Bookshelf: Nordic homes and petite places
New Nordic Houses by Dominic Bradbury.
Petite Places: Clever Interiors for Humble Homes, edited by Robet Klanten and Tessa Pearson.
We review books that explore two typologies that are distinct in their own right: one based on geography and one based on size.
New Nordic Houses
by Dominic Bradbury, Thames & Hudson
Much like the Scandinavian aesthetic it encapsulates, the book itself fits well with the theme. More than 300 pages of weighty paper stock comprise this publication yet, inside, images and text sit lightly. The homes within, too, utilise robust materiality but tread carefully on the landscape. The experience of New Nordic Houses is what you would expect: beautiful and minimally styled photos, just enough text to get the point across and escapism in the form of winter wonderland-like scenes.
A three-page introduction precedes a collection of homes in four categories: rural cabins, coastal retreats, townhouses and country homes. A section at the end of the book includes plans and elevations for all projects. Many of the homes are completely off-grid and almost all of them place warmth and sustainability at the core of their designs.
New Nordic Houses is a delight for the senses, a retreat for the mind and an exploration into the ways in which traditional Nordic values are translated into contemporary dwellings. The introduction states, “There is an essential warmth to the character of the new Nordic house that is hard to resist.” And, Dominic Bradbury has captured the same warmth of spirit within the pages of this book.
– book review by Ashley Cusick
Petite Places: Clever Interiors for Humble Homes
edited by Robet Klanten and Tessa Pearson, Gestalten
It is the mini-apartment’s job to consolidate one’s living quarters under the constraints of limited square metreage. The space is required to be savvy and, further still, to be careful not to conjure ideas of cuteness – unless, of course, cuteness is an objective.
Petite Places is a hymn to these tiny rooms and the consortium of nimble thinkers behind them. Explanatory titbits detail such things as modular walls in near-International Klein Blue, pegboard cladding and beds in boxes, gently caressing – though never quite entering – the florid realm of ‘10 tips’ and ‘how tos’, while the case studies around which they revolve quietly dissect the interior landscape of high-density urban living.
It is fitting that this is leavened by essays on La Cité Radieuse, Le Corbusier’s ‘radiant city’ in Marseille, the Barbican Estate, London’s brutalist heart, and Walden 7, a Walden Two-inspired housing experiment by Ricardo Bofill, among other apartment-filled behemoths. They are all about ambition and purpose and capability and intellect, each finding its place between necessity and luxury, subject and moment. And, almost by juxtaposition, they are reminders that quality of life isn’t a currency measured by units of physical size.
– book review by Julia Gessler
This article first appeared in Houses magazine.
