aaron! What a nice homage to your parent's first home. I remember your dad showing me a copy of the Indianapolis Home magazine article when I started working for him back in 1989. Twenty years later I still live by some of the lessons he taught me as a young architect. Thanks for sharing!

Aaron - as others have said, this is a real treasure regardless of whether we like or dislike it (yes Terrasse, I'm talking to you). Thank you for sharing.

Very cool. I must say I'm a bit envious.

Ooh Aaron, I love it! That incredible ceiling is the happiest thing I've seen all day. Is that you in the first pic? Thanks for sharing this!

I about passed out when I saw this. I had this HOME magazine. Well remembered and very impressed, then and now ;) There was also a wonderful desert home in this issue. Thanks for the memories.

What an amazing house! But the thing that made me really excited was the multicoloured roller blind in the kitchen. My mother has three similarly lovely and interesting roller blinds in her house and I have been trying so far unsuccessfully to find printed roller blinds for my own kitchen, where I'd appreciate something that sits inside the window frame and opens easily (unlike roman blinds, from what I've heard) and that is more interesting than a venetian or plain roller blind.

In my bedroom growing up there was a tiny window that had a little blue blind with a pattern of white birds flying across it - very seventies and I loved it!

Can anyone tell me where to find something like this these days? My mother says she got them "from a man with a catalogue" - not helpful ;)

This is such a great post. The home is simple and classy.

Hey Aaron, I grew up in Meridian-Kessler (actually, I'm doing a tour of my parents house on my blog next Tuesday), so right near you! I definitely know this house from the outside. Your parents sound pretty awesome.

I was born in 80...where did you go to school?

I think it is great that there is such a detailed history of your house! Amazing! Thanks for sharing... it is also great to read that a lot of the items are still in use!

What a great-looking family home that would still look great today. That is a great-looking kitchen and to think it's from the 70s. Love the cabinetry and those thick chunky countertops, and that stove that's white in the front and stainless on top.

Obviously the only tolerable response to this post is unabashed delight.

It's nice that Aaron fondly recalls his childhood home, but why such breathless excitement about a pleasantly ordinary example of late-70s modern tidiness? A wonderful home, perhaps. But as an example of style, it's a cliche. The fact that it was someone's actual home does little to alter this fundamental fact. Sorry, Sunshine Club.

Terrasse- I grew up in the 1970's suburbs, believe me-- this house would not have been considered a cliche.

Has this style become a cliche, in 2009? Sure, for the last ten years modern design has been regurgitated ad nauseam.

By AT standards, the 'breathless excitement' of these comments seems tame and not of out whack with the the subject matter. Why not direct your bile to the truly bad examples that commenters gush over? And then, clearly state your objections to the design-- instead of merely likening a perfectly nice house to a dentist's office.

A well-reasoned dissenting opinion will often inflame tempers, but vague cheap shots will only leave others wondering what your agenda is.

Be a curmudgeon, if that's your trip-- but, at least be an effective curmudgeon, instead of an ill-tempered heckler.

I'm so angry that I don't own those bar stools in the kitchen! Anyone seen anything similar more recently?

bmb,
A few weeks ago I saw some similar bar stools at the Salvation Army.

Shirley - Your gallantry is a delight. It's just a shame you don't understand the way comparisons work. In likening the look of this living room to a dentist's office, I made a perfectly clear criticism. Or perhaps I need to explain to you the defining characteristics of a typical dentist's office, circa 1980. It's not that dentist’s offices weren't “perfectly nice”; it's that they were/are bland. And if a thing is bland, it really doesn’t matter if it features a Herman Miller sofa or a Marimekko print. Perhaps you’re one of these in-the-know types who wouldn’t dare question the real aesthetic appeal of a product bearing the name Herman Miller, but these red Chiclet sofas looked every bit as bad in 1980 as they do today. And I’m sure we agree that those bentwood dining chairs are the ugliest things in the world. So the furniture is boring AND it’s ugly! You’ll dismiss this as my own taste, and you’ll be correct. But this part is simply true: we would be smart to save such big applause for those whose achievement reflects true vision rather than a few nifty purchases.

You've clearly frequented a more stylish caliber of dentist than me-- when I think dentist's office circa 1980, I conjure mauve laminate, vinyl wall paper, and-- were it were a smart metropolitan dentist-- maybe even a Patrick Nagel poster.

To blindly rail against status-y pedigree furnishings is just as slavish as blindly embracing them just because of their status pedigree.

And, to condemn a pleasant, thoughtfully-designed house just because others use superlatives that you deem excessive is little more than being a slave to the Sunshine Club itself.

It's hard to tell from the photo, but those white chairs in the living room (pic 7) almost look like Artemide's Selene chairs, which weren't especially inspired by Joe Colombo:

http://www.space1999.net/~sorellarium13/selene01.jpg

They were the first single-piece plastic chair though, and much better looking that most of the single-piece designs which came after.

I have to say I was bummed when i read the words "mall house from 1907 that had been completely gutted".

Wonderful home! It has a timeless style...then and even today. The exterior belies the interior...but in a good, unexpected way. The plants are gorgeous. Very cool!

Excellent post!! Perhaps AT could follow up on some of these parents who are still living with their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s design choices? - even if that just means a quick peek at some kitchens?!
Thanks for sharing, Able family.

Loved your childhood home. Unlike a few other posters, I do think your parent's home has withstood the test of time--the kitchen with the diagonal floors was great. The clean simplicity of the home and the bright spots of color are a delight. Thanks for sharing.

This home is not at all to my liking (mostly I just do not like those couches at all), but I think it is a really interesting time capsule and it's also fun to think about the way that some people are influenced by the design aesthetics they grew up with. Personally, I hope to end up as far away from my mom's non-existent design aesthetic as possible. She was a compulsive hoarder... So I grew up with piles of stuff everywhere and anything free from the side of the road or on sale at Salvation Army got dragged in and added to the pile. My goal is to be as far from her home choices as possible. But I do share my mom's love for repurposing found objects - just much less frequently and only if I really love the thing in the first place.

Card carrying member of the Sunshine Club here!

Great post. I'm a mid century modern renovator in Indianapolis so found particular joy in reading this.

The metal stools in the kitchen are Kinetic K700 stools now licensed through Haworth.

Check ours out here: http://bit.ly/ILKeZ

Cheers,

-Baz

How fun -- looks like a great house to grow up in. I'd be happy to live there now!

wow, your parents are very modern when it comes to design;) you could have said the photos are from today and i would have believed it :D

@livc, are we siblings!?! lol, my mom is the same way. she would buy things even when they won't fit the style of our other furniture. so our home ends up having too much stuff that don't go together. maybe that's why i'm leaning towards the minimalist style now that i'm on the process of buying my own home.

so yeah, the home you grew up in greatly influences your decorating style - either you do the same or go far away from it :D