DIY - Mini Santa Hats

Today we’re making a few fun Mini Santa Hats. These paper hats are perfect for adding to the top of a present, display on a shelf, or attaching to a headband to wear as a party hat.

Soft Loft by Ottaviano Ciabatti

Designed by Ottaviano Ciabatti, this fresh industrial loft is located in Italy.

5 Ways to Upgrade Your Stuff With...Wallpaper!

In the last few years, there has been a renewed focus on wallpaper. Interior designers have been lining walls with pattern and color, adding more than just a coat of paint to beautifully designed rooms. To hang most wallpaper, you need to secure it to the wall with paste, which is a messy process. However, we’ve got some awesome wallpaper in ourshop from Chasing Paper that is removable! Much like contact paper, this wallpaper sticks to surfaces and can be pulled up without damaging your surface. Today, we’re taking Speckle Removable Wallpaper and repurposing it to show you five alternative ways to use this awesome paper. Hang on to your scraps!

11 Signs You Live in a Really Small Space

Small space living has its joys and trials. Although I couldn’t love my 260 square foot apartment more, there are a few challenges to living in a really little apartment that I didn’t quite anticipate. If any of these things is true about your apartment, you might be living in a really really small space.

Before & After: A Home Makeover That’s Smart About Space

Our clients live in a 70’s ranch style home that had been through one really rough update by the previous owners. The main living and kitchen areas were dysfunctional and in desperate need of an overhaul.

Beyoncé-inspired skyscraper to be built in Melbourne

Australian architectural firm Elenberg Fraser has unveiled its plans for a 68-story,226-metre-high mixed-use skyscraper in Melbourne. Located at the west end of the city’s Central Business District, the Premiere Tower at 134 Spencer Street will contain 660 apartments, a 160-room hotel, and retail space. What’s most striking about the skyscraper is its appearance – a curvy, vertical cantilever to best distribute the building’s mass. How did the architects come up with the shape?

Table Candles Get a Boost From Berries

Woman Quits Job To Build Sustainable Bamboo Homes In Bali

Elora Hardy left a successful career in the NY fashion scene to build bamboo houses in Indonesia. The Bali resident and her team have spent the last 5 years revolutionizing bamboo construction in the belief that it is an underused but ideal renewable resource. Hardy uses boron, which occurs naturally in nature, to treat the bamboo and make it indigestible to insects.

Hardy was inspired by her father, who “chose bamboo for all of the buildings on campus, because he saw it as a promise,” she explains in her TED talk. “It’s a promise to the kids. It’s one sustainable material that they will not run out of. And when I first saw these structures under construction about six years ago, I just thought, this makes perfect sense…Why hasn’t this happened sooner, and what can we do with it next?”

Bamboo has the compressive force of concrete, the strength-to-weight ratio of steel, and is one of the fastest growing plants in the world. Damage from insects and moisture are its primary weaknesses, but if treated, bamboo structures can last a lifetime.

A Spectacular 36,000 Sq Ft Mural Decorates This Newly-Opened Market Hall In Rotterdam

A new market hall has opened its doors in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and it’s turning quite a few heads. The enormous Markthal Rotterdam, a curiously elongated horseshoe of a building, has a 36,000 square foot mural covering its rounded ceiling.

The enormous mural, by artists Arno Coenen and Iris Roskam, is titled “Cornucopia.” It features brightly colored fruits, vegetables, and other market goods ascending into the sky like the ceiling mural of a cathedral.


The building, designed by architecture office MVRDV and developer Provast, features an open food market with 100 fresh produce units, 15 food shops and 8 restaurants. There are also 228 apartments with 1,200 parking spaces, making the entire structure somewhat of a self-contained living space. The Markthal expects between 4.5 and 7 million visitors a year.


Image credits: Ossip van Duivenbode

The most incredible rooftop swimming pools in the world

THERE'S nothing quite like the feeling of being on top of the world, with a city beneath you. Here's a guide to the best hotel rooftop pools from Barcelona to India. Dive in.



