elements
London-based designer
Kenyon Yeh has developed a wonderful premise for hacking Ikea furniture (one of our favorite past-times): He buys standard Ikea flat-pack furniture and throws away the instruction book; then he assembles it the way he wants, adding new elements like an old English chair leg he cast in resin…It seems to us like their are HUGE possibilities for improvising here. Said Yeh (using some mighty weird language):
“The process is liberating and brings a limitless attitude of possibility creating unique furniture instead of doing such a thing that made by forces”
We know what he means. It IS a liberating idea.
And now that we’ve heard that Ikea is planning read more…
09.06.10 |
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in cheap + great, elements, furniture, inside, materials, people, plans, reimagine, resources, why not? |
Hreinn Fridfinnsson
We wish every cardboard box we come across to look like this, which is, actually, an artwork by Hreinn Fridfinnsson. Being barbarians, we’d like to copy Fridfinnsson’s idea for our closet boxes…or, as an unexpected spin on a gift box: it would look ordinary and rather humdrum on the outside, but when the giftee pulls back the flaps…a big surprise!
…a cardboard box + flourescent paper + bookbinding material = a complete change of view.
We’re sending this post to our friend Vicki Lynn who LOVES pink – a sort of virtual gift – until we can give her a real one.
Happy Birthday, Vicki Beth Lynn!
Via LNKNG
Related posts: Cardboard, Crates + Chairs as Building Materials
Andrea Zittel’s Investigative Living
Clipped-Together Shelving Pt.2: Cardboard Boxes
Couturier de Cardboard: Matthew Sporzynski
Halloween Inspiration: Cardboard Box as Empire State Building
Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules
08.10.10 |
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in art, copy this!, elements, inspiration, materials, reimagine, resources |
Ditte Isager
While surfing around this morning, we stumbled on an interior by photographer Ditte Isager and was struck by the wallpaper, loosely tacked rather than glued, for a whole other, delightfully un-done look. For us, it’s a swell alternative to the often-fussy permanence of wallpaper (and the difficulty of taking it off the wall when we change our minds). We went to Isager’s website to check out her work and found more lovely examples of paper wall coverings… read more…
08.03.10 |
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in copy this!, elements, inside, materials, reimagine, resources, stores, walls + windows |
When we were in Santa Cruz recently, a friend dragged us to a giant shopping mall. In no time, our senses were overwhelmed by TOO MUCH: stuff for sale, Cinnabon and Starbuck’s smells, piped music, people. Stumbling on the new Lego store made it all worth while. We loved its giant wall of help-yourself bins of Legos: we could buy the exact amount of whatever color(s) we wanted. Since we naturally seem to lean toward the monochromatic, we started imagining all the things we would devise with white Legos (maybe with one orange one stuck in to mess it up a little), or maybe these hot green ones… read more…
08.02.10 |
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in elements, hard, inside, materials, resources, sightings, stores |
Todd Selby//The Selby
A picture of a chair made out of orange-and-white-striped wooden safety barriers that we saw on The Selby led us to discovering Tom Sachs. He’s an artist who makes elaborate recreations of modern icons: masterpieces of engineering and design of one kind or another, from Knoll office furniture to Prada to NASA (like this hilarious video). The all-seams-showing recreations are made out of ordinary stuff like phone books and Foamcoare welded together with duct tape or a glue gun. As it is clear from The Selby’s pictures of Sach’s living/studio space, the work of this imaginative inventor/artist holds ideas for our own more modest creations…
Although we don’t know what it says, we’re crazy about Sach’s bedspread, and the idea of writing on our own…
….not to mention the wonderful chair… read more…
07.26.10 |
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in art, cool spaces, elements, inside, inspiration, inspiration blogs + sites, materials, people, repurpose, sleeping, storage |
Daniel Hale
We are so happy to have discovered Serendipity Rising, architect Daniel Hale’s blog that is mostly about the evolution of his home in Napa Valley, which seems to be a sort of laboratory for his ideas. The guy loves soft metals like zinc and lead which he cuts and hammers in unusual ways; he transforms salvaged woods and ‘finds’ by applying modern lines and layers of techniques into an eclectic take, like this incredible flight of stairs: “I layered black over brown and ran a strip of lead sheeting up the middle”. What he does to his own house is freer than the “client” work we’ve seen, as he follows his ideas for his own pleasure. “Tickle” is a recent post – a sort of poem-story (edited here) – about his violent and fearless transformation of an old piano, which had been left in the winery he turned into his studio: read more…
