William McIntosh are individually conceived and meticulously crafted. Unique architectural and decorative solutions beautifully detailed and executed, each project emphasizes the integration of architecture and interior design. His work is once familiar but also reveals surprises and new interpretations, embracing both the period and the modern.

Source : William McIntosh Design

Barry Rice Design creates modern, comfortable interiors with clean lines, natural woods and an emphasis on vintage furnishings. The Brooklyn-based firm provides clients with a high level of professional service and projects with an impeccable attention to detail. The results are expressive, individual, functional and beautiful.

Source : Barry Rice Design

Is your apartment up to date? Or would a designer scoff, “How passé!”? You’ll need more than throw pillows to keep up with Manhattan’s hottest design trends. Below are expert designers’ top ten trends for apartment living in the city.

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1. The Living/“Screening” Room
An unassuming living room transforms into a private movie theatre with large flat-screen monitors that disappear when not in use. Stephen Miller Siegel of Stephen Miller Siegel Architects has recently seen clients requesting this kind of double-duty. “As technology gets more compact, it’s easier to camouflage and become discreet,” said Siegel.

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2. The New Wood Floor
A hardwood floor is still par for the course (sorry, carpet salesmen), but their continued popularity has spurned the refinement of the ready-made floor. “Pre-finished, engineered wood floors have really grown in quality and popularity,” said Keith Steier, President of Knockout Renovation, an all-in-one design and remodeling service. They are significantly less expensive and much faster and easier to install. The boards snap in to place and don’t require the laborious process of staining and re-staining. Your guests will never know they are walking on laminate instead of solid oak.

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3. Living With “The Valuables”
Designers suggest that you don’t separate the objects you love from the rest of your living space. “There seems to be a return to the great design of the early seventies when one mixed great antiques with contemporary elements,” said New York interior designer and architect, Robert Couturier. “The newest trend I’m seeing is using furniture, even functional pieces like sofas, as art or sculptural elements.”

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4. Bye-Bye Bathtub
Designers are opting to install a full-size walk-in shower these days, in lieu of cramming in a too-small tub to narrow bathroom spaces. “Bathtubs have definitely fallen out of favor,” said Jennifer Melis, chief designer for Knockout Renovation. “There’s been a focus on updating bathrooms and kitchens, because you tend to get the best return for your investment in those rooms,” Melis added.

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5. New Granite Counter
Every home design show on TV has the decorator drooling over a new granite countertop. “People like the look and they’re durable,” explained Steier. As with hardwood, popularity has spawned more options, like fake granite, that allow you to upgrade without blowing your design budget. “Man-made products give you the look and require zero maintenance,” said Steier. Another plus: while it’s not possible to control the color and pattern distribution in a slab of naturally occurring granite or marble, man-made delivers a completely consistent result.

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6. Apartments Go Green
Designing using environmentally-friendly materials and renewable energy sources is a current trend. “There is definitely a new direction as far as using environmentally correct materials that did not seem to exist a couple of years ago,” said Couturier. Knockout Renovation has experienced a lot of demand. “Energy efficient appliances are quite popular,” said Steier. They’re easy on the conscience and the utility bills.

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7. Recessed Lighting
Who really wants to look at a fluorescent dome in the middle of their ceiling? Modern apartments have the lights tucked away and dimmable. “It creates a softer, nicer mood,” said Melis. “It’s a really clean look since nothing is hanging down from the ceiling.”

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8. Space-Saving Innovations
Designers are coming up with creative solutions to get your clutter out of sight and out of mind: from floor-to-ceiling shelving in bedroom and living rooms, to extra tall pantry closets, to roll-out bins. “Any idea that will get things off the counters and off the floors,” said Melis. New appliances are helping in the fight against clutter (and small spaces). “More manufacturers are offering drawer dishwashers and counter-depth refrigerators,” Steier said. Drawer dishwashers are the only way to offer the amenity in many tiny galley kitchens, and the new models are of a higher quality than leaky, breakage-prone early models. Counter-depth refrigerators give a small kitchen a sleeker look, since they sit flush with the line of the counter instead of protruding out into the middle of the room.

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9. Closet Pros
If you’re sick and tired of the weekly sweater-avalanche from the top of your closet, you are not alone. “Custom closet interiors continue to be a huge trend,” said Melis, “And people don’t mind putting a significant amount of money into it.” Be careful before you attempt to nail up some boards on your own. “We often refer clients to someone who specializes in making custom closets,” said Melis. “It’s a whole trade in itself.”

