House as object, objects as home.

The brainchild of twin brothers Matthew and Joey Anhalt, House & Object is design centered around the home. Both receiving their Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Design at the University of Alberta, Matt’s background brings mechanical and highly technical design to the table, while Joey’s have always lied in the realm of aesthetics and modular architecture. With a combined affection for craft, manufacturing, and architecture, their ideas range from technical solutions to modular building to hand-crafted batch ceramic production.

Joey didn’t buy the most expensive of things, but collected (and gifted if you were lucky!) the most interesting things. He filled his home with things from his travels or things found while out and about from a market, or from a dumpster in an alley - A perfectly good mid-century armchair that just needed a little re-upholstering, an American flag from a stranger in Texas, a whale tail brass cast door knocker, a Koko Taylor record from Austin, a Japanese kendo mask and sword, a pair of original Vargas pin up girl posters, books on gardening, The Joy of Cooking, and how to build your own homestead structures including barns and chicken coops, a lithograph of Michael Faraday, handmade leather sandals from Panama, a full leather skin as a rug for his living room floor. His home was filled with objects that he cherished for one reason or another. And somehow, their reason for being there as part of his collection just made sense. Old things and new things, inexpensive and rare things, things from foreign places, things found in the trash, recycled things, weird things - Joey had a place for them. Among the mix were the things he and his brother Matt had either designed during his University days, or prototypes they were working on. When the twins lived together, stepping into their living room was like stepping into an inventor’s incubation room - the things that inspired them strewn all amongst the things they were inspired to make. Adding fuel to this fire over time was their way of deeply investing energy in a broad range of interests and hobbies - from gardening, cooking, old kung-fu flicks, world history, music and travelling, to electronics, metallurgy, home building science, vintage furniture, black smithing and small engine mechanics. Most of these things were never taken up for their immediate application to their design, but rather formed an extremely rich bed out of which many of their ideas would eventually grow.