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A bunch of really cool things that are different.. Here they are enjoy the pics and post.. They stuck out at me and I felt like sharing.

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The Maison et Objet design fair kicked off in Paris last week, and Kartell unveiled something new for the occasion. In celebration of the 10th birthday of the Italian brand’s wild (and wildly successful) Bourgie Lamp, Kartell invited its team of 14 designers to reinterpret the lamp, a fanciful design by Ferruccio Laviani. It helps, of course, that Kartell’s roster of designers includes names with undeniable star power: Philippe Starck, Piero Lissoni, Patricia Urquiola, and the singerLenny Kravitz. Being exhibited during Maison et Objet at Kartell’s flagship store in Paris, the 14 new Bourgies span a range from completely deconstructed (Urquiola) to head-scratching (Starck). Here, the original Bourgie, above, and a half dozen pretenders.

A fantastic Housing Project

A housing project on the Big Island of Hawaii—labeled Lavaflow—has given San Francisco-based architect Craig Steely an ideal backdrop against which to practice his self-described brand of “reductive architecture,” distinguished by few materials and simple, clean forms. With their linear, horizontal profiles, flat roofs, and vast expanses of glass, Lavaflow houses make an obvious nod towards Mid-Century Modern architecture, but Hawaii’s particular climate injects other concerns into the building process.

“Building near the ocean, with the volcano close by and the acid rain that comes from the volcano, adds another whole level of complication.” That level of complication necessitates mitigating solutions: steel framing to combat termite infestation; orienting the houses to maximize the benefits of ocean and wind; and structural elements that leverage Hawaii’s natural resources smartly and sustainably.

“The fact that every room is located along a spine makes it really easy to activate cross-ventilation and to cool off the entire place,” Steely says. “The idea of aloha really exists. It’s that caring for people, for the land, and for each other…if you really want to understand a culture and a place, build a house there.” Don’t we just wish we could.

The Luxury Dogbowl

Traditionally low-cost gingham has gone seriously upscale. Zurich-based brand En Soie has made the provincial pattern one of its signature motifs, applying it to a line of accessories and porcelain tableware—including these food bowls, for the over-indulged canine. Hand made, hand painted, and edged in 18k gold, En Soie’s Dog Bowls are unreasonably precious enough to tempt buyers to set their own tables with the checkered beauties. Alas, that doggie bowl shape is a barking giveaway.

Sputnik Chandeliers

We’d barely finished waxing poetic about Sputnik chandeliers when we spotted this starburst-shaped kaleidoscope by interior designer Kelly Wearstler, who knows a thing or two about luxury goods. Hand-crafted in Los Angeles, and given a lustrous bronze finish, this “jewelery for the home” accent piece is decidedly not for the budget-conscious. But we do appreciate its intricate ornamentation and pitch-perfect holiday glamor.

Thanks for reading

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A few things that caught my eye

Avant-Garde Home Furnishings, LLC présents

 A few things that caught my eye

Today I am writting about a few things that have cauught my attention.. These are all classified as Modern items and minimal in nature. Hope all of you enhjoy them.. They are amazing.... 

Enjoy the pics and post

Fabric Architecture

It’s possible to read many things into Home Within Home, the ethereal installation by Korean-born sculptor Do Ho Suh, currently on view at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul. But duality, and its accompanying tensions, are clearly a central theme for the Korean-American transplant. Duh, whose preferred medium is translucent silk, has replicated, to jaw-dropping 1:1 scale, two seminal houses from his life: his childhood home in Korea, and the 3-story Providence, Rhode Island townhouse which became his home upon immigrating to the U.S. The installation merges the two houses, with the modestly sized Korean house floating in mid-air, suspended from the ceiling of the mammoth American house which completely encases it. Home Within Home, Duh’s largest sculpture to date, is dreamy and wistful, fleeting and soulful—much like houses and homes, and the lives lived inside them.

A look inside....

Mediocrity, it’s safe to say, was never to be the destiny of someone with a name like Toogood; still, we should have known that the home of the British designer Faye Toogood would have style to burn. Toogood—whose peripatetic resume includes editorial, industrial, and interior design—defines her aesthetic as “the combination of the unexpected and the theatrical with something tactile or handmade, even painterly.” All of which, happy to say, are abundantly evident in her elegantly refurbished London home. Her particular talent, befitting the eye of someone who studied art history, lies in creating still life compositions, poetic vignettes of carefully curated, seemingly unrelated objects. “I like to combine the precious and the raw,” she says—and here, she does, to splendid effect.

