We found this messed-up wall in Axel Vervoordt: Wabi Inspirations
There’s a lesson in this for renovators: read more…
cool spaces
the beauty of a messed-up wall
inspiring space: brancusi’s studio
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The great, eccentric MondoBloggo has decided to celebrate sculptor Constantin Brancusi’s 135 birthday by posting 30 gorgeous (unattributed) photos of the amazing artist, his work and his studio. The studio is a space we covet and dream of; we wonder how differently we’d think if we lived in a space like that…and then…is it possible to build some of that sensibility into an ordinary urban space…? read more…
snow fort guest house
Steve Burns/New York Magazine
It snowed AGAIN last night in New York City so we thought it fitting to post New York Magazine’ SWELL slideshow and story about the snow fort Steve Burns made in the courtyard of his chic-o apartment in Williamsburg, during the blizzard of a few weeks ago.
Piling the snow took about three hours, digging it out took a bit longer because I did it myself with a shovel and a really big serving spoon. All in all, I’d say about eight hours of work.
We LOVE the iced refreshments… read more…
brilliant solutions in 200 sq feet
Trevor Tondro for The New York Times
Living in New York City, we are obsessed with space: how much can we pack into not enough of it and still have it look clean and spare? Having 900 square feet, we imagine living in 450, to challenge our ingenuity. So we were smitten with last week’s New York Times article with slideshow that featured a 200!!! square foot apartment that is both clever and charming. It is the home of Malena Georgieva, a young interior design-smitten emigre from Bulgaria, done on a budget of $1,500.
First great idea: just about all the seats in the apartment swivel, to face either the “dining area” or “living room”. read more…
kitchen cabinets in colors vs the trend to black (and ikea’s new look)
Magnus Anesund
We just thinking how refreshing these colored cabinets are as opposed to our usual default WHITE, and were reminded of the multi-colored cabinets we posted sometime back AND Pascal Anson’s wonderful array of mismatched cabinet doors. Then we came across photos of Ikea’s new look at Core 77: a clear mainstreaming of the trend to very dark grays and blacks we’ve been seeing lately. read more…
evocative ideas from “the best of the selby 2010″
The Selby recently posted its favorite photos of 2010. So we choose our favorites of its favorites: all have an idea that we can put to use (or at least make us think), like stacking books horizontally as well as vertically on our library shelves: the flow and visuals are totally different. The wall of book in the picture looks almost like a patchwork quilt…
We love the idea of making a cloth or paper panel printed with a big view, as a kind of trompe l’oeil, to expand a space, like this (though we’d probably not choose convenience store shelves, as funny as it is).. read more…
kid’s toy craft as home design inspiration
Joel Henriques
One of our favorite blogs these days is Made by Joel, the toy and craft projects that artist Joel Henriques makes for his kids. He manages to make A LOT out of ‘nothing’: dollhouses out of Cheerios boxes, puppets from paper clips and cardboard, cities from paper. The thing that we love is how Joel’s creations affect our thinking. We find ourselves mentally applying his ideas and his spare, modernist sensibility to our grown-up lives, looking at ordinary stuff as art materials, and solutions. We want his paper dollhouse furniture made life-size… read more…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
