Category Archives: Homes

Chris Pratt draws ire for razing historic 1950 LA home for sprawling mansion

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Actor and wife Katherine Schwarzenegger dismantle 1950 Zimmerman house designed by architect Craig Ellwood

Chris Pratt has drawn ire from architecture aficionados after news broke that the actor and his wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, had razed a historic, mid-century modern home to make way for a sprawling 15,000-sq-ft mansion.

Last year, the couple purchased the 1950 Zimmerman house, designed by the architect Craig Ellwood, in Los Angeles’s Brentwood neighborhood for $12.5m. The residence, with landscaping by Garrett Eckbo – who has been described as the pioneer of modern landscaping – had previously been featured in Progressive Architecture magazine.

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Outrage as residents in England’s ‘affordable’ housing forced to pay thousands of pounds extra in service charge

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Pressure on Michael Gove to act as householders see bills rise 40%, with many saying that they cannot afford to pay

Some of the UK’s largest housing providers have dramatically increased annual service charges by thousands of pounds, plunging residents into financial crisis, an Observer investigation has found.

Many residents who bought shared-ownership properties built as affordable homes have been sent bills in recent weeks with increases of more than 40%. Some say they are unable to sell the properties having now been lumbered with “extortionate” charges and no cap on future increases. More than 1,000 people across the country are now threatening to refuse to pay.

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Banish creases with £4,000 ironing board from Harrods that comes with crystal keychain

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Swiss brand Laurastar collaborated with fashion designer Germanier on gadget said to half ironing time

What do you buy for someone who has everything? The answer, one suspects, is not an ironing board.

But for the big spender who, let’s face it, almost certainly never folds their own laundry, there is a new bougie appliance: a £3,999 ironing board.

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‘I felt so betrayed’: classical musician forced out of London flat after noise complaints

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Fiona Fey, of popular choir Mediaeval Baebes, says her livelihood was threatened by noise abatement order

Musicians are facing a postcode lottery of noise complaints, industry leaders have warned, after a member of the classical chart-topping choir Mediaeval Baebes was handed a noise abatement notice for playing music in her flat.

Fiona Fey was told she had created “excessive noise from the playing of musical instruments that is audible and detectable from your property” and that she must cease making any more “noise from the property in the form of playing loud music”.

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Tupperware warns it could go bust without emergency funding

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Shares in US firm have fallen almost 50% this week and stock exchange says it is in danger of being delisted

Tupperware, the American plastic food container business founded by the chemist Earl Tupper 77 years ago, has predicted it will go bust unless it can raise emergency funds.

Shares in the Massachusetts firm, which became famous in the 1950s and 1960s when mostly women held “Tupperware parties” to sell its plastic containers with patented “burping” seal, crashed almost 50% this week after it told investors there was “substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern”.

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Vac to the future! Can robot mops and self-cleaning windows get us out of housework for ever?

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I despise chores – so I jumped at the chance to test the latest hi-tech solutions (and simple hacks) that promise to keep domestic drudgery to a minimum

A prime candidate for secular canonisation – and a personal hero of mine – is Frances Gabe. She was a visionary, a terrible neighbour (she antagonised hers with a succession of snarling great danes and a penchant for nude DIY) and the inventor of the self-cleaning home. Gabe, who died in 2016 at 101, transformed her Oregon bungalow into a “giant dishwasher”, with a system of sprinklers, air dryers and drains, plus self-cleaning sinks, bath and toilet. “Housework is a thankless, unending job,” Gabe said. “Who wants it? Nobody!”

I agree with Gabe – and with Lenin, who condemned housework as “barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-racking, stultifying and crushing drudgery”. My own objections are mainly founded in sloth and a vague desire to stick it to the man, but for others housework can be difficult, or even impossible.

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‘Unmatched’: contents of 70s French power couple’s final bolthole up for auction

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Sotheby’s to sell designs and artwork of François Catroux, decorator to the stars, and his wife, Betty, muse to Yves Saint Laurent

In 1970s Paris, Betty Catroux and her husband, François, were the glittering couple at the heart of French high society and what used to be known as the international jet set.

She was the androgynous model and darling of the French designer Yves Saint Laurent, he the self-taught interior decorator who transformed the mansions, grand apartments and chateaux of the super-rich or royal, among them the Rothschilds, Diane von Furstenberg and, later, Roman Abramovich.

