Design Public

Every so often I receive these big tempting catalogs called “Neiman Marcus: The Book.” As an added bonus, there is often a copy of INCIRCLE entree*. The only times I ever yearn to be rich are when the Hartsfield-Jackson security line for serfs like me is endless and I long for my own jet, and when I flip through entree.

This photo was taken by Kevin Garrett, who scouted out the best places to stay in South Africa for the magazine. It is the lobby of The Saxon Boutique Hotel in South Africa. I love the way the baskets are composed, and the color and texture they give to the wall; texture tells the whole story in this room.  It seems very Vicente Wolf, whether it be something that would inspire him or something he would design. 17-hour flight in coach or not, I have been dreaming of going to this place ever since I read his article.

In fact, I couldn’t help but thing of  the Kelly Wearstler Santa Monica Viceroy Hollywood Regency version of adding texture to a wall with “native” round objects.  She keeps her color palette neutral (albeit what I call “Wearstler-crisp”) as well:

photo one by Kevin Garrett for Neiman Marcus INCIRCLE entree

photo two from KWID.com

*I can’t for the life of me figure out how to put the little thingee over the second “e” in entree. I can’t for the life of me remember what the thingee is called. Is it a tilde? I took Latin and Spanish, not French!  And “Intro to BASIC” instead of “Intro to HTML” or “Typing for Dummies”.

I’ve been meaning to tell you about this great book my Mom brought me as a hostess gift about a year ago. It’s a monograph of the work of Samuel ‘Sambo’ Mockbee, appropriately titled Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency. I kept putting it off, because frankly, scanning stuff is a boring chore, plus, it’s really hard to pick just a few projects from this book. I doubt I can summarize it better than the book jacket:

For almost ten years, Samuel Mockbee, a recent MacArthur “genius grant” recipient, and his architecture students at Auburn University have been designing and building striking houses and community buildings for impoverished residents of Alabama’s Hale County. Using salvaged lumber and bricks, discarded tires, hay and waste cardboard bales, concrete rubble, colored bottles, and old license plates, they create inexpensive buildings in a style Mockbee describes as ‘contemporary modernism grounded in Southern culture.’”

This is the first project from Sambo I remember seeing back in architecture school. It’s The Cardboard Pod and is made from baled sheets of corrugated wax-impregnated boards:This is the incredible Yancey Chapel, built around an existing rusted trough and constructed from 1000 dirt-filled used tires:This property near The Yancey Chapel is called The Goat House, a former shed for animals that Rural Studio originally planned as part of an artists’ colony. The colony never, um, colonized, and the building is now a residence. You see the Chapel aesthetic influence on the structure: (more…)

I just read about this project in Good Magazine. It’s called Re:Construction, and it’s a public art project spearheaded by the Alliance for Downtown NY in collaboration with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Here is the idea:

“Re:Construction channels the energy of Downtown’s rebuilding process by recasting construction sites as ‘canvases’ for innovative public art and architecture. This initiative comes at a time when Lower Manhattan is experiencing one of the largest public and private construction undertakings in the nation’s history. In response, Re:Construction bridges the efforts of multiple public partners and the creative community to both highlight and enliven the process of rebuilding while improving the quality of life in Lower Manhattan through the creation of places of attraction, curiosity and anticipation.”

Some of the pilot projects include Best Pedestrian Route by GRO Architects:

photo by Adam Kleinman

Tattfoo Tan’s Concrete Jungle, where the orange construction safety paint on jersey barriers has gone Dior:

(before)

(after)

photo by Tattfoo Tan

It’s interesting, obviously lots of graffiti and guerrilla artists have been taking advantage of these types of sites for a long time, and doing a great job. It will be interesting to see if the organized version can compete. Any time there is a chance to create art, I say go for it, whether through a bunch of red tape or illegally.

http://www.downtownny.com/news?nid=98

http://www.reconstructionnyc.org/

To continue the previous post, I found a few more examples of indigo and lime, including this Tricia Guild table arrangement from her book Flower Sense…

