cool spaces

Salvaged Marble and Stone For Tables, Shelves, Backsplashes…

A budget apartment overhaul by a Brooklyn design student reminded us of the great design possibilities inherent in salvaged cuts of marble and other stone.

Sleuth-Voyeur Dominique Nabokov’s As-Is REAL Interiors are a Joy

Photographer Dominique Nabokov was way ahead of the curve when she started using just a Polaroid camera to photograph the unstyled, unlit spaces of notable people “as close to reality as possible”. They are a joy and relief.

Visit Mondrian’s Paris Studio with Alexander Calder

When he was thirty-two, Alexander Calder visited the legendary Mondrian’s studio in Paris. The experience changed his life. Here’s what Calder saw.

Vintage Rug Disguises the TV: Brilliant!

In a house tour of furniture dealer and interior designer Michael Bargo, we thought: “How nice to hang a really beautiful rug on the wall, in a mashup with beautiful objects from many eras”. Then we read the fine print.

Sit for a Moment in Pierre Chareau’s Garden in Paris

Last night, we found ourselves sitting in early 20th century French architect and designer Pierre Chareau’s garden in Paris, looking at a leafy wall, and at the lovely pattern of flag stones, after we’d wandered through his extraordinary Maison de Verre. We advise going there right now. Here’s how.

Great Ideas from a Ridiculously Minimalist Apartment

The Times T Magazine featured ANOTHER perfectly minimalist apartment with no sign of a human being in it. Still, we culled some good ideas from Danish designer Oliver Gustav’s very gray Copenhagen apartment.

Enduring Perfection of Black and White Tile Floors (Casa Helsinki)

We love seeing Casa Helsinki, an old house in the historic district of Alberdi, in Córdoba, Spain, renovated to become a guest house. Its vintage black and white floors off a simple, inexpensive lesson in design.

Paola Navone House Tour and Idea Factory

Using our rusty French to translate this video tour of designer extraordinaire Paola Navone’s Paris apartment, we’ve gathered a small trove of smart, original, inspiring and doable ideas.

Canvas Floor Mats, Inspired by Marisol

The jazzy black-and-white checkerboard “rug” that defines the living room of artist Marisol’s Tribeca loft reminded us a painted canvas floor cloth: practical, stylish and easy-to-make.

Clever Textile Ideas to DIY from a Restored Tuscan Convent

We found a number of simple ideas for textiles in photos of a former Tuscan convent restored by designer Holly Lueders and her daughter. Our favorites are this very do-able paneled bedskirt and a pillow cover fashioned like a gift.

A Solution for Paint-Crusted Moldings and Doors

Recently I skyped with a colleague who just moved into a prewar rental in Brooklyn; she asked me to see if I could come up with solutions to the various challenges imposed by the wonderful but imperfect and not-hers-to-renovate space. So we did a video tour of her space. (I hope show some before and after’s…

Charming, Inviting, Comforting Draped Textiles

We must have spent an hour slowing looking at our friend Christopher Baker‘s beautiful online portfolios. We found ourselves culling images with a single theme: natural textiles used in original absolutely doable ways, no uptight styling here. Just a fine trove of ideas.

Hotel Henriette: Stay There or Steal Ideas

We’ve written extensively about our usual practice of deconstructing and arranging overwrought hotel rooms. We’ve encountered SO many that were over decorated, stuffy, busy, that we stopped loving staying in hotels. Until we saw photos of Hotel Henriette in Paris, which breaks the mould every which way and gave us a trove of doable ideas for…

A Magic Christmas Tree House

Ahh THESE are our idea of wondrous Christmas trees. No need to decorate them further: the house does it all, a magical platform for living trees.

Slotted Angle Iron Shelving, Bed, TV Stand, more

At London’s Southbank Centre, architecture studio Jonathan Tuckey Design created an archival space featuring a mid-century shelving system that echoed the building’s heritage. When we looked closely, we realized it is made of slotted angle iron, an inexpensive structuring material available at many hardware stores. We first realized its potential for creating modular furniture when we bought a second-hand copy of High-Tech, The Industrial…

Quick Home Fixes from a Cooled Out Chateau

As we ramp up to the holidays, a lot of people we know are scrambling to pull their spaces together in preparation for big crowd of family and friends. We take a cue from the unexpectedly chill interiors of this 12th Century château in France that Isabelle Dubois-Dumee and Hubert Bettan of the interiors brand Les…

Geometric Painted Wall: Keep the Pattern, Change the Color

We are smitten with Parisian antique dealer and interior designer Florence Lopez’ website and its many interiors showing her extraordinary use of darkish, saturated color, especially deep blues and greens (all with a little black in them). Of note, this geometrically patterned wall in greens and cream in her showroom and the other iteration of the same pattern

Inexpensive Urban Shelters Solve a Housing Crisis

As apartments in urban areas become prohibitively expensive, young people in Oakland, California have been developing innovative, grassroots strategies to provide homes for themselves, and for homeless people in their communities. The New York Times recently article and slideshow samples new ways of thinking about “home”, “a social experiment in stripping down to the basics.”

A Family Home Full of Heart and Good Ideas

“Something boldly improvisational and cheery going on in this house in Australia” wrote Susan Dworski in an email as she described the home Ruth Bruten, writer of Gourmet Girlfriend blog, shares with her husband and five boys. It is delightfully REAL and colorful, and packed with ideas. Here are Susan’s favorites, and ours:

Optical Illusion Interiors Out of Paint or Tape

Could it be that the great Mexican architect Luis Barrigan created a study with an unexpected, roughly-painted rather expressionistic trompe l’oeil window to brighten a windowless space? It LOOKS that way in this image we found at Aqqindex. It got us casting about for abstract optical illusions we might employ at home, the opposite of the usual trompe l’oeil that…

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