Attic apartment

I adore this apartment. Designed by b-arch (Jo blogged this firm recently here and here), this was formerly the attic and kitchen spaces of an eighteenth-century building renovated to make an open-space loft. I love the stairs (although not to code by Canadian standards), the flat file cabinet, the globe collection, the huge sign in the kitchen, the LIGHT BLUE SMEG!!!, colourful tomato cans, Jielde light fixture (I have 2 of those!), huge vintage map as a headboard. And then there's all the white...and those floors....

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Stalking a cool dude's pad

Once upon a time there was a cool dude ( I'm making this up as I go along so I hope he is cool) who took a warehouse space and made it his own. Its first incarnation was as a dark and pseudo dingy but über stylish man cave. The cool dude wrote some copy, snapped some pics and submitted it to Apartment Therapy. It went down a treat with the AT crowd as did his mix of self deprecating humour and grandiose ideas. Follow the link and you can see why or if you are lazy scroll down and you'll get the idea.

Fast forward 3 years and I'm real estate stalking as is my daily want. Oh look! Sexy warehouse apartment say I. Bookmark. Move on. Email drops into my inbox from the cool dude who owns said sexy apartment. Serendipity. Synchonicity. Weird co-incidence. Did I know it was for sale? Hell yes and I would buy it in a flash if I didn't live in another state, have bad knees and find ladders to mezzanines just a little beyond me at my advancing years. Damn but it's hot and the position in Surry Hills in Sydney couldn't be better. AND the dark and über stylishly dingy man cave has grown up. A light, bright and seriously sexy inner city pad. Wonder if the owner has got better with age too? Link here while it lasts.

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Saturday with friends

Late afternoon. The sun is hanging low in the west. A cool breeze nips and snaps to remind me that winter hasn't quite gone yet. I'm sitting waiting for friends to arrive. Wine, cheese, light the fire when the sun goes down. Jazz and chicken pot pie for dinner. Maybe mushy pies. A movie with orange almond cake during the interval. (Remember intervals and choc top cones?) Easy going, relaxed and just perfect. A bit like this warehouse space. Warm, cosy, real. Perfect for a Saturday afternoon with friends. Found at the always inspiring Airspace Locations. The Shoe Factory.

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Lofty living

I have been a huge fan of lofts for as long as I can remember (still dream about owning one someday) and I got my hands on some photos of a fabulous Vancouver loft designed by architect Omer Arbel (Jo featured an amazing home of his design here). Here are some details from Omer: The project consisted of a seismic upgrade and restoration of a heritage building in Vancouver's historic gastown district, and a loft interior design project. The loft is organized around a new courtyard open to above, inserted into the heritage fabric of the building, allowing light into the centre of the very deep plan. All other interior elements are rendered crisply using precisely machined elements, conceived to stand in strong contract to the rough heritage fabric of the existing shell. The massive amounts of exposed brick, the beamed cielings, concrete floors - it is breathtaking, and yet not at all cold. W O W.
Photography by the talented Martin Tessler (we showed him some love too here and here).

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Jordan Carlyle - a first glimpse

Jordan Carlyle of NYC interior design firm Carlyle Designs emailed us about his work and thought we'd like to share some of his projects with our readers. You'll see why I didn't hesitate to say yes in a moment. First, a little bit about Jordan: Characterized by earthly surfaces, singular details and keen colors richly layered across an architectural framework, Jordan's designs recast classic elements in modern settings. It's an approach that pays homage to timeless notions of sophistication as surely as it spritzes them with modern zest and sheds the stuffy overtones of elegance to reveal its sexy young skin. Jordan's understanding of the exceptional and his love for the refined continue to be the core of his design philosophy. I was shocked to discover Jordan is only 29, and not only am I already smitten with his work, it turns out he has collection of beautiful custom furnishings (Carlyle Collective) and produces contemporary artwork (for CB2 for over 4 years!) found here. I am thoroughly impressed. So impressed I need to do two posts. To begin, here are two projects - the first is an industrial loft gone elegant, and the second, a dreamy bathroom.

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