Your Favorite Podcast Wants to Make You Feel at Home

As more money flows into the medium, professionally designed sets that mimic domestic backdrops have become the go-to ingredient for keeping things candid.

I have to imagine I’m not the only person who has said to a friend, "We should start a podcast." I have a clear memory of having this conversation with a former roommate after one of our frequent evening debriefs, sitting on opposite sides of our gray, L-shaped sofa beneath a gallery wall, our legs tucked under blankets and kicked up on the water-stained West Elm storage coffee table sourced from Facebook Marketplace. If we had started a podcast (we didn’t), that table is probably where we would’ve set up microphones to casually record our ramblings. If there were enough people out there who wanted to listen (we’ll never know!), our setup would’ve likely eventually evolved to include at least one video camera. But we might not have felt the need to change our "studio" setting; today, the lived-in backdrop would’ve fit right in with the look of many of the most popular podcasts out there. 

As podcasts have swung from an audio-only medium to a video-centric one, with Youtube becoming the dominant platform for consumption, the lines between video podcasts ("vodcasts") and traditional television talk shows, late night, and cable newscasts have increasingly blurred. Professionally designed recording studios are now the norm; most new talk show podcasts launch with built-out sets, and ones that started before podcasting’s major pivot to video around 2020 have adjusted to meet the moment. At first, that just meant starting a Youtube channel with video recordings of podcast episodes, but since 2023 (upon close study), numerous major podcasters have unveiled full-on recording studio overhauls. And across categories, from pop culture "chat-casts" to expert interview and political commentary shows, those sets overwhelmingly pull from domestic aesthetics, whether they’re filmed in at-home studios or production headquarters. The central notion is that the most interesting, honest, and natural conversations happen between people in the comfort of their homes—and wouldn’t anybody want to be a fly on the wall for those?

Interwoven Studios and creative director Connor Brock designed the set for Jake Shane’s Therapuss podcast before its first season. They updated it for the show’s second season (shown left) and for the third on Netflix. Interwoven and Brock also designed the studio for What We Said (top). The Dear Media podcast launched in 2018, added video in 2024, and debuted the new set at the end of that year. So True With Caleb Hearon started recording from a new, built-out studio when it was picked up by Wave Sports and Entertainment in late 2025 (right).

Left to right: Courtesy Interwoven Studios; Courtesy Dear Media; So True with Caleb Hearon via Youtube

The nostalgic lounge

When you start looking, there are some clear aesthetic categories that emerge. One of the most recognizable examples of a category I’ll call "the blast-from-the-past living room/lounge" is the wood-paneled backdrop of Therapuss, the talk show–style podcast from influencer/comedian Jake Shane that was among a slew of well-established titles licensed by Netflix in early 2026 (when the streamer ignited a race amongst major streaming services to add video podcasts to their platforms). Before the show’s first season in 2024, Shane and his team approached Los Angeles production services company Interwoven Studios and creative director Connor Brock to design the set, and asked for something along the lines of a "midcentury-modern-inspired therapist’s office," Brock says. They built a distinctly of the internet-era vision of a 1960s den—er, shrink’s office—in the guesthouse behind Shane’s L.A. home. In one episode, Shane and Charli XCX kick up their feet on blue velvet lounges, the framed faux certificates behind them reminding of Shane’s position in "the proverbial therapist’s chair," while the TAYLOR SWIFT ERAS TOUR bumper sticker propped on a bookshelf gestures that he, like the audience, is ultimately just a pop culture stan.

Interwoven cofounder Chance Horky says Shane’s team made "a purposeful investment" in the look of the set as Therapuss took off in its second season, though he declined to discuss numbers. In came a stick-on stone accent wall, patterned rug, and Eamesesque wood-and-leather sofas to add visual texture; out went the Eras Tour sticker and the wood-and-brass bar cart. In the third (exclusive-to-Netflix) season, the framed certificates are the main signifiers that we’re not just in the warm-but-spotless living room of a chronically online person who spends a sufficient chunk of their income on taste-signaling home decor. A-list guests like Hailey Bieber and Kylie Jenner lean into the brown velvet couch and talk to Shane like he’s a friend (indeed, he runs in the same circles as many of his superfamous guests). The environment is shiny enough for fully styled and glammed celebrities to not feel totally out of place in (hello, chrome accents!), but still within-reach for the pop culture devotee watching through the screen to project themselves into.

