Warsaw firm Mamastudio enlisted Polish architect Mateusz Baumiller to design the Autor Rooms in its new hotel to showcase furniture and artwork by Polish designers. The favorite big idea we got out of it: thick copper pipe to create rooms within rooms, like the sleep area at top. It’s a lovely way to define a big space, and…
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Recently, we came across this extraordinary Memorial to a Marriage by artist Patricia Cronin. We don’t know when we’ve seen such a tender “real” memorial of and for a couple. It made us think about just what form our own memorial might take. We’ve discovered there are a lot of interesting options IF you shift your view .
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When my 5-year-old-laptop bailed on me, I reacted like any strong independent woman with a brain and an alarm clock; I handed it off to my husband and said “This is broken, please fix it”. Seriously. Being the feminist my husband is, he said NO…….
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For us, this image of Louis Armstrong playing his trumpet for his wife Lucille at the Sphinx during their trip to Egypt in 1961 describes “sublime”. It reminded us of that feeling when everything is rich with pleasure, without worries, fine.
But what about those times when things turn in a moment and bad things happen? Armstrong had a powerful answer .
For many years La Merenda, a tiny restaurant near the Cours Selaya market in Nice, was considered by many to be one of the city’s finest bistros, renown for the simple preparation of perfect ingredients. There long ago, I tasted as lovely a dessert as I have ever encountered: an ordinary sounding “compote” of raspberries…
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When we saw this Parisian flat in Design Milk, we were intrigued more by the floors than by the slanted shelves built into each “space” of the sprawling apartment. Short lengths of hardwood flooring are almost always less expensive than longer lengths, but, when laid out in the traditional, end-to-end pattern often LOOK cheap and…
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When our friend Karrolyn Belkis turned 80, she said was so full of joy, she felt like LEAPING. “Wherever I was, I just wanted to jump around and say YESSSSS. Isn’t it beautiful????” She thought people might think she was crazy if she leaped for joy on the streets of New York City. “I had to…
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When I wore my iPhone stuck to a velcro forearm band to a friend’s house, she said “How can you wear such an ugly thing?”; it’s terrible!” Terrible? Lighten up! It is actually an amazing device. I workout hard, cook, and do chores with it and it has yet to come off. It’s like a big Apple watch whose serious advantages trump its looks. As with everything I buy, I hacked it a bit, and pushed its limits.
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All over town we’re seeing signs of people felled by the stunning heat wave, sleeping on benches under shady trees, lounging lethargically on the grass in parks. We’ve found ourselves working at partial power, desperately needing to nap and recuperate. We’ve found two unexpected antidotes.
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When photographer Ellen Silverman first visited Cuba in 2010 little did she know that the visit would change her life/ Just as Cuba is on the verge of its own big changes, Ellen will be leading a tour there. It is a rare opportunity for just about anyone who wishes to visit private homes in Havana and engage with their owners. Here’s a glimpse:
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We’re big into interval training because it seems like a really efficient way to exercise. But the question still remains: how to get yourself to actually do it? A new iteration seems to accomplish that. The promising research is outlined in the New York Times’ A Way to Get Fit and Also Have Fun. Although…
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It’s curious how bright red stickers with the words why not? and Do. have been appearing around town, in the subway and on lamp posts. They’re our new Improvised Life stickers. We wonder who the guerilla(s) is/are that are tagging things and spreading the word?
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For some time now, we’ve been compiling a file of wall decorations made from paint chips, the colorful free material available at your local paint or home store. Placed on the wall with a little thought and creativity, paint chips can make a surprising burst of color graphic. Check this out:
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Somewhere in our travels, we stumbled on this sign which echoes what many people feel about Monday, the start of the work week, including our own. Monday being a bastard, we get it. But we’re thinking we’d rather change the sign, and view, to this:
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Lucky Peach, David Chang’s food magazine and site’s archive is chock full of compelling recipes and the thinking-behind-them from some of today’s most creative chefs. It makes for sublime food porn, as well as really exciting summer cooking, included our favorite: corn or fennel- infused whipped cream.
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Max Richter’s 8-hour lullaby, Sleep (on beds in the concert hall) reminded me of how many people have difficulty sleeping. I learned how to sleep the hard way, by NOT understanding my body’s needs, and thinking that I could defy them because there was no immediately adverse effect. When my bad habits caught up with me, I had to re-learn how to sleep.
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We were wondering how we might illustrate the late centenarian ceramic artist Beatrice Wood’s extraordinary statement: “My life is full of mistakes. They’re like pebbles that make a good road” . Then we came upon the work of artist Richard Long, who for decades has made remarkable path works that seem to echo Wood’s words…
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“Girl prisons” are publications so full of notions of “the right way to be a girl”, so fierce with implicit “shoulds” and shame as to become a”prison” in the reader’s mind. Girl and other kinds of Prisons are so woven through our culture, we are always on the lookout for ones that liberate rather than imprison. Our new favorite: MAN REPELLER.
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When we found this gif, we thought “How beautiful. That is the wondrous globe we are riding around on every day.“ We started following trails and inviting connectors —the daily practice of Improvised Life —and suddenly there was a poem by Pablo Neruda we had never read before, whose last line led us full circle to perfection.
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In his installation at the Maruhiro Flagship store in Nagasaki prefecture, Japanese designer Yusuke Seki used 25,000 pieces of imperfect ‘Shinikiji’ ceramics as bricks, stacking them to create a platform/floor to support simple timber plinths that showcase the products on sale. Feeding into our serious “brick love“, we looked closer into how Seki transformed the pottery into…
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