furniture

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.

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.

Fab Fermob’s Outdoor Furniture INDOORS

Having bought vintage furniture years ago that I still love, I rarely buy a new piece unless I really need it (and/or see something SO spectacular, I can’t resist). And what I needed when I moved into my Harlem space was a table for the terrace. I fell in love with the Fermob Tertio table because it’s stylish enough…

Martino Gamper’s Chairs are in Our Head

When we stopped to ponder the legless back and seat of a ubiquitous faux Eames polycarbomate chair we found on the street, we suddenly realized the influence designer Martino Gamper had on our thinking, whose clever 100 Chairs in 100 Days inspire completely novel iterations.

Ikea’s Stylish Frosta Stool is BACK to Hack and Embellish

I have had a set of four Ikea stacking stools for years. The $14 version of the iconic $500 vintage Alvar Aalto stool has done stylish double-duty as extra seating, side table, surface for projects… in a number of spaces I’ve had. In my new space I built a nook just to store a stack of them…

Loom Chairs, Tables…Reminders of the Adjacent Possible

We’re smitten with this chair by Pascal Anson, a wire frame with one thousand pieces of ribbon, rope and string that were individually tied it, creating upholstery and wondrous visuals. (And metaphorically, it is a reminder of the possibilities in the everyday, which we need right now).

Makeshift Chair, ‘Loving the Universe…Where Peace Begins’ (Neruda)

This astonishing chair, a mashup of plastic and stone, is from Sidewalk Salon, Manar Moursi and David Puig’s book about makeshift chairs they encountered while walking around Cairo, Egypt. They remind me of a fragment of Neruda’s Ode to a Chair.

Folding, Height Adjustable Ironing Board Table…Desk…Table Base

Ironing boards, with their adjustable height stands and ability to fold away into a closet, are really an ideal dual-purpose surface. We started remembering beautiful vintage ironing boards we’d seen and envisioning their chic, useful possibilities.

Hungry for Cool Design Ideas? Check out The Art of Things

The massive The Art of Things: Product Design since 1945 surveys all kind of objects that we use in our lives, as well as their placement in the bigger picture, in time and place. Our quick run through a pdf we found yielded a number of useful ideas:

Stuart Ringholt: ‘Can Art Be Super Practical and Improve My Life?’

This compelling chair made of a sawed-in-half bathtub is the creation of artist Stuart Ringholt who, in the throws of hashish psychosis, wondered if art can be practical. In making art, he found his answer.

Hammocks for Healing, Indoors or Out

When a friend told me about research showing that gentle rocking can help heal nervous system, emotional and cognitive imbalances, I decided to install a hammock in my NYC space and test rocking out on myself.
I dove headlong into hammock investigations. Here’s what you need to know to hang a hammock inside or out.

Artist’s Studios with Sofas + Rest Spaces

Bored Panda’s slide show of 300 artist’s studios is illuminating on many accounts: it provides an edifying survey of art works in process, as well as a look into work styles and spaces, with a number of interesting home design ideas. Like Roy Lichtenstein, above, quite a few artists have a sofa or easy chair…

An Unexpected Chair Cushion

We rove through a lot of design sites in the course of each week and find ourselves finding only a single idea among a whole feature of sleek pictures. Like this one unexpectedly charming one: a chair cushion with ties that wrap around the legs. The question is, how to do create the effect with existing…

That Plain Ikea Bed is a Canvas You Can Paint

We love this hack on the most vin ordinaire of Ikea beds by stylist Meta Coleman in her home in Provo, Utah: paint it PLAID. It made us realize that the plain white Ikea Malm Bedframe is really a nice blank palette with many possibilities…

Tables Tattood with Memories or Poems

An image spotted at the great Moon to Moon has us revisiting the idea of tattooing wood furniture: carving with words or images in the tradition of stealth carvings on park picnic tables, bars and old school desks.

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

When we 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…

Makeshift Tables and Chairs to Seat a Crowd

If you’re planning on hosting a crowd, now’s the time to figure out what tables you’ll serve everyone on, and where the guests will sit… Here’s our best mostly makeshift ideas.

Re-envisioned Chairs We Could Make Ourselves

Over the past months, we’ve been collecting an illuminating array of chair images over at the great site Aqqindex. Each one has made us think, look into its structure, opened our mind to the many possibility of “chair”. All are so startlingly simple, it makes us think we could make them ourself:

Clawfoot Tub Sofa to DIY or Buy

We’ve watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s many times and never noticed the very makeshift decor of Holly Golightly’s apartment: the crate coffee table…luggage storage bins…and…the wonderful clawfoot tub sofa. THAT set us on the hunt…

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