Sao Paulo, Brazil, home of 2006 Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Paulo Mendes da Rocha, is often described as a place of dreams and nightmares.

The population of the world’s fifth-largest city has doubled in 30 years, to more than 18 million.

Unemployment hovers at 20 percent, but commerce is so good that skyscrapers jostle for airspace. Four million autos cruise 10,000 miles of streets, creating traffic jams that send the elite fleeing to helicopters in a Blade Runner escape from everyday reality.
Read more…

MILAN, Italy Poltrona Frau SpA CEO Giuliano Mosconi said the luxury Italian furniture maker intends to use money raised from its initial public offer launched Monday to finance new products, stores and marketing around the world.

Poltrona Frau expects to raise up to €88 million (US$111.9 million) by selling 35 percent of the company’s shares on the market. The IPO, which closes on Nov. 10, has a price range of €1.80 to €2.20 per share, valuing the company between €252 million (US$320.47 million) and €308 million (US$391.68 million). Read more…

WYOMING — Eight years ago, Gilmore Furniture Inc. followed a hunch and bought a bankrupt office-furniture company. At the time, Cumberland was just a name.

Now, that classic brand is booming for Gilmore, a manufacturer with a niche in wood-based furniture.

In just three years, sales are up 350 percent for Cumberland, Gilmore’s traditional furniture line. This month, Gilmore is accommodating that boom by wrapping up its second expansion in as many years at its plant at 321 Terminal St. SW, near U.S. 131 and 28th Street SW.
Read more…

THE Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court yesterday ordered Shanghai Banri Family Appliance Co Ltd to compensate Beijing Innovation Co Ltd, a Denmark-invested furniture company, 50,000 yuan (US$6,250) for patent violation.

Innovation received a patent for a sofabed designed by its parent company in China in July 2003. It found Banri was selling a similar sofabed in 2005. Banri argued it didn’t produce the sofabed itself but bought the product from a furniture market in Jiangsu Province.

HIGH POINT, N.C. - When she talks about the new furniture collection for kids, Maxine Clark acts like an excited 9-year-old. She scoots up onto a bunk bed, gets on her knees to pull out a deep toy drawer, almost giggles when she lifts a shelf to expose a secret hiding place.

Clark is founder and chief executive of Build-A-Bear Workshop. The chain has partnered with Pulaski Furniture to create and market a new line of youth furniture, which was introduced recently at the High Point Market.

The four collections - two for girls, one for boys and one offering modular storage - created the most buzz in what industry insiders say is one of the hottest furniture categories. Read more…

Last week, two lectures had the same bottom line: Design matters. Wednesday, in Newell-Simon Hall, the Human-Computer Interaction Institute hosted Jared M. Spool, a founder at the research and consulting design firm User Interface Engineering. Spool used examples from the Internet on how (and how not) to design a website.

Spool’s lecture, titled “The Dawning of the Age of Experience,” cited airline fare-restriction agreements as examples of poor usability. Such agreements are written in a language difficult for even a lawyer to understand. In the case of Southwest Airlines’ policy, Spool noted, the entire document is condensed into three confusing paragraphs. Using Netflix as an example, Spool noted how good design is essentially invisible: “If we succeed, no one notices,” he explained. Following user recommendations, the company has increased its website’s usability by implementing a system featuring user preferences and movie taste correlations. Spool concluded his lecture with some lessons he has learned from experience. He recommended a multidisciplinary approach, where multiple talents collaborate during the production process. Communication is key, said Spool; it’s important to have an immediate customer feedback loop, which can be used to review incremental design decisions. Read more…

More space to the interior design of ships and super-yachts in the exhibition area known as “Abitare il Mare” during Seatec 2007, the fifth international exhibition of shipbuilding technology, due in Marina di Carrara from 1st to 3rd February 2007. A surface of 1,200 square metres will host those Italian companies that offer the very best of design in the manufacture of tables, chairs, upholstered furniture, beds and interior decoration.

On February 2nd, “Abitare il Mare” will see the winners of the second Furniture Design Award and the conference on the “Quality of life on board”. Read more…

The Art Deco Home has many new designs of Art Deco furniture for sale, including works by the great masters of Art Deco design.

PIERRE CHAREAU

The Maison de Verre (French for House of Glass) was built from 1928 to 1931 in Paris, France. Constructed in the early modern style of architecture, the house’s design emphasized three primary traits: honesty of materials, variable transparency of forms, and juxtaposition of “industrial” materials and fixtures with a more traditional style of home décor. The primary materials used were steel, glass, and glass block. Some of the notable “industrial” elements included rubberized floor tiles, bare steel beams,perforated metal sheet,heavy industrial light fixtures and mechanical fixtures.
The design was a collaboration between Pierre Chareau (a furniture and interiors designer), Bernard Bijvoet (a Dutch architect working in Paris since 1927) and Louis Dalbet (craftsman metalworker). Much of the intricate moving scenery of the house was designed on site as the project developed. The external form is defined by translucent glass block walls, with select areas of clear glazing for tranparency. Internally, spatial division is variable by the use of sliding, folding or rotating screens in glass, sheet or perforated metal, or in combination. Other mechanical components included an overhead trolley from the kitchen to dining room, a retracting stair from the private sitting room to Mme Dalsace’s bedroom and complex bathroom cupboards and fittings. Read more…

Hidden Canyon Ranch Offers perfect Black Hills Vacation Property

Lying in the shadows of Elk Mountain in the celebrated Black Hills of South Dakota, Hidden Canyon Ranch is nearly 1500 acres of infectious beauty and one the most pristine Black Hills vacation properties that you will ever have the opportunity to experience. Its painted limestone canyons, majestic pine and cedar covered ridges, separated by grassy open meadows provide for the renewing of the weariest of souls.

This is a land where the antelope, deer and elk still roam free. Hawks and eagles soar overhead. And crowded cities are but a distant memory. To ensure that it remains this way, more that 1,200 acres of Hidden Canyon Ranch will forever be preserved. Keeping the Black Hills the way it’s been for thousands of years. Read more…

You may live in a two-bedroom ranch, but you can still eat, sleep and relax on furnishings inspired by the biggest American mansion of them all, Biltmore House in Asheville, N.C.

Two new furniture collections by Magnussen Home Furnishings draw inspiration from the 1890s French Renaissance-style chateau in the Blue Ridge Mountains that has become a popular tourist destination, letting homeowners channel their inner George and Edith Vanderbilt.

“People want something to remember an experience,” said Jerry Epperson, a furniture industry analyst with Richmond, Va.-based investment banker Mann, Armistead and Epperson. “In this case, the souvenir just may be your entire living room.” Read more…