Квартира в 37.6 кв. м. досталась по наследству со старинной мебелью – большой сервант, комод и высокое зеркало, все темно-коричневого цвета. Задача была оставить всю мебель и при этом создать квартиру в которой могли бы жить двое (пара) + 1 гость.
Как правило, обставляя маленькие квартиры габаритной мебелью, да еще и темного цвета, мы визуально делаем маленькую квартиру еще меньше. Однако, если клиент хочет оставить мебель, то приходится искать варианты устроить все так, чтобы все поместилось, но в то же время квартира выглядела просторной (к сведению, от комода все таки пришлось отказаться)
Квартира готовится для сдачи туристам, которым кроме городов Шелкового пути и узбекской культуры также интересно наше советское прошлое. Поэтому, в качестве декора я использовала постеры советских времен. Я также оставила старый, но рабочий, советский холодильник “Днепр” – мы его просто перекрасили в другой цвет.
3D визуализация: Aтабек Касымов. Все остальное – я.
Планировка мебели
Вид с входной двери. Старинное зеркало слева
Кухня + зал
Вот он, старинный сервант!
Спальня | Photo credit: Matt Kollasch http://www.kollarfoto.com/
На прошлой неделе подбирала кафель для проекта и зашла в один из магазинов на Жомий, в котором я всегда нахожу что-то интересное. Возле выхода, так, между прочим, лежит на табуретке еще не выставленная на витрину майолика. Красивые цвета, приятная текстура. Моя первая мысль – будет интересно как это будет выглядеть на “фартуке” на кухне.
Спрашиваю продавца откуда такая красота. Он меня удивляет ответом “Это наша, узбекская” и продолжает “но стоит она дорого …”. Дорогая майолика стоит 300 тысяч узбекских сум за квадрат (по базарному курсу это около $44). Для тех кто не в курсе цен на кафель, $45 и выше – это цены на испанский кафель Made in Spain. Спросите почему так дорого? Оборудование из Испании, было завезено очень дорого.
Размер плитки 45см x 30 см в магазине Venus Ceramic, который среди дизайнеров и кафельщиков больше известен как “У Альберта”.
Отличная новость для дизайнеров и не только – в Ташкенте открылся новый магазин портьерных и обивочных тканей британской фирмы iLiv. Я имела возможность на прошлой неделе пообщаться с представителем фирмы iLiv Ферузой в Ташкенте и воочию пощупать ткани.
Выбор тканей огромный и что особенно радует минималистов вроде меня есть большой выбор тканей для интерьеров в стиле минимализма и хай-тека. Эко-дизайнер во мне ликовал при виде тканей из натурального льна и хлопка.
Для родителей, которые думают об обустройстве детских комнат, iLiv предлагает отдельную коллекцию гипоаллергенных тканей.
“My theory is that this lack of “starting” is attributed to two stupid things: perfectionism and fear.”
Emily Henderson
As I was doing some research this morning I stumbled upon a blog of Emily Henderson (LA based interior stylist, for those of you who like myself haven’t heard of her until this morning) and got sooooo carried away watching her styling videos. You can check them out on your own here (there are some great decorating tips in them, just FYI ), however, this post is about a specific article Emily wrote not too long ago which resonates with two other books I am currently reading – “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert and “Show you work” by Austin Kleon.
“Show your work” by Austin Kleon. 10 ways to share your creativity and get discovered.
How do you start a creative career, any creative career? From my own experience I know it is a change, a challenge and my answer is “Just start” and once you start you follow Nike’s slogan “Just do it”. For more elaborate discussion on the topic you can first read “Big Magic” and then “Show your work” but key points are:
A) you need to overcome your fear, and
B) you need to be breaking out of your comfort zone daily and showing what you do, even if your work is far from being perfect.
