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The Bathroom As Incubator of Ideas

The bathroom is the one place where I find mindfulness overrated. It is a lovely place to read, write, draw. Look at all the way it can be an incubator of ideas.

A Homemade Foam Core Screen to Block the Sun or Define a Space

In my top floor space, the scorching temperatures have been pushing me to find non-electric ways of cooling the place down to mitigate air conditioner use. I turned to the material that seemed most likely to provide insulation: foam core leftover from the many life-size prototypes I’ve built …

New York Magazine’s Low Lift Home Improvements for Under $100 INCLUDING Improvised Life’s Big Fat Idea

How swell to see Improvised Life mentioned in New York Magazine’s ’31 Low Lift Home Improvements for Under $100′ for our decoding of Donald Judd furniture. We got a lot of ideas for jazzing up our space….

Yves Klein’s Interior Inspirations, From Ultimate Blue to His Unusual Do-able Table

A single rare image of Yves Klein’s Paris apartment/studio got us hunting for his plexiglass coffee table filled with astonishing blue pigment he commissioned. We found A LOT of inspiration.

Pauline Caulfield’s Ingenious Textile Panels Become Wall Covering, Art, Window Shade

This tiny video of textile artist Pauline Caulfield’s brilliant 1968 diploma show while studying at the Royal College of Art shows an inspiring, ingenious alternative to obstructing window treatments.

Lotta Agaton’s Flat File Day Bed and Other Inspired File Beds

Stylist Lotta Agaton’s clever day be made out of flat files got us considering the very practical and chic possibilities for these sophisticated storage beds…

Sleeping like Donald Judd in Low-to-the Floor Beds, with Details and Plans

At the Judd Foundation, we stumbled upon this wonderful bedroom with a very Judd-esque low bed. It reminded us of the austere low platforms he made for his Spring Street Loft. We took a closer look at how he made them.

Frame the View of Plants and Flowers, Outdoors and In (Coco Capitan and Maria Robledo)

Artist Coco Capitan’s silver gelatin print, “plants framing plants”, got us thinking about the wonder of the frame, and ways to use it outdoors and in, as photographer Maria Robledo so brilliantly improvised.

The Secret to Artist Constantino Nivola’s Sublime Painted Floors

We stumbled on this inspiring idea for painted floors while leafing through Artists’ Handmade Houses, which is chock full of ideas. Sculptor- designer Costantino Nivola painted the kitchen in his Long Island home a sublime, deeply saturated yellow available in a singular paint.

Dominique Nabokov’s As-is, Not-Styled, REAL Paris Living Rooms Are a Joy

Unlike most interior photographers, Dominique Nabokov photographed consciously NOT-styled or lit spaces, each unique because they reflect the very unique lives of the people who created them, whose lives dictated their design.

Cool Private Spaces Where On Kawara’s Date Paintings Reside

We roamed the internet to collected images from photographer Candida Hofer’s ‘On Kawara, Date Paintings in Private Collections’. Often they are displayed in the place where the collector spends much of his or her time, or where they give the most inspiration and meaning. Unstyled and rather plain, they let On Kawara’s work resonate.

Clever Bookcases Made of Stacked Boxes

We love the idea of these NOT built-in bookshelves at a Swedish design store. They are composed of a series of volumes — rectangles and squares of various sizes — into which books are stacked. Then we figured out a way to make them.

Karl Lagerfeld’s Inspired Ideas

After legendary designer Karl Lagerfeld passed away in February, we looked back into our archive for good ideas any of us might steal and employ…

Please Take Your Shoes Off! What’s Really On the Bottom of Your Shoes

Beyond notions of “better vibe”, there are some very good reasons to impose a “shoes-off policy” at home, including the mighty scary ones we’ve just discovered…

Henry Miller’s Bathroom “A Voyage of Ideas”

This clip from a 1975 documentary of Henry Miller takes place mostly in the writer’s remarkable bathroom and transports you WAY beyond the little room…

Ephemeral Curtains and Room Dividers Strung on Wires Are Easy to Do

In these images of gauzy curtains hung on simple wires via Clothier Aurelie Lecuyer, the lack of an imposing curtain rod achieves a pleasingly minimalist and ephemeral quality that’s easy and inexpensive…

Cool, Graphical Masking Tape Decorations for Walls, Cards, Wrapping

“I haven’t done a thing to get ready for the holidays” is an echo I’ve heared from many people I know. No matter. There’s always ways to festive things up at the last minute, with whatever is on hand.

How to Print Poems on Your Wall Like the Odes to Calder and Kelly at Lévy Gorvy Gallery

Specially commissioned poems on some walls at the Calder / Kelly show at the Levy Gorvy gallery made me wish for poems on my own walls. So I found out how…

Endlessly Useful, Morphable, Stylish Photographer’s Apple Boxes

When I worked as a food stylist in photo studios, I came to appreciate the endless ways apple boxes could be used. They are just as useful at home. Witness Le Courbusier.

A Clever Solution to Low Bookshelves That Minimizes Visual Clutter

In a house-tour of a mid-century apartment in São Paulo we spotted a clever iteration of low bookshelves that too often look cluttered and domineering.

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