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Stumbling on this wonderful image of sculptural black-painted chairs on a wall of the La Gran Francia Hotel in Granada, Nicaragua got us thinking about ways to store un-folding chairs. This assemblage is a more playful, freeform take on the Shaker-esque practice of hanging uniform chairs on hooks (below).
Then, moving too fast as we scanned Remodelista, we mistook Williamsburg’s (and now San Francisco’s) store The Future Perfect as someone’s HOME, and thought, how cool is that: line up interesting chairs, and even a bench or two on a shelf, like a display of sculptures. read more…
05.16.13 |
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in furniture, solutions, storage, walls + windows, why not? |
Of the many imaginary inventions in my head, a pop-up guest room has had many iterations. Living in a moderate-sized New York City apartment with only one bedroom, I’d love a separate, somewhat private space to offer guests who come to sleep in my big open livingroom/kitchen/workspace. My latest inspiration comes Fabrica, Benetton’s communication research center in Treviso, Ialy.’Next Cabane’ was a design exploration spurred by a foldable wooden structure found in a dark corner of an antique market in the south of Scotland. Fabrica’s designers viewed envisioned it as movable rooms that can be carried from place to place.
‘small, temporary spaces where we can set our boundaries, seek shelter or simply live a different life rediscovering the quality and simplicity of things.
personal, intimate havens in harmony with their surroundings; they reflect on subjects like work, pop-up culture, loneliness, games.
alternative settings were one can live in a better way with more awareness, where design is at the service of research into materials, forms and structures.’
All it would take to make the frame is a some drilled slats of hardwood, jointed with hex bolts and wing nuts* nut whose “wings” provide a grip for the thumb and finger. You tighten the wing nut to secure the form; untighten it to fold it up for storage. read more…
05.15.13 |
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in diy, how-to, playing, reimagine, rooms, solutions |
modknobs.com
When we saw this cunning walnut doorknob from ModKnobs, we imagined it to be the perfect knob for our bathroom door. But when it finally arrived, the knob we thought so fab turned out to be huge and clunky, way out of scale for the space (see photo, below). We had neglected to take note of the knob’s actual dimensions and hold a template up in the space to see if it would work. Not only did we have to pay return shipping but a restocking fee as well, all because we had neglected a simple step.
It reminded us of other common mistakes we made when ordering hardware online during the Laboratory’s renovation. We learn our lessons the hard way! Like all lessons, some good came out of it; it lead us to create our 7-Step Guide to Buying Hardware Online so you can avoid our mistakes when you buy hardware:
read more…
05.14.13 |
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in elements, how-to, inside, resources, stores |
One of many things we love about artist/designer/craftsman/journeyman Max Lamb‘s work is that he ALWAYS has an unusual take on the practical AND he loves to reveal his process, offering in a powerful lesson in EMPOWERMENT. This video shows him making a wood stool out of huge chestnut tree log he hauled home from Springfield Park, London. It especially interests us because we lugged home several fallen tree hunks on our trusty Magna Cart
after Hurricane Sandy, then wondered what to do with them, having no access or facility with a chain saw. Fallen trees are a readily available raw material for a lot of people.
The big revelation from Lamb: you can fashion rough-hewn slabs and furniture parts out of fat tree trunk by using Steel Splitting Wedges, axes, hammers, a drawknife
and a good amount of muscle and gumption.
read more…
05.09.13 |
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in art, d-i-y, furniture, how-to, paths + processes, people |
Karin Matz Arkitekt2
Always on the lookout for clever way to divide and define a space, or give the illusion of different areas in an open space, we really like these clever “screens” from Swedish firm Karin Matz Arkitekt. They’re made of made from blue polypropylene string strung tight from floor to ceiling with hardware store fittings: simple, inexpensive materials, carefully thought out. read more…
05.07.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, elements, materials |
Marc Berenson
Marc Berenson sent us some snaps of magazine wallpaper he spotted at Steiner Studios at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The subject line read: I thought you might have an opinion on this homemade wallpaper from old magazine pages, it’s improvised
For sure we have an opinion: Although it kinda works in a public stairwell with that cobalt blue, we aren’t crazy about it since it’s so busy and we get addled by a lot of words and the pages don’t seem terribly well edited, and why look at commercial stuff? BUT…
WE LOVE THE IDEA!!!!
