To catch a thief - interiors story in pictures

In the dead of night, the lure of modern design proves hard to resist

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Let’s move to New Ash Green, Kent: there’s no hiding from the neighbours here

It feels like a shotgun marriage between two visions of the future: the same-old-same-old, and what might have been

What’s going for it? Imagine, if you will, a property developer building a garden village of beautiful, affordable, modern homes of exemplary design – not a faux gable or ye olde garage in sight – including hundreds for social rent for the council, all set in a luxuriant leafy backdrop of trees and “village greens”. Hard, isn’t it? Still, Span began such a thing for the Greater London Council in the late 60s, designing a model development high on the North Downs for escapees from London. These days, Span homes are ogled on websites such as the Modern House, but the company began life committed to building modernist homes at modest prices for the middling classes. New Ash Green was its biggest project. “This may well be a model of how to get civilised modern community living in an area of beautiful landscape,” said Labour minister Richard Crossman. Nearly. Peter Sissons moved in, and DJ Pete Murray and his sideburns spun the decks at the grand opening. Cool, or what? Alas, coming at a time when mortgages were being squeezed, it sunk Span, and New Ash Green was completed, more humdrumly, by Bovis. The indignity. The place still feels like a shotgun marriage between two visions of the future: the same-old-same-old, and what-might-have-been.

The case against Feels as if it could do with some zip, or investment; the village centre in particular could use a spruce-up. Not for those who hide from the neighbours; the residents’ committees are coming to get you.

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Let’s move to New Ash Green, Kent: there’s no hiding from the neighbours here

It feels like a shotgun marriage between two visions of the future: the same-old-same-old, and what might have been

What’s going for it? Imagine, if you will, a property developer building a garden village of beautiful, affordable, modern homes of exemplary design – not a faux gable or ye olde garage in sight – including hundreds for social rent for the council, all set in a luxuriant leafy backdrop of trees and “village greens”. Hard, isn’t it? Still, Span began such a thing for the Greater London Council in the late 60s, designing a model development high on the North Downs for escapees from London. These days, Span homes are ogled on websites such as the Modern House, but the company began life committed to building modernist homes at modest prices for the middling classes. New Ash Green was its biggest project. “This may well be a model of how to get civilised modern community living in an area of beautiful landscape,” said Labour minister Richard Crossman. Nearly. Peter Sissons moved in, and DJ Pete Murray and his sideburns spun the decks at the grand opening. Cool, or what? Alas, coming at a time when mortgages were being squeezed, it sunk Span, and New Ash Green was completed, more humdrumly, by Bovis. The indignity. The place still feels like a shotgun marriage between two visions of the future: the same-old-same-old, and what-might-have-been.

The case against Feels as if it could do with some zip, or investment; the village centre in particular could use a spruce-up. Not for those who hide from the neighbours; the residents’ committees are coming to get you.

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How has Brexit vote affected the UK economy? September verdict

Each month we look at key indicators to see what effect the Brexit process has had on growth, prosperity and trade

• Brexit uncertainty pushes UK to bring of recession
• An expert debates the data

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Homes for sale in former factories – in pictures

Build a future at these properties previously used to make products ranging from shoes to fighter planes

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Rick Owens: 'I love art nouveau. It's super sexy and ominous'

His brutalist furniture has been inspired by rocks and bunkers. But the designer known for his gothic aesthetic has created a new range with a warmer influence – his mother’s homeland of Mexico. Has the ‘Donald Judd of fashion’ gone soft?

This year, designer Rick Owens and his partner Michèle Lamy went to Mexico for the first time. “I’ve never really explored my Mexican heritage, even though my mother was from there,” says Owens. “But I was thinking about using it for my next clothing collection.” He returned to Paris inspired by what he’d seen. “Not the piñatas and the Frida Kahlo Mexico,” he says. “More the hot colours that Luis Barragán used, and Aztec architecture, and the photographs that Josef and Anni Albers took there in the 1930s, which I saw at the Guggenheim in Venice last year. Loud colours. And sequins.” Sequins? Colours? From the man who loves grey? “Yeah! I’m a flashy guy!” he giggles.

Another, rather different, strand of influence emerged from the trip, seen in a new furniture collection that launched in London at Carpenters Workshop on 16 September. “We went to the cenotes in Tulum,” says Owens of the underground cave systems. “There was something about the enclosed spaces that felt insulated and grand at the same time.” Channelled through the designer’s brain, this culminated in a work called Glade – seating units that form an enclosed monochromatic landscape. “It’s like a hole in a forest,” says Owens, “which is what a glade is.” The seating, made with ply and covered in the grey vintage army blankets that have appeared in his work for two decades, comes fitted with internet and lighting connections. “I like the option of putting a hundred of them together,” he says. “You could fill a stadium with them. It’s like my version of wallpaper.”

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Rick Owens: 'I love art nouveau. It's super sexy and ominous'

His brutalist furniture has been inspired by rocks and bunkers. But the designer known for his gothic aesthetic has created a new range with a warmer influence – his mother’s homeland of Mexico. Has the ‘Donald Judd of fashion’ gone soft?

This year, designer Rick Owens and his partner Michèle Lamy went to Mexico for the first time. “I’ve never really explored my Mexican heritage, even though my mother was from there,” says Owens. “But I was thinking about using it for my next clothing collection.” He returned to Paris inspired by what he’d seen. “Not the piñatas and the Frida Kahlo Mexico,” he says. “More the hot colours that Luis Barragán used, and Aztec architecture, and the photographs that Josef and Anni Albers took there in the 1930s, which I saw at the Guggenheim in Venice last year. Loud colours. And sequins.” Sequins? Colours? From the man who loves grey? “Yeah! I’m a flashy guy!” he giggles.

Another, rather different, strand of influence emerged from the trip, seen in a new furniture collection that launched in London at Carpenters Workshop on 16 September. “We went to the cenotes in Tulum,” says Owens of the underground cave systems. “There was something about the enclosed spaces that felt insulated and grand at the same time.” Channelled through the designer’s brain, this culminated in a work called Glade – seating units that form an enclosed monochromatic landscape. “It’s like a hole in a forest,” says Owens, “which is what a glade is.” The seating, made with ply and covered in the grey vintage army blankets that have appeared in his work for two decades, comes fitted with internet and lighting connections. “I like the option of putting a hundred of them together,” he says. “You could fill a stadium with them. It’s like my version of wallpaper.”

Continue reading...

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