I’ll be implementing a weekly post featuring links I’ve come across throughout the week that I find interesting, inspirational, intriguing, unique, thoughtful … You get the gist. Some will be design-related, others architecture-related, and others, well, who knows.

New York Times – Dollar Store Decor: Outfitting an Apartment

Stylelist Home – Integrated Versus Fragmented

Design Sponge – Antique Specimens

Apartment Therapy – The “Other White House”: A Roundup of Presidential Retreats

Furniture Fashion – Once Upon a Shelf: 10 Stunning Bookcase Designs

Check back each week to see what on the World Wide Web has caught my eye.

Every year, Pantone releases its color report for the spring. Fashion designers lend their expert opinions to compile this palette.  Their report for 2012 was full of fresh, bright colors and is truly inspiring – whether you’re making clothes or putting together your home, color palettes like this can give your thinking a spark. These shades can be incorporated throughout your entire house, in a number of subtle, or even obvious, ways. Here are some of my favorite ways to use these colors…

This piece is very versatile – for seating or with a tray on it as a side table. This is just one of those colors that can really work in many styles of homes, whether you’re going for a more sophisticated and neutral look, or playing around with spring-inspired colors.

This project, above, is one where I used a accent color, Cockatoo, to tie the room together. Rugs, pillows, and accessories allow you to add that pop of color to a room,without breaking the bank. These things are easy to swap out if you decide your room needs a revamp next season or year.

This lamp/lampshade has just the right amount of color.  For those who are a bit cautious to introduce such a bright, bold color into their home, try incorporating smaller accent pieces – they don’t have to necessarily be all one color, in this case the silver base of the lamp makes the bright Cabaret-colored lamp shade a bit more understated. Be careful, though, not to make the accent color look too intentional.

There’s no reason you can’t have more than one pop of the same color in a room, more than one accent color gives the room depth, too many, however can make the accents ineffective. The way that the inside of this cabinet is painted the same color as the chairs really ties the entire room together, but it doesn’t need to be so obvious. The project above isn’t mine, but it successfully shows how to use accent pieces and accessories to tie key colors together. This is a great technique to use if you have one odd-ball thing in the room that you are trying to make look intentional.

This fun shag rug would be perfect for a kids’ room or could even be used under the desk. These can be thrown down on hard wood floors or used on top of carpet, just to dress up the room a bit.

With all of this thinking of bold colors, it’s easy to forget about the more neutral shades. This project is a perfect example of how to make neutral tones interesting. By painting the walls in Driftwood it makes the room look very elegant and sophisticated and enhances the way that the lighting is used here. Also, notice how great the accent pillows look!

The site is full of useful articles by design experts, tips and tools for decorating, and over 250,000 great photographs of both home exterior and interiors.

Over 40,000 professionals are part of Houzz, as well as countless homeowners looking for advice and finding and sharing their own design inspirations.

Whether it’s posted by professionals, like yours truly, or just the home design fanatics of the world, it’s a great site to share ideas, and at the very least look at some incredibly beautiful homes.

My Paul Schulman Design page on Houzz is brand new, but I will be continually posting new projects and building content. I’m excited to be a part of the Houzz community and think the site is an invaluable tool for all!

You can see my Houzz page here.

Houzz page

CHECK IT OUT!

Two Thumbs Up for Thea Flaum’s Presale Renovation

It’s been a relatively active year in Chicago architecture, all things considered. Let’s take a look at the good and the bad.

For my money, the good begins with the photo above: The UNO Soccer Academy that was completed this year at 51st and Homan. The metallic, almost serpentine-like charter school was designed by Chicago architect Juan Moreno and Ghafari Associates, uplifts the working class Gage Park neighborhood in which it sits. The school has generated some buzz in design circles, but not nearly as much as it deserves. Which is fine, in the end. The students and residents know what they’ve got. Read more about the school.

Also good? The magical, mechanical Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago Designed by Helmut Jahn. The structure features a breathtaking and expansive glass-domed reading room. And beneath the room sits a five-story deep storage area with an automated shelving system that–within minutes of a computer command from the reference desk–can fetch any one of the library’s 3.5 million books, periodicals, etc., and bring it topside. Read more about the library.

And one more highlight of 2011: The city’s Landmarks Commission and the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency voted to recommend he U.S. Park Service grant a National Register of Historic Places listing for the city’s connecting ring of historic parks and boulevards. The listing would not only give an additional honor to big parks like Douglas, Washington, Gage, Humboldt and Sherman, it would make property owners of pre-1942 buildings on the miles and miles of boulevards leading to the parks–streets like Logan Boulevard, Drexel and Garfield–eligible for money-saving tax credits and other rehab incentives. Read more here.

And now some of the worst…

The demolition of the old Michael Reese Hospital main building at 29th and Ellis–despite assurances from City Hall under now former Mayor Richard M. Daley that it would be preserved.Read more here.

That awful fiberglass Marilyn Monroe in granny panties outside the 401 N. Michigan Avenue building. I opined about it here, but architecture journalist and critic Edward Lifson summed it up best, calling the statue “The Seven Year Kitsch.”

And now it’s your turn. What were the best and worst things that happened on the Chicago architecture front in 2011? Email them to me at lbey@wbez.org and I’ll blog your responses between now and next week.

And one more thing: If you’re on Michigan Avenue tomorrow around 12:15pm, drop by the City Gallery inside the old Historic Water Tower, 806 N. Michigan. I’ll be giving a lively–and final–gallery talk on my photo exhibit there, Chicago Then and Now: A Story by Lee Bey. The show, which has been in the gallery since January, pairs 100 year old images of Chicago locales–taken from postcards and stereoscope cards–with my contemporary photography of the same sites. See the image and come check me out.

Read the original article here

This past weekend I went to a restaurant that inspired that memory. Roka Akor is a new hip and trendy place in River North with amazing Asian food.The space is full of very interesting design details. I took some images, the lighting was terrible, I apologize.

the paneled wood wall by the kitchen

the ceiling above the bar

the welded nail mesh above the open range

the back lit wall adjacent to the bar

the flexible wood mesh that wraps around the structural pillars

So here is the question, do great design details make a great space or does coherency matter? What do you think?