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10. Open Floor Plans
To make your apartment truly modern, consider using a sledgehammer. Melis and Steier agree that taking out extra walls is a huge trend for remodeling apartments. “Many clients have had us take out the wall between the kitchen and the adjacent dining or living room,” said Steier. “It visually opens up the space.”

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Source : New York Resident, Interior Design

Näckros Villa designed by Staffan Strindberg architecture in Sweden. The 12×12 metre Villa has six rooms and a kitchen, 178 sq metres of living area, 125 square metres of terrace and 74 square metres of windows but is crammed with technologies to enhance your lifestyle and create an ambience of tranquillity and harmony with nature.

“The idea of living so close to the water and nature is really thrilling. The design is focused on bringing the surroundings inside, to get the feeling of the water into your living .” With water comes a special light and the reflections from the water that dance on the ceiling. Strindberg’s experience and fascination with water and light led him to explore far and wide, and he was particularly drawn to the “the beautiful treatment of the light that you can find in the old Turkish villas climbing the slope of the Bosporus around Istanbul where they mainly let the light in from below, reflected from the water.”

In building the site, Strindberg tried to foresee what could happen around the site, and then got more and more interested in the idea of not just one but several water houses and how to arrange the interior of the house for this imaginary pattern. “On one side you have the dock and on the other side you have the water, one official side and one private. How do you get the most out of the privacy and how do you make a welcoming entrance yet a distinct border for privacy?”

The entrance design takes into account various dock heights and those environments without a tide. The living room is as close to the water as possible and sleeping facilities are positioned so you go to sleep at the same level as the surrounding water. The layout is concentrated on opening the house to the water. The kitchen is close to the entrance and faces the quay but is also a part of the open area that includes the living room and the terrace.

Strindberg also had to address what the feeling and ambience should be based on, such as “what is a floating home, what does it stand for, does it have to look like other kinds of floating things that man uses, like boats?” “Should it even borrow details to associate to other floating vessels?” “What does it express in its design?”

These thoughts led to the decision that it should be a house, not a boat. “A house that takes care of the special qualities of the surroundings,” says Strindberg.

Source : Arkinetia, gismag, Modern Marine Home, Interior Design

Hotel design is currently an exciting area of architecture. New trends in hotel design are currently coming about as a result of the modern desire to travel, increase our range of experiences, and utilize our precious leisure time more effectively. Today, I will show you about Palace of the sea or the Palau de la mar in Spanish.

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The Hospes Palau de la Mar is a new addition to the cultural and creative scene of one of Spain’s most lively cities Valencia. Continuing a tradition of fine cuisine and hospitality, the Palau de la Mar (Palace of the Sea) is a modern remodelling of two palace residences in the centre of the city. An immaculately developed and advanced concept, the hotel is the work of prestigious interior designers Isabel Lopez and Sandra Tarruella.

Hospes is known for restoring historic buildings while successfully updating them into workable and luxurious properties.

Under natural light pouring through a stained glass skylight, the grand loggia stairway with an intricately carved wood banister has been made all the more striking by simply painting the surrounding areas a stark ivory white.

Once a carriage passageway, the vaulted foyer is accented by using interesting textures such as black leather padding atop the banister rail and a long cowhide runner in the foyer’s hallway. The casual and contemporary interior patio pairs well with the classical nobility of the façade and interior architecture. Covered by a glass-and-steel balcony, which leads to the guestrooms, the patio’s raised boxes are lushly filled with fragrant Mediterranean plants and herbs.

Though the design concept remains consistent throughout, the original architecture of the two mansions has brought about innovative uses of space. As for interior design, principles of modernity reign rather than historicism. Carefully co-ordinated design elements, mainly using wengé wood, have been chosen for the rooms: The joinery work on the wardrobes complements the floor pattern, which is again mirrored in the wengé headboards, tables and stools placed throughout. Some guestrooms feature oversized bathrooms where large bathtubs are either sectioned off from or opened up to the main living and sleeping space via a folding wooden screen.

Source : Design Hotel, Interior Design

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that an up-and-coming neighborhood in possession of increasingly hip retail and rising rents must be in want of a name. Several have been trotted out for the bustling blocks of Portland, Oregon’s southwest quadrant just west of downtown and south of the hip and hopping Pearl District. Given its spate of design and fabric shops, the Fiber Arts District is an option, as is the hackneyed SoBu (south of Burnside). A far less ostentatious moniker, favored by one of the primary drivers of the neighborhood’s development, is also in the fray. “I like the West End,” says architect Jeff Kovel, founder of Skylab Design Group. “That’s what it’s been called historically, and I think it’s kind of classy.”

