I’d call this a materials story.

Steel. Glass. Stone. Now you can add Legos® to that mix. Lego Architecture kits include everything you need build your own model of some of your favorite landmarks. We’re especially excited about their partnership with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Get your very own replica of Falling Water (above) or the Guggenheim, ready to be painstakingly assembled and enjoyed. The release of these sets coincided with the May 15 opening of the Wright exhibit at the Guggenheim, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the opening of that landmark structure. The exhibit runs through August 23. The kits can be purchased here.

Frank Lloyd Wright prefab?

Designed and built by graduate students at Taliesin West (Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture school in Arizona), Taliesin Mod.Fab is a prototype prefab house that combines Wright’s principles of architecture with some green design. Mod.Fab can be built on or off the grid and uses fixtures like rainwater harvesting, grey-water reuse and natural ventilation. They estimate that the one-bedroom, 600-square-foot structure would sell for $100,000, though it’s not in production yet. (It is included in the Desert Shelter Tour at Taliesin West through April 25. And you might recognize some of the furniture, as it’s on loan from us here at DWR.) Or, if you really must have a piece of Wright’s legacy, for slightly more money (just $2.7 mill.) you could own the Fawcett House, which appears to still be on the market.

For Sale in California: a later work of Frank Lloyd Wright.

California’s seminal role in the history of modernism has been well documented. Now you can buy a piece of that history (provided you have about $2.7 mill and a strong, unyielding passion for modernist history). Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fawcett House, nestled in California’s Central Valley, is about 3,700 square feet and sits on 80 acres of farmland (and don’t forget the walnut orchard). It has five bedrooms, a wine cellar, tractor bay, koi pond, aviary and (very angular) outdoor pool. But more than that, it has Frank Lloyd Wright’s look, feel and style. Designed in 1955, when Wright was 87, the house was created for Randall and Harriet Fawcett who felt that California’s Central Valley was an ideal spot for the master’s work. Wright certainly used the landscape to inform the look and feel of the home, which was finished in 1961, two years after Wright’s death. To learn lots more about this icon of American modernism (including how to buy it), visit this site.

No John Doe hotel.

If you were a travel expert, where would you reserve rooms for the San Francisco-based DWR team to stay in New York? Our most recent visit - we were in town for the opening of the DWR: Tools for Living store in SoHo - was at the Hotel on Rivington designed by Marcel Wanders. Located on Manhattan's Lower East Side, this hotel is in a great location, providing a true New York feeling (and not just the gentrified neighborhoods) no matter which direction you travel. Walk across Delancy Street and you feel like you've stepped back in time. Prune, Shiller's and Katz's, all within a few blocks of each other, make you realize why New Yorkers don't cook at home. 

And being less than a mile from SoHo, the walk was an ideal way to start each morning (made complete with a look-see at Sigerson Morrison shoes on Price Street). The Rivington gives visitors the unique feeling of being part of the neighborhood. As for the rooms, they're comfortable and feel super spacious due to floor-to-ceiling windows. We liked the remote-control window shades that opened with the press of a bedside button, and the bathtub was especially beautiful. The Hotel on Rivington is one of about 10 hotels in New York that have joined the Mr. and Mrs. Smith luxury boutique hotel group (no, they have nothing to do with Angelina and Brad). If you never want to stay in another could-be-anywhere hotel, check in with the Smiths.

A town house turns fun house.

I just have to spotlight the whimsical and ridiculous home of Roland Emmerich here on the blog. The New York Times featured the auteur’s London town house on Thursday and I’ve been unable to shake the images from my head. Admittedly not for everyone, Emmerich’s home contains bold image after bold image: a taxidermy zebra, communist imagery, World War II planes remade into furniture and a waxwork of the Pope. While on the same grand level as his blockbuster films, like Independence Day, his home has something I find missing from his films: depth. Slideshow here.

A modern nest.

The world has its eyes on China this week for the beginning of the Olympics. Sharing the spotlight with the athletes will be the quite-incredible National Stadium in Beijing. Designed by the duo Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the stadium has been given the rather appropriate nickname of “bird’s nest.”  The resulting structure is breathtaking and as complex as the nation it’s housed in. The New York Times has a slideshow here.

Sold! (or not)

Christie’s “Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale” is one of the premier events of the New York auction world. On Tuesday, May 13, 2008, the event – which is an art auction – included a house. Listed in the catalog between auction item 41, Shot Salesman, a painting by Richard Prince, and auction item 43, I’m in Love for the First Time, a painting by Damien Hirst, was auction item 42: the Kaufmann House. Christie’s estimated the house to sell for $15–25 million, and it sold to an unnamed buyer for $15million (or $16.8m with commission). UPDATE: The sale fell through. On May 23, the president of Christie’s said that “the contract has been terminated by the seller by reason of a breach of its terms by the buyer.”

Designed by Richard Neutra in 1945, this Palm Springs, California, house was originally the home of Edgar J. Kaufmann. In 1947, Julius Shulman photographed the house, and those widely reproduced images turned the house into a symbol of mid-century California living. After Kaufmann’s death in 1955, the house went vacant for a few years, before going through a handful of owners (including Barry Manilow) and several renovations. In 1993, Beth and Brent Harris purchased the house, which was then considered a teardown, for $1.9 million. The couple spent five years restoring the house to its original condition, using Shulman’s 1947 photographs and Neutra’s original sketches as their guides.

In the spring of 2007, we photographed the Design Within Reach catalog at The Kaufmann House, and earlier this year, we were back in the neighborhood to photograph our assortment at the Loewy House, which is next door. Click here to see an aerial view. (The Kaufmann House is on the north side of the street, to the left of where Mapquest puts the red star. The Loewy House is to the left of the Kaufmann.) As for the paintings by Prince and Hirst, those were each estimated to sell between $1–2 million. Results: $1,161,000 and $1,273,000 respectively. The evening’s top seller was a 1952 painting by Mark Rothko, at $50,441,000.

Hot chocolate.

We often write about museums here at Design Notes, but none have gotten me as excited Nestlé’s Chocolate Museum in Mexico City. I am a chocoholic and I must make this trip.

The museum is also an incredible modernist structure that was built in less then three months. Conceived by Rojkind Arquitectos, it is reminiscent of a giant, red origami worm.  It leaves me wondering if I’d be more impressed with the building’s design or its sugary contents.

Alice Ball House.

Wendy Scuccimarra, an account executive at DWR’s Greenwich Studio, forwarded me some information on the possible demolition of Philip Johnson’s Alice Ball House in New Canaan, Connecticut. The house, what Johnson called his “little jewel,” was built for a single woman and rests on 2.2 acres.  The current owner, Christina Ross, is trying to sell the home for an asking price of three million. Hopefully, someone will pony up, pay the three million and restore the home.  It would be a sad day to lose the structure, especially within the same city limits of the Glass House. The Stamford Advocate has more on the issue here.

Ol’ Blue Eyes blunder.

We’ve written some on this blog about the Palm Springs location shoot last spring that resulted in some of the fantastic photography in our summer catalog. (The one with the nice Bertoia Diamond Chair on the front. You know, the one that made you want to go swimming?) One of the most utterly hip places we shot is known as Twin Palms, which was built for Frank Sinatra starting in 1947. According to the Twin Palms historical page, architect E. Stewart Williams recalls that “Frank came in with a white sailor hat and an ice cream cone and said ‘I want a house.’” The result is simply stunning. As a proofreader of the catalog, I was somewhat traumatized to learn that we mistakenly printed the wrong website for this piece of mid-century modern history. Learn all about Twin Palms (including a contact to actually book it) at sinatrahouse.com.