MARINA BAY SANDS

Agora Tower

Taipei just broke ground on a twisting skyscraper that is wrapped with a jungle of vertical gardens! Designed by Vincent Callebaut Architecture, the 42,355-square-meter (455,000-square-foot) Agora Tower will have an orchard, a vegetable garden, space for aromatic and medicinal plants, and a compost and rainwater capture system - and that's just the beginning.

Designed to mimic two encircling hands and the helical structure of DNA, the towers are organized a central core that allows for what the design team call a “hyper-abundance of suspended gardens.” These will spill over with edible and decorative plants, enabling residents of 40 luxury apartments to harvest a great deal of their own food (except for protein.) Plus, the rainwater capture system alleviates pressure on the municipal water supply and gives the complex even greater independence.

Each 540 square meter apartment will have an interior green wall as well, ensuring optimum air quality and a great green aesthetics. A circular light funnel will push daylighting right down to the basement of the building, a solar roof will provide energy, and low E glass will mitigate excess solar gain and prevent thermal loss. Complete with nanotechnology and a host of other high-tech features, this one-of-a-kind tower may well be the greenest of its kind when it is completed circa 2016.

The Secret Apartment At The Top Of The Eiffel Tower

Opened in 1889, the Eiffel Tower is an iconic building, recognized throughout the world. For many people it was an impressive news that the Tower contains a secret apartment within its highest level. Owned by Gustav Eiffel, the engineer who designed the tower, this apartment was fully decorated and frequently used for social gatherings with individuals, including Thomas Edison.

What many people don’t know about the tower is that the highest levels—which after several decades are now open to the public—play host to a private apartment built specifically for Gustav Eiffel, the engineer who designed the tower. Unlike the complex iron-weaved tower in which it lies, it was furnished in a simple manner and contained all the trappings of a modest 19th-century Parisian home, including carpets, wallpaper, cabinets, and a small bedroom. Despite this, the apartment was the envy of much of the city; indeed, Eiffel reportedly received several substantial offers for a single night in the apartment. Needless to say, such was his attachment to this highly coveted private space that he turned them all down.

Architectural Innovations - Egg shaped office building in Mumbai, India

The new “Cybertecture Egg” has been designed to be build with innovative technologies in Mumbai, India.

The 32,000 square meter building was designed by James Law Cybertecture International, a firm based in Hong Kong, UAE and India that has coined the term “cybertecture” to mean a meeting of architecture, technology and innovative engineering to sculpt the urban environment. Newest system enables electronically monitoring workers’ health: vital signs and statistics such as blood pressure are accessible to workers electronically in restrooms, and the stats can be signaled to doctors if deemed necessary.

The building’s design attempts to decrease energy demands through passive solar design, the construction of an elevated garden to help cool the building (through a process called thermolysis), the implementation of photovoltaic panels and wind turbines on the roof, and infrastructure to recycle gray water for landscaping.

The building was commissioned by Vijay Associates (Wadhwa Developers), and features special features even beyond those already described. Workers, for example, will be able to customize their favorite “view” to enjoy the virtual scenery of their choice. Also, because of the unusual shape and positioning of the building, the interior features up to 30-meter spans of floor space that lack obtrusive columns.
The Egg clearly boasts an unusual and innovative design, and that is the ethos that defines the work of the James Law Cybertecture firm: whether you like their designs or not, their aesthetic is plowing into the 21st century with all technology on hand and a healthy appetite for creativity.

Ombre Style Interior

Ombre Style is a common trend in the fashion industry, which in recent times, has invaded into the interior designing. Transition from the light to the darker color to each other is the main feature of Ombre style. Ombre interior also includes painted furniture, textiles, decorations reflected Ombre Style. Ombre effect can also be obtained through the mosaic tiles.
If you are ready for a completely different and bold experiments, just try Ombre!

Boho Style

The last few years have seen a grand revival of the vintage and retro elements in both the fashion and interior design worlds. Golden metallic surfaces, bright colors that make a grand visual effect, bold flowery patterns that steal the show and retro kitchen decor with a modern makeover are currently part of the hottest design and decorating trends doing rounds.

