Balance, Design, Products, Technology
February 10, 2012
By Cerentha Harris
Where we’ve been this week…
1. Treehugger for their “Most Beautiful Street in the World” post.
2. Apartment Therapy for this home office tour.
3. Design*Sponge’s wonderful wrap up of home office spaces.
4. Design Milk for their Designer DeskTop Wallpaper series.
5. MujiUSA has some very sleek minimal designs for the home office including these acrylic organizers.
6. Luludi for their cool way of incorporating plants into the home office – hang them on the wall.
7. Cleverhands shop on Etsy has a interesting alternative to the pencil case – check it out here. Good for home office workers on the go.
8. Vienna-based designers Less & More create beautiful wooden desk organizers. You can see them here on the US-Supermarket site.
9. Design Notes funny post on a new game – “Six Degrees of Cranbrook”.
10. Desire to Inspire‘s post on a cool Toronto office.
Balance, Design, Products, Technology
February 3, 2012
By Cerentha Harris
Where we’ve been this week…
1. Inhabitat ran a post on a beautifully designed little prefab cabin inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright.
2. Interior Design magazine “10 Questions with Konstantin Grcic“ - who designed, among other pieces, Chair_One.
3. Huffington Post for their piece on the Eames’ film “Powers of 10″.
4. Co.Design on how plywood change the world…look out for pieces by Ray and Charles Eames.
5. Architizer for Drew House - an amazing building that includes a tubular section for the living area.
6. The Office Stylist for her post on 22squared’s cool office space.
7. Cubicle Refugee for her lovely, color-driven tumblr blog. Lots of eye candy during your coffee break.
8. Pinterest has so many good boards loaded with home office ideas but make sure you check out Design Studio for really eclectic mix of images.
9. Poppytalk for her home work space post.
10. Habitus for their interview with BassamFellows.
Balance, Design
January 25, 2012
By Cerentha Harris
Yesterday I came across Caroline Clifton-Mogg’s new book A Space of My Own on Remodelista’s revamped site (which is certainly an improvement but will take a bit of getting used to!) Clifton-Mogg is a British journalist and has put together a beautiful book that explores the idea of home workspace as sanctuary. “The important thing is that it is known to all as very much your space and feels private; somewhere specifically designed to cater to you and what you are doing,” writes Clifton-Mogg. As I write this at my kitchen table with our home office desk piled with kid’s drawings I wonder if I’ll ever have a work space in this house to call my own! And I also wonder how many of us manage to carve this kind of precious space out for ourselves?
Balance, Design
December 7, 2011
By Cerentha Harris
My friend Preston of Jetson Green criticized me a few weeks back for being too negative about a possibly ground-breaking project. He was right; in that particular case, if I had nothing good to say, I probably shouldn’t have said anything at all. I consciously decided to follow that dictum when I first saw the stunning little Tetra Shed or Shedworking. It is a beautiful thing, designed by David Ajasa-Adekunle of Innovation Imperative,an award-winning British architecture firm, and it has been showing up on every design website, including Jetson Green.
So what could I possibly complain about with this little gem? Only this: I once owned a geodesic dome with doors and windows installed in sloping walls, and they leak. That’s why buildings have roof overhangs, why windows and doors are inset and have trim. That door, with its double hinges, is going to be hard to lock and harder to seal. The shape is gorgeous but it is technically a huge problem. My dome had a sloping door like that; the first time I opened it, while carrying my baby daughter, the waterlogged door came off its hinges and clonked me on the head. There are reasons wood buildings have evolved the way they have.
This thing is either going to leak, or it is going to be impossibly expensive. And then it will take a little longer to leak.
There are other issues; Bucky Fuller might point out that the tetrahedron encloses the least volume per unit of surface area. Or that municipalities with limits on floor area measure the overall footprint, whereas what matters to a human being is the headprint, how much room is there to stand up in.
Preston raises a serious issue; are we cheerleaders or critics? I don’t know anymore.By Lloyd Alter
This story appears in partnership with treehugger, a one-stop shop for green news, solutions, and product information
Balance, Design, Products, Technology
November 4, 2011
By Cerentha Harris
Where we’ve been this week…
1. Four – as in four-legged friends. It takes a lot to get me to linger on a pet’s site so this wonderfully designed doggy destination was a surprise. Check out their post on Kuntzel+Deygas who painted the Eames chair below.