Some living room-like podcast sets lean into similarly stylized nostalgia for past eras that the hosts and audience actually know firsthand. The set where Arizona-born influencers Jaci Marie Smith and Chelsey Jade Curtis film their lifestyle podcast What We Said—also designed by Brock with Interwoven—could easily be the childhood bedroom of a wealthy New Englander whose empty-nester parents took the space and repurposed it as a reading corner, leaving the baby-pink-and-blue wallpaper and the bulletin board with Polaroids and Post-Its but making space for their World Atlas collection. Brock says the duo’s team gave them a mood board to illustrate the aesthetic they wanted, which he describes as "like, Northeastern rich girl from the Nineties." When the podcasters talk through relationship red flags and "unhinged wellness habits" or stories about wedding drama and accidental texts on chintz-style upholstered chairs, we’re supposed to feel like we’re watching two hometown besties-cum-sorority sisters locking in on a gossip session, and lucky you, you got the invite.

By contrast, comedian Caleb Hearon’s So True got a new set last year that could be a believable pop-up for an Urban Outfitters collab with the children’s book classic, Goodnight Moon. The aesthetics—a green-tiled fireplace with colorful camp pennant flags, and a wall-mounted cord landline—help suggest the tone: We’re in a space that might remind millennials of ones they played and learned in as children, so expect conversations that bounce between silly, intellectual, and earnest.

In Your Dreams With Owen Thiele launched in 2024 under Alex Cooper’s Unwell Network with a Y2K-inspired bedroom set where he films the podcast from his home (left). Influencer Becca Moore also started her For the Girls podcast in 2024 and by the end of that year started recording episodes from a professionally designed at-home studio (right).

Left to right: In Your Dreams With Owen Thiele via Youtube; For the Girls with Becca Moore via Youtube

The Y2K bedroom

Unsurprising to anyone who’s had even one eye open to what the kids have been into over the past few years, the Y2K bedroom is a more specific subset of the nostalgic podcast set that’s a go-to backdrop for a certain type of zillennial chat-cast. In Owen Thiele’s In Your Dreams, the influencer/comedian curls up on an unmade bed dense with fuzzy pillows and plushies with Gen Z favorites like Emma Chamberlain, who lean against a wall plastered with cutouts from their own magazine spreads alongside Taylor Swift album covers (clearly a quick signifier of 21st-century fan culture) and flyers for canons of early-aughts media like Lizzie McGuire. The hyperstylized slumber party aesthetic begets a manufactured atmosphere of familiarity where Thiele can ask Kendall Jenner, for example, to address internet rumors about her sexuality in a way that Jimmy Fallon could never in a more late-night talk show setting. Remember, this is a sleepover where personal lore is shared—not a traditional media interview.

The set of influencer Becca Moore’s For the Girls (a double entendre for the intended demographic of her podcast, and also her romantic interests) also borrows from the decorative hallmarks of the era. Moore talks directly to the camera about her own dating stories and interviews other queer influencers on a pink Togo-style sofa with a cheetah print blanket and throw pillows. Behind her, there’s a bulletin board with butterfly clips, a Clamshell Macbook, a bedazzled desk chair, and baby-pink walls strewn with cutouts of 2000s pop girl icons like Britney Spears, and queer canon media moments like the iconic Megan Fox lighter shot in Jennifer’s Body.

If the Y2K bedroom podcast studio looks more believably lived-in than "the blast-from-the-past living room/lounge," that’s on purpose. "It’s always towing the line that you see just enough of my mess to feel like we’re hanging out, but also I’m a content creator," explains Christine Tran, an assistant professor at Alberta University of the Arts whose research covers digital culture, domesticity, and the creator economy. "There’s still that professional sheen."

