Plants die. Sweaters go out of fashion. Chocolates get gobbled fast. But design books are gifts that keep giving.
It’s true. Sumptuously illustrated books about well-designed objects, inviting interiors, and extraordinary homes are forever useful, always up there on the shelf offering ideas or the occasional escape into a more comely world.
So add a trip to the bookstore to your last-minute shopping rounds and look for these selections from among this year’s notable releases: (more…)
These days, it’s a breeze to find the perfect ceiling fan.
They come with blades covered with cloth, hand-carved into leaf shapes, made of saw grass and wicker — even double-deckered to look like the wings of a biplane.
Some have elegant, crystal-like or etched glass and lots of ornate detail. Others are simply styled, made of brushed nickel and aluminum. Some have an industrial look.
As temperatures rise and houses often get stuffy, many people are thinking about buying ceiling fans. (more…)
Imagine lounging on a chaise, sipping something cold on a hot day and being cooled by palm fronds moving slowly overhead.
Or picture a pair of small airplane propellers whirring around the room, or evoke the feeling of a fine old hotel with an ornate fixture in an antique finish.
Today, it’s a breeze to find the right ceiling fan.
They come with blades covered with cloth, hand carved into leaf shapes, made of saw grass and wicker. Some have elegant, crystal-like or etched glass and a lot of ornate detail. Others are simply styled, made of brushed nickel and aluminum. Some even have an industrial look to them.
Brian Sponsler, vice president and general manager of Emerson Ceiling Fans in St. Louis, calls ceiling fans the “hottest accessory in home fashion” that can be a “reflection of the homeowner’s personality.” (more…)
To mark Architecture Week, each day the Magazine will look at a notable building opened in Britain in the past 12 months and ask what makes it different.
Donnybrook Quarter in Bow, east London, is an island of white in a sea of brown and grey. And even discounting the unusual whitewashed effect, it would still diverge dramatically from the surrounding area, with its squarish modernist look.
Finished in January, the £4.5m development was honoured with a RIBA award on Thursday and a place on the long list for the Stirling Prize, British architecture’s top prize. (more…)
The widening net of world trade appeared to be the reason the 45th Salone Internazionale del Mobile, an international furniture fair held in the outskirts of Milan, hosted a near-record 2,500 exhibitors from 37 countries this month. It was a New Age trade caravan, and with it came a hybrid international aesthetic that even the Italians, who were 90 percent of the exhibitors, embraced.
At the new fairgrounds and buildings in Rho-Pero, designed by Massimiliano Fuksas, in showrooms within the city, at private parties leading up to opening day, and at off-site events in the grungy Tortona design district during I Saloni, spectators got a clear view of what’s to come in furniture, kitchen and bath design stores this fall. (more…)
