La Cornue by Martyn Lawrence Bullard

Celebrity interior designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard has collaborated with La Cornue, the venerable French company making high quality ranges since 1908, to create ten new colors in their Château series based on high performance race cars.

Bullard says, "The colors I chose for the collection, apart from being iconic racing car colors, are colors that bring such personality to a space. Color is really something that we can use to show our personalities in our interiors. So, for me, everything from our beautiful deep black, to our rich and sexy oranges and reds, are all colors that are so vibrant and so full of expression and personality. It adds such excitement into a kitchen in a way we haven't seen before."

I can see these working really well in kitchens of many different styles. The colors allow for varied directions of feeling and expression in a home remodel.

Happy designing!

Legends of Design: Philippe Starck

We've looked at a few designers from the past but for our continuing Legends of Design series, let's look at a living legend: Philippe Starck.

A man of many talents, Starck's career has bounced around the design world, from commercial (restaurants and hotels) to residential to product design to architecture--even naval design. He started his career in 1969. He was named artistic director of Pierre Cardin's publishing house, he opened his own industrial design company Starck Product, and in 1983, he designed the private rooms of President François Mitterrand at the Élysée Palace in Paris.

With former Studio 54 owner and hotelier extraordinaire Ian Schrager, Starck pioneered the idea of the boutique hotel by creating The Royalton in New York City, where guests checking in had to traverse a veritable fashion runway of blue carpet to reach the reception desk at the far end...

...and a very unique men's room with a stainless steel waterfall urinal, a pedal-operated, round communal sink in the middle of the space, and hidden stall doors. When I visited The Royalton in the early 90s, just a few years after it opened, it was quite the hot spot, and I can indeed attest to the uniqueness of the rest room--it seemed like something out of a science fiction film with nothing resembling what I knew of as a men's room.

Starck went on to design a slew of unique hotels, each a true work of art. Just look at his work in the lobby of The Paramount: a checkerboard rug upon which is arranged, like game pieces, a collection of designer seating that includes sofas by Jean-Michel Frank, upholstered chairs by Marco Zanuso, a wooden chair by Antoni Gaudi and Marc Newson’s chaise lounge. A grand staircase to the mezzanine level is backed with a canted wall covered in silver leaf.

One of my favorite hotel spaces Starck created is the wildly imaginative bar at The Hudson. The lighted floor and Louis XVI furniture deliberately recalls the final set where Dave Bowman ages in Kubrick's masterpiece "2001: A Space Odyssey." I especially love the log bench with chair backs attached to the top.

Starck also worked successfully in the world of product design. In addition to mineral-water bottles for Glacier, watches for Fossil, and luggage for Samsonite, he created the iconic Juicy Salif citrus squeezer (it looks like an alien pod from "War of the Worlds") for Italian houseware brand Alessi.

But I think Starck is best known for designing hundreds and hundreds of pieces of furniture and lighting, and the best known of those pieces must be the Louis Ghost chair for Kartell. The classic incarnation is clear acrylic but it also comes in tinted colors and opaque black as well.

Happy designing!

Michael Aram's Orchids By Artistic Tile

Every now and then, my design radar picks up a product that boggles my mind. And these three dimensional tiles are doing just that.

Based on Michael Aram's White Orchid Collection of dinner and housewares, these inspiring tiles he created in conjunction with Artistic Tile are simply jaw-dropping. Orchids are waterjet sculpted out of white Thassos marble and placed on a background of grey and white Bianco Carrara marble for a stunning look. While they are not suitable for wet locations like a shower, the tile could be applied to a vanity wall in a bathroom--or it could be used as a very special tile accent in a kitchen area.

I hope these tiles inspire you the way they have me.
Happy designing!

Know Your Chairs: The Egg™ Chair

If you're not totally egged-out from yesterday's Easter egg hunt and, if you're anything like me, devouring the last of the Cadbury chocolate eggs, let's take a look at another kind of egg for this installation of Know your Chairs.

Designed by Danish architect and designer Arne Jacobsen for Fritz Hansen, the Egg™ Chair is an iconic piece of mid-century design.

Inspired by the bent plywood designs of Charles and Ray Eames, Jacobsen created this marvel in 1958 for the Radisson SAS Royal Copenhagen Hotel in Denmark when it opened in 1960.

Here we see the Egg™ Chair in the lobby of the SAS Hotel and Arne Jacobsen with a pair of chairs also at the hotel. The curved contours of the chair--like those of its namesake, an actual egg--served to soften the hard angularity of the modernist hotel itself, a contrast that is a hallmark of mid-century design.

Yes, the Egg™ Chair is modern, but because of the dynamic of pairing opposites (see my Design Mantra #1 to the right, "Contrast brings interest!"), the Egg™ can fit nicely with other periods and styles.

The chair is still manufactured today by Fritz Hansen using the same exacting techniques: 1200 hand-sewn stitches go into the making of each Egg™. The photo below from their website obviously contains a typo since the company was founded in 1872, not 1972!

Happy designing!

The Serif TV by the Bouroullec Brothers for Samsung

I previously wrote about Yve Behar's marvelous The Frame television, and now Samsung has introduced another television that is just as interesting.

While Behar's approach was to make the television disappear (an approach I utilize in my own designs), the award-winning Paris-based Bouroullec Brothers who designed the Serif TV envisioned it to be an object that fits into everyday life—a hybrid of furniture design and technology. It is an appealing prospect to incorporate the technology into an object that will join furniture and furnishings seamlessly.

A distinct stand design, featuring attachable legs that easily screw into the bottom four corners, works in unison with the Serif TV's design and evokes a Mid-Century aestehetic. The custom legs, included with the TV, allow it to sit comfortably and blend more naturally into the home.

The user interface includes a transition between standby and normal viewing options called "curtain mode". This feature allows users to apply a filter over the content, creating a "curtain" effect in which viewers can access services such as a clock, Bluetooth speakers, apps and their photo gallery.

A woven fabric cover magnetically attaches to the back panel of the television to conceal component connections, ensuring it looks great from all angles.

I love the idea of taking this piece of technology that has become shunned and despised from a design perspective and returning it to the days when televisions were housed in casework. The Seif TV feels modern but also a bit retro!

And best of all, the television is fairly affordable at $1,499. It is available at Samsung On-Line.

Happy designing!

Snedker Studio's Marbled Wood Flooring

As part of Copenhagen's Snedker Studio, textile designer Pernille Snedker Hansen creates marvelous painted wood floors using the ancient handcrafted art of marbling (the technique used to create classic endpapers for books). By swirling paint onto a fluid surface and dipping planks onto the paint, the marbling design is transferred.

Her Refraction Series #1 fits together beautifully and can be configured in a bookmatched pattern...

...and Refraction #2 can be configured into a chevron pattern.

I think her Wave pattern might be my favorite. She says her aim with this technique is to invoke old-growth tree rings and this pattern feels wonderfully organic.

And for some curves, the Arch series creates a pleasing, rhythmic pattern.

Here's how she does it!

I would love to use these incredible, one-of-a-kind planks for a project. Anyone?
Happy designing!