As far as domestic spaces go, the bedroom is the one that most reliably signals intimacy, but Tran argues that it also carries a particularly gendered undertone. "Bedrooms have historically afforded women spaces of safety and networking," she says. "Scholars have looked at the bedroom as a rehearsal room for the type of femininities and social-emotional labor that girls are expected to perform outside the home." Youth culture theorists Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber introduced the concept of "bedroom culture" in a late ’70s essay highlighting how teen girls of the time participated in subcultures in their private domestic spaces, and researchers have pointed to girls’ bedrooms as "sites of cultural production" since the ’90s and 2000s especially: of zines, of blogs, of fanfic, of mixtapes, of dances, and, eventually, of Youtube and TikTok vlogs and GRWMs. The Y2K bedroom set expresses an unabashed embrace of culture typically deemed feminine (and usually also vapid, for that reason); millennial viewers can recognize it from their own upbringings, and younger generations from depictions on-screen. The background mosaic says something about who the host is, and also who their followers are likely, too. But, Tran says: "It’s important to note that these backgrounds default to suburban, middle-class, white-coded, American-coded settings. And very idealized ones. I think these nostalgic responses, these middle-class fantasies are a way of harmonizing those class differences."

Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper tapped the designer behind her L.A. mansion renovation to redo her podcast studio twice since 2023 (top). Khloé Kardashian launched her Dear Media podcast Khloé in Wonder Land in 2025; it records from a Calabasas studio (left). The at-home set where influencers (and friends to the Kardashians) Victoria Villarroel and Stas Karanikolaou record their Better Half podcast splits the difference between Cooper’s hyperfeminine backdrop and Kardashian’s luxe but minimal one (right).

Left to right: Khloé in Wonder Land via Youtube; Call Her Daddy via Youtube; Better Half with Stas & Vic via Youtube

See the full story on Dwell.com: Your Favorite Podcast Wants to Make You Feel at Home

Do Plywood Interiors Hold Up?

The material can discolor and is hard to patch. We spoke with architects who used it in projects covered by Dwell to find out how they’re looking now.

Plywood has been a staple of modernist design since the 1940s, when American architects began transforming it into Dri-Bilt homes. Today, it lines houses around the world from ceiling to floor, as architects take full advantage of its ease of manufacturing, flexible structure, and distinctive grain. And while its aesthetic appeal has lasted almost a century, it’s not the first material that comes to mind when considering durability. But, as we found out, those who’ve worked with the materials themselves beg to differ.

For a ground-up, net-zero house in the L.A. neighborhood of Highland Park, Project Room principal Isaac Resnikoff and his in-laws at Louis Wasserman & Associates made a complete family home from plywood—floors, ceilings, custom furniture, walls, the lot. For those wondering if the material can stand up to the rigors of daily life with young children, good news: "We moved in about August 2019," Resnikoff says, "and over the seven years, it’s held up very well: durable and beautiful." In constructing their two-bedroom, two-bathroom "Unfinished House" in Tiny, Ontario, Workshop Architects relied on raw plywood almost exclusively. "The plywood on walls, ceiling and mezzanine floors was sanded and finished with two coats of Osmo Natural Oil Woodstain in 701 Clear Matte," says principal Helena Grdadolnik. "They typically say to refinish it every three to five years in areas that aren’t high use, but it has been almost five years and it doesn’t look like it needs it." Though, of course, the fact that the vacation house being unoccupied for part of the year doesn’t hurt with the wear and tear.

The color of the plywood in Atelier—Heyman Hamilton’s cabin aged between 2023 (left) and 2025 (right).

Left to right: Photo by Andy Liffner; Photo by Andrew van Leeuwen

What worked in the dry climate of northeast Los Angeles and the woodsy bays of Ontario was equally right in southeast Sweden, where Atelier—Heyman Hamilton renovated a 1970s cabin with pine plywood for use as a weekend home. Three years of Nordic weather later, "No repairs have been made, and no sheets have been replaced," reports co-founder James Hamilton. "The key is specifying the right quality of plywood. In Sweden, BB/X pine plywood is a few steps below furniture grade, has no knots or defects on one side, and is cost-effective."