Lots of possibilities there. read more…
05.07.13 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, reclaim, walls + windows |
photo: maria robledo
This weekend when we go to the farmer’s market, we will have Tubetti Pasta with Asparagus, Morels and Fava Beans from Sally’s award-winning cookbook A New Way to Cook 
in mind. It the perfect spring-into-summer pasta recipe because it lends itself to endless improvisation, depending on what look’s best in the market, or how much energy we have.
It plays on an essential principle of improvisational cooking: most foods harvested in the same season — in this case asparagus, morel mushrooms, and various members of the pea family— have an affinity for one another.
The recipe is built on a basic technique: braising the vegetables in a flavorful fat and a little water, then tossing them together with small tubetti pasta and fresh herbs. If you’re pressed for time, use the essential method as a foundation and use only one or two of the vegetables or whatever else looks good in the market. Or swap out like vegetables: use other firm mushrooms like maitake instead of morels.
Shucking fava beans or peas can be a delight when done with friends, but if you’re pressed for time, frozen peas are a fine stand-in.
For those who want to improvise, here’s the basic approach: read more…
05.03.13 |
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in eating, entertaining, family + friends, food, recipes, resources books + zines |
photo: thomas loof
In the new Spring Design Issue of New York Magazine, artist Maira Kalman talks to longtime neighbor and friend Isaac Mizrahi about how Tel Aviv has influenced her New York apartment. The two images of Kalman’s apartment shows a warm, personal, comfortable, loose space, very different from the stark interiors of so many other designer’s homes. Kalman calls her apartment a “cabinet of curiosities” and indeed it appears to be. The suit hanging in the picture below was worn by Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini.
read more…
05.02.13 |
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in cool spaces, people |
photo: sally schneider
Over the years, just about every place we’ve lived has had hardwood floors. They’ve ranged from prewar bleached and polyeurathaned oak to white “pickled” new oak and lately, off-white, high-gloss painted slightly rough plywood. For all those years, we’ve searched for the best way to clean our floors without damaging the protective surface. Since New York City is a fairly dirty place, a simple dry-mopping won’t do; the dust that settles on the floor needs to be washed away or it will get ground into the surface (and our bare feet). The classic string mop is hard to wring out and doesn’t seem able to handle shoe marks very well.
Last week we came across an awesome combination: a Starfiber Star Mop read more…
05.01.13 |
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in cheap + great, floors, how-to, resources, strategies, tools |
Sally Schneider
For the renovation of my 1,000-square-foot ‘Laboratory’ in New York City, my mission was to open up the space to the spectacular park view AND fluidly accomodate an open kitchen, workspace, dining area, and living area. To do this, I removed a small bedroom to dramatically expand the main room and built an office area along one 15′ wall in the big space. The pressing question then became: how to “disappear” or close-off the office so I could “leave” my work? (This is the great dilemma of people who work at home; I learned the hard way that sleeping where you work is NOT a good idea.)
I discussed the problem with Scott McFarlane, an interior designer I consulted with early on in the project. A curtain won’t do”, said Scott. “It’s not substantial enough. You need to close your work off with a WALL, that will really make you feel it’s gone.” He thought for a moment. “I remember seeing a mechanism that was basically flat panels that roll on a track to become a flush wall that would conceal the office. When you rolled them back to reveal the office again, they would “nest” in a specially built nook.”
We found the mechanism — called the Aperto 60 H Operable Wall System read more…
04.30.13 |
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in cool spaces, elements, inside, materials, resources, storage, stores, walls + windows, working |
We’re smitten with the Quad Trivet a cool Indegogo project. It consists of 16 wooden cubes — oiled walnut or maple — connected by a flexible, durable, heat-resistant silicone strip inserted in the underside of the cubes. This structure allows various configurations and different applications ranging from a compact squares and rectangles to a widespread circular shape.
It’s a trivet you can configure to any size pot, a design game you can play with and leave sitting on a coffee table….We’re thinking we’d wear it as a necklace. read more…
04.24.13 |
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in elements, housewares, inside |