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A French retreat brought into sharp focus

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Photographer Serge Anton has updated his great-grandfather’s home and made it his own

Having spent three decades travelling the world, enjoying a nomadic lifestyle, French-Belgian photographer Serge Anton finally felt the need to settle down. And he found his personal oasis of quiet in a house he inherited, a retreat called Mon Desir. Built by his great-grandfather about a century ago in Sedan, in the heart of the French Ardennes, the house sits in a landscape full of calm – a million miles from any stress, with trees and green views wherever you look.

“At first the name [which translates as “my desire”] did not particularly inspire me and it was only later I discovered how appropriate it was for me. After 30 years of travelling, I realised the house embodied a pure and strong desire: that of settling down and returning to my roots,” says Anton.

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Lulu Guinness: ‘I am basically a recluse who likes people’

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Designer Lulu Guinness moved to a gothic folly in the sticks in lockdown to restart her life. Now she talks about her brother’s tragic death, and how she has learned to live with her own depression

I’ve had 30 years of trying to do lots of things at once. Now I want to stand and stare a bit more,” says Lulu Guinness from the splendid isolation of her gothic folly in deepest Gloucestershire. “Lockdown also taught me how much you can get done from your phone.” It was during the pandemic that Guinness, 61, with two grown-up daughters, swapped her London terrace for life in the countryside. She recently put the house she bought with her ex-husband Valentine Guinness, from the Irish brewing dynasty, on the market. “At first I saw this place as a getaway. But I’ve moved on.”

Guinness, best known for her glossy lip-shaped clutch and vintage-infused handbags, has found the move transformative. Lulu’s Folly, a hexagonal, three-up-three-down perched on the rim of a sheep-dotted valley, is where she now lives and works.

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Is smart tech the new domestic battle ground?

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Now that Alexa, Siri and Google have moved in, it’s only a matter of time before some of us are left out in the cold, says Emma Beddington

I came into the kitchen recently to find my husband cradling our electricity smart meter with the kind of tender attention more usually directed to a new-born, his phone clutched in his free hand. “You didn’t turn your office heater off last night,” he said. I didn’t like his tone.

“I did! I went in this morning to turn it on again!”

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Houses of tomorrow: A more hopeful vision of domesticity, or a dystopian nightmare?

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In the future, will we find a better way to live, or will our homes be taken over by surveillance and despotic appliances?

Imagine, if you can, a small, bluish room. Wires, screens, sensors. A few keepsakes from the old world. The room’s fleshy inhabitant, confined indoors by a zoonotic pandemic, greenwashes a data-mining company from her bed. The government has made it illegal for her to step outside.

There is a communal kitchen down the corridor, which she shares with a few strangers she met online, but mostly she orders her meals via an interface and eats them here. Microphones record her interactions. A motion sensor on her wrist reminds her to optimise her performance. Filled with saudade for the dying world outside, she has bought a few rainforest plants to brighten the space. Her pocket surveillance device reminds her to water them. She catches the news: the world’s richest man has just left the Earth’s atmosphere.

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‘It was quite overwhelming’: how it feels to have your business thrive in a pandemic

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From virtual puppy school to home bubble-tea subscriptions, lockdowns in Australia have created unlikely winners, but victory as an outlier is sometimes bittersweet

It’s no secret that on the work front, the Covid narrative has predominantly been a negative one, with two-thirds of Australian businesses reporting a hit to revenue in 2020 and underemployment hitting a historic high of 13.8%, impacting 1.8 million people.

Despite this, lockdowns have brought growth to certain sectors, with Australians spending big in areas such as beauty, hobbies and home furnishings. This increased desire for little luxuries is sometimes called the lipstick index. So what does it feel like to be an outlier in a downturn? We asked four business owners to share their experiences.

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Mismatch plates and hang art low: 18 ways to create a more beautiful home

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Matt Gibberd, founder of high-end architectural estate agency The Modern House, shares his top tips

For the past 16 years, I have spent my days nosing round other people’s homes like a design-obsessed basset hound. I have been granted access through hundreds of locked doors, perched on wobbly Windsor chairs, and taken tea in stylish studio flats, cleverly converted factories and even a working barge.

Throughout all this, I’ve learned a lot. As The Modern House has grown, I’ve discovered that these homes – from studio flats to listed architectural masterpieces – have the same design principles in common: clever layouts, masterly manipulation of natural light, tactile materials, a connection to nature, sheer exuberance and personality in decoration – and much more.

