Displaying posts from October, 2011

Rooms ripped from the latest pages of the your favourite magazine, right? Would you believe that this Antwerp home by Vincent Van Duysen was designed in 2001. It’s so fresh. So now but still so timeless. Fads come and go but 10 years later we can look at these photos and say not only fashion forward for the time but just right for now.

And 1998. Yes 13 years old.

Over the weekend my husband was researching Ottawa architects online, and came across one of our favourites, John Donkin (I featured him last year). He found a recently completed home in his portfolio that is EXACTLY what we’ve been dreaming about. We drove by it on Saturday and after picking our jaws up off the ground we managed to snap some photos of it with a cell phone like a couple of stalkers. The exterior is perfect for us – tall and narrow-ish with a huge garage (it is really deep and wide once you drive in) where my husband can hang out and do guy stuff. These folks have a fairly wide lot so they were able to plan for alot of windows on the more private side of the house, which we may not be able to get away with given our narrow lot.

I love that the facade is not made up of 8 different materials in 8 different colours like all the other modern homes going up around Ottawa. (BLEH). The simplicity of it is perfection, and draws your attention to the wonderful details like ALL THE WINDOWS.
Now, I have not really taken a good look at the interior as I am up to my eyeballs in French studies so this post is more about the shape and the exterior but I thought I’d show you the photos from John’s website of both so you can see what this fabulous home is all about (after the jump).

If you’d like to send us photos to include in next week’s “pets on furniture” post, please ensure your photos follow our basic rules: First, the pet must be on a piece of furniture. And said piece of furniture must be clearly visible in the photo, so it takes center stage rather than your pet. Think of it more of a photo of a great piece of furniture that you want to show off…and your pet happens to be sitting on it. And second, the photo must be of decent quality. If it’s dark or fuzzy (from a camera phone) then it may not make the cut. Thanks! (Photos, your name, location and a brief description can be sent to  desiretoinspirekim[@]hotmail[.]com and PLEASE don’t send closeups of your pet!)

This is my Brussels Griffon, Alma, on a Room & Board couch.
– Lauren (New York City)

My boyfriend wanted it black, I wanted it white, so we bought a grey sofa. The cat’s loved it anyhow. Leon (on the armrest) and Idde.
– Ylva (Swedish, with a Norwegian boyfriend, living in Australia)

I am submitting photos we took during our recent vacation at Casale Monticchio in Umbria, Italy.  One of the resident cats, Jasper, often came to visit us in our apartment, a 17th century converted outbuilding, which originally housed stables, pigsties, wine presses and a bread oven.
– Sarah

This is my dear French bulldog/shih tzu mix, Bo. She sits in her favourite corner of our well loved, down-stuffed leather sofa. Inevitably the pillows she is perched on are dramatically shoved off moments after she jumps up to rest her nearly hairless belly on the cool leather! For such a silly little dog, she certainly looks serious in this picture.
– Jen (London, Ontario)

My cat (Nancy Raygun) chillin’ on my bed. Artwork in the background is: bird print, tree print, mermaid, beard couple, swimmer
– Kelsey

I snapped this recently of our cat, Smokey, enjoying a few minutes of peace on our couch. Our daughter was born 7 weeks ago, so life in our house has been a bit crazy! Smokey didn’t really appreciate my interrupting her nap but I couldn’t help it 🙂
– Barbara

I send the picture of my cat, I know that the furniture ( table) is not clear, but i simply think that is a perfect picture for a halloween pets post, a black cat and a BOO! He is Rasputín, my 5 months cat, we live in south Spain, and I was printing some printables for the halloween decorations and he decided to appear behind the computer.
– Nuria

I love the Giogali chandelier designed by Angelo Mangiarotti in 1967. Love. I’m thinking of one in my dining room. I’m also loving these fabulous photos featuring the Giogali in all its glory by Jim Bastardo (via Big Leo). Makes my decision so much easier. Just what a good commercial photographer should do. Capture an image that captures your dreams. (You can see Kim’s post on Jim Bastardo here.)

I get so excited when I see an email from Australian architect Scott Weston in my inbox. He has been a regular on Desire to Inspire for quite some time now as he generously shares his latest projects. What gets me so excited though, is that not only are his projects so inspiring in their colour choices, storage solutions and great design, Scott generously gives us an insight into his design process, material selections, plans and models. The complete package. Today is no different. I’ll let Scott explain SWAD‘s latest work.

It’s been a while since I shared what we have been up to in SWAD world. We have just completed a 70m2 apartment in Darlinghurst for a female doctor who sold her house up in the blue mountains and is now living full time in the city. The existing apartment was ‘surprise surprise’ a cold white bland space devoid of any personality but had great natural light. The general colour scheme of materials and finishes was generated by the Client’s favorite colours as shown by the handbag with it’s walnut, powder blue, copper, olive green and silver grey palette. On the ground floor we designed a continuous floor to ceiling walnut timber ‘hero wall’ 500mm wide x 5626mm long that concealed everything. The bespoke cabinetry housed TV, stereo, speakers, flexible shelving, electronic push touch drawers and secret walk-in pantry all finished in a light olive green. To break up the scale and planar shape we inserted linear and vertical niches that were hand finished in copper leaf and reflect beautifully both natural and artificial light. The return end wall housed the kitchen wet area and appliances and we used grey mirror to reflect and give the illusion of greater depth to the room and reflect the new landscaped external balcony room. The pantry is a great exercise in planning and design and reminds the Client of being on board an airplane or ships galley with everything having it’s own specific place.

Upstairs the existing ‘white blandness’ continued with a bedroom, separate inglenook office and a rather dark and dingy wardrobe room. Walls were demolished and the entire room was opened up and the joinery insertions seamlessly defined the three functional activities of bedroom, office and robe. A light crown cut timber was used for the general robe wall and extended out to form the office and framework for the upholstered bedhead. A beautiful grey green hand drawn wallpaper with pistachio green overtones was selected to define opposing walls and to house a concealed triptych mirror and cupboards to the robe corridor. The office borrowed on the flavours of eau de nil with a desktop of powdery olive linoleum and a cashmere pinboard in a similar hue. Turning the corner there is a vertical library shelving system and facing the window the oversized king size bed with powder blue cashmere bedhead. Direct and indirect strip lighting creates great visual drama to the spaces and the finishing touch being the grey/lilac carpet that ties both upstairs and downstairs together very elegantly. The Client took a leap of faith about the lilac carpet as I said many a time convincing….. that if we did just brown carpet the whole space would become very flat and the visual interest would not be there. Very happy Client and a pleased Architect.