Over the years,I have discovered I am part of a secret underground of people who quietly shift spaces they stay in to bring them closer to their personal sense of harmony, or to infuse beauty into the downright ugly, improvising using whatever was at hand. Here are some recent adjustments I made to the lovely country house a friend and I stayed in recently, and the logic behind them. My friend said they made the place better. What do you think?
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In the 1920’s, Le Corbusier designed Carlos de Beistegui’s apartment in Paris. The rooftop garden, with a very grand rococo fireplace one would usually find indoors, turns the usual outdoor space on its head. Here, he elaborates on it, with a mirror, candlesticks and an ornate sideboard, on grass.
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Having created the illusion of an expansive corner window using smoke-and-mirrors in our Harlem space (below), we LOVE seeing other riffs on the theme of optical illusion windows. Granit Chartered Architects devised a brilliant faux bay window
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Survival tells us to build shelter, but human nature tells us to make it interesting. The people of New Guinea have been making beautiful homes high in the trees for many years. The tree houses, explored by photographer George Steinmetz are set in open spaces in the forests of Indonesian New Guinea lowlands. Though the…
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We love artist/designer Dominic Wilcox‘s fix for red wine spilled on the carpet (below): Don’t bother trying to get it out…paint a pattern around it. It gives us ideas for fixing clothes and table linens that have impossible-to-remove stains or spots. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em: transform them by emphasising the transgressions,
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The other day I was reading a poem written by Su Tung Po in 1097, over a thousand years ago, and realized that it was talking about me, right now in 2015, using such perfectly wrought words, I saw the most ordinary moment differently. Here is a fragment*
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Cow hide rugs are so ubiquitous these days, that we’ve gotten pretty tired of seeing them in interiors. That is, UNTIL we saw one speckled with gold. It seems that painted, spattered, striped, embellished hides have become something of a trend. Apartment34 has a great DIY that gives the gist (and there are lots of…
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As we scroll through design sites, we periodically spot some new gadget for keeping ugly computer wires in check: reels that wind them up, dongles that collect them behind your desk… Perhaps the BEST improvisation we’ve seen is in Christoph Niemann’s workspace. The inspired illustrator/artist/author disguised an ugly black cable by placing a black and white image…
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Unlike many folks using recycled materials, WILL Holman of Object Guerrilla has an eye for style, as evidenced by the inspired Zip Tie Lounge Chair, above, a flat-pack armchair made of plywood panels sewn together with zip ties. His new book Guerilla Furniture Design contains chapters on Guerilla History, Sustainability, Philosophy, The Guerilla Workshop and Design Fundamentals,…
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(Video link here.) Over the years, we’ve published quite a few of artist/inventor/designer Domnic Wilcox‘s brilliant rethinking of ordinary objects, documented on his site Variations on Normal. We love that Wilcox constantly challenges “normal” because “normal” is often so terribly limiting. And as Wilcox shows, its FUN and illuminating to think outside the normal box.…
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On the heels of our post about Staging a Summer Party with Modest Means, frequent contributor Susan Dworski sent this email about Shoji Solar Lanterns, an essential, inexpensive, mood-enhancing element that are, in her words “Pretty damned lunar at night”: Ironically, I just replaced my tattered red Shoji solars yesterday with the familiar bluebird ones. They are…
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When VosgeParis posted images of a party at designer Paola Navone’s home in Milan, the wire crates affixed to the wall caught our eye. Are they an artwork, or simply vintage crates made into art, on which she arranges objects to her liking? So we hunted for google images for clues.
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How often have you found yourself late for a birthday party and casting around for a way to wrap your gift? We find ourselves in that position so often, we’ve begun to keep a photo archive of hasty, curiously chic gift wrapping solutions, sometimes made with only a few elements, like the startlingly-sensual beauty from artist David Carrino, below…
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When friends ask, “What can we bring?” to my dinner parties, lately, I’ve been asking them to bring the “mystery” bottles of wines languishing in their “wine cellars”. Those are the bottles that promised to be great —once; since they’ve languished for years, it’s impossible to say if there’s something delicious inside, or a wine that’s past its…
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(Video link HERE) Does your headphone phone jack have a loose connection? Did the stem of your eyeglasses snap? Tired of trying to repair them with weak glue or duct tape? We said YES to all those questions and were thrilled to find Bondic, a liquid plastic that “welds” broken items. It fits right in with our…
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Of all the shipping pallet creations we’ve come across, this has to be one of the most stylish. It is curiously reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s famous chrome-and-black-leather Grand Confort chair. In pallet wood! It is one of the many brilliant hacks and revisions we’ve seen of the iconic, now-uibiquitous chair… …since we came across interior designer…
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Artist, designer, craftsman, longtime friend Jamison Sellers solves a bit of the ethical wood-sourcing dilemma by delving into the world of shipping pallets. He explores these familiar, reclaimed objects on a much finer scale than most by collecting bits and pieces of coveted woods (and even again recycling his own shop scraps from past projects) to create ornamental patterning inspired…
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We recently needed a sturdy envelope to carry some papers in our big satchel. Hmmm. What to use? FedEx envelopes are made of Tyvek but they have all that terrible writing on them. NOT. What would happen if we turned one inside out so it became plain white, and then crumpled it to turn it…
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(Video link here.) Viewed one way, artist Bernard Pras assembled a random scattering of STUFF —chairs, stools, dolls, a tub, a violin…—at the Palais du Facteur Cheval in Hauterives, France. But viewed another, it becomes something totally OTHER. (…after our own hearts.) via Jody Lotito Levine. Thanks Jody!
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In light of our posts on decluttering houses and work spaces, and our consideration of THINGS and what we need to live well and freely, we found Italo Calvino’s thoughts incredibly clarifying. The possibility that … everything can be constantly shuffled and reordered in every way conceivable… is at the heart of living an improvised…
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