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magazine or book page wallpaper???!!!!

Marc Berenson sent us some snaps of magazine wallpaper he spotted at Steiner Studios at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  The subject line read: I thought you might have an opinion on this homemade wallpaper from old magazine pages, it’s improvised For sure we have an opinion:  Although it kinda works in a public stairwell with that…

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kickstarter project: a magazine about ‘makeshift’

Here’s a magazine idea we find compelling: called Makeshift, it’s about the ingenious solutions and inventions people all over the world are making with what they’ve got on hand. Right now it exists as a Kickstarter project. We see it as a quarterly reminder of possibilities in magazine form, an antidote to Martha Stewart Living, Wallpaper,…

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8+ Strategies for Redecorating an Ugly Hotel Room

Being very sensitive to spaces, we have long been big on tailoring hotel rooms to our own sensibility and personal feng shui. Photos of the newly renovated Hôtel Baume in Paris made us think of the many strategies we’ve developed over years of traveling to shift the feeling of not-quite-right, often OVER-decorated hotel rooms and make them more comfortable. Here are our tricks and tips, with examples:

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realm of possibility: custom digitallly-printed wall coverings

Having had a mother who was obsessed with busy, French-provinical wallpaper, I’ve always steered clear from any semblance of a wall covering. Until, that is, companies like HP devised a latex printer that will digitally print your own designs to make cool wall-coverings. A number of companies will help you do this…like New Era, 4walls, FlavorPaper. Apparently, the HP…

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books as stunning reclaimed building material

Recently we celebrated a friend’s birthday at the rarified 12-seat sushi bar at Brushstroke, chef David Bouley’s collaborative Japanese restaurant in Tribeca, NYC. Designed by the Japanese firm Super Potato, the interiors are serene and graceful, evocative of a Japanese temple melded with modernist architectural elements: stone, reclaimed timber, salvaged, weathered steel. The most stunning detail were…

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enzo mari’s autoprogettazione for diy furniture designs

Autoprogettazione, roughly translated “self design,” was a project and book by the modernist artist and designer Enzo Mari that gives instructions for building easy-to-assemble furniture — tables, chairs, bookshelves, wardrobe  — using rough boards and nails. Originally published in 1974, it has been reprinted many times. Mari created the project because he thought …if people were encouraged to…

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origami made of anything (vic muniz’ birds of a feather)

photo: andrew moore We LOVED this piece from the last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine: After the Japanese Earthquake in March, the nonprofit Bezos Family Foundation invited children to mail origami cranes to the Seattle headquarters of its Students Rebuild program. Each would trigger a $2 donation, up to $200,000. The group received more than 2…

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inspiration journals: walls, books, software…

Annaleena’s Hem recently published a whimsical “inspiration” wall, a styled visualization of a very practical process. She taped up clipped-from-magazine images of ideas for redecorating, and called it “Collect Your Dreams”.  Says Annaleena: Something I often say to…those who are renovating is to tear out pictures as you like, it can be inspirational images of…

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