Category Archives: Cabinetry

New Products at KBIS

Posted on May 2, 2011 | 2 Comments

Showtime

At the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show (KBIS) in Las Vegas last week I had the feeling I was watching a market in transition. Overall, I saw an emphasis on new ways to deliver products and product information such as  via Ipad aps  but  fewer new introductions and exhibitors. Here’s what caught my eye.

This  “Image-in Motif” tub from Wetstyle.CA , a Canadian firm, is seductive.The calligraphy pattern is part of the design. I like the Zen-like simplicity of the oval shape (also available without the lettering), which would be a nice upgrade for my bathroom!

For something a little different in the bathroom, especially for the younger set, how about turning your tub into a fire truck. Perhaps something Salvador Dali might appreciate…It’s possible with American Standard’s FunBath Temporary Bath Conversion. The solid molded acrylic tub deck and front panel apron fit over your conventional tub. They can easily be removed when the truck no longer appeals. Ingenious!

Turning the closet pole into a lighting system is a clever idea — and puts the light right where you need it most — along the bottom of the pole shining on the top of the hangers. I can see this Sempria Illumirod from Task Lighting becoming especially useful for smaller, darker, narrower closets.

Solid surface countertops with quartz crystals saw expanding color and pattern choices. Dupont Zodiaq introduced  five new colors

inspired by spices, bringing their total palette up to 59 hues. Korean solid surface producer Hanwha added a little “life” to their introduction of new Hanstone quartz colors by using people dressed in skin tight body suits to  call attention to several new designs including Indian Pearl (left),  Grigio (center), and Sabbia (right). Cambria also unveiled new colors.The trend in all these colors seems to be toward a little more veining and figuration in the pattern, approximating various granites and marbles. These materials are  smooth, non-porous, and exceptionally hard.

Italian design is always worth seeing and the Colombini Group presented its new City line of Kitchen cabinetry — a sleek minimalist dove gray/beige (like an Armani suit), with doors faced in melamine for easy cleaning. I like the way the table extends at right angles from the island: an alternative to the typical breakfast bar. Finally there seemed to be more toilets at this show than any other product: every possible size and flush ratio was represented as the Japanese brand Inax showed.Toto introduced their Aquia high efficiency toilet,which is an all-in-one fixture. Kohler’s big splash was the Numi, the sculptural modern rectangular fixture that does everything imaginableincluding greet you when you walk into the bathroom (motion sensors make this possible). It also provides music. Another novel feature is its flushing sensor: if you remain aboard for longer than a set period,a stronger flush ensues. This reminds me of an inscription on a public bench in Denver: “If you wish to rest, rest not too long.” The Numi took years and many engineers from various disciplines to produce and is an impressive technological achievement.

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Posted in Appliances and Fixtures, Cabinetry, Design Ideas and Inspiration, Green Design, Japanese design, Kitchen and Bath, Lighting, New Appliances, New Fixtures, Uncategorized

Flat Screen TV Placement

Posted on March 25, 2011 | 2 Comments

Digital Decor

In our house we have a tiny TV room/home office that was carved out of part of a bedroom. Call me a “slow adopter” but I think it might be time to take advantage of the flexibility that today’s flat screens allow: replacing our bulky television on its rolling cabinet with a flat screen mounted on the wall would dramatically expand the available floor space. The clever five-part wall cabinet  by my friend Nathan Hartman of Kerf Design, shown here, would be  a great way to go. The cabinet acts as a frame, turning the TV into a contemporary artpiece. And according to Nate it’s a drinks cabinet as well as storage for dvds — what a clever idea — mai tais with movies! The TV cabinet unites the dining area with the rest of the kitchen — where the Kerf system expresses new functionality and warm contemporary character.

Or consider Sarah Susanka’s Plan 454-6 (Not So Big Showhouse 2005), which shows a popular approach in the living room:  treating the flat screen like a painting over the mantelpiece. The wood of the mantel itself helps frame the TV. A flat screen can even be worked into the wall paneling, as the master bedroom in Plan 56-604 demonstrates. The flat screen can be set into the wall between the studs — so it’s flush with the wall surface — a pricey but elegant solution. Sometimes it’s even hidden behind a real painting whose frame is hinged.  It’s even possible to aim a little higher, as happens in our Plan 48-433. Here bedtime stories take on new meaning when you lie back and look up at the TV in the master bedroom  — it’s on the ceiling. Talk about Super Titles! For more flat screen placement ideas check out Houzz.com, a fascinating and comprehensive source for remodeling inspiration.

