cool spaces

minimalist timber bed + trompe l’oeil bath

David Dubois (photo: Olivier Amsellem)

We LOVE this simple bed on a base of this rough-cut timbers, one longer than the other to extend beyond the bed to make a built-in side table. This bedroom is part of an exhibition at The Villa Noailles, an arts center located in the hills above Hyères, in the Var, in southeastern France. The villa is an early modernist house, built by architect Robert Mallet-Stevens for art patrons in 1925. (It has quite a history.)

Four designers were invited to design a guest room in a wing of the building, conceiving the basic furniture of a room: a bed, a table-office, bedding, a lamp and a vase.

In this bathroom, the walls were covered with artful photomurals, that expand the space (imagining it with plain walls shows the scope of the transformation, do-able in any untiled bathroom.) read more…

11.29.10 | comments | in bath, bathing, cool spaces, copy this!, elements, inside, materials, sleeping, walls + windows |

cardboard office + furniture (+ where to buy cardboard)

Tara Mann alerted us to Mashable’s slide show of unusual offices. We especially like this impromtu cardboard office designed by Paul Coudamy, who cleverly used corrugated cardboard as walls and shelves (more photos follow). Of course we instantly started hunting down that really thick cardboard that’s so perfect for making furniture like this chaise… read more…

11.03.10 | comments (2) | in cheap + great, cool spaces, copy this!, furniture, inside, materials, resources, resources blogs + sites, walls + windows, working |

materials we’re smitten with: concrete cloth

Our new favorite fantasy material is Concrete Cloth: a flexible cement impregnated fabric that hardens when hydrated to from a thin durable water and fire proof concrete layer. This video and a pdf about it gave us lots of ideas. You can drape it over forms to mold it into shapes, like these sculptural chairs and sofas read more…

11.01.10 | Comments Off | in buildings, cool spaces, furniture, hard, materials, outside, resources |

dieter roth’s workspace + the courage to ‘leave crap the way it is’

Dirk Dobke/From Dieter Roth Estate via Hauser & Wirth Gallery

We originally planned to post this image of artist Dieter Roth’s studio with little comment just because we find it illuminating to see how creative people work, what their spaces look like. Then we stumbled on the story behind this image clipped from the New York Times Magazine a couple of weeks ago, in a piece about an exhibition of Roth’s Work Tables & Tischmatten at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in Manhattan. Tischmatten are large gray sheets of cardboard that Roth used to cover his work surfaces. From the Times:

…”[they] soaked up the life of the studio, some of it deliberate (say, a drawing), some of it accidental (the ring left by a cup of coffee or a glass of water), until they were retired from duty and hung on the wall.”

The introduction to the show on Hauser & Wirth’s website reveals them to be more than diaries of Roth’s process:

“As a young concrete artist in the 1950s and 1960s, Roth produced what was then in fashion: organized, controlled works that others would like. ‘In my shame about my smears – which no one wanted to see and no one actually looked at – I started to make constructions,’ he later recalled. ‘Today I leave such crap the way it is. When I have the courage.’

…this body of work…poignantly describes the complex ways in which the artist’s ‘courage’ took form.” read more…

10.18.10 | comments | in art, cool spaces, paths + processes, people, signs, working |

brilliant d-i-y pallet desks, table, stairs

Rogier Jaarsma

When we pass cast-off wooded shipping pallets on the street, we find ourselves imagining ideas we’ve collected in our “pallets” file, and trying them out in our minds. We are especially inspired by the visionary open offices Dutch firm Most Architecture designed as a temporary space for the company Brandbase. The client asked that the space be furished with recyclable materials, so the designers thought of shipping pallets, configuring them in ways that invited people to sit, stand or lie on them.

In addition to some cool desks, Most designed a conference table…

…(that with its glass top, it would make a fine, odd dining table) read more…

10.03.10 | comments (2) | in cool spaces, furniture, hard, inside, materials, resources, working |

the art of temporary shelter

Here is the challenge: Build a structure that is…

…temporary

…has at least two and a half walls

…is big enough to contain a table

…has a roof made of shade-making organic materials through which one can see the stars…

…

What would you build?