Taking a cue from the world of fashion, interior designers and homeowners are now turning towards this decorating style that places emphasis on accepting the world around you and delighting in the process of hunting for interesting finds! Of course, the bohemian style has been tweaked considerably to suit the many needs of a contemporary, urban lifestyle. Yet, here are some amazing inspirations that range from unadulterated bohemianism to the hip boho-chic.

10 Most Creative sinks

The bathroom is the most important room in our houses. The domestic sink can take on many different forms, from a traditional round bowl basin to a sharp-edged shallow twin user trough. Basins come in all manners of finishes, colors and sizes, let's take a look at the most weird and wonderful solutions, including ecologically friendly ideas, integrated systems and cunningly concealed designs. I decided to make a list of the most creative sinks:

 

Karim Rashid - "King of colors"

Most famous and well-known designer and interior architect, so-called "the king of colors" Karim Rashid is one of the most eccentric industrial designer, whose works fascinate lots of people around the world. Karim Rashid was born in Egypt, raised in England, educated in Canada, and worked in Italy for a few years before opening his own studio in New York in 1993. He describes his work as a marriage of organic and geometric design, of technology and material, with soft, friendly organic forms that express a strong visual comfort and pleasure. 'You concentrate on the object but there should be a sense of humanity too. Something soft that touches you and makes you feel at ease' says Karim. 
Karim Rashid is gifted with various talents: he is an architect, decorator, artist, fashion designer, lecturer and is also DJ. His impressive portfolio includes the award-winning 300 project and  more than 3000 designs in the field of luxury goods, furniture, lighting, surface design, brand identity and so on. He has worked in about 40 countries, with the Labels like Audi, Armani, Kenzo, Prada, Tommy Hilfiger, Estee Lauder, Yves Saint Laurent, Sony, Swarovski, Gorenie
Karim Rashid stands out for its own dress style: he always wears white or pink clothes.

Interior Ideas For the Girl's Room

If you decide to arrange an individual room your girls, I provide the best examples of how to make a cheerful environment.

Interior Ideas for the Boy's room

If you have decided to decorate separate room for your kid boy, I offer some great interior design templates that will help you to generate your ideas concerning furniture, wall art, game zone and so on.

Modern Rug Collection by Werner Aisslinger

The new collection of Vorwerk “Elementary Shapes” is created from the master of collages and honeycombs Werner Aisslinger – this virtuoso with creative hands follows honorably the footsteps of Hadi Teherani’s highly successful carpet tile collection. Werner Aisslinger has interpreted the subject of fitted area floor coverings in a new way with soft, organic shapes.

“Primary geometric shapes that form a part of our everyday perception in the sense of archetypes served as the inspiration for the ‘Elementary Shapes’ that emerged. Shapes like these equally gained fame during fairly recent design history – for instance in the Memphis era,” explains the designer based in Berlin.

The components of “Elements” and the freely shaped area rug islands “Mito” and “Leaf” originated from his concept. The textile feel of “Elementary Shapes” allows a sense of cosiness, warmth and comfort to arise in a cool architectural surrounding. The component units form a new playground for carpet zones while enhancing areas in a targeted manner. With “Elementary Shapes” Werner Aisslinger is imparting a new face to the area rug.

The free-form area rugs entitled “Mito” and “Leaf” constitute another segment of “Elementary Shapes”. “Mito”- a rounded, curved triangle, and the eponymous “Leaf” devote themselves to accenting ‘homey’ islands at a business site and provide creative solutions towards a pleasing spatial atmosphere. The rug areas give a distinct emphasis to lounges, lobbies and meeting sectors. The resultingly satisfying residential look sets them apart from their stern interior architectural environment while giving each area a special touch. The soft, organic shapes are put together from modules partitioned by strips of woollen felt, some in bright, luminous hues. Each of these unusual geometries is available in two different formats.

Interior Designer Ana Cordeiro

Let's meet Ana Cordeiro, a very talented and well-known Portuguese designer! Whether her designs are modern or classic, elegant or casual, she never fails to create a beautiful space that look chic and fresh. Basically Her work is classic and elegant with a touch of modern. Ana's favorite colors are green, yellow, cobalt blue and pink. She always balance sharp and vivid colors with the neutral color combinations. Let's check out some of her gorgeous work below: