Le refuge: increasing the minimum

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Sometimes the most impossible challenge turns to be the most audacious… In Les Menuires, France a peculiar apartment renovation testifies the eloquent answer to a particular brief: Le refuge. The request was extremely challenging: to increase the surface of a living room without touching the bearing elements, offer two bathrooms instead of the existing one, and keep the number of sleeping 8 beds in an available area of 55sqm. But how do you make an already small living area larger than it is? The answer lies in an ingenious design concept of living furniture. Continue reading →

Urban townhouse: living in the city that never sleeps

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A unique townhouse is quietly living in the skyscraper city that never sleeps…In New York City there’s a five-story building that redefines the typology of the common urban townhouse on a representative narrow Manhattan plot. Stuck between two ancient brick houses, Urban Townhouse demonstrates how to achieve the most unique experience of living within a small area. Continue reading →

House in Belas: a tiny white village

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The process of fragmentation is often developed in architecture. A single family residence in Portugal exemplifies how a contemporary home can be efficiently dispersed through several volumes without compromising its main purpose.

A total floor area of 350sqm stands ingeniously distributed in five different volumes all similar in formal appearance: a clear reinterpretation of a traditional Portuguese house. In fact, once inside the site one can experience a sense of being close to a small community – like a tiny white village – where each one of the single-story volumes assumes a distinctive orientation and proportion. Continue reading →

Bagigia: a hot water bottle made by Italian hands

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The design of this bag was inspired on a cold day on the streets of Milan, where a woman holding a hot water bottle passed by Gianmarco Godi – the designer of Bagigia. Godi decided to dress up the hot water bottle in leather, while keeping the typical marks on the rubber surface, adorn it with a stainless steel stopper, four rings and two adjustable shoulder straps, and voila! a new bag was born. Continue reading →

Chevron House: life in Technicolor

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The Chevron House belongs to Oliver Peyton, a collector of contemporary British Art and a renowned restaurateur and food critic. It’s an Edwardian piece of architecture, situated in the suburb of West London, which has been transformed into a multicolored living space. A new extension was developed, taking the Edwardian elegantly proportioned spaces to a modern extreme. Continue reading →

Verso Arc Light for Kindle

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Reading lights always seemed to me to be uncomfortable clip-ons that obstructed my reading experience instead of illuminating it. It also seemed frustrating to flip on the lamp near my bed to read a book on my Kindle – a strange process of using older technology to light new technology. My 3rd generation Kindle Keyboard functions well, and I don’t see any reason to buy the newer backlit, Kindle Paperwhite. For those like me who are so reluctant to buy newer versions of functioning hardware, the Verso Arc Light from Lightwedge brings beautiful luminescence to the original Kindle. Continue reading →

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