The material lasts. Its original hue may not. "We knew it would darken and age unevenly over time, with areas exposed to direct sunlight changing faster than those in the shade," says Hamilton. "This uneven aging process was a specific quality we were interested in exploring." Resnikoff anticipated a shift, too. "We wanted wood that would not yellow with time, and of course that’s kind of impossible," he says. A lacquer with a bit of white pigment helps mitigate that. "There’s definitely a little bit of yellowing, but it’s not that dramatic! And it’s a satin finish, which feels really nice."

Of course running your hands across the satin plywood has an effect, over time, never mind the more constant wear and tear of family life. Resnikoff has noticed the floors take it the hardest. "It’s a softer floor than you might normally have, so it’s going to get dinged. We have two stools by the kitchen island, and their feet dig the floor a little bit. I think it has almost a hammered patina. When we did it, we thought in ten years we’d probably have to replace it. We don’t feel like that’s inevitable, at this point." Hamilton has also been impressed with the appearance of aging. "Because the cabin is a weekend home, surface wear could even be left intentionally unattended to allow for an uneven, character-rich aging process where areas with rubbed-off finish darken faster."

Differences in the "Unfinished House" are minimal between 2024 (left) and a recent photo (right). The wood hasn’t required refinishing in the nearly five years since it was installed.

Left to right: Photo by Scott Norsworthy; Photo courtesy Helena Grdadolnik

There’s patina, however, and then there’s punctures. In the "Unfinished House" Grdadolnik had to relocate the thermostat from the main floor to the warmer mezzanine. "That left a small hole in the wall where the wires attached," she says. That was an easy fix, but it taught her to be careful. "Plywood is less forgiving than drywall, it can’t be patched or replaced without being noticeable," she says. "So plan any lighting, wall switches, and equipment in advance, and think twice before cutting holes in the wall."

That’s assuming you’re seeking a book-matched effect. If so, designers recommend purchasing extra panels and lacquering them alongside the pieces that’ll be used for construction, so that they’ll age together. "We selected a spruce plywood finish with a very strong pattern that came as a bunk from a mill, so the patterns match. If in the future we would need to replace a sheet on a wall or in the ceiling, it would be hard to match and the difference could be noticeable," Grdadolnik says. "You see other interiors using clear birch plywood, which has less personality, but would be easier to replace with a similar look."

Time has given Isaac Resnikoff’s home a slight yellowing, as seen in photos from 2021 (left) and 2024 (right).

Left to right: Photo by José Mandojana; Photo by Emanuel Hahn

See the full story on Dwell.com: Do Plywood Interiors Hold Up?
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Budget Breakdown: A Tiny Red Addition Adds a Radical Amount of Utility for a Family of Four

South of Prague, the 210-square-foot extension creates one open, fluid living space that’s flush with built-in seating and storage.

In 2017, Zuzana Fuhrmannova and her partner, Tomas Binder, began renting a small house in Nečín, a village in the Czech Republic’s Central Bohemian region about 25 miles south of Prague. Zuzana, a property manager who works from home about once a week, had been looking for a suitable place to raise her then two young sons from a previous marriage. She found out about the rental, an approximately 1,146-square foot weekend cabin, through an acquaintance and reached out to the owner. They settled on an unusual agreement: instead of paying rent, they would partially renovate the house.

"We cleared it out, converted the attic into living space, put in a kitchen, and made other minor improvements," says Tomas, who works mostly from home in online marketing. "The renovation was done on a very tight budget, with only the absolute essentials so that the four of us could somehow live there."

Zuzana Fuhrmannova and Tomas Binder bought a cabin they had been renting and expanded it with a red addition, designed and constructed by Facha Architekti.

Photo by Peter Fabo

A few years later, the couple decided to make an offer on the home. It took a year to convince the owner to sell—"he had an emotional attachment to the house," Tomas says—but they closed in 2020. As it was now the family of four's permanent home, they called on Prague studio Facha Architekti for another round of improvements. "They wanted to create a home that would support everyday family living and working from home, while keeping operating costs as low as possible," says Matej Nepustil, one of the four architects who make up Facha. "They also wanted the house to be a welcoming place to host gatherings with family and friends."

