The Designer Gardens
Trend Alert 2012
by MeCC Interiors
If you’re a trend watcher and can’t wait to know what’s on the design horizon for 2012, here are a few of the evolving shifts occurring within Canada and the US pertaining to home design, which are making our living spaces more practical than aspirational. These trends apply not only to new homes, but more extensive renovation projects.
Open Concept Living and Family space (photo by homeaway.com)
Letter pillows from Jonathan Adler, Pottery Barn
Despite what your English teacher might have said, we think that sometimes it’s good to get a little bit wordy. In this case, you can put the pen and paper aside and let two kinds of graphic wool pillows do the talking for your abode.
Spell it out with the Letter Pillow, $110, from Jonathan Adler. Displayed as a single initial or grouped together, these hand-loomed wool pillows have a classic, stately quality. Each capital letter, finished in a thick matching border, practically pops off the pillow.
Love & Architecture
Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, but more importantly, the famed Sinatra estate Twin Palms. Image via Curbed.
Curbed posts today on old hollywood romances, and the houses they happened in. Our favorite, naturally, is the mod: the Twin Palms estate in Palm Springs whose original owner was Frank Sinatra. One of the midcentury Palm Springs landmarks that’s managed to escape demolition, the house was built in 1947 and designed by E.
Help SKSN Swim!
SKSN are embarking on a brand new project, to build a swimming pool at the school. This will allow many of the children to have therapy in the water and also help encourage activity with the local community.
As regular readers of our blogs will know, we have been supporting SKSN School for a number of years now through donations and trade links with a vocational training scheme. This is a big project for the school which would enable the physically disabled pupils to benefit from a swimming pool. The school is home to around 550 male and female pupils aged from 5-25, many of who have been affected by polio, are amputees or have been injured.
In 2003 Dawn Fraser, an Australian Olympic swimmer visited the school and realised the benefits that a swimming pool would bring to the children.
Liyuan Library by Li Xiaodong Atelier
Li Xiaodong Atelier has completed a meaningful work of municipal architecture for the village of Huairou, a small town outside of Beijing, China. The Liyuan Library is a quiet, relaxing environment for literary study and entertainment. Its interior is bright, warm and airy, featuring multiple terraced levels and a high, naturally lit ceiling. Glass sections stretch across the walls and ceiling, even behind the bookshelves, letting light into the interior as filtered by the external fascia. Thousands of bundled sticks, all reclaimed from the local environment, stretch across nearly every inch of the exterior. Here and there, rectangular breaks in the stick pattern allow light inside like a standard window would do. No matter the viewpoint, whether you’re sitting inside or viewing from a distance, the Liyuan Library is a remarkable work of architecture, one that could pass for a temple if it weren’t employed as a library.
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