Among the many projects we’re working on, is creating a standing desk – or perhaps better put – a standing area for our the 13-foot desktop we’re creating, so we can sit AND stand during many ours of blogging. We’ve seen many iterations on the internet, not to mention research as to why standing while you work is beneficial. Wirecutter’s recent article rounds up much of it, and shows the lengths, and cost, the standing desk obsession can take you to.
From our recent renovation we’ve discovered that in designing anything, it’s good to keep in mind the simplest, most bare-bones iteration; read more…
(Video link here.) Artist Tom Sachs, who we’ve posted about a number of times, recently made a video about plywood. He LOVES IT, uses a lot of it in his work, and has learned a great deal about handling it, which he summed up in this charming, illuminating video. It is totally after-are-own-hearts: in our the ongoing renovation of our Laboratory, we’ve made – and are making – all sorts of things from plywood…like the floors read more…
This makeshift pull’s austere beauty comes from having been made from Gorilla Tape, a super strong opaque black tape made by the Gorilla glue people. Our friend chose it because the pull had to be able to open a door held closed by strong magnets (which he’s using to gradually “train” the 8-foot warped plywood door to straighten out…which it is.)
We love the pull so much, and think it looks SO good, we might just leave it… read more…
We love the surprising “flower arrangements” created by Sania Pell, author of Homemade Home for Children. Carrots, radishes, herbs and other market treasures give earthy charm to a glass vase of flowers. Great!
Good lighting is essential to making any space come alive, ESPECIALLY one suffering from disorder, as ours has during our recent move of lock-stock-and-many barrels. The solution was Lunette, lighting designers David Weeks’ and Lindsey Adelman’s inexpensive clip-on lamp shade we bought and blogged about a couple of years ago, but never had occasion to use. We bought two more in advance of the move and found them a perfect INSTANT solution to bare bulbs and unresolved lighting fixtures. It’s soft form is somehow perfect with our sculptural 50′s Atomic base which has lost its original globe, as well as the inexpensive porcelain pull-chain socket ”thrown up” as a temporary placeholder for a sconce. read more…
In the days after our move to Harlem, friends came to help with the massive amount of unpacking, disposing of paper and boxes, and figuring out how to make the unfinished space as livable and pleasant as possible. As is typical with well-layed plans, ours did not go altogether smoothly. read more…
Photographer Maria Robledo emailed us a couple of images of her impromptu flower arrangements, with these words:
I love making these freehand arrangments.
I dont start with that intention, i start with looking at the leaf or flower as a photo then i bunch ‘em together w/o thinking.
it’s a surprise to me too because they just come out to look so pleasing.
We admire how fluid her process is: she doesn’t start with an idea in mind. A leaf or a flower grabs her and then she’s off ”bunching them together” to discover how they will arrange themselves…
…like the blossoms that ended up – unexpectedly, charmingly – inside the jar/vase… read more…
On Ikea’s impossible-to-translate blog, Livet Hemma, we found this image of the two-toned fabrics European Ikeas are selling. We’re not crazy about the color scheme but love the idea: why not overlap vividly-colored tablecloths or large swathes of cotton or linen to make a color block table? Unhemmed ends are CHIC.
But we never showed what actually happens over the course of a week as the tightly-closed bulbs open and bloom. So we photographed the hyacinths that we’d plunked into a Smarta bowl from Ikea about 5 days ago. All we had to do was water them lightly every few days. Over days we watched the plants transform in front of our very eyes. We realized that we had actually created a tiny tabletop garden, whose subtle changes we could enjoy daily.
When Design Within Reach launched the Sapien bookcase, it seemed like a brilliant idea: a bookshelf that allows books to be stacked vertically over five feet high, to form a neat stack from which you could easily remove any book. CB2 promptly knocked off the rectangular-pillar-with-removable-shelves-design. We bought one, then rued the day. The problem is, once the bookshelf is loaded with books, it becomes too heavy to move, a major flaw for something that is really about living fluidly, the opposite of built-in shelving.
So we devised the perfect hack: a ready-made set of wheels (originally made to hold metal file boxes) that fit the Sapien base perfectly. read more…
We knew that changing the shape of a sofa’s or bed’s legs can be a simple way of jazzing up lines and look AND that there are lot of options around for unfinished wooden legs of all shapes and sizes. And we’ve written before about mask-painting one or all the legs of a table or chair. But we hadn’t thought of putting the two ideas together until we saw a how-to on the French blog Morning by Foley.
By by masking off parts of the an unfinished wooden leg with tape, you can create all sorts of designs – subtle and not-so – that lend a pleasing detail to a bed or sofa; read more…
Lately, we’ve come across some extraordinary uses for OSB – oriented strand board (also known as waferboard) – a cheap, strong, durable building material made from pressed tree chippings and resin. It’s generally been viewed as garbage, something to use for structure and hide, until open-minded designers started to explore its potential and beauty.
Architect Carl Turner’s use of it to clad the interiors of two barns borders on obsession; it is everywhere as itself: as walls, beds, sofas, benches, even an interior pod that houses a bathroom and utility room. read more…
Today Remodelista featured Garde, a new shop in Los Angeles that sells “stylishly understated” housewares. We are smitten with the poplar-top table’s Garde’s owner Scotti Sitz designed to display her wares, and which are available by custom order.
The bases appear to be an ingenious use of simple copper plumbing pipe. We’ve thought of all the times we’ve found ourselves in the plumbing department of our local hardware store, mulling the possibilities for copper pipe, t-joints and other fittings. Copper, left uncoated, is beautiful shiny or dull.
We are smitten with this room divider featured a while back on IkeaHackers: it is a rather visionary transformation of a simple material by Marloes van Heteren of SOLUZ and Remco Wilcke of CUBE Architecten. Clear glass Ikea rectangular vases, in two sizes, were painted white inside, to make reverse-painted glass, a compelling material we posted some time ago. They are used as “bricks”, staggered with light shining through, and cemented with strong transparent glue.
The effect is of a curiously light wall that can be made in a variety of shapes to define a space, read more…
, a super strong opaque black tape made by the Gorilla glue people. Our friend chose it because the pull had to be able to open a door held closed by strong magnets (which he’s using to gradually “train” the 8-foot warped plywood door to straighten out…which it is.)
. Carrots, radishes, herbs and other market treasures give earthy charm to a glass vase of flowers. Great!
”thrown up” as a temporary placeholder for a sconce. 