These are some of the Talmudic constraints that twelve design contest winners worked under to make their versions of a sukkah, the ephemeral, rough-hewn dwelling built to celebrate the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot. The twelve unique structures are on display for two days in Union Square Park in New York City. Alerted by a friend, we ran over to see them, and to learn about the amazing idea of a sukkah, about which we knew nothing, and which expanded our ideas of both “shelter” and “celebration”. read more…

09.20.10 | comments | in buildings, celebrations, community, cool spaces, family + friends, identity, outside, sightings |

sliding walls and (garage) doors

Sally Schneider

Friends of ours recently finished the long renovation of their brownstone in Brooklyn; designed by artists, the house is full of interesting ideas. One of the most dramatic is the floor-to-ceiling sliding doors that collapse sideways to open to the lush garden in the back…on two floors no less. (Our photographs were taken while the punch-list was being done, a few days before our friends moved in; we thought it would be great to have before-and-after photos down the line of the empty-then-lived in house.)

When the doors are fully open, the house feels like a tree house: the outside is, startlingly, right there…expanding the concept of al fresco...

Then we started looking for ways to achieve this lovely effect with more modest means… read more…

09.07.10 | comments (6) | in cool spaces, elements, garden, hard, inside, kitchen, materials, outside, walls + windows |

new york city beekeeper/surfer

Todd Selby/The Selby

The Selby has run a really nice story-with-few-words about Andrew Field, chef of Rockaway Taco, in Rockaway Beach, Queens – right by the beach – who loves surfing and keeps bees on his roof (we are always heartened when we discover a New York City beekeeper; it reminds us that nature is here, even in the midst of the city…”build a hive and they will come!…)

We’ve been pondering what makes Todd Selby’s work so compelling. He’s not a great photographer in the usual sense; individual photos are not terribly well-composed or exposed or beautiful. But, man, does that guy have an eye for a story, which he always manages to tell in a compelling way, with lots of photos. He makes sure to choose interesting people in their very personal spaces, honing in on the details and surroundings, so you get a sense of where this person is living and what their life is like, some of what they see when they go about their day. Like this little detail that speaks volumes: read more…

09.02.10 | comments (2) | in cool spaces, identity, inside, inspiration blogs + sites, paths + processes, people, sightings |

thinking about structures from the inside out

We came across this coupling of essential quotes when we were poking around John Zernings blog about Garden Trellises and Architectural Space Frames.

“Applied to architecture and structure, the former is primarily an aesthetic position; the latter is a principle of economy.” wrote Zerning. We find both immensely useful, and made a sign to remind us…”

You might wonder how we ever came across Zerning’s site in the first place, living in the city as we do, with no garden, or even a terrace. We were following the trail of some images that have been flying around the blogs, of a beautiful architecture of wires… read more…

08.30.10 | comments | in cool spaces, garden, how-to, inspiration blogs + sites, materials, outside, people, projects + play, resources |

cardboard, crates + chairs as building materials

Tiffany Chu/Dwell

When we read that Centre Pompidou in Paris was offering a Cardboard Carton Workshop, we wanted to beam ourselves there, a la Star Trek, to see what more we could add to our overflowing file and minds about this wonderfully versatile material. We were stunned by a photo of an archway made of cardboard sheets combined in layers and compressed; it flies in the face of the usual ways of building with cardboard, of using the flat sides as walls. It is the work of Tadashi Kawamata who is known for the spare structures he builds out of humble materials – pine boards, cardboard, packing materials, chairs – in unlikely places. They seem impromptu (though they take a great deal of work and planning), and speak of temporariness and informality; they somehow question the spaces and structures we take for granted. Now wonder his workshop has lines around the block.

When we saw pictures of Kawamata’s art at the Pompidou’s site, we realized we had seen his work before and had a vivid unattributed memory of it: of beautiful, odd, slapped together-looking nests and houses perched high up in the ancient tress of Madison Square Park, in the center of New York City. They made us LOOK with wonder and, for a moment, imagine ourselves hiding out in one of them but we never stopped to find out who had made them. Now we know, and are inspired by a central theme of Kawamata’s art: read more…

08.09.10 | comments | in art, buildings, cool spaces, inside, materials, outside, people, projects + play, resources, strategies |

tom sachs’ philosophy of making

Todd Selby//The Selby

A picture of a chair made out of orange-and-white-striped wooden safety barriers that we saw on The Selby led us to discovering Tom Sachs. He’s an artist who makes elaborate recreations of modern icons: masterpieces of engineering and design of one kind or another, from Knoll office furniture to Prada to NASA (like this hilarious video). The all-seams-showing recreations are made out of ordinary stuff like phone books and Foamcoare welded together with duct tape or a glue gun. As it is clear from The Selby’s pictures of Sach’s living/studio space, the work of this imaginative inventor/artist holds ideas for our own more modest creations…