07.19.10 |
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in bath, cool spaces, elements, floors, inside, materials, people, reclaim, repurpose, resources |
Rum Magazine
Lately, we’ve been seeing planks and bits of salvaged wood being used in bold geometric patterns to enclose bathtubs, and kitchen islands, make headboards and floors… Pieced together like a puzzle, with a good eye, “rustic” changes curiously to modern. read more…
07.12.10 |
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in elements, floors, furniture, hard, inside, materials, reclaim, repurpose, resources, resources blogs + sites, stores |
Ellen Silverman
A couple of weeks ago, we started posting about Lydia Wills’ former studio apartment in New York City; the 600-square-foot space had so much going on, we had to make it a series…
Here’s her renovated kitchen which, when she moved in, was the most generic of New York City apartment galley kitchens (there’s a gratifying “before” after the jump). A few years ago she ripped it out and rethought the original space. The question: How to create a pleasurable, efficient kitchen without moving any walls or spending a fortune?… read more…
07.08.10 |
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in eating, elements, hard, inside, kitchen, lighting, materials, reimagine, solutions |
Joshua Abelow
Recently at You Have Been Here Sometime, we found two really great posts (among a lot of good stuff): The first: a post called A Possible Yellow with two paintings and and interior that use various yellows: POSSIBLE yellows to consider for …where? ….a room?….a sign?….a dress…the side of a building….? We love the idea of collecting POSSIBLE colors, ideas, patterns… for use… somewhere.
The other was an excerpt of a letter from the artist Eva Hesse to Sol Lewitt (part of the wonderful Joshua Abelow, Interview pt. 2:
“From your description, and from what I know of your previous work and you [sic] ability; the work you are doing sounds very good “Drawing-clean-clear but crazy like machines, larger and bolder… real nonsense.” That sounds fine, wonderful – real nonsense. Do more. More nonsensical, more crazy, more machines, more breasts, penises, cunts, whatever – make them abound with nonsense.
“Try and tickle something inside you, your “weird humor. You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you – draw & paint your fear and anxiety. And stop worrying about big, deep things such as “to decide on a purpose and way of life, a consistant [sic] approach to even some impossible end or even an imagined end”
You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO!”
…There’s some advice to follow!
07.01.10 |
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in elements, inspiration, inspiration blogs + sites, materials, reimagine, strategies |
Knowing we have a serious thing for concrete, Lydia Wills sent us this picture of a light fixture designed in 1960 by Le Corbusier for the Chandigarth Zoo in India. It’s massive – about a yard across, a yard high and 22 inches deep – yet wonderfully graceful. We’d buy it if had $36,000 to spare (what it went for recently at auction) and could move it. But we’re happy just to have seen it: our view expanded about the possibilities of cast concrete (as Marcel Breuer did once with concrete block).
Like so many things that come our way, the photo of Le Corbusier’s extraordinary light fixture sent us following one idea after another…we started learning about cast concrete, wondering if we could do it ourselves…envisioning not just a Tobias Wong-inspired door stop made by using an Aalto
, or other vase, as a mold for concrete…but something BIG (why haven’t we seen any concrete slabs as bed frames? yes, yes, too heavy, we know….)…we were wondering how to get hold of bigger-than-a-doorstop molds for concrete and discovered the Smooth-On Liquid Rubber that can be poured, brushed or sprayed onto whatever you want to make a mold…hhmm… read more…
06.28.10 |
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in elements, inspiration, materials, people, reimagine, resources blogs + sites, strategies |
Sally Schneider
Last weekend, instead of the usual fabulous summer flowers – sunflowers, zinnias, roses – we picked up our favorite alt-flowers from our farmer friend Keith Stewart. He sells the flowers from his alliums (members of the onion family) like onion, shallot and chive: long green stems topped by white modernist globes.We also buy Keith’s garlic scapes, the vivid green shoots that the forming underground garlic bulbs send up, that curl into beautiful tendrils. Two or three scapes in a vase have a sculptural look that will change slightly daily. Garlic scapes are also delicious to eat. When they are young and tender, we slice them on an extreme diagonal and braise them in extra-virgin olive oil or butter with a bit of water and salt, until they are tender. Their texture is like a string bean with a delicate flavor of mellowed garlic.
