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Plotting to Steal Artist’s Idaho Desert Home and Plant It in the Nicola Valley

With our city now so laughably unaffordable, thousands of Vancouverites are stuck imagining wonderful homes instead of living in them. Spaced is a record of our minds wandering the world of architecture and design, up and away from the unrewarding realities of shoebox condos, dark basement suites, and sweet f~ck all on Craigslist.

(via) I’ve now just stared at this house from every afforded angle and decided its total isolation is what makes it so damn transfixing. Try as I might, I just can’t look away. Designed by Tom Kundig and his Seattle-based team at Olson Kundig as a live-in workspace for an artist, the remote Idaho desert construction would probably seem strikingly out of place if it suffered next door neighbours. It’s a good thing it doesn’t.

Aptly dubbed ‘Outpost’, the house is window-wrapped and dreamily appointed with low, broad furnishings that appear to flow with the sweeping, 360 degree views. The floors are made of recycled timbers and the kitchen is kitted out with Carrera marble; a tall fireplace completes the cozy picture.

If I had the power to physically lift the entire building and its walled-in sculpture garden and transport it some place on this side of the border, I think a remote (hopefully equally isolated) stretch of the Nicola Valley between Merritt and Kamloops would do it proper justice.

  • Images © Stuart Isett, Tim Bies, Jan McFarlane Cox and Jean-Luc Laloux
  • Images © Stuart Isett, Tim Bies, Jan McFarlane Cox and Jean-Luc Laloux
  • Images © Stuart Isett, Tim Bies, Jan McFarlane Cox and Jean-Luc Laloux
  • Images © Stuart Isett, Tim Bies, Jan McFarlane Cox and Jean-Luc Laloux
  • Images © Stuart Isett, Tim Bies, Jan McFarlane Cox and Jean-Luc Laloux
  • Images © Stuart Isett, Tim Bies, Jan McFarlane Cox and Jean-Luc Laloux
  • Images © Stuart Isett, Tim Bies, Jan McFarlane Cox and Jean-Luc Laloux
  • Images © Stuart Isett, Tim Bies, Jan McFarlane Cox and Jean-Luc Laloux
  • Images © Stuart Isett, Tim Bies, Jan McFarlane Cox and Jean-Luc Laloux
  • Images © Stuart Isett, Tim Bies, Jan McFarlane Cox and Jean-Luc Laloux
  • Images © Stuart Isett, Tim Bies, Jan McFarlane Cox and Jean-Luc Laloux

Images © Stuart Isett, Tim Bies, Jan McFarlane Cox and Jean-Luc Laloux

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