stephanieNY

Check out this lift/room at Rem Koohaas' Maison Bordeaux. The handicapped user here sits in his sweet office to get between floors instead of in a cramped and isolated elevator. Bookshelves run the height of the shaft, thus never depriving the office of books. Each floor is constantly redefined by the presence or absence of the room.  

Beautiful.

The rest of the house (designed as a "machine for living") moves too:

A steep gambrel roof pitched toward a close neighbor is one way to privacy.  A box with solid walls and a light shaft through the middle is another. 

Check out the incredible interior. The split-level stair that circles the kitchen in the core is such a clear and elegant organization of space and way of circulation...It's the kind of space that makes me wish I had thought of it first. Symmetry gets me every time.

Project by Atelier rzlbd

Photo via archdaily

I somehow missed the boat on this. Apparently the double space after the period went obsolete with the typewriter. Proportional fonts compensate and automatically give periods a little breathing room.  All this time and I never knew.  It's going to be hard habit to break.  Case in point.  

A few entries ago, I posted some picks of some neat things I had seen online...3 to be exact.  My intention, a la when I post craigslist furniture finds, is really just to share and log some design-y things that catch my eye.  This particular post incidentally coincided with my birthday and Christmas, and I received all three things as gifts last month.  (The calendar, I got twice!)  I love love love my gifts, but didn't meant to disguise my Christmas wish list as a post on my blog.  I recently plead this case to my family, who together decided that I was full of it and knew exactly what I was doing.  Hah.  Maybe, a teeny tiny part of me thought I might get the calendar, but I swear, my intentions are first and foremost to share cool design with you.  

    

This is an amazing thought for about 4 1/2 seconds.  Mmmmmm:

Dreamy thoughts of soft sand on your feet quickly squashed by uncomfortable thoughts of sand in your couch.  

Pantone color mugs at a shop in the North End. 

Honey, how do you want your coffee?

Uhhh...dark, one sugar, and I'll take it in Pantone 19-1557.  Thanks.

Craigslist is hot right now.  

A complete Hans Wegner dining set.

Walnut dresser from the 60s with rosewood handles:

As of Thursday, I was officially finished with my classes.  My final final was for my graphic design class, the best class I took all three years.  I had these two really great professors, both from 2x4, Inc.  It made me wish I had studied graphic design instead.  False alarm though.  I think this falls somewhere with my furniture design dreams.  I'm just really good at liking good graphic and furniture design, not really making either.  Here's Michael Rock standing with my final diagrams (in black on the wall).  

And here are my diagrams (inspiration for color palette and dots from AB):

I don't often find myself needing to sit on the floor, but when I do, I know that I want this.

I have a couple questions for this guy though.  Do you carry that around in your bag at all times, like reusable grocery bags?  Or do you bring it for special sitting-on-the-ground occasions?  Where are you in this picture?  And why aren't you sitting on whatever everyone else is?

This is the second time in the past month or so that I've come across the guy who designed this, Alejandro Aravena.  I looked at his housing projects as a precedent to my studio project this semester.  

I also handed in my final icon designs last week.  I settled on 4 modes of transportation...kind of generic, but I wanted to create something that I could use in my studio project somehow.  From fastest to slowest, it's train, bus, bicycle, and pedestrian.  I was really into the Munich Olympic icons that I posted about.  They used straight lines at 45 degree angles to represent the moving figures.  I set up a 14x14 grid and used quarter circles to turn all corners.  The tree was my favorite (until someone in my class told me it looked like a smiling elephant...thanks.)