Italian industrial designer Francesco Faccin, who teaches about “objectness/project making”, made a beautiful little video of the “bow drill”, a device he designed to start a fire manually, using the principle of rubbing two sticks together. “…a beech spindle is rotated within pre-formed holes in a board made from linden wood…The user kneels on the board to…
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When we saw “non-working” fireplace listed in real estate ads, we used to think “What good is that?”. Then we lost our space with a working fireplace and took the mantle with us; we realized just how great a non-working fireplace i.e. a mantle, can be. Depending on what it looks like and how it…
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César Cervantes is a Mexican art collector with an unconventional story and lifestyle. We love Cervantes’ comfortable library with a seating area of outdoor furniture (Reitveld crate furniture?) and the disparate collection of sagging shelves.
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We recently came across this tweet from God, with a new set of refreshing and useful commandments. Equally compelling, were tweets sent in response with suggestions for additional commandments. Here are some favorites:
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Peak season for artichokes is March through May and the markets are still full of plump globes. So I am making this recipe often to serve as an hors d’oeuvres with drinks before dinner parties, and the occasional panful for my supper. It chases after the flavors of fried artichokes I’ve had in Italy, but…
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We recently wrote about Rotten Apple, an artist who has done a series of inspired ourdoor hacks. Our favorite bit of brilliance: he placed magnetic poetry kits — an array of magnetized words that people typically display on their fridge — in an unlikely public place: a steel subway sign. Random riders can make poetry while they wait. It’s…
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We love outdoor fireplaces and are always looking for interesting iterations, like this big slab of rusting steel as a fireproof backstop, with a cast cement fireplace, and the one Constantino Nivola fashioned one out of ordinary brick to create his outdoor room.
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Recently, we stumbled on an image of UTEN.SILO (also known as the Wall All), the very stylish wall storage Dorothee Becker designed for Ingo Maurer in 1960s, almost half a century ago. Nor long after, we found Urbio, a new play on the essential idea, but with magents this time.
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Last week’s wild weather knocked most of the glorious cherry blossoms off the trees. We found ourselves walking through a wondrous pink “snow”. We sent a photo of this surprising landscape to a few friends. Two sent back haiku to go with it.
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This c 1900 makeshift kitchen/dining area in the sheltered space of a giant boulder in New South Wales reminded us of the many makeshift kitchens we’ve created over the years, outdoors and in, and simple ones where many a great meal have been forged.
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Sometimes people adept at designing things get jammed and stuck by thorny design problems. When that is the case, making a prototype with moveable parts can help to test out various iterations. You can shift them around and play with them to see how they will actually work and feel. Somehow, I had forgotten this essential technique until a friend reminded me and got my stalled hideaway bed/storage/bookcase unit project MOVING.
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Over the years, we posted a good number of stylish housewares made from copper or black pipe, from closet fittings to faucets to table bases and pot racks, all diy-able. Sometimes we don’t diy because we don’t really have a sense of the essential workings of the process: how do we actually do it?
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(Video link HERE.) This morning first thing, we listened to J.S. Bach’s Herr Gott, Dich Loben Alle Wir Chorale (BWV 130): PERFECT music to start the day. And along with it, as we went our morning routine, was the vision of musicians performing it. There is something remarkable about having the performance “live” even if we…
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Where are we going? via Fowler Museum at UCLA with thank to who ever sent it our way Update: A VERY astute reader wrote to tell us it was Proust. Even better!
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We stumbled on this compelling interior and were smitten by the slats of colored wood displayed on the wall, someone’s-we’don’t-know-whose artwork. Research hasn’t yielded the answer, but did tell us that the image is really about the small blue painting propped on the right of the mantle. Others in this series have found their way into very interesting interiors.

According to London-based design firm Doshi Levien, this fence was the inspiration for the line of cabinets below. We think the fence itself is just swell in it’s simple, curiously modern lines and simple construction. As for the cabinets, were interested to see someone else’s iteration of our long-held fantasy of using corrugated metal for cabinets and doors, even room…
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We discovered decorative painter Deirdre Newman when she reached out on Facebook to say “I can paint a lot (all) of the painted floors and walls you suggest! Would love to execute some of your amazing ideas!”. We poked around her huge portfolio of projects and found a trove of clever, meticulously-executed ideas. We especially like her faux parquet…
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Artist Holton Rower taped this sign in his studio years ago: a simple, powerful practice to constantly clear misunderstandings or hurts. Recently, we read literary critic D.G. Myers description of a practice he’s taken up since hearing of his diagnosis terminal prostate cancer:
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Lately, we’ve been seeing some pretty interesting uses of helium-filled balloons, which we’ve been fans of since we got a gaggle as a gift. First we stumbled on Tokyo-based design studio, h220430‘s balloon chair which promised a change of mood: “if you sit in this chair, you’ll be able to think positive thoughts even if you are feeling…
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Part of our philosophy at Improvised Life is to TRY THINGS OUT, whether it be ideas we have, or products we see. We test them on ourselves, in our own lives, to see if they will work. Our most recent test was a products we’d be waiting for for years: a safe way to remove…
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