Cultivating a garden not only helps you and your family live a greener lifestyle, but also saves on grocery bills, too. Start a fruit and vegetable patch in your backyard or roof terrace; and if you live in an apartment with limited outdoor space, try growing herbs and even vegetables inside.

A shot of the stunning view from Arbel’s backyard.

The Bocci 19 series is made with a sandcasting technique, which Arbel favors because it creates a unique product each time. “Our jobs as designers now is to build systems with enough looseness in them so that they result in different pieces” he explains. Here, Arbel checks the mold before the molten metal is brought in.

A 28 prototype is stowed away with some books in the bedroom.

In the living room of their Vancouver home, Omer Arbel and Aileen Bryant sit on a Coronado sofa by Afra and Tobia Scarpa for B&B Italia. They are joined by their Weimaraner, Bowie, boa constrictor, Picasso, and milk snake, Legs. “I have a casual approach to prototyping that involves our day-to-day life. I am always tinkering, and I have lots of transformers to run electricity through things, but Aileen lives with me now, so I have to be respectful. Before she moved in it was like a total madhouse; now I can’t pour concrete in the kitchen. It is a collaboration in a sentimental sense. This work is my life, and the objects are my objects, but how they are arranged and the flow of each room are something we’ve created together here.”

We also toured inside Arbel’s home along the Vancouver cliffs. Pick up our September issue, on newsstands August 5. to see his home filled with collectibles, animals, and Bocci prototypes.

For our In the Modern World section, we shared a process shot of a Bocci 19 series. Here is a finished product of a Bocci 19 series bowl. Photo by Gwenael Lewis.

From the outside, an unassuming 1942 cottage overlooking Vancouver’s harbor is an unexpected place to find Omer Arbel, a designer known for his experimental, amorphous creations for the Canadian furniture and design company Bocci. But inside the 2,600-square-foot home he shares with his girlfriend, musician Aileen Bryant, and a collection of exotic pets, Arbel’s rich imagination and exuberant love of objects are on display. Here, he takes us on a personal tour.

“I am obsessed with glassware. Whenever I go to antique stores, I always come home with suitcases full of glass. The pieces on the plate rail in the kitchen are Depression-era glass, and the green pieces are nuclear glass (a material now illegal due to its radioactive uranium content). They have an amazing iridescence, and it’s fun to drink wine from them. We threw a dinner party using the whole set and serving green food. It was really beautiful."

The light is pictured here in a transparent shade.

The final form is created once the glass cools; the fabric is temporary. A flat LED lamp is inserted, creating a diffused illumination. Each piece is completely unique and they are meant to hang together in a group.

The amorphous shape of 73, so named for the chronological place in Arbel’s design continuum, is the result of gray glass blown straight into heat-resistant ceramic fabric. First a loose fabric vessel is created, next the hot glass is blown inside. Just like all of Arbel’s glass works, the piece is created without a mold of any kind.

Vancouver-based designer Omer Arbel is constantly experimenting with process and form, and his latest debut is a dynamic progression in his series of organically shaped pendants.

A close-up view of the lamp's fabric-like texture.

"Across the room is the first 25 bench I ever made; it was salvaged from a now-closed restaurant I codesigned, called Ping’s Cafe, where Aileen and I met. Hanging over the bench is our first Bocci 14 light fixture. I feel like it would be bad luck not to have it in the house. Other pieces in the kitchen—like the wooden island Aileen found in an alleyway and the yellow ceramics by Knabstrup, a Danish company active in the 1960s—we’ve collected along the way.”

A 14 Series pendant by Omer Arbel for Bocci hangs in the stairwell. The desk at the window was designed by the architects.

Omer Arbel, the creative director at industrial design firm Bocci, was given three parameters when he began designing a home for his colleague Randy Bishop: Create a “profound” connection between the internal and external spaces; build only one level; and, most crucially, utilize a wealth of 100-year-old beams salvaged from a series of warehouses owned by Bishop’s ancestors.