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Posted in Appliances and Fixtures, Cabinetry, contemporary home design, Decorating Ideas, Design Ideas and Inspiration, Furniture, House plans, layouts, Kitchen and Bath, Modern Houses, Uncategorized

Martha Stewart and the 2011 Home Builder Show

Posted on January 17, 2011 | 2 Comments

With apologies to Charles Dickens, the International Home Builders Show (IBS)  in Orlando last week was the worst of times and the best of times. Worst because of an economy that meant fewer exhibits and lower attendance and snowstorms in the southeast that closed airports and highways. Best because the smaller  size — only one vast convention hall

and a thousand exhibits to cover — made it easier to see everything and find time for several especially interesting show homes, like the net zero energy concept home produced by KB Home and Martha Stewart. The 2,667 square-foot, 3 bedroom, 2  bath subdivision house is slated to sell for $380,000. As you would expect from these folks, it’s full of great ideas and products, from the invisible glass-front, gas living room fireplace (Montebello by Lennox)

under the elegant round mirror that brings the entire room into focus (showing the media tour in progress), to the kitchen at the opposite end,

where cabinets, open shelves, and cubbies by Merillat allow for multiple storage and display options to make the rear wall both functional and visually compelling. The Dupont Zodiaq-topped island, 7 feet 6 inches by 4 feet 6 inches,

includes a wide, deep Kohler apron-front farmhouse sink, a convenient “drop-in” stainless steel compost canister by Blanco (want it!) instead of a disposal, pull-out recycle bins (to right of sink, not visible here),

and ample room for books. Nearby is the pantry,

accessible through glass-fronted double doors beside the microwave and wine storage. A built-in desk to the right of the pantry has space for a laptop.

Ten foot-tall sliding glass panels by Windoor open the kitchen/dining area to a spacious lanai,

with its own fireplace,

allowing the house to expand for entertaining in good weather.

At the media conference I asked Martha Stewart what her greatest challenge was in shaping the interior. She said it was “to keep it gracious, with good proportions, and high 9 foot 4-inch ceilings.” I would elaborate  that her team’s simple but sophisticated decisions — such as adding chest-high, white-painted horizontal wainscoting, setting windows low in the wall, using stone-like ceramic tile floor tiles and a refined pastel color palette (with AkzoNobel’s  Martha Stewart low VOC paint) throughout — made this house feel custom-designed.

Martha also said she was excited at the opportunity to make a production home so green that it uses less power than it produces — thanks in part to photovoltaic roof tiles (by SunPower)

and a solar water heating system (from Velux).

My only reservation about the house was with the exterior — I think the important lessons about simplicity and strong indoor-outdoor connection could have been expressed on the street front. But overall it’s an exciting project that shows how to be green, gracious, and give good value. A full description is at Builder Magazine Online; and a  virtual tour is at Builder Concept Home 2011. More idea houses and new product sightings from the Home Builder Show will be in my next post — so stay tuned.

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Posted in Appliances and Fixtures, Building Materials, Cabinetry, Decorating Ideas, Design Ideas and Inspiration, Green Design, Home Products, Idea Houses, Kitchen and Bath, Porches, Uncategorized

Desk Design, Jefferson, and Siting Help from Don Lyndon

Posted on January 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

Looking In and Looking Out

I should have taken a “Before” photo of my desk and the surrounding area, with its sea of loose manila file folders crashing against reefs of brochures, books, magazines, and rolls of drawings. The new year seemed a good time to clean up my act: now the tide of paper has receded, if only briefly,  and the desk is visible again. So work surfaces and paper storage are on my mind, like the handsome bent bamboo  K Work Station by the innovative design firm MisoSoup:

It creates a serenely efficient corner office, though I would need space for conventional non-computer files (not to mention a waste basket).  Older desks often have more storage compartments — for a more paper-dependent age no doubt — such as this stair-stepping antique from the 1920s by designer Paul Frankl (image courtesy the very informative interior design resource Design2Share).

It takes inspiration from the signature silhouettes of New York’s Art Deco skyscrapers and is all about storage, as if Rockefeller Center were really one big filing cabinet above an ice skating rink  — which come to think of it, it is (I love those morphing metaphors!). The simplest way to deal with clutter is not to organize it but to hide it, which is what the rolltop desk does so well. The famous example by George Nelson for Herman Miller from 1964

simply pulls a tambour door across the low work surface, like a wooden blanket (image courtesy1stdibs.com and Gueridon). But I’m afraid if it were my desk the cover would never completely close. Then again some designers appear to be “embracing the clutter,” as this example does,

with built-in bins for rounding everything up (I found this image on Dornob, a website full of fascinating design and furniture ideas). Room and Board’s Eames File Drawer Desk

remains a classic and would meet some of my needs. But I think my favorite example of a great desk is the one Thomas Jefferson designed in 1776 for use while traveling between Monticello and Philadelphia:

(both images courtesy The Smithsonian). This is the original lap top/I-Pad for writing occasional notes and the odd Declaration of Independence. In the end all you really need is a wide flat surface, good lighting, storage drawers, and inspiration.

