Kim's personal links
MY FAVOURITE DECOR SHOPS IN OTTAWA
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kitchen remodel in my last house
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my twin sister's mostly kid's rooms decor blog
When living space is tight there is no reason not to live big. It just takes clever solutions. A sleek, almost sculptural solution to open plan living with kitchen in plain view. Hide it way but celebrate the deception. Love this little black and white kitchen by double g.
Jen Chu is from San Francisco currently residing in Brooklyn, and is an Art Director for Project Runway and has even worked on a couple J-Lo videos. I spotted her in the latest issue of Design Bureau mag and checked out her portfolio. I love her interiors as they are, believe it or not, for NORMAL people who do not have unlimited budgets. Her own apartment is super small and she has done an amazing job with it (the first 5 photos below are of her itty bitty bedroom and bathroom). It's great to see how this half lives too. :)
Toronto based Taylor Smyth Architects create poetry or so they say. Buildings relate intimately to their surroundings, embracing the site, celebrating the vista. The Sunset Cabin at Lake Simco, Ontario is a simple building and simply beautiful. A one bedroom cabin, a private retreat in the woods, a bunkie, a getaway that looks to the setting sun for inspiration.
In Hong Kong, where space is at a premium, the OnebyNine studio architects took on the challenging brief to help design this 35 square meter apartment. Lukasz Wawrzenczyk and Ewa Koter, originally from Poland but now in Hong Kong, reworked the configuration, removed walls and created a more continuous space for living, sleeping and entertaining. As a quirky linking element, "Space Invaders" mosaics appear in several rooms. A small terrace with tropical plants is a perfect (and welcome) retreat from such a bustling, overcrowded city.
Maurizio Giovannoni, and architect and interior designer in Rome, emailed us about an apartment he designed: The apartment is a little penthouse (about 65 mq.) in Turku, Southern Finland. Before renovation, too many walls and doors blocked the spaces and the passage of light, and the most beautiful view of the historical sites of Turku was on the bedroom side. My principal goal in this project was letting the light flow in and creating a relaxing living room where my customer could do his creative work. The partial demolition of walls was a natural consequence, along with reversing the location of the bedroom and living room. After fixing this, we decided on the overall “concept” together with my customer, organizing all the details that colored the white spaces. That happened during my customer’s visit to Rome (due to my impossibility to travel in that period), and via 4oo e-mails between Turku and Rome. The result is what I now consider my style: a blend of cultures. There is nothing that stimulates me more than to study different countries and make some cultural themes recognizable but never intrusive in the project. In this case, the floor is covered with parquet of white ash, the shelves are birch and the kitchen table is also birch but colored with heat. Wood is an omnipresent element in this flat as it constantly is for Finnish people, but the real attention is catalyzed by the nature theme pictured on wall paper, carrying colours and contrasts and a typical Mediterranean “courage”. The furniture itself is a mix of the 2 cultures and of past & present: the grandmother’s armchair is a piece of Finnish vintage from the sixties as is the red floor lamp. The arc framing the wall paper is the famous Twiggy by Foscarini and the suspended lamps are Italian as well:Olimpia by Ideal Lux. Everything fits together in perfect harmony! (Photos by Mikko Ala-Peijari for Kauniit Kodit magazine)
I love this apartment. It's spaces like this that make me want to forget my obsession with neutral/natural decor and grab a can of spray paint - or buy a row of chartreuse green kitchen cabinets.
Tue, 14 Aug 2012