Elizabeth Gilbert in her “Big Magic” talks about how fear becomes a glass wall many people never manage to destroy to start doing what they have been wanting to do for years, sometimes their whole lives. She has an interesting way of talking about ideas as energy life-forms which come to a person waiting for the person to materialize them and if the person does not act on it, the idea picks itself up and goes to someone else who is more willing and ready to collaborate. I can totally relate to this because I have learnt for myself that if I have a recurring idea visiting me over and over, it just means that the idea is nagging to come to this material world through me. I have also seen how an idea that came to me and I never followed it through was implemented by someone else.
“Show your work” by Austin Kleon is about getting your work out there (still focusing on your work and not necessarily joining the glamorous world of La Boheme) and showing what you do using social media, taking your audience behind the scenes, sharing the process of creating, telling the stories behind the work because each step is influenced by something that we hear, read, see, try, fail, try again, fail again, try until you get it. Important point to remember is what needs to be shared is work or things related to work – not cats, dogs, lunches, babies, sunsets, selfies, but WORK!
‘This is a very thought provoking program. The thought it’s provoking is: Why am I watching this garbage?’
I don’t watch TV. I haven’t watched TV since I was 16 and I stopped watching it because with my high school graduation exams and entrance exams to the university I physically had no time for it. That “preparation for exams” period lasted for almost a year and as we all know, we only need 40 days to create a new habit and 180 days for a habit to become “you”. Since I was well beyond 180 days period, TV’s and my way parted for good.
Having said that I notice that I have a struggle or, rather, an internal resistance, to plan a space for TV in my projects. I have clients who occasionally ask me for a TV in their bedrooms. Ladies and gentlemen, bedrooms are meant to be used for something else! Moreover, having a TV in the bedroom is counter-productive to a good night sleep, in other words, your health!
I have also met people who placed a TVs in hallways – seriously, how badly are you afraid of missing the latest news from Syria?
TV in a dining room – I know it is a tradition and we need to respect traditions but family gathering around a table, talking about their day rather than staring at “the box” is a much older and healthier tradition.
TVs in cafes (which, sadly, became so popular in Uzbekistan) is a story which requires a separate post but my 2 cents – you place a TV in a cafe when you have nothing else to offer other than a mediocre food paired with a mediocre entertainment. So what do you do? You place a TV on a height of 2 meters so everyone can watch it from any place.
Why am I writing this? Because I am working on an interior design of a small apartment and if not for TV, the space planning part would have been finished.
I am aware that people are different and we need to show tolerance towards each other. Moreover, the client’s wish is my command, so, what I think about TV is really irrelevant when it comes to someone else’s house.
P.S.: full disclosure requires me to honestly state that Internet is becoming as addictive as TV and I am guilty of this crime myself though I am working on it.
This is the second house (89sq.m.) being built on the same land lot as “Karasu House I” in Karasu district of Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
While the bigger house (Karasu House I) is designed to be used by all family members and had to be more traditional to cater to the tastes of grandparents, this one is designed only with a head of a household in mind – a 40-something businessman living a very dynamic life with late work hours and international conference calls in the middle of the night.
In addition to the main living requirements for a residential space like a bedroom, a bathroom, a living room and a kitchen, House II features a home office with a library and a hamam. Since the natural light only comes from one side of the house, to separate living room and home office zones wooden partitions were used to visually expand the space, to provide more natural light and better ventilation.
3D visualization of this project was done by Atabek Kasymov – thank you for your patience, especially with decoding my notes :))), and optimism you brought to this project.
Floorplan | Karasu House II
View of the kitchen from the living area
Living area and office (in the background)
Kitchen
Bedroom features an all-natural wooden accent wall as well as a brick texture wall on the left to frame a window that allows a natural light into a master bathroom
Master bathroom featuring Tintoretto tiles by Keramin
Hamam entrance featuring glorious Iznik tiles on a sink wall
I am very lucky with landlords, or rather, landladies. When I worked in Almaty in 2007-2008, I rented an apartment from a woman who later became my friend. My landlady in Tropea, Callabria became like a sister within two days of staying at her place. One of my latest blessings was my last landlady in Florence, Italy who was half Italian, half Austrian and that half-and-half mix of cultures was a beauty of its own. Her Italian half was evident in her genuine warmth that she spread around. However, when I saw her apartment with all appliance instructions filed in one folder, towels neatly organized in closets and the apartment so clean and sparkling I knew there was something unusual about this level of organization for Florence, Italy. Later I discovered that her Austrian blood was responsible for that. With time we became friends, I got to meet her children including the one to whom I devote this post: Teresa Fontanarosa.
