Swedish living rooms.

Images via Alvhem (1 to 5) and Stadshem (6 to 9)

Color palette: Spring has sprung!

Image sources: 1, 2, 3.
Color matching: Muffins in my backpack

Stacking green house.

This is the HA house (or Stacking Green) by Vo Tronga Nghia, Daisuke Sanuki and Shunri Nishizawa in Saigon (Vietnam). This is a typical tube house in a plot of 4m wide and 20m deep. The two open façades are made by concrete planters. The distance between the planters is from 25 to 40cm depending on the height of the plants.

There are few partition walls in the house, to make sure there is fluency and views of the green façades all over the different spaces. There is also a skylight at the center of the house, and the sunlight gets into the house from morning to afternoon through the plants, creating beautiful shadows on the walls.

This house recreates the typical building in Saigon: narrow and tall houses full of flowerpots. These plants protect people from the sunlight, street noise and polution.

Simply clever!

Images via Arch daily.

Stone painting.

It would be awesome to have small groups of hand-painted stones displayed around the house.

Images via: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Tom Vac.

Ron Arad designed the Tom Vac chair in 1999. It is composed by a plastic seat shell (with additives that prevents sun bleaching) and steel legs. It can be stacked up to 5 chairs in order to save space.

It's so versatile that it fits in a lot of environments, as an individual or a group; in shops, offices, homes, restaurants, cafés... indoors or outdoors! 

I've never had the opportunity to seat on one of those, but they seem so comfortable as the seat is wide enough to seat relaxedly. This powerful black above is so chic and elegant!

I'm in love with this last photo, this group of Tom Vac chairs seem like white flower petals flowing around the patio. I would definitely have some of these at my courtyard (if I had one!). 

Images from Vitra.

The High Line.

"Parks in large cities are usually thought of as refuges, as islands of green amid seas of concrete and steel. When you approach the High Line in the Chelsea neighborhood on the lower west side of Manhattan, what you see first is the kind of thing urban parks were created to get away from—a harsh, heavy, black steel structure supporting an elevated rail line that once brought freight cars right into factories and warehouses and that looks, at least from a distance, more like an abandoned relic than an urban oasis."

This is the beginning of the great article by Paul Goldberger that you can read here.

And you can also "visit" the High Line thanks to this time-lapse video by photographers Diane Cook and Len Jenshel, and senior producer Hans Weise.

Images and text from National Geographic.

Lots of information, images, videos... at the High Line official web site.

Brilliant Gaudí.

Yesterday we visited la Sagrada Familia, by Gaudí. So many years living in Barcelona and hadn't visited yet! It was so beautiful, we also went up to the towers and had great views of the city.

Images by Muffins in my backpack.

Travelling memories.

A friend of mine is currently living in Santiago de Chile for a year and she shared this precious video of a couple during their vacation in Chile and Patagonia.

The edition is so good, the music is so charming, everything's so cleverly thought...that you just want to jump in the first plane and start your own adventure around the world. It's such an inspiration. It truly made my day!

a story for tomorrow. from gnarly bay productions, Inc. on Vimeo.

GR-92 (Part 4).

STAGE 4: Roses - El Cortalet
Date: Saturday, March 03, 2012
Distance: 16,93km (10,52mi)
Time: 4h 07min
Moving time: 3h 35min
Start elevation: 0m 
Finish elevation: 4m 
Min. elevation: 0m
Max. elevation: 29m (95ft)

1. Typical path among farming.

2. Deserted road crossing the countryside when approaching the Marshland nature reserve.

3. First landscapes with marshes.

4. Water channel getting to the sea (Empuriabrava at the background).

5. Fields of the nature reserve.

6. Antique washing place in Castelló d'Empúries.

7. Stately home close to the nature reserve information area.

Next stage: El Cortalet - L'Escala.

Images by Muffins in my backpack.