You’ve done it! You’ve taken that shoddy rancher with a responsibly small footprint and updated it with double-paned windows, LEED-certified cladding, a sod roof that recycles water runoff, and a tasteful smattering of Eames chairs and DWR Tools for Living. Next stop: page 64-67 of Dwell! But sometimes being profiled in the leading eco-friendly shelter porn publication* (printed on recycled paper with soy-based ink) isn’t enough to cure the homeowner blues. Some of these people look straight up depressed. Others, well, maybe we’re just projecting. That’s where Unhappy Hipsters comes in. Taking unintentionally hilarious images from back issues of Dwell and adding pithy commentary turns the mag’s tagline from “At Home in the Modern World” to “In Hell in the Modern World.” See for yourself after the jump, plus a fill-in-the-caption contest.
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Architectural photographer and tastemaker Julius Shulman made the modern domesticity of Los Angeles into a consumable art form.
Shulman, who died this month at 98, shot glossy, stylized images of California cool, which in turn promoted the architecture of Richard Neutra, John Lautner, and their brethren. His iconic photographs symbolized the polished freedom of LA living, evoked by shots like that of models lounging in Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House No. 22.
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Our friends over at Inhabitat are partnering with Dwell Magazine on ReBurbia, a design competition that invites “future-forward architects, urban designers, renegade planners and imaginative engineers” to reenvision the American suburb:
What would a McMansion become if it weren’t a single-family dwelling? How could a vacant big box store be retrofitted for agriculture? What sort of design solutions can you come up with to facilitate car-free mobility, ‘burb-grown food, and local, renewable energy generation? We want to see how you’d design future-proof spaces and systems using the suburban structures of the present, from small-scale retrofits to large-scale restoration–the wilder the better!
The winner will take home a $1,000 cash prize and will score a feature in the December issue of Dwell and an editorial feature on Inhabitat. Entries are due by August 1st. Click here for more details.
Today at Flavorpill, we enjoyed all the bad puns in this piece about Hung‘s huge ratings. We felt bad for Susan Orlean’s cremated chicken. We watched the first four minutes of the new Harry Potter movie in German. We wanted to buy one of these pre-fab homes designed by Dwell and Marmol Radziner. We marked our calendars for the debut of Rock Plaza Central’s short story experiment on Twitter. We wondered who was going to buy a pair of Kanye West’s expensive shoes. We were happy for Senator Al Franken. We wanted to sport one of these ironic eco-totes. We couldn’t decide whether we’re rooting for Venus or Serena — we wouldn’t want to piss either one of the Williams sisters off. We felt bad for all of the talented people who were fired at Paramount. And finally, this Michael Jackson in Lego form post made us smile. And here we thought we were all MJ’ed out.