…and fashions from Aprils issue of Bazaar…

I was perusing the photos I’d marked as “faves” in flickr last night and came across this one from flickr member patia.  The color combination was fresh and at once familiar, so I started to flip through all of my sticky note-laden magazines to find more examples of deep indigo blue and bright lime green.  I thought I’d share them with you:

from House Beautiful (I love the unexpectected use of indigo grasscloth in a few of these):

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I rarely pick up Southern Accents magazine, but in an especially slow line at Publix the other day the March/April issue caught my eye. Usually I’d be scanning the tabloid headlines, but if I hear one more thing about Suri’s favorite restaurant or Britney’s meltdown I don’t know what I’ll do. So, I used to think of Southern Accents as froufy and matchy-matchy and full of doilies or pictures of Robert E. Lee. I was totally wrong. Well, almost totally, there are a few way over the top window treatments full of billowing pleats, trim, tassels, etc. but that’s about it. Of course, I have noticed lately that a lot of the most chic designers in all the glossies are coming out of Atlanta, Dallas, New Orleans and Alabama; these towns are not just about the Sugarbakers. While the magazine has roots in traditional looks, most of the homes featured are uncluttered, modern, have a great mix of styles and eras and were quite fresh. I especially enjoyed the feature on Madison Spencer’s Rabbit Run transformation which has a lot of TJ, Palladio, and on the back, perhaps a hint of Graves attitude thrown in? It’s brilliant - I love that he used triple-sash windows like TJ used at Monticello:

An Atlanta home by designer Betty Burgess. She has mad art and book arranging skillz, though she does do that backwards book thing, which I think is rather absurd unless you have a secret Dewey decimal system going on in invisible ink or something: (more…)

 Who doesn’t love a firehouse? It seems they are truly en fuego right now as a trend.  Perhaps it started with this house, where the Ghostbusters had their headquarters:

Then there was The Real World: Boston, where a charming firehouse was renovated to house seven self-important, immature  strangers.  This was one cool renovation:

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Just checking in with a little vintage inspiration. I’ve had this issue of H&G sitting out in my guestroom for awhile. The cover is so fantastic. It reminds me so much of Dorothy Draper and Kate Spade style. This issue is from May 1965. I am having deja-blog because I feel sure I must have shared this one with you before, but I just did a search and don’t see it in the archives.

There is another great article in here called “Same Space: Two Kitchens.” I should totally cut it out and send it to Susan Serra, I know she’d get a kick out of the kitchen organization and spatial issues and how they were addressed in 1965. My favorite part are the following two images. I will always be a sucker for a black and white checkerboard floor; it will NEVER go out of style with me. Neither will pop floral prints. Also, these colored square-ish cabinets are so fantastic. With a few tweaks, the blue kitchen could be a wonderful IKEA display room today.

I am almost as obsessed with fashion magazines as I am with home magazines (it used to be the other way around). The delivery of the huge W every month is always exciting and this month it is incredible. I am so glad to see that some people are working hard to make sure the rest of us do not forget that New Orleans is still in dire straits. The April issue of W has an amazing 60-page spread of New Orleans shot by Bruce Weber. Since shotgun houses have been on my mind this week (and I’ll be sharing some more about some other shotgun houses next week), I thought I’d share this image with you today. So many houses like this one were lost in Katrina. Let’s make sure they are not erased.

To learn more about how to help rebuild the 9th Ward, check out The Make It Right Foundation. This is a really cool project that deserves its own blog post, so I’ll tell you a little more about it next week. Explore the site - the pink project (the color is so very Christo) and the tour of the affordable housing is very cool and inspiring.

Also, on a disaster-related note, for those of you in the Atlanta area who would like to help out with the tornado recovery in Cabbagetown this weekend, click here for more information.

photos by Bruce Weber for W magazine

I could not help but pick up yet another vintage issue of H&G from Victory Vintage last weekend. This image jumped right off the page at me. I don’t know what else to say about it except that I find it to be a rather artful way of staying organized and I wanted to share it with you:

images scanned from House & Garden magazine, July 1966 issue.