When I was looking for an affordable space to buy in New York City, I devised strategies for envisioning how I might tailor the various spaces I was considering. I ended up teaching these strategies to several friends who were “stuck” when trying to design a new kitchen, study — any room at all; these simple approaches helped them unplug the creative flow of ideas, and ultimately find solutions to their design dilemmas.
The first thing is to figure out all the things you need a space to do or have, and make a list. read more…
We often post ideas on ‘the improvised life’ that we might never make, like the futurist cinder block artist Tom Sachs displayed at recent exhibition Space Program Mars. There is a simple, practical logic to this: these creations remind us of do-able possibilities that, had we the time or wherewithall, we COULD make ourselves.
Sach’s wonderful block is made with ordinary materials: plywood bored with holes, flat corner irons, flat-head screws, possibly a skim of concrete for texture. We find the image infiltrating our prejudices, shifting the notion of what a cinder block can be, offering up the possibilitiy that we can view our daily norms in radically different ways, and maybe, with stuff hidden in our tool chest or at the hardware store, create something new.
Some time ago we wrote about IdeaPaint, special paint that can turn any surface into a dry erase “white board”. You can write all your brilliant ideas on it with markers, then wipe them off when you don’t need them anymore. Now the IdeaPaint people have come out with a great variation on the theme: CLEAR IdeaPaint, that can be painted on virtually any painted wall or wood surface. Paint it on your exotically colored wall, or a plywood wall or door. It ain’t cheap—about $225 covers 50 feet.
But as we settle into our new space and laboratory, we’re constantly thinking about the possibility in writing our many ideas on walls…and then erasing. We’re reminded of the folks at IDEO, read more…
Our friend Maria Robledo sent this photo with the words “Color inspiration”. It was a two-fer gift: a virtual bunch of flowers AND a color combo we couldn’t imagine otherwise (for wall or floor or…) …that has us looking around… read more…
The Internet and phone are turned off in our old place; we’re camping amidst boxes. Needless to say, posting has been erratic…we spent 15 hours yesterday at the new space wrangling electricians, Fios guys, handiman, rug delivery.
We’re both overwhelmed and excited by the impending move to new digs, ‘the improvised life’s ongoing work-in-progress, a move from pre-war to modern.
We’re going dark for a week or so while we get things organized…and our wit’s about us. See you soon.
And big thanks for all who wrote to wish us well on the new space.
A few months ago, I bought a space in Harlem, soon to be home of ‘the improvised life’s new LABORATORY, in which to experiment with all sorts of ideas for home and daily living.
I had scoured New York City real estate listings for YEARS, traipsing from space to space in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan weighing the pros and cons of neighborhoods, commutes, space-for-the-money – a huge list – until I finally said YES to modest space with very good bones. It was a lucky find, fitting a VERY limited budget AND having the essentials I’d been looking for: proximity to great transportation, a real neighborhood, good security, and most important of all, a wonderful view that could never be obstructed. The architecture is nothing to speak of and the apartment itself needed serious work.
It has become a lesson in seeing through the superficial to the bones beneath, and envisioning possibilities. read more…
The other day BoingBoing posted a ‘photo gallery’ from the newly-released Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter by Lloyd Kahn, a book of the possibilities for small space living of all kinds, from Colin Doane’s sauna, above, in Queen Charlotte Islands with green whale jawbones lashed to the front rafters to this spectacular little cabin in Montana’s mountains… read more…
Spotted at Accidental Mysteries, a boy (or is she a girl?) wearing stunningly chic, rigged glasses that seem to be more for look than practicality: there appears to be no glass. Who cares? For sure they give him a new virtual lens to look through and a unique identifying style. (We had a friend that used to wear lensless glasses for that very reason; they would change his ‘head’, shift his identity and offered a buffer from the world.)
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…
(Video link here.) In 1975, film maker Tom Schiller made a documentary of Henry Miller. A full 35 minutes of it takes place in Miller’s astonishing bathroom after he had woken up. We found all 35 minutes riveting, though the first 3:35 give the big gist: Miller decorated his bathroom in a break-the-mold way that has nothing to do with the usual concerns of style and luxury, that takes you WAY beyond the little room:
People often come in here and get lost as it were…they get fascinated with these pictures. I often myself, to tell you the truth if it, I spend long minutes in here reviewing them all, wondering why did I get them, why did I put them up there. They run a gamut from the Buddhists to the whores to the maniac that made that beautiful castle up there.
In a way, it is very much like a sort of voyage. I look upon it, a voyage of ideas. We’re traveling not around the world but around my bathroom which is a little microcosm like the world…that’s one of the beauties about it, that it can take you anywhere. You let your mind roam. As we way, one thing leads to another. If you sit here and you are relaxed, why you’re free to make free associations. read more…
The most inspiring article in last weekend’s New York Times was about Chris Hackett and his workshop in Gowanus, the epicenter of Brooklyn’s burgeoning underground of artists, inventors, chefs, carpenters, urban gardeners, hackers, fabricators, scavengers, repurposers, live-free-or-die,and prepare-for-the-shit-to-hit-the-fan proponents.
On Chris Hackett’s personal periodic table, the world’s most interesting, and abundant, substance is an element he calls obtainium. Things classified as obtainium might include the discarded teapot that he once turned into a propane burner, or the broken beer bottle he used to make a razor, or the 9-millimeter shell casings he acquired some time ago, melted in a backyard foundry (also made of obtainium) and cast into brass knuckles for a girlfriend.
Hacket has been described as a “ master improviser…It’s almost like he thinks with his hands”, and his workshop, an obtainium mine, rich with materials for making: read more…
We’re always on the lookout for interesting painted floor ideas and love this modernist pattern painted onto the naked wood. This ‘freeform’ design would have to be done with care, with a series of stencils, we imagine, shapes carefully cut out of big sheets of thin but firm plastic.
We started to imagine other “moderne” designs that would be great on a floor and thought of the great Alvin Lustig, who designed book jackets, textiles, magazines and interiors in the 40′s and 50′s. The graphic elements from these book jackets these be swell: read more…
Studio Ve’s Endy’s line of furniture gave us a quick, smart design solution for handling the cut ends of d-i-y wood furniture: paint them colors to accent the intention of the cuts and a lot of charm.
, that can be painted on virtually any painted wall or wood surface. Paint it on your exotically colored wall, or a plywood wall or door. It ain’t cheap—about $225 covers 50 feet.
by Lloyd Kahn, a book of the possibilities for small space living of all kinds, from Colin Doane’s sauna, above, in Queen Charlotte Islands with green whale jawbones lashed to the front rafters to this spectacular little cabin in Montana’s mountains… 
