Desert Modernism is a term for the style which captures the Palm Spring mid century movement best.
All posts tagged: Modernist Sydney House
Post WW2 and the Small Homes Service
Post WW2 home interiors in Australia were featured prominently in women’s magazines and newspapers, alongside houses designed by architects. Small plans were made available via the main representative architectural bodies (e.g RAIA – Royal Institute of Architecture) Victoria and NSW. Plans were also sold by […]
Sydney House – Beach
Settling in.. Sydney House has moved. Yes that’s right. How could we do it after pouring so much of ourselves into the wonderful house shown on this blog? It wasn’t easy. But like many families, a pandemic made us reassess. Sometimes you have to take […]
A modern Pettit & Sevitt Lowline house #6 – Pandemic times
Our spaces came to the rescue during Covid19. I would never say “stuck” at home. Stuck only because of international rules, local restrictions, and new safety protocols. It’s been stressful on the work and school front because suddenly our lives have stopped, uncertainty is everywhere […]
A modern Pettit & Sevitt Lowline house #5 – Room sizes, shade and windows
Floor space Lovely modern houses sometimes come with ample room, but among the early builds, many were extremely modest or even basic. Room sizes were tight, and many were designed to fit with the carpet available. For example, Axminster carpet was in use before Broadloom. […]
A modern Pettit & Sevitt Lowline house #4 – Beams and Oils
Beautiful Oregon beams are a notable feature of P&S and many other modernist homes from the Sydney School period, to post-and-beam styles across the world… most notably in Japan, on the US Pacific West Coast, across the land to New Canaan and back to Palm […]
A modern Pettit & Sevitt Lowline house #2 – Rewiring and lighting
Every light and switch was replaced! Amazingly simple but effective, along side a complete rewiring of 50+ year old cables and wires. Loving our original Lowline as we have, lighting was dim at the best of times. The groovy recessed pendants just didn’t emit much […]
A modern Pettit & Sevitt Lowline house #2 – Internal Doors
Our lovely doors are restored, with an exacting match to the original green of the house, it still plays with the eucalyptus trees outside, and softens the mood when moving from the quiet zones of the bedrooms to the active zones of living,dining, kitchen and […]
Pettit & Sevitt details
We’re getting closer to finishing our extended areas and that means we’re starting to think about moving out of the original P&S Lowline spaces so that we can re-skin it with new Gyprock (and insulate while we’re there) following our October 2016 flood. I am […]
Our Pool
Deciding on the type of pool for our home was quite a dilemma for a while, which I enjoyed writing about. Happily, we went with the classic rectangle and felt we couldn’t go wrong with the geometry of the house. So that was drawn into […]
Digging begins
Here’s a photo of our excavator turning the soil for the first time in late March. Very exciting! The weather was good, we’d nailed down a start date with the builder and started talking to the window manufacturer to place our order for the first […]
Plans approved, here we go!
Sam our architect was able to work more rapidly on the plans for council development approval once this modular idea had come to life. It feels like a huge triumph just to get drawings done, and yet we are miles away from turning soil. And […]
Sydney House. 