While most homes have their front doors centered on a flat wall, this home in Canada by Omer Arbel is entered through two solid walnut doors at the corner of the home.

If you have a bathroom with tight corners, follow Omer Arbel Office Inc.'s lead and make good use of tricky nooks to showcase beautiful joinery, like they did for this angular home in a Canadian hayfield.

A suspended oak sideboard runs the length of the living room. The project leads designed that piece and the black-painted metal shelves on the wall; both were fabricated by Giuseppe Motta,a local artisan. A 14.1 pendant by Omer Arbel for Bocci hangs near one end.

Nodding to the bay windows so common in San Francisco, the AetherSF shop's second in the stack of three shipping containers cantilevers out over the entry not only to provide a bit of shelter from a rainy night, but also to permit an expansive view of the neighborhood from the second floor lounge.

Last night, January 23rd, Dwell and Aether Apparel teamed up for the Dwell Conversation Prefab's Progress. We were joined by a two architects, a metal fabricator, and a prefab entrepreneur to talk about how prefabricated architecture can solve the problems presented by difficult sites.

Douglas Burnham, principal of Envelope A+D, and designer of the AetherSF shop describes how the trio of shipping containers are connected by just four bolts, making them entirely mobile. Because the buildings at the Proxy are intended to be temporary—San Francisco has designated the lot for mixed-income housing when it has the capacity to build—Burnham and his colleagues faced a difficult site not in terms of topography, but in terms of time.

Seth Krubiner (plaid shirt) and Benjamin Parco (black blazer) describe how they used prefab tools to build a pair of Bay Area Houses. Krubiner is a founder of Simpatico Homes and lives in the firm's prototype house in Emeryville, California. A hybrid site-built and modular system, Simpatico Homes build as much as they can in the factory but as Krubiner argued, certain elements (like the garage) are better done on-site. Parco designed a panelized prefab system for a house high in the Berkeley Hills, too high for a big truck and a crane to move a modular solution to the site.

At just nine feet wide, AetherSF succeeds by being a vertical store. A customized dry-cleaner's conveyor belt hoists tons of jackets tens of feet into the sky, essentially suspending the shop's inventory.

Rather an informal talk, Deputy Editor Aaron Britt (in the tie) moderated a talk about prefab design with (from left) architect Benjamin Parco, Seth Krubiner of Simpatico Homes, architect Douglas Burnham, and metalworker Chris French. Here French describes how his long experience doing custom metalwork allowed him to avoid a trial-and-error approach to the Aether interior.

After removing two small kitchens from the original building, the home’s new kitchen dominates the second floor, opening onto the living area. Fixtures in the kitchen include 14 Series pendants by Omer Arbel for Bocci, and Charles Ghost stools by Philippe Starck for Kartell.

Vancouver-based light maker Omer Arbel is interested in process, when he creates his hand-made glass lamp baubles for Omer Arbel Office. OAO has its European office in Berlin.

Arbel’s “14” sconces spot the wall to ethereal effect in the master bedroom. “I wanted this place to be habitable. One of my greatest criticisms of modern architecture is that it often forgets to make things cozy.”

Arbel’s projects—both products and architectural commissions—follow a chronological numbering system. The house itself is his 23rd design, while the one-of-a-kind glass pendants that accent nearly every room like a starscape are called “28.”

Situated between two forest, the 23.2 House by Omer Arbel offers a buffer between the distinct woodlands. White Rock, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Photo by Omer Arbel Office.

Bocci 73.19 by Omer Arbel for Bocci Estimate: $50,000-70,000

“The house is a piece of origami made out of triangular shapes, which we then draped over the landscape,” says Arbel.

Bench by Canadian designer Omer Arbel. Local artwork in every room.

Designer Omer Arbel develops his latest works inside an eclectic Vancouver home filled with a teeming assortment of pets and prototypes.

Omer Arbel has created yet another masterpeice lighting installation at the Barbican for the London Design Fair.