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‘It’s all here on the water’: how Britain’s canals became home to bakers, blacksmiths and florists

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Stroll down Britain’s canals these days and you’ll encounter waterside businesses of all kinds trading out of narrowboats. Here, five floating traders share their stories

When Stuart Fenwick first moved to London seven years ago, he spent a lot of time on foot exploring the capital’s towpaths. His wanderings prompted a recurring dream in which he ran a floristry studio aboard a narrowboat. “I’ve been working with flowers since I was 15 and I’ve always wanted a shop, but could never really afford it,” he explains. “The overheads in London are just too high and unfortunately, retail floristry has been in decline for a long time.” Fenwick found the solution in Bria – a 42ft narrowboat that roves the city’s waterways.

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What will our eco-friendly homes of the future look like?

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The planet-saving innovations available, and which are most likely to be used in UK houses

As we argue over heat pumps and electric car charging sockets here in the UK, it is undeniable that most of our homes have a long way to go to be eco-friendly.

To reach net zero, we are going to have to change how we heat our houses. The way they are built will probably have to change, too. Perhaps the ubiquitous squat brick suburban house will become a thing of the past. Hopefully so will our Victorian pipe system and, for those of us who rent, our ancient boilers which make a disturbing noise.

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‘Bro, I cooked it in a bloody airfryer’: is the unofficial appliance of lockdown just a tiny oven?

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Used to cook everything from racks of lamb to gummy worms, airfryers are a social media sensation – but food professionals are split on their utility

When the Sydney chef Dan Hong posted a video to his 104,000 Instagram followers of a lamb rack emerging from his home airfryer, its fat aureate and twinkling, the caption had a caveat: “Edit,” it read, “please don’t take this too seriously guys. It’s a lamb rack cooked in the air fryer ‍♂️ ‍♂️ ‍♂️”

“Some people were commenting ‘it’s undercooked’ or this or that you should’ve rendered the fat a bit more and it’s like, bro, I cooked it in a bloody airfryer,” Hong says.

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‘I opened it and I just started laughing’: the pitfalls of pandemic shopping

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From accidentally over ordering, to products that bear no resemblance to their description or photographs, buying everything online has its downsides

When Sam Bowker and his partner moved into their new rental, they planned to buy a couch the same way they usually did – with a trip down to the local op-shop.

But Covid-19 scuppered this. The Salvation Army was no longer offering delivery services, so after a couple of drinks one evening, Bowker turned to eBay. There he found a “sleek looking black three seater lounge – it was a flatpack you build yourself, with free shipping”.

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Don’t be lonely: how to make friends if you’re moving house

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Yes, the pandemic has made it harder to connect with strangers. But, from fitness classes to social media, there are plenty of ways to meet people in a new area – especially if you assume you’re naturally likable

Freed from the shackles of the office and the misery of the commute, and with a newfound appreciation for space and air, it may suddenly have seemed as if a new kind of life was possible. Last summer, a few months after the first lockdown, data from Rightmove found searches by city residents looking for village properties had risen by 126%. But for those who took the plunge, leaving behind everything and everyone they know in return for a garden and a spare room, the pandemic has not made it easy to meet people in a new area. With this in mind, here’s some expert advice on how to build a new community.

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Experience: I accidentally bought a derelict house

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We wanted to bid on a property. But auctioneers speak quickly, and this one had a strong Glaswegian accent

My girlfriend Claire and I had both been to Scotland just once before: me as a kid; Claire for a medical school interview. I’m English, she’s Canadian, and we met in the French Alps in 2016, quickly grew close, travelled around Europe, then got it into our heads that we should move to Glasgow. Wanting a project, we looked at auction listings and found an apartment in Pollokshields, Southside. It needed some love, but the starting price was £10k. Before deciding to bid, I’d spent a few nights sleeping in my van across the street from it. I liked it.

With Claire away, I ventured to the sale alone. It was my first time at a property auction. I took my seat and waited patiently. The problem was auctioneers speak fast, and this one had a strong Glaswegian accent: I was really struggling to follow. Thankfully, a brochure on my seat contained the details for every lot, while a screen behind the stage displayed its corresponding number. I ticked off each sale in my copy as we went, counting down.

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London basement extensions as normal as loft conversions, study finds

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Most are built for middle-class professionals rather than oligarchs, with trend raising flood concerns

With their underground swimming pools, cinemas and art galleries, London’s luxury basement developments have long provoked envy and disgust as depositories for the hidden wealth of the super-rich.

But a study that has mapped all the 7,328 basements approved by 32 boroughs and the City of London between 2008 and 2019 has found that the majority of these developments were built for middle-class professionals rather than oligarchs, with the researchers saying they have become as normal as loft conversions.

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