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If anyone deserves credit for kick-starting the West End’s revitalization, it would have to be Kovel. The neighborhood has been a home to vagrants and many of Portland’s social services; a methadone clinic and a rundown hotel were centers of activity. But in 2001, Kovel, then 29, decided to move Skylab Design—now with a staff of eight—into downtown Portland and lit upon a crumbling building at SW 12th Avenue and SW Alder Street as his new digs. “We intended to stay for a year and then sell it and get out,” he says. “But obviously we’re still here.”

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The ramshackle building that has become 12 + Alder serves as the office for Skylab Design, the storefront for the furniture shop Intelligent Design, space for the salon D Studio, and home to the Kovel family. Erected in 1907, the building has housed a messenger service, a boardinghouse, a storage space, a gay bathhouse, and more recently, a store selling fine, handmade men’s lingerie.

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Manly underthings aside, for years the West End’s only architectural draw was the First Presbyterian Church, a stately Victorian Gothic just across the street from 12 + Alder. “The church is amazing,” Kovel says with clear admiration for the sanctuary designed by William E. McCaw, Richard Martin, Jr., and Manson White in 1890. “It was a real no-man’s-land down here, and one of the things we wanted to do when building 12 + Alder was to feed off the church and to extend the context of [the] architectural experience.”

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While the modernist glass-and-steel façade is an aesthetic departure from the First Presbyterian’s design, the clearest and grandest example of Kovel’s dialogue with the church comes in his open, uncluttered 2,000-square-foot residence on the second floor. “When it was a bathhouse in the ’70s, there was this pitched skylight that looked up to the steeple.” Kovel kept that detail in the bathroom, but wanted an even more sweeping statement for the living room. The corner of the house just opposite the church’s steeple seemed promising, but viewing the entirety of the 180-foot bell tower from so close up required a dramatic gesture.

“I imagined prying apart the façade of the building, the way you’d pry open the doors of an elevator,” Kovel explains. The result is a great vertical swath cut out of the shell of the building running the length of the second floor and back several feet into the roof. It’s as though a skylight has bled into a window, creating a broad transparent glass stripe that gives way to a numinous view. Realizing this bold gesture required a more down-to-earth feat of engineering and a leap of faith.

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“When we decided to keep the shell of this building,” Kovel says, “we essentially had to design another one inside it because the place was crumbling. So when we cut out the big window there was a good chance the whole thing could have fallen [down]. We cantilevered the floor out a couple feet over the sidewalk and sup-ported everything from the inside, but once that cut was made the two walls on either side of the window were no longer connected.” To the delight of the Skylab team—and passing pedestrians—neither wall fell. And in keeping with his connection to the church (secularly architectural), Kovel canted the frame of the window to mirror the spire across the street, just as the bronze painted steel panels that make up the second floor’s exterior allude to the First Presbyterian’s slate shingles.

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Kovel’s makeover of 12 + Alder was purposeful, if occasionally perilous. “The people we purchased the building from were going to tear it down,” he says, “and we had a couple reasons for wanting to buy it. One was to try to create a conversation about how a defunct building and neighborhood could be revitalized, and another was to adaptively reuse the structure.” What’s more, the old wooden framework of the structure was shipped over to the Doug Fir Lounge—a Portland restaurant and club Kovel designed and partially owns—and fashioned into the bar. Ordering a Rusty Nail never seemed so apt.

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Kovel’s tenants Bill Fritts and David Kennedy are as satisfied with their new HQs as their laid-back landlord is. Kennedy’s D Studio once occupied a sliver of retail space on the ground floor of 12 + Alder, but has since moved upstairs into a roomier, more private space cut to resemble an apartment. Fritts’s Intelligent Design sells the latest in modern furniture; he and his team of designers also do custom and consulting work. Musing on his highly creative tenants, Kovel says: “It’s kind of like a collective here—though a really professional one where everybody is working and doing well.”

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Downstairs, beyond the bespoke walls of 12 + Alder, one finds a neighborhood in flux. West End mainstays like luggage shops and laundries now vie for space alongside chic shops and new restaurants. The derelict hotel nearby has been replaced with a park, and when asked about 12 + Alder’s place in the rise of the West End, Craig Olson, who recently opened the modernist gift shop Canoe just across the street, says, “That building is hard to overlook and clearly signaled that change was afoot.”

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“There’s a transformation happening,” Kovel says, “and I think that we planted the seed. This building made sense for us because it was all about transition: in business,
in the neighborhood, in our lives.”

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Source : dwell, Interior Design