 Black Archetecture

The color black, with all its ominous implications, is, in fact, tailor-made for 21st Century architecture. While a black-washed Victorian or Tudor morphs into an architectural cliche of foreboding doom, black lends the clean lines and geometric volumes of modern architecture a stark, sophisticated dynamism. This summer house in Tjajkovski, Sweden is one of many examples of contemporary architecture which showcases black as an aesthetic feature—and it’s a personal favorite here at 2Modern. Designed by architectural firm Tham & Videgård, the already striking angles, extreme horizontal profile and external detailing of the glass and wood Archipelago House are rendered only more dramatic by its rich black stain. As an even more dramatic counterpoint, the inside of the Archipelago house is predominantly white—but today being Halloween, it’s only black that has us transfixed.

 Hope all of you enjoyed the pics and post..

AG Home Goods

A bunch of cool things

Avant-Garde Home Furnishings, LLC présents
Interesting places, sites, sounds..

Today I am just going around in circles and writing about all sorted of things in the design world.. No direction just things that caught my attention...

Sydney's Apollo RESTAURANT....

“For me, Greek food is something you have at home. It’s not made to look refined,” says interior architect George Livissianis, who translated some of that simplicity and lack of pretension to his design for the Greek restaurant, Apollo, in Sydney, Australia. Livissianis, an Australian of Greek descent, was lucky enough to find fortuitous architectural details beneath the dropped ceilings and plasterboard of the existing space, and had the vision to know what to do with them.

“Our intent was to expose the carcass of the building and encourage the inherent Mediterranean feel of the existing arched windows, the hidden decorative ceilings and stripped finish of the existing walls.” Wabi-sabi rawness and a dearth of color—Livissianis refers to the color palette asdesaturated and dusty—recalls the rocky, sun-bleached Grecian landscape; and Artemidesuspension lighting and pale Thonet chairs inject contemporary elegance. Pretty refined, we’d say.

A Water filler

We’ve written about the lovely glass carafe and sustainable water filter designed by San Francisco-based Soma in a previous post, but it’s worth noting their current collaboration with Charity: Water, the non-profit group which has made clean drinking water for everyone its goal. Soma has launched this limited edition yellow filter to help raise funds for Charity: Water’s initiatives in Cambodia. For each Soma carafe and limited edition filter purchased, Soma will donate $12.50 towards providing clean water to every family in 3 Cambodian villages. If you weren’t tempted to buy a Soma water filtering system before, we hope you will be now. 

Interior designs Line Item Rack... 

Interior Design Magazine has announced its “Best of Year” 2013 Finalists in a broad range of categories that includes furniture, lighting, textiles and accessories. A finalist in the accessories category is Line, the elegant storage piece designed by North Carolina’s Davis Furniture—and no design enthusiast would argue the selection. An impossibly slim, wall-mounted slat of oak, walnut, or painted MDF, outfitted with 3 steel pegs and a separate pull-down lever, Line is a visually striking hold-all for clothes, coats or small accessories, whether used singly or in a group. The only conundrum we see is in having to choose amongst the gorgeous selection of colors.

  

Mexican Hospitality...

Anyone in the mood for the vibrant brand of Modernism exemplified by Mexican masters Luis Barragan and Ricardo Legorreta will have to look somewhere besides Mexico City’s new Distrito Capital boutique hotel, a ravishing Modernist nirvana with nary a nod to Mexican culture in sight.

French architect Joseph Dirand, whose previous hospitality venture in Mexico produced the austereHotel Habitat Monterrey, oversaw the interior design at Distrito Capital, and it shows. As with Habitat Monterrey, Dirand’s European flair is prominently on display, with furnishings by great Danes Saarinen and Aalto taking center stage.

Refinement and restraint, down to the monochromatic color scheme, reigns supreme—makingDistrito Capital a Mexican destination in which the only Latin reference point lies in its breathtaking panoramic vie

ws.

Hope all of you enjoyed the pics and post.. 

AG Home Goods