Hasta La Ideas

Two design-savvy sites team up for the ultimate DIY decorating tool

When British website Mydeco arrived stateside last year with their 3D room planning tool, we were impressed with the user-friendly interior design program that allowed you to choose from a host of home furnishings. Their interactive tool proved so clever, it’s now serving as the foundation for Design Within Reach‘s latest online offering.

DWR’s collection of designers like Herman MIller, Knoll and Cassina fill your virtual living room, bedroom or kitchen with the simple click of the mouse. Like Mydeco’s original site, you can upload your own floorplan, or choose from a model, to really design according to your room requirements. Then, you can choose wall colors, floor coverings and where to place doors and windows before finally selecting your furniture. When finished, just save your work and two hours later the program will generate a realistic photo of your room that you can print, take to the brick-and-mortar for reference or share on Facebook or Twitter.

If you’re looking for an easier way to shop, as you add and remove furniture to your layout, the program keeps an updated shopping list. Completed designs are stored online for your reference, as well as inspiration guides for other users. Launching today, the
DWR and MyDeco tool is available online for anyone to use, and will also be in over 45 stores throughout North America.

A retrospective book of Masamichi Katayama’s beautiful design “experiences”

From A.P.C.’s bungalow-style boutique in Tokyo to Hong Kong’s freezer-like Ice Cream store, Wonderwall, the interior design firm founded in 2000 by Masamichi Katayama, has made its name by creating a diverse range of spaces throughout Asia, the U.S. and Europe. A monograph of the studio’s work to date, Wonderwall Archives 01, is now available from Parco Publishing.

Containing some 50 examples of Wonderwall’s commercial projects, from Uniqlo shops in New York and Paris to Nike’s Harajuku, Tokyo outpost (check out our 2009 video on the project here), the volume showcases Katayama’s fresh take on contemporary architecture and design. The featured spaces represent his vision of places that foster an exchange between the consumer and their respective brands, based on his notion that such locations are “only complete with people and products inside.” With no set expectations on that which a final product should consist or a standard process for his design, Katayama takes each project individually, with “no rules that bind him.”

“Interior design,” Katayama says, “needs to be something that can be communicated without words.” As such, he bears responsibility for producing an experience—rather than just a physical atmosphere—in his designs, ranging from retail spaces to restaurants/bars to offices and building complexes. He finds inspiration in his own experience as a consumer, and tends to blend traditional and modern styles as well as luxury and “cheap chic.”

Wonderwall Archives 01, which includes descriptions of Katayama’s projects in both English and Japanese, is available now from Colette or in Japan from Wonderwall’s online store.

From a Maserati bike to a neighborhood revival project and Yves Klein’s retrospective, the year in color

Color, perhaps the most powerful, immediate and accessible element in a designer or artist’s repertoire, blessed 2010 in abundance from all quarters. With products, fashion, art and social projects all proving that color is a key to unlocking human emotion on a multitude of levels, here are five offerings which had us more than tickled pink this year.

Let’s Colour

One of the most fantastic things about color is its ability to change the feeling of a place or even a viewer—often without anything more than a bucket and paint brush. Dulux’s Let’s Colour project typifies the simple power of a splash of color. Throughout the year volunteers have taken the Let’s Colour project to all corners of the world, helping to brighten up neighborhoods and locations which needed a little lick of paint. Working in collaboration with the locals, Dulux has been able to not only breathe some life into the downtrodden locations but also empower the inhabitants in the process for a truly inspirational venture.

Zweed

Arming the consumer with a little creative power, Zweed produces bespoke furniture which the buyer can spec out themselves, choosing color, shape, material and form. As we enter 2011, Zweed is truly showing how times of economic strife can lead the increased customer satisfaction, product longevity and beautiful pieces of handmade design which carry with them narrative and meaning in their coloring.

Evolving Image

Color can produce a dizzying array of effects and illusions in an architectural space, shown this year in the renovation of the compact CH HQ bathroom. Designed by Evolving Image, two tones of gray, a geometric pattern and a complimentary aqua accent draw the viewer’s attention to the paint job while elongating the small space. The blue-green hue is also a color which will remain fresh and contemporary for a long time, while gray always acts better as a base tone than a purer white if you want to pop an accent.

Montante Maserati 8CTF

This year the cycling world has enthralled and inspired in terms of color use, but it’s hard to find a pursuit which has a better grip on color combinations and selection than the Montante Maserati 8CTF. If you think about the physical constraints of a bicycle, in terms of the actual surface area one has to color, it makes the achievement of creating a mind-blowing color combination—one which is staggering to even the most skilled colorist. Examples of quality coloring on bikes this year are endless but this piece—produced in honor of the Maserati 8CTF winner of the Indy 500—demonstrates a great subtlety of tone played out with gold accents. Deep, luxurious, completely desirable and proof that you don’t have to go chromatic to make a statement.

With the Void, Full Power

No top five of color would be complete without finding some way of mentioning the retrospective of Yves Klein, whose famed International Klein Blue pigment remains the most acute colors seen with the human eye. With the Void, Full Power is still showing and is an absolute must-see. In fact, we recommend everyone at some stage in life gaze in awe at even the smallest pile of the powdery IKB. The glow of this color brings out such a gloriously base emotion that the very thought of it makes me want to weep joyfully in a corner.

Our dizzying new bathroom by NYC’s premiere specialty painters

When Annemarie Flynn and Andrea Patterson of Evolving Image stopped in on a friend’s recommendation to show us their portfolio of detailed murals and wall treatments, they saw the dismal white walls
of the small bathroom in the Cool Hunting office and got inspired. After presenting us with a few ideas, we gave some feedback and the duo tapped the third in their partnership, artist and colleague Jeremy Stanger, to implement the geometric pattern of his design.

The aqua-and-gray pattern now lines our entire bathroom, creating one cohesive, slightly psychedelic experience from floor to ceiling and elongating the narrow room. Along with a the revamped space, we can now count ourselves in the same company as other Evolving Image clients like the Metropolitan Opera House, Versace and The Plaza Hotel.

From big to small, the custom painters tailor every design (commercial or residential) to each space, drawing on their consummate skills with color, proportion, graphics and interiors to create gorgeous, inventive spaces. Styles range from wallpaper-like patterning to fanciful trompe l’oeils and subtle textures, but all add character to a room and, like in our case, can solve size or other structural issues. After we suggested the service to our friends at the food-focused boutique PR firm YC Media, Evolving Image painted a massive artichoke over a striped pattern (created with a squeegee) on their office wall.

In addition to eco-friendly paints, a variety of finishes including glazes, faux fabrics and plaster are available. The trio’s impeccable execution combined with seemingly endless capability turns any room into an open canvas for impressive decor.

New York interior designer and Apartment Therapy co-founder Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan shows real-world solutions when square footage isn’t on your side in the new book “Apartment Therapy’s Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces,” which documents his travels through every type of ingeniously designed, spaciously challenged home.

Maxwell explains, “This book is meant to be easy to dive into and really useful. After all, I want you to get so excited that you’ll eventually put it down.” His knowledge of interior decorating is honest and put to the test regularly, not only on his wildly popular website but also on HGTV and in numerous newspapers and magazines.

This Big Book is interior design for everyone, organized for maximum use—following the successful model of their previous publications. Photos accompany tips gleaned from interviews with home owners, and insightful commentary helps narrate easy approaches to your own DIY redesign.

Apartment Therapy’s Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces comes out tomorrow, 11 May 2010, Random House or Amazon.