Words and Photos: Elisabeth Aarhus

Blå blomst

Designer Anette L'órange & artist Lars Morell live with their young daughter Tilda and a spectacular blue «flower», which was hacked from an IKEA cabinet and some bent veneer then treated with 32021, Le Corbusier’s outremer moyen (The lucent sky blue. Like the sky on a clear, sunny day in summer.)

Now, flower might be a bit of a stretch - but once my eyes have adjusted to the warmth of the Dijon mustard entrance hall, the massive bright blue curve ahead fixes my gaze and transports me from what could have been an apartment in 1930’s Paris or Antwerpen today, and on to something altogether more, how do you say it - fun…? The curve (actually a closet on one side and a home office on the other) was, according to Anette, an ingenious solution by Lars that satisfied their need for more storage space and a home-office). I can’t help but think of it as a flower - or a stem at any rate, rounded, organic, it occupies what feels like the centre of the apartment, a nexus, the rooms like petals on a flower, all tied together by this one «to die for» piece of furniture, both elegant and functional! Just like a flower no?

Primed Canvas

The apartment building is just a few years shy of a hundred years old, an architectural period that Anette and Lars have a penchant for. Their home reflects the combined vision of their respective practices, perhaps even the city where they met, Berlin, and their plan the whole way through has been to enter into a dialogue with the original skeleton of the apartment but still keep it contemporary.

Most of the walls are like primed canvases, but in those places colors have been used, they’ve done it in capital letters. This home reveals itself as a well-structured and carefully conceived space that evolves and will continue to do so, as Anette tells me about their plans for a glass door here and a fresco ceiling there - for what, if any art to hang from the walls, and a sofa of course, that the three of them can snuggle up on during cold Oslo evenings.

From the sitting room, my eyes travel from the old glazed blue tiles covering the fireplace to the tall doors painted a glossy white that open on to the kitchen. As the low winter light peeps through the windows, grazing the stainless steel worktops that cover the oak kitchen units, it dawns on me that the large white unit in the middle of the room is not actually a part of the kitchen, but a mobile home for two female guinea pigs. Their silence complete until Anette opens the refrigerator and off they go chattering away like little children eager for a treat.

Whimsical

I’ve photographed some of this stuff before, in their former home, like Anettes oddly macabre assortment of bric a brac contained in the glass «cage» behind the door to the kitchen. Though the current home is a relative to their former one (they set that up before their daughter Tilda was born), this one evokes something more easygoing, playful and well, magical. The neat, rhythmic presentation of objects placed on exposed white shelves in the former apartment put me in mind of Edmund De Waals ceramic displays. However, this one has me thinking of Joseph Cornell’s boxes - whimsical and obsessive, culled from a logic entirely their own.

As I head back towards the blue sky, passing the wooden desk that Lars made himself in his studio (he does absolutely everything, from stretching the canvas to painting the picture to building the frames) and on through the washroom where all the appliances are humming away, I am greeted by nothing less than a cheerful shower room! The walls and ceilings a shiny bright yellow whilst the plain white tiles are separated by grouting reminiscent in hue of the aforementioned blue sky flower stem. Happy chic I mutter to myself as I place my feet and tripod on the plastic floor, feeling slightly stressed (as always when photographing) about the lack of natural light in this happy bathroom..

New York state of mind

The trio is fortunate, or foreseeing enough, to have put in a second bathroom, this one complete with a tub to linger in. Anette tells me she still has a vision of herself with a glass of wine and a good read whilst leaning back in the piping hot water, and yet - we’ve lived here for some time now and it never seems quite right, she says with a smile. Lars adds to this, - we did a kind of «best of» from pinterest where things were placed into two categories: the green bathroom has a certain classic New York City vibe (the couple actually married there) whilst in the yellow one we let ourselves go slightly… Anettes mother, architect, professor and color theorist gave the couple Le Corbusiers color chart as a housewarming present.

Doable solutions

To say that Anette is quite active might be an understatement - she’s passionate and speaks rapidly whilst making coffee and tidying up a few things in the kitchen, talking to the guinea pigs and giving me the tour while magically able to lock eyes with me through it all.