Teresa is an architect who recently graduated from Università degli studi di Firenze. While she was doing her degree in architecture she was also designing clothes and recently launched her first swimming suit collection on Etsy, store name Baluardo32 – just in time for a beach season! My first reaction to the swimsuits, especially to “Fontana” swimsuit, was “sexy”. Now it is for you to judge and, hopefully, to buy.
Не могла пройти мимо этой статьи в индийском выпуске Architectural Digest, потому что вопрос того что делать со стенами всплывает на всех проектах частных домов и квартир, и очень часто мне приходится объяснять своим клиентам почему клеить обои на все стены – это перебор.
Вот мнение экспертов по этому поводу. Основная часть выделена желтым и на русский переводится приблизительно так:
“Люди часто перебарщивают с обоями и клеят их на все стены. Это просто размывает красоту обой, не говоря о том, что по цене они обходятся в целое состояние. Эксперты рекомендуют покрывать обоями только одну стену – возможно, акцентную – для того, чтобы подчеркнуть истинную их красоту”
Voila!
Architectural Digest India | Use of wallpaper
Main image is of “Graham & Brown Birch Heart & Tulip” Wallpaper designed by Marcel Wanders. The image of a courtesy of http://www.houseoffraser.co.uk/
“Limits of whatever form, provide an ideal context for innovation. When faced with obstacles or adversity, our efforts to overcome them hone our creativity and help us find solutions to global problems”
Writing on a wall, Expo 2016, Italian pavilion
You know how we, the humans, are finally realizing a mass damage we are creating by our mass production and are going back to eating local and using local materials?
I have been pondering on these thoughts for some time and while visiting Bukhara and Samarkand I saw how a basic construction material such as brick could be used in so many versatile ways as both a building material and a decoration material. These images are a mix from 9th century architecture to newly renovated / built buildings. The key is – you have a basic brick and it is only human creativity and skills that turned it into something spectacular.
Samanid mausoleum
Winding brick staircase at Chorbakr
Glazed partition wall (details)
Glazed partition wall
Brick wall partition
Exterior wall of a new construction
This is how the shape of the old brick – square! Chorbakr necropolis.
Brick covering of a dome
Samanid mausoleum – change of pavement in progress
I just returned from a week long trip to Bukhara and Samarkand. This was an early birthday present from my parents – thank you, mama and papa!
I don’t remember the number of times I have been to these cities, however, every time I re-visit them I feel like I have matured and I find things I did not even notice before.
This time in Samarkand I came across a mosaic shop set up in a famous Registan square. By the entrance door, on a stool covered with a newspaper, they had a mosaic tile. When I touched the tile the mosaic pieces separated and that’s when I realized that it is a real thing!
I walked into the shop where I received a quick intro into mosaic tiles making. The process itself sounds simple and straightforward but its application is a very detailed tedious work.
Basically, the process goes as follows:
Draw a pattern on a paper.
2. Break it down into small pieces (see below). 1c stands for 1 blue (1 синий), 1б is 1 white (1 белый), 2c is 2 blue (2 синий), etc.
3. Cut the drawing into elements.
4. Apply each piece onto a glazed tile of a correspondent color (like this).
Application of a drawing to a glazed tileGlazed tile, gift from Abdullo Narzullaev, ceramist in Gijduvan
5. Cut and file the edges to make them smooth with a gray stone (lower part of the photo below, to the right of the paper drawing).
7. Repeat a gazillion time.
I can’t think of how much time and how many people it would take to make a portal like this at Shahizinda mausoleum.
Дизайн: Hummingbird. Используемая ширина ткани 141 см, подходит для обивки и для штор, 
Не знаю как вы, но лично я вижу какие шикарные получатся портьеры из этой ткани. Состав ткани: полиэстер + лен