Facha enlarged the main living space, relocated the entrance, and enhanced the connection to the garden, all of which was achieved by adding a bold, red extension to the west side of the house. "We liked the original volume of the house and did not want to redefine it," says Nepustil. "The extension was conceived as a clearly legible addition, deliberately distinguishable from the older building."

Clad in corrugated metal, it expands the home by more than 200 square feet with a new entrance and living space, and connects with the yard via wide steps and a deck. A floor-to-ceiling slider was one of the more expensive elements of the project.

Photo by Peter Fabo

A red awning reaches down to the deck to provide complete shade to the interiors.

Photo by Peter Fabo

See the full story on Dwell.com: Budget Breakdown: A Tiny Red Addition Adds a Radical Amount of Utility for a Family of Four

There’s a Handmade Touch at Every Turn in This Craftsperson’s Vermont Cabin

Ally Silberkleit channeled her obsession with tinkering into a bespoke three-level home.

Ally Silberkleit, a woodworker, likes to keep her hands busy. "For most of my adult life, I would come home from work and if I was watching TV or relaxing, I would need to either be carving a spoon or a hairpin or knitting or doing something while I’m sitting there," she says. This devotion to craft is at the heart of the home she built in northern Vermont, a 1,300-square-foot, gable-sided cabin that put her skills to the test and taught her many new ones, too. "I love making and learning, and the house is really designed around that," she says.

For a long time, Ally dreamed of building her own home. Nearly seven years ago she finally took the leap. She spent two months in Japan learning traditional woodworking and carpentry skills. Then she attended Yestermorrow, a design/build school, where she earned a certificate in residential design and construction and began sketching a house. After finding what she describes as a "very calm and magical" tree-covered plot in rural Vermont in 2021, she commissioned Andy White, the instructor in her Yestermorrow course and founder of the studio Boreal Design, to turn her initial concept for a small home with a loft into a real building on a real site.

See the full story on Dwell.com: There’s a Handmade Touch at Every Turn in This Craftsperson’s Vermont Cabin
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How Little Trees Goes Big to Protect Its Trademark Symbol

For such a utilitarian object, the pine-shaped, scented cutout holds a surprisingly singular spot in pop culture. The brand has made sure of it.

Not everyone appreciates the bracing perfume wafting from a cardboard tree air freshener named Black Ice, Vanillaroma, or New Car Scent—I know I don’t. But while I would strongly prefer to avoid breathing in a heavily scented object hanging from a car’s rear view mirror, I can’t help but love the instantly recognizable look of a Little Trees cutout.

To this day, Little Trees remains the leader of the pack among car freshener brands, and their unique shape has become a cultural phenomenon. It’s a piece of Americana, a collector’s item, and a visual shorthand for smell. But if you’re a brand and think, maybe we could riff on that a little—say, put a tree on a T-shirt or key ring—think again: Little Trees is known for suing those who infringe on its trademark, and the brand usually wins. We’re free to feel our feelings about Little Trees, but the shape, that’s on lock.

Little Trees is the property of Car-Freshner Corporation, a third-generation family firm headquartered in Watertown, New York. The whiff stretches back to 1952 when a milk truck driver complained about the stench of spilled milk to Julius Sämann, a German-Jewish chemist who’d fled Europe during the Nazi occupation. Two years later, Sämann filed a patent for cardboard with "odor-destroying, air-perfuming substances"—the initial version was a pinup lady before he settled on the now-famous pine tree. It was mostly for practical reasons, as a conifer makes it easier to peel back the wrapper slowly, branch by branch, to prolong the smell for up to seven weeks.

Royal Pine was the first fragrance, followed quickly by Spice and Bouquet. As drivers across the country took to this practical solution to an unpleasant tang, the company wasted no time expanding the range. Many have been fruity and spicy, like Cinnamon Apple, Moroccan Mint Tea, and Lavender, while others more ambiguous like Pure Steel, Heat, and Supernova. Today, Little Trees are sold all over the world, in parts of Europe known as Wunder-Baum or Arbre Magique, making the dangling tree an internationally recognized fix for terrible odors everywhere.

There are more than 30 classic Little Trees scents, each with different imagery on the same trademark shape.

