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Journal: Untapped 003

With its systems-based approach, residential furnishings brand Henrybuilt seeks to unravel the myriad ways people live with design, and this publication is just one way it does so. Billed as “a design journal that looks back to look forward,” Untapped is an editorially independent initiative teeming with critical long-form content. “Understanding the impacts that objects and spaces have on our lives is no easy feat — which might be why there are so few media outlets devoted to the subject,” explains Henrybuilt CEO and creative director Scott Hudson. To that end, Issue 03 explores the domestic at every scale — from Kate Wagner’s reflections on the resurgence of McMansions to photographer Charlie Schuck’s account of Louis Kahn’s Shapiro House to an essay from Rarify’s co-founders on evaluating quality in furniture. Its unconventional 5-by-11-inch layout,
designed by Yeliz Secerli, makes reading Untapped an experience of quiet discovery that is echoed in its content: This issue’s centrefold asks 10 practitioners what they learned from the first thing they made and how it has influenced their practice.

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Book: Making Space

In the early 1900s, Elsie de Wolfe gave the term “homemaker” a whole new meaning as the world’s first professional interior decorator. It took decades for this work to be taken seriously as a profession, rather than a pastime viewed as an extension of unpaid domestic labour. “Interiors were framed as inherently feminine,” writes architectural historian Jane Hall in her introduction, “if not excluding women from public life outright, at least firmly positioning their social role within the home.” Today, this couldn’t be further from the truth — and this global survey of women’s contributions to the field expands well beyond the residential realm. Organized in alphabetical order, the book jumps between eras, illuminating both the contrasts and the unexpected connections between them. The women featured are also arranged chronologically on a visual timeline at the end, spanning from modernist matriarchs — Ray Eames, Lina Bo Bardi, Charlotte Perriand and more — to today’s shining stars, including Tekla Evelina Severin, Tosin Oshinowo and Kelly Wearstler. Among the big names, lesser-known practitioners like Anna Maria Niemeyer (daughter of Oscar) and Sandra Githinji of CB2’s Black in Design Collective get their due.

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Film: Living in a Piece of Furniture

“Space — that’s the architect’s material…As long as it’s boundless, it’s there,” says Truus Schröder in a 1982 interview, clips of which are overlaid throughout this documentary. Such was the guiding philosophy behind the design of her Utrecht home by furniture designer and architect Gerrit Rietveld — a paragon of the De Stijl movement — that resembles a Mondrian painting rendered in three dimensions. Lovers and collaborators, the duo shared a sensibility for both the function and feeling of spaces. “I immediately felt that you shouldn’t work with the mass of the material, but you should use the space inside it,” Rietveld explains, likening the Schröder House to a credenza composed of boards and slats. The film follows Rietveld’s residential projects, from a prefab home designed for a chauffeur to a modular social housing complex, as they are restored and reimagined for modern life. Decades later, these homes are still sought after by owners who appreciate their history and wish to prolong their life.