“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:
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Day after day of sitting and writing at my computer made my body crave standing. Knowing that standing is much healthier than chronic sitting, I’d rigged standing desks in the past but none of them ever seemed quite right. In desperation, I plunked the EverBlock library steps on a terrace table and perched my old 17″ MacBook on it.
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MANY improvisations are inspired by mistakes that accidentally afford a new view of something we take for granted. After Mira Keras‘ one-year-old knocked a chair over, she immediately saw the possibilities in the situation.
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Warsaw firm Mamastudio enlisted Polish architect Mateusz Baumiller to design the Autor Rooms in its new hotel to showcase furniture and artwork by Polish designers. The favorite big idea we got out of it: thick copper pipe to create rooms within rooms, like the sleep area at top. It’s a lovely way to define a big space, and…
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At the ever-inspiring Aqqindex the other day, I came across this sublime pink sleeping nook in Tunisia and thought WANT! I know the influence of pink because of the pink wall in my bedroom: in the three years I’ve slept there, I’ve not grown tired of the hopeful, serene-yet-jazzy vibe it sends me. Then I found…
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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…
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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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While checking out the work of designer Meike Hardeeike Harde, we were intrigued by her wooden aquarelle room screen. We’re always looking for clever, mutable ways to divide our space or hide an in-process project. We were pleased to see that, like Max Lamb, Harde SHARES her process, allowing us to take her ideas and RUN.
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We love this detail from a home designed by i29 Interior Architects: a spray of cut-outs in a wall of cabinetry. It breaks up the uniformity of the cabinets in a random, rather artful way. It applies a technique we love — unexpected holes cut out of walls — to cabinets.
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In one of the images on the feature 1st Dibs did about interior designer Suzanne Shaker recently, we spotted this clever long shelf made of two different materials, which makes for an unexpectedly interesting shelf unto itself, whether or not it holds objects or art. It was designed by Rogers Marvel Architects for a row of modern townhouses built in…
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Although we are huge fans of using tree parts and the natural world as furnishings, we were stunned to see this wildly impractical coffee table made of what appears to be bundled branches or driftwood of some sort. Is it just us or do they have strangely phallic shapes? (Not that we don’t like phallic shapes but…er..seems a bit…
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Kirsten Camara’s Analog Memory Desk has a holder embedded in its legs for scrolling huge rulls of butcher paper over the desk’s surface to make “a sort of tablecloth of memory”. It can record months, possibly years of ideas, drawings, doodles, mind maps, phone numbers, calculations etc. She has made detailed blueprints so you can build your own. Or you try these other methods of analog idea-capturing.
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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…
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We’ve written numerous posts wishing out loud for a life-size building block that would allow us to create with the ease of a Lego; over the years, we’ve featured some “close-but- not-quite-right iterations“. Our wish has come true, at last. Serial entrepreneur Arnon Rosen applied his knowledge of modular flooring to create the technology to produce 12-inch…
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(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…
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Lately, we’ve been seeing appealing LOW shelves in some of the interiors we’ve come across. The low-to-the-floor horizontals they create have the effect of making the ceiling look higher, especially useful in low-ceiling rooms. We especially like the these clever shelves spotted at Il Richiamo Del Bosco (The Call of the Woods), and eco friendly bed & breakfast in Sala Baganza,…
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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.
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To date, I’ve published four lengthy posts about my desperate attempts to quiet the mysterious vibration that shakes me awake every morning. I lost count at twenty; the latest was making four 80+ pound concrete block legs to support the platform, which was a grid of wood on a frame of steel angle irons. The real…
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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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