Photo by Jammer Gene via Adobe Stock

But it’s the shape we love. "I have one that smells like surfboard wax. It hasn’t had a smell coming from it in months, but I still like seeing it flopping from the rear view when I have the windows down," says Jason Kress, cofounder and creative director of Washington, D.C., design agency Clever, and self-described "car guy." Kress thinks Little Trees are a mainstay in car culture: "It’s almost like a badge of honor that you wear, down to the type of Little Tree you hang from your mirror." Kress says the "masculine, cologne-smelling" Black Ice is especially popular among Honda drivers, a group he used to belong to before he moved on to VWs and Audis, whose drivers he says are more into Piña Colada, which is "more of a fashion statement." 

There are currently 33 classic Little Trees to choose from, with thriving forums of collectors on TikTok and Reddit who hunt for rare special releases and discontinued scents. Kress says he’s seen up to "fifty or so stacked [in cars], as a tongue-in-cheek flex." While he points out there are a lot more elegant (and frankly, better-smelling) car fresheners on the market, Kress thinks Little Trees appeals with its cheerful simplicity and low price: "That amount of joy for a dollar, that’s a pretty good deal! There’s so much variety, so you can make a statement with that dollar."

The ubiquitousness of Little Trees might fool us into thinking we’re at liberty to make our own uses for it. But if you’re a brand tempted to tap in on its symbolism you will soon feel the wrath of Big Tree. When fashion house Balenciaga made a Little Trees–shaped keychain in 2018, it charged $275 for a leather trinket with a nod to retro Americana—and Little Trees sued for trademark infringement. The year after, the company served European budget airline RyanAir for using its image to advertise the airline’s car rental service. Dog toy maker Chewy was informed in 2021 that the pine is not for sharing, and two years ago, Meta was put on notice for failing to take down infringing posts from third parties selling stickers and T-shirts carrying the Little Trees trademark. 

Angela Langlotz, a trademark lawyer operating out of Dallas, Texas, remembers the green tree hanging from the dashboard knob of her aunt’s Ford Mustang when she was a child—this is the kind of "intangible goodwill" that Little Trees has built over decades and is keen to control. "I think Little Trees have been appropriately aggressive," says Langlotz, suggesting that they’re just protecting what’s theirs. A trademark is meant to be an exclusive identifier, she explains, so if you let things slide to the point where people no longer associate your brand with your company, you could actually end up losing your trademark rights.

That means when Old Navy puts your trademark on a T-shirt emblazoned with "Keeping it Fresh," it may be best to nip things in the bud—at least that seems to be Little Trees’ attitude. "Then, pretty soon, you get a reputation for being a formidable enforcer of your trademark rights, and people just leave you alone," says Langlotz. This may explain why Little Trees doesn’t just go after large corporations; in 2016, the company sued a nonprofit called Sun Cedar, which helps at-risk individuals get back on their feet, for making a tree-shaped cedar ornament, and two years later, it informed the Bob Ross merchandising company that regardless of how Ross telling viewers to paint "happy little trees" to cover their mistakes, there would be only one diminutive arboreal in town.

Little Trees’ journey from smell peddler to cultural icon has benefited from some memorable pop culture endorsements. "You’ll find one in every car. You’ll see."—that’s the famous line from the 1984 cult sci-fi black comedy Repo Man, which was ultimately a teardown of ’80s consumerism but did a lot to tighten the brand’s associations with American car culture by placing its products in various scenes. "That film is a big part of why some car people are obsessed with Little Trees, sometimes in an ironic hipster way," says Phil Greden, an automotive journalist whose pen name is Murilee Martin. Greden has taken over 10,000 photographs of Little Trees in junked cars over the past 18 years, across the U.S. and overseas. "In junkyards in the U.S., probably ninety-five percent of air fresheners are going to be Little Trees," says Greden, explaining that it’s often the Black Ice and New Car scents. "In the Deep South people like the fruitier ones, like Coconut, Watermelon, and Strawberry.... I think because it’s so humid and they need a more powerful scent to mask the mildew." Greden also finds more clusters in hotter areas—he fondly recalls what he calls the "Charlotte Stack," named for the thick decks of Little Trees air fresheners he saw hanging from the rear view mirrors of many cars in a North Carolina wrecking yard—whereas in dry areas, like his hometown of Denver, Colorado, cars usually have just the one.

