On a recent visit to Amersfoort in The Netherlands, I visited the Rietveld Pavilion, one of the last buildings designed by Gerrit Rietveld and a rare example of an exhibition pavilion that survived long after it was ever intended to. Unlike many of Rietveld s better-known residential projects (including his colourful house in Utrecht that I [ ]
Whilst visiting Bangkok, I paid a visit to the Atlantic Hotel on Sukhumvit Road, one of the city’s few surviving mid-century landmarks. Opened in 1954, the hotel dated from a very different era of Bangkok’s development when Sukhumvit was still on the edge of the city and international tourism was in its infancy. Over the [ ]
On a recent trip to Bangkok, I visited the Nai Lert Park Heritage Home which was neither a mid century nor modernist building but somehow had the look and feel of one through its use of natural materials, its connection with its surroundings and pared-back, very contemporary aesthetic. Set within what was once a vast [ ]
This beautiful house occasionally pops up during Open House weekend for tours but tickets are usually snapped up in seconds. I managed to get in via an alternative route: a paid-for tour via C20 and it was well worth the price of entry. Just west of Hampstead Heath, within the Hampstead Conservation Area, Pine Heath [ ]
I was fortunate enough during last year’s Open House festival to attend a tour of The Stanley Picker House, a mid century modern marvel on a substantial private estate in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey. Commissioned in 1965 by Stanley Picker, a successful entrepreneur whose ventures in plastics and cosmetics had brought him considerable wealth, the [ ]
Updated January 2026 Looking at the stats for this blog, my most viewed post every year is usually the round-up of mid century shelving systems that I compiled all the way back in 2017 so for my first post of 2026, I thought I’d do an update. Almost 10 years on, I’m still very fond [ ]
During a recent trip to Stockholm (which unlike neighbouring capitals Oslo, Helsinki and Copenhagen seemed to have a dearth of mid century/modernist attractions), I decided to make the long journey north to visit Lilla Hyttnäs, a late 1800s cottage and the home of Carl and Karin Larsson, in the tiny village of Sundborn outside Falun [ ]
If we were ever to move on from Great Brownings, it would likely be to Woodhall Drive, another Austin Vernon and Partners estate just down the road. I’ve admired it for some time and sometimes cycle through it I suspect that this isn’t especially appreciated by its residents just to admire how the [ ]
Having visited the Rietveld Schröder and Van Ravestyn houses in Utrecht, we moved on to Amsterdam. A short tram ride west from the centre of the city was Westelijke Tuinsteden (the Western Garden Cities), an ambitious post-war housing development that was as much an open-air museum as it was a living neighbourhood I d never [ ]
Tucked into a small triangular plot a few minutes down the down from the Rietveld Schröder House was the intriguing Sybold van Ravesteyn house. Built out of sand-coloured railway bricks between 1932 and 1934 by Sybold van Ravestyn (an eccentric architect best known for designing train stations for the Dutch Railways), the house challenged architectural conventions [ ]