2. Designer Alvin Aronson‘s site for this cool prototype of a perfectly white digital clock.
3. Design Milk for their post on this pencil holder from Giha Woo.
4. Swissmiss for her post on Instagram – an obsession I share. It’s a lithe little bit of social media perfect for capturing just about everything and now it looks like the pics can be accessed more easily, making it an even better work tool.
5. Cool Hunting for the story on all-natural cleaning porducts. Perfect for getting that desktop sparkling.
6. Wallpaper magazine for their lovely “Letter from Japan” architecture update. Below – House in Seya, Kanagawa, by Suppose Design Office.
7. Design Applause‘s coverage of Belkin’s green power strip.
8. Dwell’s excellent “Small Spaces” series (the house below is the most recent addition to the series).
9. A Brief Message for Hugh Graham’s short essay on design – “We have the opportunity and the responsibility to create a world where each object and experience is filled with value, where living with less but better is both joyful and meaningful.” We couldn’t agree more.
10. Field Notes new red notebooks. I use these little notebooks in the car and always have one on hand in my purse. Nicely designed, small and light weight.
Design
October 5, 2011
By Cerentha Harris
Over at Blue Ant Studio’s blog Joel Pirela has just started a new series offering up shots of creative people’s desks. I was invited to contribute (my desk is above) and was thrilled to see some of my favorite bloggers were already there. Check out the images below and head over to Blue Ant Studio for more.
Above: Joel Pirela’s workspace.
Above: Design Milk’s Jaime Derringer’s home office
Above: Marcus Fairs at the Dezeen office in Stoke Newington, north London
Design
October 7, 2010
By Cerentha Harris
A friend of mine is renovating her house and I spent time looking over swatches of fabric and thinking about color, sofa shapes and rug pile earlier this week. It was so nice to get back into that head space again. Renting has kept me from doing too much major work on the house that we live in…that and a rather tight budget! So it was fun to step into someone else’s shoes and indulge in a morning of talking nothing but interiors. It also re-sparked my interest in interiors shoots. Always on the lookout for great home offices I came across this one in Elle Decor. It’s the house of cosmetics queen Jeanine Lobell, actor Anthony Edwards and their four children. The whole home is pretty amazing – great use of color. But I especially enjoyed this workspace. The crisp white of the walls and the gallery of paintings is a perfect back drop to the desk. I feel like you could write the great American novel sitting at that desk.
Photographed by William Waldron.
Balance, Design, Products, Technology
February 18, 2010
By Cerentha Harris
Kim Johnson is one half of Desire to Inspire - a blog packed to the brim with great interiors. She and fellow blogger, Australian Jo Walker, have never actually met. They came together on Flickr and “well that was that. Desire to Inspire was born.” It’s a picture- heavy global tour of chic homes that attracts people from all over the world. Kim, who is a web programmer based in Ottawa, Canada, talks with us about blogging from her home.
What does an average work day look like for you? The majority of my day is spent in a cubicle while I am at my day job as a web developper for the Canadian government. Not very exciting. But then I get to come home and spend my evenings working on the interior design blog I share with Jo, who lives in Australia. That involves answering reader emails, conversing via email with advertisers, collecting photos for a post to be published the following day, and hopefully finding a bit of time to make dinner, check out other blogs, and relax a bit before the day ends. Then it all starts again (at 5 am). My workspace is pretty small; a room at the back of my house that is 11’x10’, with a rather large powder room taking up a quarter of the space.
What technology really works for you? Being surrounded by technology all day, I am inspired by the simple things that get the job done quick. My pink (I loooove pink) Dell laptop is a god send. It is fast and super handy. I often move it into the kitchen where I sit at the dining table and while working I can watch the TV in the living room (and keep an eye out on my 7 cats).
Do you have a favorite desk accessory? The only desk accessory I really need is my whiteboard. I have a marker obsession so I love keeping track of everything (blog advertising, grocery lists, Home Depot lists) on my whiteboard.
What makes your home office work well? Organizing a home work space is essential. Disorganization = stress. No one needs more stress in their lives. So I am always on the hunt for fun vintage metal baskets, storage furniture, trays for stray papers…whatever I need to have a space for every single thing that enters my office.
What do you listen to while you work? Sadly I find I am too preoccupied with other things to find decent music to listen to. I often turn to my digital cable box for help, where I set it to one of the “hit list” radio stations.