The vapors can get overwhelming pretty fast. Little Trees actually provided unscented props to save the noses of the Repo Man film crew, and overly perfumed rideshares are such a common complaint that Lyft has started offering fragrance-free rides as a premium option. When Greden was an official at 24 Hours of Lemons, an endurance race for cars bought for $500 or less, one of the penalties for misbehaving drivers included hanging 50 Little Trees air fresheners inside their cars. "You could smell it as they drove by at a hundred miles an hour," he says. "It was awful." Greden likes to hang his own Little Trees outside for six months to get the odor out, and then enjoy them more as decor.

Despite the brand’s eagerness to defend its trademark, the company behind Little Trees doesn’t seem too concerned about what people say about it. My request for an interview with a representative was politely rebuffed by Nikki in consumer relations, who only remarked that the company "recognize[s] the unique role that LITTLE TREES has played both within the air freshener category and in popular culture over the years." They hardly ever seem to talk to the press—the rare exceptions being when Jody LaLone, the former longtime president of Car-Freshner Corporation, told the New York Times in 2012 that they’d sold billions of units, "Probably right up there with the number of hamburgers McDonald’s sells," and in 2014, when U.K. car dealer Arnold Clark interviewed the brand’s European sales and marketing director who compared the secrecy around Little Trees’s scent recipes to that of Coca-Cola.

Meanwhile, Little Trees occupies our cultural imagination as the car freshener of record, the shape widely celebrated as a classic design. So maybe saying nothing is the smartest move? "Little Trees have been around for so long, I don’t think they need the conversation," says Kress. "They’re doing just fine—their products sell themselves."    

Top photo by Bill Hogan/Chicago Tribune/MCT/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

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How They Pulled It Off: Curved Windows Turn This Minnesota Home Into a Sundial

On a narrow creekside lot in the Twin Cities, CityDeskStudio built a multigenerational home with lifted rooflines, curved plaster ceilings, and custom windows to draw light deep into the interior.

Welcome to How They Pulled It Off, where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.

When a Minnesotan woman had the opportunity to move back into the 1950s home where she grew up with her three sisters, she realized that it wasn’t the house that she wanted to revisit, but the land it stood on.

The property had stayed in the family, but the house was small and rundown. It certainly wasn’t suitable for the "forever home" the woman envisioned sharing with her husband and sister, who would also be living with them. The family approached Ben Awes, founder of Saint Paul-based architecture practice CityDeskStudio, to create a home that would support them into retirement but also provide a layout for two family units.

Set low into the site for easy access, the house reads as modest from the street—an age-in-place home with an elevator that "sits very beautifully, nested right into the ground," says architect Ben Awes.

Photo: Dwell Creative Services

The couple wanted a single-level home they could age into, with a separate apartment for the wife’s sister, a home office for him, and an art studio for her. Beyond these more practical considerations, the husband requested that the home have what he described as "lift."

"He’s a bit of an architecture fan and has always loved Louis Khan, and said to me early in the process that all great architecture has lift," says Awes. "And, so he hopes that his house has lift."

The 4,200-square-foot home, aptly named Crescendo, features lifted rooflines rising in sequence across the plan.

Photo: Dwell Creative Services

The primary challenge was the narrow lot, which is deep and angled toward the west, with the Minnehaha Creek view concentrated along one edge. Rather than line the rooms up along a single side, Awes set one living area, the dining room, and the kitchen in the center of the plan as an interior core. This is then flanked with the owners’ bedroom suite on one side and the studio and office on the other.

The living area, dining area, and kitchen sit at the heart of the plan—an interior core with no exterior walls of its own, lit instead from above through the lifted roof.

Photo: Dwell Creative Services

See the full story on Dwell.com: How They Pulled It Off: Curved Windows Turn This Minnesota Home Into a Sundial
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I Tested a Little Electric Grill at My Neighborhood’s Biggest Party of the Year

My big barbecue is a dream for everyday use, but I was curious if a plug-in alternative could help me bring hot dogs that are just as satisfying to any place with an outlet.

