Since when is it hip, slick and cool to lie in bed and stare at your clothes and shoe racks––no matter how neatly organized––when you’re rustling up romance? I’m talking about a very particular theme of design porn these days: highly-styled, out-in-the-open clothes racks that make me wonder: What would happen in this uber-neuter scheme if…
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While we were writing about Karl Lagerfeld’s bathroom, we remembered an image of his library that we’d posted years ago. Lagerfeld seriously loves books and has found ways to house LOTS of them. We’re interested in how he arranged them. The interplay of vertical and horizontally stacked books makes for a pleasing graphical look while allowing…
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Looking for a skillet to fry some eggs in at Maria Robledo’s house, we opened a drawer to find a brilliant idea we never would have thought of: line a drawer with a cloth, such as a dish towel instead of the usual paper. It cuts down on clatter and the cloth can be easily…
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Recently, we stumbled on an image of UTEN.SILO (also known as the Wall All), the very stylish wall storage Dorothee Becker designed for Ingo Maurer in 1960s, almost half a century ago. Nor long after, we found Urbio, a new play on the essential idea, but with magents this time.
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This simple, stylish hanging shelf is made of only 3 elements: a (painted) board, suede or leather lacing, wall hooks. It reminded us of other cool iterations —some more complex, some simpler — of the hanging shelf.
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Our new favorite blog Moon to Moon has a swell house tour of the lightly renovated 450 square foot apartment of architect Lukáš Kordík of GutGut architects. The major takeaway for us, aside from the pleasingly UNconstructed feel of the space, is Kordík’s use of laminate. First there’s the stylish turquoise kitchen cabinet with oven and storage built in;…
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This kitchen is so stylish and inviting, we’re wondering if it’s in process and unfinished OR if it’s purposely as is. We’ve cooked in many a kitchen outfitted this way, with great pleasure, in part due to the constraints it imposes.
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Was visionary designer Paul D’Urso’s 1980’s cyclone fence clothes closet the roots of Ikea’s recent iteration?
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Just about everyone we know has on-going piles of books they are in the process of reading somewhere in their house, whether it be along side the sofa (us), the bathroom (us), or on the bed table (MANY people). The New York Times Book Reviews’ weekly column By the Book asks writers what is currently…
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We generally viewed bookshelves using bricks as uprights as simple college student decor UNTIL we saw these fab shelves designed by Gionatan De Pas, Donato D’Urbino and Lomazzi for Longato in 1971. Of course the designers used just the right bricks for their striped shelving and a great deal of thought and vision, i.e. the width…
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If you are lover a books and a person who stacks them high on shelves, you know of the problem of access. Either you need to pull up step stool or wobbly chair (pain in the neck), or to have one of those stylish sliding book ladders that take up a lot of space both real and visual. We really like the idea of Karen King’s Higher Ground, a tall shelf with a built-in ladder.
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We’re big fans of the versatile Componibili system of modular storage units. Originally designed by Anna Castelli Ferrieri for Kartell in 1969, they have since become a modern classic. Made of ABS, the units come in rounds and squares that can be stacked, stand alone, and put on wheeled bases. They are flexible, functional and stylish. Their simple lines seem to work in just about any interior and just about any room, from bathroom to living.
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Of all the ways to label a box, we like this the best: IMAGES of what’s inside rather than the usual ugly scrawl. We became a fan of this method when we stumbled on Virginia Sin’s black-and-white photo of her version in 2009; she catalogued her shoes by pasting a Polaroid image of the shoe right…
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Plastic milk and soda crates are often used as design challenges for architecture students, who morph them into interesting useable structures. We’ve found uses closer to home.
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Enzo Mari’s fireplace rolls all sorts of things we love into one: a fireplace, slabs of concrete or stone, shelves and ledges to display still lives —perhaps one of the nicest use of a mantle. Our own yellow mantle acts as a repository of things we love. It’s been getting pretty full lately; a friend suggested placing a smaller mantle inside it.
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We got a lot of ideas taking a little photo tour of the versatile 66-square-foot artist’s studio Anaan Stern and Shany Tal, with its many kinds of clever storage: folding bed, shelving, drawers of all sizes…But what we liked best are the wooden pegs inserted into sliding doors to hold works of art or open books, to make an ever-changeable private gallery.
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Recently, while browsing through the Danish website Bungalow 5, we were inspired by this idea in the home of Ollie and Seb. By combining two ordinary, daily objects, they’ve created a miniature installation of their own.
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We’ve long admired this wonderful stacked block shelf we clipped years ago. It is made of scrap wood (salvaged from a lumbar yards garbage bin) that was bored, threaded and secured with thick rope, and hung from hooks anchored in the wall. Then we wondered: What if you didn’t bother with the rope part and…
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We’re putting this image into our ever-growing file of shelving ideas. A chain is a fine solution for when you don’t have an end wall to hold up a wooden shelf. You get the support without the feeling of the space being blocked or hemmed in. Simple and ingenious. We can imagine interpreting it in…
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The hanging shelf rigged from a board hung by rope we spotted on The Selby recently reminded us of hanging shelf iterations from two great artists.
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