Although we don’t know what it says, we’re crazy about Sach’s bedspread, and the idea of writing on our own…

….not to mention the wonderful chair… read more…

07.26.10 | comments (1) | in art, cool spaces, elements, inside, inspiration, inspiration blogs + sites, materials, people, repurpose, sleeping, storage |

blog find: daniel hale’s ‘serendipity rising’

Daniel Hale

We are so happy to have discovered Serendipity Rising, architect Daniel Hale’s blog that is mostly about the evolution of his home in Napa Valley, which seems to be a sort of laboratory for his ideas. The guy loves soft metals like zinc and lead which he cuts and hammers in unusual ways; he transforms salvaged woods and ‘finds’ by applying modern lines and layers of techniques into an eclectic take, like this incredible flight of stairs: “I layered black over brown and ran a strip of lead sheeting up the middle”. What he does to his own house is freer than the “client” work we’ve seen, as he follows his ideas for his own pleasure. “Tickle” is a recent post – a sort of poem-story (edited here) – about his violent and fearless transformation of an old piano, which had been left in the winery he turned into his studio: read more…

07.19.10 | comments | in bath, cool spaces, elements, floors, inside, materials, people, reclaim, repurpose, resources |

andrea zittel’s investigative living

When we wrote about clipped-together cardboard box shelving a while back, we mentioned wanting to paint the cardboard boxes – coat them with something to change their look (we were thinking rubber paint) – knowing that the cardboard would swell slightly and become….something else: not smooth but sculptural, possibly even stronger once it had dried. After a few comments to the effect of: “bad idea…YOU CAN”T paint cardboard”, we put the idea aside. Then we saw Andrea Zittel’s wonderful cardboard construction, with its cryptic blurb:

“For the last year there has been a teetering pile of cardboard boxes precariously stacked against the dining room wall. Today the masterpiece was finished and installed…. Walla!”

Look at that!!! we thought as we sailed from one website to another discovering Andrea Zittel. FOR YEARS she has been following her imaginings and exploring ways to define and organize space, question assumptions about it, experiment with new ways and systems for living.

Zittel’s not-quite-finished website is all about her work as a – WHAT? -, an installation artist-designer-sculptor-lifestyle thinker and investigator… She is the driving force behind A-Z West,”an institute of investigative living” read more…

07.06.10 | comments (2) | in art, buildings, cool spaces, dream houses, furniture, identity, inside, inspiration, paths + processes, people, reimagine, strategies |

lydia wills’ apartment: before + after + in between

Ellen Silverman

Knowing that Lydia Wills was about to move to a bigger apartment, we enlisted Ellen Silverman to photograph her 600-square-foot studio near Gramercy Park. We’ve known Lydia for years and have watched her apartment evolve into a home with lots of good ideas, far too many to cover in one post. So we thought we’d do the broad strokes now and then focus on specifics during the next few weeks. The real story of Lydia’s apartment is that it slowly evolved, as Lydia did, growing out of one thing and into another, as she discovered furniture, fabrics and lighting that resonated with her life.

Lydia has been sewing since she was young and loves natural textiles, which she used to define the space (often incorporating unusual and vintage fabrics). Over years, she discovered and fell in love with the work of Scandinavian and European Modernist designers. She bought some enduring, beautifully designed pieces of furniture and lighting (mostly on Ebay, for a fraction of their cost), like the leather chair by Yngve Ekstrom, the fantastic table by Bengt Gullberg and the chandelier by Eric Hoglund.

Since there is nothing more gratifying than seeing before-and-after photos, we’ll start with a picture of what this apartment looked like BEFORE, when someone else had it: read more…

06.23.10 | comments (6) | in before + after, cool spaces, elements, furniture, inside, kitchen, paths + processes, reimagine, rooms |

hiding furniture with fabric

Sometimes there’s no way around keeping a piece of furniture in your place that you’re not crazy about; you either need it (like a file cabinet or storage chest) or you can’t get rid of it just yet (you’re keeping it for the next place). Here’s an example of using a great fabric to hide a piece of furniture, from the fabulous house designed by the great Mexican architect Luis Barrigan that we blogged last week. Laying fabric upon wonderful fabric on the table and folding the corners in neatly makes it look interesting and intentional, rather than like a disguise (though we don’t imagine Barrigan is disguising anything in that house.)

We think, the example from Lonny Magazine, below, works pretty well, though it transmits subtle inklings of “disguise”. We think it would have been much more complete with another piece of fabric, or a runner (even placed front to back) draped over it, a la Barrigan.