The first weeks of the year are also a good time to look outward and for me that means thinking about siting. I asked the eminent architect Donlyn Lyndon — one of the designers of Sea Ranch (and author of the definitive book about it),  co-author with Charles Moore and Gerald Allen of the influential The Place of Houses

and Emeritus Professor of Architecture at U. C. Berkeley — for advice to share with prospective house plan purchasers. Here’s what he very eloquently wrote for me: “Siting is about Making Places. Siting is about making connections — to the ground; to the sky; to neighbors; to existing vegetation; to water and its flows, both natural and channeled; to the sun and the wind; to transportation. Siting is making the most of your surroundings; finding the best places to be for various activities, inside and out.”

He wants you to think creatively about the site even before you start looking for a house plan. He continues: “The first step is to examine your site, imagine being in it in various ways and at differing times of day and season. Make careful note of levels and change/slope of the ground. Get a sense of its dimensions by positioning yourself in ways that you expect to interact with people and measuring the distances.” I would add that a way to start thinking about such connections would be to find a few plans that already show some sort of site relationship,

the way Ross Anderson’s Ranch House Plan 433-2 wraps around a courtyard;  or the way Peter Brachvogel and Stella Carosso’s Whitehall Plan 479-8

uses porches and dormers to capture views; or the way Daniel E. Bush’s Modern Living Plan 460-3

opens to a variety of outdoor spaces.

Donlyn sums up his recipe for siting success: ” Choose a house plan not just on what looks good to you, but on what plan will do three things: Make rooms in the right places on the site; Make best advantage of your site and its views, outlooks/connections; Make sense with your neighbor/neighborhood, add value to the place. Then start imagining how that plan can best fit on the site, given the findings above. Make several different arrangements of the house on the land and imagine what might eventually be added to the site.”  (You can find more detailed analysis of siting principles in his Place of Houses book.) I think Donlyn must have been using that Jefferson desk — we should hold his truths to be self-evident.

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Posted in Uncategorized, Architectural Innovation, Design Ideas and Inspiration, House plans, layouts, Books, Decorating Ideas, Furniture, Cabinetry, modern houses and house plans, contemporary home design, Porches, Siting

Flexible Shelves and Forward Thinking

Posted on November 4, 2010 | 1 Comment

Boxing Days

It is a truism that limitation breeds invention, especially in the field of design. Take the ordinary bookshelf, for example. Industrial designer Eric Pfeiffer of PfeifferLab has re-thought it as a set of six different-sized, sturdy, well-constructed wood frames that you can rearrange to create a sideboard, bookcase, bedside tables, or media storage wall.

“The set encourages interaction and lets you bring your own personality to the product,” according to Eric.  It shows just how flexible and adaptable the simple box can be: the humble orange crate transformed. Two of the boxes have two compartments; the rest are single boxes.

They’re all  just very large toy building blocks after all — no wonder I like them! They are  the first product from a new company founded by Eric, and Steve Piccus, called The Utility Collective. The idea is to bring intelligent, well-made products to market and share how they are designed and made. Here’s a sequence from TUC’s website showing the construction process for each box, from cut wood panels to joinery, clamping, and sanding.

All TUC products are made in the US with sustainable materials. I like their passion for the utility, function, and craftsmanship of everyday objects and for sharing the stories about their design and construction. TUC’s next introduction, to be ready by Thanksgiving, is something eye-catching and useful for your home office: a whale of a desk accessory.

It gives new meaning to “catch of the day.” Now I would like to know what the inspiration for this object was — a recent rereading of Moby Dick? The ocean of learning that lies between the pencil holder and the post-it note?

Doing Good Works

Speaking of thinking inside and outside the box, I recommend a new book about donated imagination and expertise: The Power of Pro Bono: 40 Stories about Design for the Public Good by Architects and Their Clients (published by Metropolis Books, 2010, which is part of Metropolis Magazine).

It’s edited by John Cary and Public Architecture, which is an organization that puts the resources of architecture in the service of the public interest.  The projects range from a sculptural tool shed/shelter

by Cast Architecture for the Interbay P-Patch Community Garden in Seattle, Washington to a sleek minimalist and lens-like arts studio addition by Gray Organschi Architecture

for the Calvin Hill Day Care Center in New Haven, Connecticut. The book itself was a pro bono project designed by the well-known graphics and branding firm Pentagram. These projects — and the descriptions by the architects and their non-profit clients — vividly show how high quality design improves lives. In a sense I guess Pro Bono really means building outside the box.

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Posted in Architectural Innovation, Books, Cabinetry, Design Ideas and Inspiration, Furniture, Green Design, Uncategorized