Because they are the byproduct of an edible crop, allium flowers usually cost little, last quite a long time, and are wonderful to look at. They have the added virtue of being edible. Allium flowers are really clusters of tiny individual flowers; you can pull them apart to sprinkle in salads… on just about any cooked vegetable…eggs…for a little hit of onion flavor.
Related post: On Tomatoes and Improvising
Little Makeshift Vases
Copy This: Vines and Leafy Vegetables as Flowers
06.27.10 |
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in cheap + great, elements, garden |
Ellen Silverman
Knowing that Lydia Wills was about to move to a bigger apartment, we enlisted Ellen Silverman to photograph her 600-square-foot studio near Gramercy Park. We’ve known Lydia for years and have watched her apartment evolve into a home with lots of good ideas, far too many to cover in one post. So we thought we’d do the broad strokes now and then focus on specifics during the next few weeks. The real story of Lydia’s apartment is that it slowly evolved, as Lydia did, growing out of one thing and into another, as she discovered furniture, fabrics and lighting that resonated with her life.
Lydia has been sewing since she was young and loves natural textiles, which she used to define the space (often incorporating unusual and vintage fabrics). Over years, she discovered and fell in love with the work of Scandinavian and European Modernist designers. She bought some enduring, beautifully designed pieces of furniture and lighting (mostly on Ebay, for a fraction of their cost), like the leather chair by Yngve Ekstrom, the fantastic table by Bengt Gullberg and the chandelier by Eric Hoglund.
Since there is nothing more gratifying than seeing before-and-after photos, we’ll start with a picture of what this apartment looked like BEFORE, when someone else had it: read more…
06.23.10 |
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in before + after, cool spaces, elements, furniture, inside, kitchen, paths + processes, reimagine, rooms |
When we were looking around for affordable knobs for a kitchen cabinet we wanted to use as furniture, we spent quite a bit of time hunting for ones that were the moderne shape we liked, only to discover that the finish was awful: too-shiny, too-brassy, too…cheap looking. Since the knobs we found had great lines and were inexpensive, we decided to try hacking them: we sanded them with fine sand paper to take most of the brassy coating off, and bring them down to the base metal (or was it the other way around?). We liked the roughed-up look even better than what we had in our heads.
We LOVE hacking things, customizing them, “overcoming their limits”, as Scott Burnham writes in his the very interesting pamphlet on hacking, “creating new options on one’s own terms”.
Is there anything that cannot be hacked? As we look around us, we think: It’s pretty much our imagination that limits what we can or cannot hack…
Related post: Kitchen Cabinets as Furniture
06.16.10 |
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in elements, furniture, hard, inside, materials |
Tobias Wong
A couple of years ago (when ‘the improvised life’ was just an idea), we stumbled on this picture of Tobias Wong‘s file cabinet bed in Reference Library, and bookmarked it, thinking we’d write a post about it someday. It is such a great, direct idea, with many possibilities for implementing in different ways. But we didn’t think then to follow the little link below the photo, to Wong’s website, brokenoff.com where we would have seen just what a gifted designer and conceptual artist he was. We discovered this in the saddest way possible: reading in the New York Times of Wong’s recent death at thirty-five.
Wong’s work was very much about mocking the pretensions of “great design” in thoughtful, clever, often angry ways. He famously hacked – and mocked – the work of other designers – to their outrage – for his creations. He coined the word “paraconceptual” to describe his work. “When I do pull a prank, it’s my means of sending out a conceptual idea. It’s not just laughing at them.” Although he didn’t like being called a designer, all of his work had the grace and harmony of good design, while pushing you to think or experience things in a new way, like his Stoop Installation: read more…
06.14.10 |
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in art, elements, housewares, inspiration blogs + sites, people, reimagine, repurpose, why not? |
