BoingBoing recently posted a compelling video (below or link here) of a toupeed fellow named Augustus Gladstone giving a tour of the room he lives in in an abandoned hotel, in some unnamed city. Gladstone’s apartment is an eccentric, strangely homey place decorated with what appears to be mostly found stuff and collections of bric-a-brac. There’s some question as to the authenticity of the video but no matter. It’s really interesting either way.
What caught our eye (in addition to two old TV’s placed one on top of the other) was an ingenious shelving unit using stacks of books as bricks to hold boards. It’s clever, and in another setting, could be pretty chic. Just for the hell of it, we typed “books as bricks” into google images and found some beautiful iterations of the idea, like read more…
We found this great looking d-i-y mousepad on our friend Tara Mann’s Tumblr. We love Tara’s description of her eureka moment:
My friend Phillip recently had cork flooring put in his kitchen, and as I was shoving a cheese covered baguette down my throat, staring at the floor, I thought about how nice that material would look as a mousepad.
So I asked Phil if he had any extra cork, and he had quite a bit laying dormant in a closet. Anyways, I measured and cut the cork in squares of various sizes. They look great on desks and work really well! read more…
We are big fans of masking tape for taping up pictures, ideas, and even making designs right on the wall, as our friend Holton Rower did in a Children’s hospital in Russia; – white, black, and blue painter’s tape are our favorites. We’d forgotten about the possibilities of using brightly colored and/or patterned Japanese Washi tape for the same purposes, until we stumbled on this lovely inspiration board.
We are completely smitten with Variations on Normal, Dominic Wilcox’s blog about his inventions and simple,”out there” solutions to everyday needs and wants. Wilcox is a self-described “artist, designer, inventor and ‘thinkeruper’ who works within the territory of the ‘everyday’.” That’s our favorite territory.
Each of Wilcox’s concepts and inventions is annotated. To make his room more welcoming, he carpeted it with Welcome mats. “You can even wipe your feet wherever you want. Oh and there is a patch of floor where the door mat should be.”
“ …to avoid the squeezing at wrong end arguments” he invented Two WayToothpaste, with a cap on each end.
Wilcox has gained some notoriety of late for his phallic and practical Finger-nose stylus for touchscreen technology… read more…
One of our favorite mindgames is to think about what we can do without, or perhaps better put: What do we really need? We started doing it rigorously in the kitchen when we had to downsize years ago, and began to ask ourselves,”What equipment is truly necessary for the way we cook”. Not only did we discover that we did NOT need the wealth of gadgets being touted as essential, but we didn’t even need some things that people take for granted, like an electric toaster. In our smaller space, we saw an electric toaster as a space glutton that we didn’t want on our counter. About the same time, we came across an inexpensive stovetop fish grill in a Japanese kitchenware store. Hmm, we thought, wonder if we could toast bread on this? It worked wonderfully and we’ve been using it to grill our bread on a burner ever since…(sometimes we put the buttered toast back on it to melt…)
After we posted Gary Chang’s 344 square foot Hong Kong apartment, we thought we’d pretty much seen the pinnacle of morphing possibilities for TINY. Until this morning, when we found ourselves riveted by this video of photographer Christian Schallert‘s 258 square foot Barcelona apartment (apx 11′ x 23′): a former pigeon loft re-envisioned by designer Barbara Appolloni. (Check out the “before” shots in the beginning!) We’ve seen this clever configuration of cubes likened to Legos, but find the image misleading. This completely built-in, every-need-and-square-inch-considered space is like one of those Chinese puzzle boxes that suddenly open to reveal hidden chambers; everything is hidden behind walls until Schallert wants to access it. It is an “action apartment”, given great charm by the stunning view and penthouse feel. read more…
Spotted in the left hand corner of this Corsican kitchen, a sink so wide and shallow that it can be used as a “wet” work surface, to wash and pare the artichokes or any other vegetable. Shallow sinks fly in the face of usual thinking of “the deeper the better”. For deep sinks make us have to bend over and work in an uncomfortable position, whether it be washing dishes or cleaning lettuce. We prefer shallowish sinks, our ideal being the custom-made one our friend Margot Wellington had made for her East Hampton kitchen, which allows her to pile dirty dishes at one end, and prep food on the other.
Faced with the possibility of camping in a kitchenless space, we’ve been thinking about ways to forge a makeshift kitchen. Lately, we’ve come across a number of kitchen islands made out of sawhorses and a slab of wood. Although they have a pleasingly ad hoc feeling, sawhorses naturally seem to possess a low-key architectural aesthetic, as witnessed by our many posts on saw horse tables (more below). Unique slabs of wood make for compelling surfaces, like this massive slab of cypress featured in a recent Dwell slideshow. read more…
Using sliding panels and walls and consummately clever thinking, architect Gary Chang revamped his tiny 344-square-foot Hong Kong apartment to be able to change it into 24 different designs. It totally challenges preconceived notions of what a space can be, which is Chang’s mission. We are especially inspired by his use of sliding walls, which offers fantastic potential in small urban spaces, allowing them to become mutable and expansive. And we wish there were a place to buy the sleek murphy bed-cum-sofa he designed.
We love this quote from Design Milk’s great interview: “Psychologically, one should ‘maintain’ an open mind on how to use the space and avoid, as much as possible, the pre-conceptions on what a ‘home’ should function and look like.”
Spotted in Annaleenas HEM: taping down an electric cord with a charming warning…the opposite of the usual mass of gaffer’s tape. We’re thinking this would encourage people to step OVER the cord rather than stepping on it as gaffer’s tape does. We’re wondering how long it would stay in good shape.
It also makes us think about taping down electrical cord with a multitude of colored tapes in stripes or other designs that are not about hiding what’s going on, but making it a design element. Artist Jim Jambie‘s wonderful floors come to mind… read more…
Every morning we scroll through A LOT of blogs looking for delicious/interesting/useful ideas and improvisations. Lately, we spotted some Ikea pieces buried in features about stylish interiors. Our view of Ikea is that when it’s great, it’s really great, like the Alto-esque stacking stools they used to sell for $12 and the geometric rug, above, that we blogged a while back. And then there is Ikea that becomes great when used cleverly…
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…
For years we’ve wondered why extension cords and power strips have to be SO ugly; we’ve secretly been waiting for an alternative that we won’t want have to hide under rugs or behind pictures propped on the floor. So we were thrilled to discover Multi Line, an almost perfect solution.
It’s essentially an extension cord that has plugs placed along the whole length rather than at just one end. It allows you to plug things in where you need them, leaving the vividly-colored cord exposed. Because it’s like a long, slender wire, it can be neatly arranged. It’s a cool looking thing unto itself. read more…
If you’ve got a wood-burning fireplace in a city apartment and use it a lot, you have to come to terms with a firewood storage system. Do you store it in the basement and lug batches up flights of stairs (which we once did), or do you find a nook inside to pile it up (below)? We love the possibilities in Studio St. Paul‘s clever firewood storage, made by nestling wooden crates randomly amidst the pile of wood. They use it to display their textile goods. We’d store kindling and paper, little paintings, a lamp, maybe some books. read more…
. 