I first met the couple when photographing their previous home years ago, instantly falling in love with the apartment AND a couple of green prints Lars had just exhibited in Paris. Their apartment had been celebrated as an icon in various magazines, and if I hadn’t known better, I’d be tempted to call them trendsetters:-). No - I firmly believe that the reason they’re able to make these intriguing spaces with such apparent ease, be it at home or in their work, is because they follow their hearts and use their hands -they do things before they have the time to second-guess them which is also to say they allow themselves the luxury of making mistakes. The aforementioned «happy bathroom» for instance was a velvety kind of aubergine just a few weeks ago but apparently it looked too perfect and Anette had to dive into her color chart once again. Added to this, they had some advise from Anettes dad who also works as an architect.
Thanks to his determination and patience, the couple knew they could bring him their wants and visions, and that he’d be able to translate these into doable solutions.

Blunderbuss

Anette L’orange is one part of the well established design and artist duo Blunderbuss. In addition to an ongoing photographic art project with Anna Granberg, Anette designs art publications. Over the years she’s won numerous awards, designing books, magazines and catalogues - as well as creating exhibition designs, posters and visual identities primarily for clients within the arts. Anette invests the same fiery passion in bringing a publication to life as she does within the family home.

Lars, with his steady hand, tool kit and a second or even third opinion on all matters pertaining to their home complements Anettes eagerness. «I’ve taken the lead when it comes to the structural stuff, drawing up plans and figuring out how to rework the space, whilst Anette has this extra gear when it comes to mapping out and narrowing down our choices of what seems an infinite number of material choices. Surprisingly, finding common ground about color was really difficult because we had to physically test out what worked where. In the course of a weekend, the colors of the walls and ceilings can change completely, meaning that the choices we make are more about a certain process than they are something that has to be decided for all eternity.»

Only a bike ride away

Over the last decade, Lars has become a well known and much appreciated artist both in Norway and abroad. His diverse body of work, paintings, photographs, sculptures and installations have consistently questioned the fine line that separates the visible from its counterpart, transforming familiar objects and phenomenon into something strange and otherworldly. There’s a certain mysticism to his work, and from what I can gather this project of his started out as a themed series of paintings where motifs were inspired by illusionism, magic, spiritism and the occult and the 19th century fascination with capturing and representing these psychic hinterlands on film and in photographs. At its inception the framework was clearly delineated, but as time has passed Lars has moved on to a more intuitive way of working. Fog, more than simply a way of describing or representing a certain idea, has become a synonym for the process itself, more diffuse and fumbling than it is analytic. Lars works in parallell with paintings and sculptures mostly, as I’ve been lucky enough to witness firsthand over the last year or so as my office is adjacent to his studio in an old industrial building right outside of Oslo where among others Marie Buskov, Espen Dietrichson, Anders Sletvold Moe, Monica Flakk and Knut Benjaminsen also work. Lars studio is tidy - there is not a single superfluous thing in the space. White walls, grey floors, daylight lamps and his equipment; paints, brushes, machines. Oh, and of course, his bike, which takes him back home, to Majorstua, to the blue stem in the middle of the apartment, the gravitational point of this threesome…

As Anette declared: The very best thing about our apartment, is that we all love being there, at home, together and a lot!
All needs are taken care of, even our aesthetic ones..
Oh- and the two green prints from the Hotel Paris exhibition, well I managed to get the last pair of the edition I believe. Now displayed on our very own toile de joy wallpaper at home.

Lars and Anette first met when Anette and her Blunderbuss partner Anna Julia wanted to live and work in Berlin for a period of time. The partners showed up at Lars’ doorstep, as he was renting out his place in Mitte - and, well, so it goes!

Not a single picture on the wall yet. But hidden behind Anettes hacked dresser, there is a print by Espen Dietrichson and a smaller painting by Anettes mother Mette L’orange.

Book read by Lars Morell at Croy Nielsen April 2009 New novels, new men, (jealousy, sjalusi, jalousi La celosia, die jalousie, oder die Aifersucht).

Detail from the dresser. Open books and journals displaying a different piece of art each day.

Postcards on display create ever-shifting constellations..

The view from the sofa. Audun Alvestad on the right, placed on an Afdal bench in the winterlight.