A lifelong city-dweller, it’s only been later in life that I’ve been able to appreciate the luxury of having storage for extra options. The kind of basic luxury that is, instead of owning a certain number of towels because that’s all you have space for, you have a closet where you can keep an alternate set.

Last year, I wrote about the experience of getting and testing a big Kahuna grill, which has most certainly changed my life for the better. But of course, the flip side of a big grill, no matter how nice it is, is that it’s mostly stuck wherever you park it, despite the wheels. There are numerous other grilling situations it doesn’t work for, and in my family, there happens to be one that comes up every year—our annual block party, where all our neighbors bring out their grills to the front of their houses to cook and hang out. (There’s also two insane bounce houses and a DJ playing music louder than is probably safe for human ears, but I digress.)

Our new gas grill, parked in the back of the house, was not going to work for such a task. I’d avoided this issue last year by moving the falling-apart-but-still-works propane grill that had been left behind in our backyard to the front, cooking on it for the block party, and then leaving it there and posting on Facebook Marketplace that it was free for the taking. (It was gone within a few days, rusted out bottom and all.) But this year, I decided I’d look into a more portable solution for yes, specifically and potentially just this one event above all else, but maybe there would be other possible uses for it down the line. (Camping, which I could always get into.) Again, the privilege storage gives you.

Kenyon’s City Grill is compact and sleek.

Photo via Kenyon

I wanted electric, to avoid the size, space, and logistical issues of propane and charcoal, and because they are easy to put on a countertop, or, in this case, a jerry-rigged table out of sawhorses and an old slab of stone that had also been left behind for us to do what we wanted with. That’s when I happened upon Kenyon’s very literally named City Grill. It seemed as easy to use as possible, so I got in touch with the company, and they sent off a sample to me to try out. 

The Test 

Kenyon is a Connecticut-based company that got its start in making ceramic glass cooktops for boats, later moving into RVs and more residential applications. They say their patented design makes most of their grills ideal for indoor and outdoor use, because they are "flame free" and "smokeless." Per their website: "We’ve designed the bottom side of our cooking grate, and griddle to have a channel in which the heating element is concealed directly underneath the grate/griddle. This placement allows for even heat transfer from the element to the cooking surface so there is no heat loss (improves efficiency as well). Exposed heating elements are the cause of smoke and flare-ups for electric grills when food drippings hit the element so the concealed element eliminates the possibility of flare-ups and allows for smoke-free grilling." The City Grill retails for $695, which isn’t cheap, if you’re paying for it which I wasn’t, but it is the cheapest of their grill options, which come in portable and stationary. It’s also extremely easy to use; it’s literally an aluminum grate that lifts up to reveal the heating element, under which is a drip pan to catch the drippings. Once you plug in the grill, there is one knob to turn it on and adjust the temperature. That’s it!

The grill was packed snug in its box upon arrival. 

Photo courtesy Kate Dries

The City Grill arrived quickly, within a few days of placing my order actually, in a very large box with a lot of styrofoam to cushion it so it wouldn’t slide around. Though it’s less than two feet long and a little shy of nine inches thick, it’s still fairly heavy at a little under 30 lbs, though not impossible to move, given the point is ease of logistics. Before the party we easily stored it on a low shelf in our kitchen. On G-Day (grill day), we simply took it outside, set it on the table, plugged it in, and that was that. We cooked up nothing more complicated on it than rounds and rounds of hot dogs and buns, but given that it can go up to 550 degrees, I’d happily have tried most anything on it. They tasted just as good—which is to say, totally normal—as any other hot dog. It was also easy to turn off and then quickly turn back on again for another round. It’s not ideal if you’re making a lot of food for a lot of people all at once—batch eating would be ideal, unless it’s just a small party—and I’d say it’s likely best for simpler things, i.e. hot dogs and hamburgers, and not, say, a whole rack of ribs (which really do best in the oven anyway, but I digress).

Hot dogs from the City Grill tasted just as good as hot dogs from a bigger barbecue. 

Photo courtesy Kate Dries

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