View full size Ikea develops space-saving and storage products in myriad forms. Here, simple devices provide basic storage.Ikea "home visits":
A New Jersey
who takes his team on "home visits" to learn how people live and what organizational challenges they face. He also tests solutions to those challenges in his own home. The Star-Ledger says:
Marty Doorley likes to think of troubled interiors like crime scenes, in which every misplaced item or pile of junk holds a clue.
Stacks of books all over the house might suggest the need for more shelving -- or a Salvation Army donation. "If I see a lot of shoes in the hallway, that tells me that people like to take their shoes off here."
Perhaps there's a tidier way to corral footwear right there in the hall.
As the guy who conceives Ikea displays that illustrate how such challenges might be addressed, Doorley has a particular interest in such disorder.
... A recent visit to Doorley's own Roselle Park home revealed firsthand how he tests and lives with many of the concepts his displays illustrate.
Ikea builds a neighborhood:
In more Ikea news, an Ikea holding company is
in Britain, including housing, offices, shops, restaurants, schools and health care facilities. All the housing at the Stratford, East London, site will be rental, none for sale -- a model that's unfamiliar to Britons and Americans though it's popular elsewhere.
The design puts parking underground and provides car-free pedestrian zones. Waterways bordering two sides of the area offer interesting possibilities.
You can
Doomsday condos:
A developer is creating what's been called
-- luxury doomsday units (the phrase has an odd ring) being built in an underground missile silo in Kansas. Larry Hall says he's already sold a quarter of the condos, priced at $1 million to $2 million, and in case you're wondering, it's cash upfront, or, you might say, pre-apocalypse.
Plus, the place is designed to have filter-water tanks and an indoor farm for fish and veggies so residents could survive five years after, say, a nuclear attack.
And in a post-apocalyptic world, wouldn't you want to live in luxury while your less-prepared neigbhors are battering at the well-buttressed gates? Uh, maybe not . . .
View full sizeIan Fleming in 1962. James Bond snub to modernism:
A roundup of photos of
notes the relation between Ian Fleming, who wrote the books that gave rise to the movies, and modern design. Seems Fleming hated modern architecture -- he had a particular grudge against one project, as well as a special distaste for architect Erno Goldfinger (
) -- so he housed all of his villains in modernist lairs, which Bond flamboyantly destroys in the end.
Post-divorce decor:
I don't think I've ever seen advice before on how to make your home feel like home again after a divorce. And yet why not? (Unless because newly divorced people usually have so many other things to think about.) Still, if you're going through a split, and your living space feels empty or haunted or strange -- or anything other than comforting and supportive -- here are
who specializes in the needs of newly divorced clients.
Green roof:
A hillside studio in Mill Valley, Calif., has a green roof that makes sense in every way: No ladder is needed for access -- you can step right onto it from above; it's planted with native plants; and there's a good reason for it, as the roof forms part of the view from the studio above it, "and we didn't want the client to be looking out at a metal roof," says
The project added two studio spaces (artist and yoga) in separate buildings from the existing main house in order to keep the surrounding trees intact.
What's more, the green roof is beautiful, with its meandering diagonal lines of plantings and play of colors. It's the creation of landscape architect Jori Hook, who worked with the client -- described as "an avid gardener" -- to choose the plants.
Take a look at the
Feldman Architecture also designed the
in March.
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