Artist Donald Judd’s iconic plywood tables are made with materials you can get anywhere, with methods just about anybody can do: his response to the lack of useful, well-designed furniture he was unable to find.
Read MoreThis Cool Art Shelf Headboard Is Really a Plywood Box in Disguise
We’ve been collecting examples of shelf headboards that double as picture/object displays to inspire the one we are designing in our head. Looking closely we realize they are really only a plywood box…
Read MorePlywood Niche Set In Sheetrock Wall
We love this very practical, very stylish idea from Oink Studio: a plywood-lined niche set in a in sheetrock wall. Baltic Birch’s stripey uniform plies make for a pleasing natural edge that gives a crisp furniture feel with an organic edge. Here’s what you need to know…
Read MorePerfect Room Screen: Bamboo Wave or Plywood Eames?
Over the years, one of the very best purchases I have made were two bamboo Wave Room Screens made of thin bamboo slats that unfurl to create an organic wave shape. I have had mine at least 15 years in two spaces and they have proven to be endlessly useful. They are an inexpensive, stylish alternative to the classic Eames plywood screen I could not afford. Here are SOME of the ways I’ve used them…
Read MoreNiemann’s Workspace: Plywood Picture Rails + Other Good Ideas
During a visit to Christoph Niemann’s website recently, we found ourselves smitten with the images of his workspace. They were full of decidedly straight-forward, practical ideas with a sort of deconstructed charm: back-to-back work tables on simple pipe frames, articulating task lights, flat files that serve as additional work surfaces. Niemann wrote us that the…
Read MoreBrilliant Plywood: Stair Chair DIY
Now that it’s getting to be THAT time of year — the trees will soon be in bud, and warm weather upon us —we yen to hang out on stoops and stairs. We’re smitten with this StairChair that solves the problem of back support or needing a wide enough surface to lie down and snooze…
Read MoreFab Color-Tinted Plywood
As fans of plywood for its economical, elemental, very modern possibilities for stylish interiors, we are smitten with bright blue-stained plywood used in Vancouver’s Kin Kao Restaurant. Local Scott & Scott Architects choose plywood to use in tandem with readily available materials, including painted concrete, soaped beech, and galvanized metal. Their clever technique of using construction-grade…
Read MoreTom Sachs’ Video Homage to Plywood Will Help You Create
(Video link here.) When we stumbled on the sleek, illuminated video, Love Letter to Plywood, on Kottke, we hadn’t realized it was by artist Tom Sachs. Of all the plywood “makers” we know, he is among the most inspiring. The guy seriously understands and works the stuff, from his plywood “concrete” block, to his black plywood…
Read MoreStylish Painted Plywood Sofas, DIYable
Feeling under-the-weather, we surfed the ever-inspiring Aqqindex and came across two seriously-stylish painted wood sofas, the top designed by Salvati and Tresoldi in 1978, the one below from Maison de Vacances designed Andre Monpoix in 1963. We imagined them as DIY’s we could make out of plywood and started hunting for more examples to…copy.
Read MorePlywood Love: Bauhausian Kitchen Storage
This kitchen refurb by Hearth used plywood as cabinet storage in an elemental Bauhausian way. We love geometry of the squares and rectangles, the the grain showing through the washed finish and the holes instead of handles. …and are reminded once again the appeal of sliding panels… via Desire to Inspire
Read MorePlywood Swirls via Jigsaw Make Surprising Tables and…
We stumbled on this lovely side table at the ever-illuminating Aqqindex. “Paint and parchment side table” was the only info. We instantly envisioned plywood, one of our favorite materials for its possibility and accessibility. You could make a table like this with three rectangles and two flat sides cut with whimsical swirls.
Read MoreMaterial for Making: Healthy Plywood 101
Plywood is an endlessly useful, accessible, great-looking material for making, that has been inspired legions of artists, architects and designers. The glues used to make modern plywood often contains formaldehyde, so we’re passing on this great primer on healthy plywoods.
Read MoreStool, Reitveld Chair and Other Plywood DIYs, Via X-ray Vision
An essential practice of improvising is developing x-ray vision: you gradually train your eye, or mind to identify the essential structure of a thing, to understand how it works and how it is made. We learned about plywood construction by scrutinizing some cool simple furniture.
Read MoreTiny Plywood Studio Morphs into a Gallery via Pegs
We got a lot of ideas taking a little photo tour of the versatile 66-square-foot artist’s studio Anaan Stern and Shany Tal, with its many kinds of clever storage: folding bed, shelving, drawers of all sizes…But what we liked best are the wooden pegs inserted into sliding doors to hold works of art or open books, to make an ever-changeable private gallery.
Read MorePlywood Cube Room with Sliding Doors
We’ve known a number of people who have built small rooms within an existing space, but we have never seen one quite so appealing as this plywood cube. Bookshelves and storage along one side afford some sound proofing. And painted sliding doors make for an appealing wall in the main room.
Read MoreSheetrock or Plywood Walls With Shapes Cut Out
This installation by American artist Scott Carter is making us view walls as sculpture. Carter cuts out shapes from walls and formed them into furniture, like some living, human-sized puzzle. But we can’t stop mulling the idea of cutting out shapes from plywood, to give interest to walls or partitions.
Read Morehow to: bleached plywood walls, trivets, more
Bleaching plywood gives it a pale, silvery cast and much softer look than the usual orangey woodgrain, especially appealing when you’re using it on a wall.
Read Moreharry roseman’s draped and folded plywood
Artist Harry Roseman’s makes draped and folded plywood sculptures. They turn art for its own sake, and shows us a whole other realm of possibility for this uniquitous material.
Read Morecheap + chic: how to install and paint plywood floors
When Remodelista recently featured a picture of the Laboratory’s painted plywood floors in Remodeling 101: Painted Plywood—The Best Budget Wood Floor, I figured it was time to show HOW my plywood floors actually were made, and to lend a little reality to what it takes to install and paint 1000 square feet of them. I love ’em, and…
Read Morediy or buy: moveable magnetic plywood tiles, artworks…
Just as we posted about the many possibilities for using plywood as a wall covering, we learned of this brilliant play on the idea: moveable MAGNETIC silkscreened tiles made out of plywood. They are the brainchild of Giovanna and Matt Taylor, a couple who had never designed before. Remembering the blue-and-white ceramic tiles of her Italian childhood,…
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