Audun Alvestad shows his wort at QB Gallery in Oslo and Kristin Hellegjerde internationally. Alvestad’s paintings revolve around random male characters, living their everyday lives, doing everyday-things. Through these generic characters, he exposes social structures, shines light on changing gender roles and plays with formal aspects of painting.
Behind- canvas by Jesper Skov Madsen

Alma lampen, designed by Wastberg.

Cabinet doors made by Oak and Kitchen, and spectacular steel tops made by Nicro in Siljan.

One of Lars mystical sculptures in bronze. Sketch for the larger piece ’Liquid Interpretation’ .

It is never accidental.

The Guinea pigs Prick og Fläck. House.

Anette’s cabinet macabre..

Detail from the display Cabinet.

’Born (in the mid 70s) — a sunny, yellow buddy from the same generation felt like the appropriate gift to treat myself’. Varier Ekstrem by Terje Ekstrøm.

The original fireplace covered in lovely old glazed blue tiles. The chair, which is fit for a king, has been toned down with a more neutral cloth.

Lars own sketch flying by..

´The rounded corner was Lars’ stroke of genius. Not only does it ease us gently into the living room, its curve mirrors the curvature of the ceiling where it meets the wall, as was typical of the 1930’s.

The generous hall in the middle of the apartment was actually the dining-room when we took over the place. But, given that we’d already drawn up a large social kitchen with room for a dining table, we were completely free to do whatever we wanted with this area. Two things we’d learned - you can never have enough storage space, so a large closet was high on our list of priorities. In addition, the dining room in our previous apartment had become a makeshift home office during the pandemic, so we saw a real need for a dedicated office space in our new one. Our closet then created a natural space behind it, a perfect spot for us to draw up an office.

From the outside, not looking in. A powdery pink covering both ceiling and walls in a small in between room.

Blå Blomst anno 2021.

Home office for two

Detail from their home office, marked by Lars.

The Perfect Green for a Gramercy Bath?

Le Corbusier’s color charts became key to the fun loving combination in the playful bathroom. He had his big breakthrough in the 1920’s which should correspond well with the age of our apartment. It also characterizes our point of view in this renovation process.

A glimpse from Tilda’s room, ’Kunst er Livet’.

A room of one’s own. Bjarne Melgaards Røros teppe. Exhale Jotun color covering ceiling and walls. Awaiting Anette’s plan of a tiled bedhead, we may have to come back☺

Window between bedroom and bathroom. A relic from the previous owner.

Once you’re enveloped by the Morell & L’orange entrance hall, your expectations for the rest of the apartment go through the roof.

Only a bike ride away

Over the last decade, Lars has become a well known and much appreciated artist both in Norway and abroad. His diverse body of work, paintings, photographs, sculptures and installations have consistently questioned the fine line that separates the visible from its counterpart, transforming familiar objects and phenomenon into something strange and otherworldly. There’s a certain mysticism to his work, and from what I can gather this project of his started out as a themed series of paintings where motifs were inspired by illusionism, magic, spiritism and the occult and the 19th century fascination with capturing and representing these psychic hinterlands on film and in photographs. At its inception the framework was clearly delineated, but as time has passed Lars has moved on to a more intuitive way of working. Fog, more than simply a way of describing or representing a certain idea, has become a synonym for the process itself, more diffuse and fumbling than it is analytic. Lars works in parallell with paintings and sculptures mostly, as I’ve been lucky enough to witness firsthand over the last year or so as my office is adjacent to his studio in an old industrial building right outside of Oslo where among others Marie Buskov, Espen Dietrichson, Anders Sletvold Moe, Monica Flakk and Knut Benjaminsen also work. Lars studio is tidy - there is not a single superfluous thing in the space. White walls, grey floors, daylight lamps and his equipment; paints, brushes, machines. Oh, and of course, his bike, which takes him back home, to Majorstua, to the blue stem in the middle of the apartment, the gravitational point of this threesome…

As Anette declared: The very best thing about our apartment, is that we all love being there, at home, together and a lot!
All needs are taken care of, even our aesthetic ones..
Oh- and the two green prints from the Hotel Paris exhibition, well I managed to get the last pair of the edition I believe. Now displayed on our very own toile de joy wallpaper at home.