The Making Hard Things Soft pillow line by the new Swedish design company How Are You is brilliant! The 50cm x 50 cm hand made pillows, printed in Sweden, are made from heavy 100% cotton canvas and feature detailed images of hard surfaces like rock, plywood, & concrete.
The pillows are available for purchase direct from How Are You for 600 Swedish Kronas or around 84.00 US dollars.
— Via Fine Little Day
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia based design firm Mim Design has just completed the interior for a brand new cupcake shop, Joy Cupcakes. The brilliantly colored interior features simple design; a vibrant wall covered in a custom tile patchwork, custom light fixtures, stools, tables, and merchandising wall.
All of the pieces emphasize the hand-crafted joyful aspect of Joy Cupcakes by using honest materials and design, warm vibrant colors, and a home-style aesthetic.
— Via Contemporist
This RGB wallpaper by the Milan based studio Carnovsky is really blowing my mind today. The wallpaper, which has been designed in many different motifs, features three color layers, one each in pure Red, Green, and Blue. The resulting patterns and complex shapes mask the real images within the wallpaper until the wallpaper is washed in corresponding colored light. When this happens, each layer is revealed in vibrant monotone color.
Slowpoke Café, by designer Anne-Sophie Poirier of Sasufi, is a beautiful Melbourne based coffee house that serves all organic foods in an amazingly warn and calm atmosphere. What the designer and the clients did with the space on a very limited budget is really inspiring.
The 12 meter (40 foot) feature wall that runs clear across one side of the cafe is clad in random depth off-cuts and remnants of dozens of species of wood. Above each table, a shelf projects from the wall, giving the cafe a place to set sugar bowls and other small things. All the furniture and lighting was sourced from local flea markets and the window sign is even lit using a small solar panel!
— Via Dezeen
The London based studio Joint Perspectives has recently finished the Mundvoll Café + Grocery Store situated within one of Zeppelin University’s campuses in Friedrichshafen, on the edge of Lake Constance. The small grocery, which aims to bring back the concept of the small local stores, serves drinks, small bites, and lunch, with a small food market attached.
— Via Contemporist
I really, really want one of these rugs by Gothenburg, Sweden based rug makers By Second Studio. Their geometric rugs are hand-made using 100% pure wool and all come in a wide array of brilliant color combinations, patterns, and sizes. One of these would look awesome in the studio in front of my danish modern couch! By Second Studio’s rugs are all available online at 2Modern.com.
— Via Black White Yellow
I honestly can’t decide which one of MiniModerns wallpapers I love more. I think If I had to decide it would be their C-60 Wallpaper in Chalkboard & Gold. Mini Moderns is a brilliant range of 50′s inspired interior products designed and produced by London based design and branding agency, Absolute Zero Degrees. The wallpaper is all printed in the UK with water-based inks on paper harvest from certified sustainable forests and costs between £45.00 and £50.00 (around $75.00) for a 52cm x 10m roll.
— Via DesignSponge
I love the beautiful bold graphics and warm feeling interior of the Capital Kitchen in Melbourne, Australia. The restaurant/cafe/bar was designed by Mim Design to have a rustic, wooden, country feeling that is in stark contrast to the urban shopping center its located in.
I love the new Kith Café in Singapore by the designers at Hjgher. The clients were inspired by a line from the Japanese movie, Be With You, “would you care to have coffee with me sometime?” They wanted a place that had the power to turn strangers into friends or “kith into kin.” They decided that they would remove all the fancy lampshades, mass produced furniture, and unnecessary printed materials to delivery an unassuming space that would support their philosophy & ethos.
All the furniture for the space was hand made out of cut-offs from plywood sheets and is designed to allow the guests to reconfigure them to fit their needs, allowing large groups to be seated together while still allowing single guests to feel that they have a private space. The large chalkboard menu allows everyone to see what is available without having their noses in a menu, fostering interactions between guests.
— Via Contemporist
I knew that the Urban Outfitters corporate campus was just down the road at the Navel Yard in Philadelphia but I never imagined it would be as amazing as it is. All 285,000 square feet of the campus looks like a mix between an Anthropology store and an Urban Outfitters, even down to the detail of all the hipsters walking around! The move was considered risky and described as being “equivalent to exiling Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue fashion houses to an industrial park near JFK” by Metropolis Magazine’s Inga Saffron.
The architects, Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, Ltd., did an amazing job designing the space, leaving many of the original details of the old factory space intact. Majority of the walls and ceilings were left as they were, and where they decided to cover up the chipped paint, they used rough-sawn wood siding. The mix between the old industrial remnants and the shabby-chic interior elements is exciting to say the least.
Modern patterns on reupholstered Victorian furniture under a 10 ton Niles crane that was once used to move giant ship parts fits perfectly with the mix of Anthropology and Urban Outfitters design styles.
Architects: Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, Ltd.
Total construction cost: $100 million
Project Area: 285,000 sqf
Project Year: 2006
Photography: Lara Swimmer Photography
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