From the home front: Ray Bradbury and architecture; office cubicles; bedroom and bath design

Ray Bradbury: The outpouring of tributes to the great speculative-fiction writer Ray Bradbury, who died June 5, included one with an architectural bent. Steve Rose writes in his weekly architectural column in the Guardian about Bradbury as an architectural "imagineer" who took a keen interest in urban design, and a key influence -- "for better or worse" -- on theme parks and urban malls. He quotes Bradbury on the latter:

"Malls are substitute cities, substitutes for the possible imagination of mayors, city councilmen and other people who don't know what a city is while living right in the centre of one. So it is up to corporations, creative corporations, to recreate the city."

Rose concludes: "The only architecture that would really have satisfied him, one suspects, is a permanent moon base, from which to launch manned expeditions to Mars."

"No front porches. My uncle says there used to be front porches. And people sat there sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk, rocking, and not talking when they didn't want to talk. Sometimes they just sat there and thought about things, turned things over. My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn't look well. But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong KIND of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think. So they ran off with the porches."

-- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 Home, sweet cubicle: For many of us, a cubicle is our home away from home, which makes this roundup of funky office cubicles just home-related enough to include here. There's a pop-up cardboard office -- think of a giant pop-up card -- and the Kruikantoor portable office by Tim Vinke, which looks a lot like a recycling bin. Gotta love the way the chairs fit into it. There's an office in a box by Toshihiko Suzuki for Kenchikukagu. A puffy one that inflates. A solar-powered outdoor workspace. The uber-cool Hus 1 garden office by Torsten Ottesj. And possibly my favorite, the iTrunk Pocket Office by Pinel & Pinel, which is pink and has a cabinet front that looks like an iPod.

Bathroom amenity: An extra-long bathroom in a Vancouver, B.C., home presented a challenge with its dimensions: 16 feet long and 9 feet wide. Interior designer Kelly Deck writes: "Done poorly, (the room) was almost certain to feel like a bowling alley."

The solution was to bookend the bathroom with two millwork towers: one opposite the toilet for storage; and the other, across from the steam shower, offering a place to sit, hooks for hanging robes, open shelves for fresh towels, and two drawers for more storage.

The tower with seating bench is brilliant, and looks inviting in the photo. Every bathroom that's large enough should have one. As for the steam shower, that's probably grand, too.

-- Pat Jeffries

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From the home front: Ray Bradbury and architecture; office cubicles; bedroom and bath design