Neighborhood Tours

As the weather gets colder and the days get darker, you're probably seeking out soft, fuzzy materials to snuggle up with in your New York apartment. One new item we would definitely like to get cozy with is Romero Vallejo's Ruff Pouf. This contemporary ottoman is crowned with an ingenious folded felt structure inspired by neck ruffles worn by men and women during the Elizabethan era.
Learn more about this autumnal seat

City Will Start Accepting Proposals for Underground Lowline Space

Lowline Lab via 6sqft

November 20, 2015

City Will Start Accepting Proposals for Underground Lowline Space

In 2009, James Ramsey and Dan Barasch started planning a solar-powered subterranean park on the Lower East Side, the underground equivalent of the High Line. They set their sites on the 60,000-square-foot abandoned Essex Street Trolley Terminal below Delancey Street and named their project The Lowline. Now, six years later, they've launched the Lowline Lab, "a high-tech, miniaturized precursor to the city’s first underground park," as 6sqft put it in a recent interview with Ramsey and Barasch. Located in a vacant warehouse on Essex Street, the Lab most certainly served its purpose, as The Lo-Down is reporting that the city and MTA have finally agreed to accept proposals for the space. The Economic Development Corporation (EDC) will release on Monday a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI), followed by a briefing next month with Community Board 3.
Find out more ahead

November 9, 2015

Tiny House ‘MUJI Huts’ Will Start at Just $25,000

For lovers of the tiny house movement and eco-design, it was pretty big news when environmentally conscious, "no-brand" Japanese household company MUJI announced that they'd be launching three tiny prefab cabins called MUJI Hut. The three models are of varying materials (wood, cork, and aluminum) and size, created by three well-known designers (Naoto Fukasawa, Jasper Morrison, and Konstantin Grcic). One is envisioned as a true tiny home for living off the grid, another as a vacation retreat, and the third as a place to temporarily escape. The models first launched last week at Tokyo Design Week, but now Spoon & Tomago has uncovered the pricing, which ranges from $25,000 to $40,000.
Get inside all three designs

November 9, 2015

Sitskie’s Innovative Wood Furniture Mimics Memory Foam to Conform to Your Body

Buying furniture can be a significant investment, so you want to make sure you're putting your money towards something that will last. While fluffy upholstered pieces can help you take a load off at the end of a busy day, fabric furniture is often more difficult to care for and maintain than wood. Designer Adam Friedman from Los Angeles' Sitskie design studio, who spent years working in furniture sales, has created a new line of furniture that aims to solve this problem. His solid wood pieces conform to the body like memory foam, giving users the best of both worlds.
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November 3, 2015

New Furniture Collection Features Clever Storage as an Ode to Ye Old Carpenter’s Workbench

Recently debuting at the London Design Festival, Planks is a new furniture collection from studio Benchmark and designer Max Lamb. The collection was created in part as a tribute to the humble carpenter's workbench and 17th and 18th century English country furniture such as boarded chests, box stools and dough troughs. In keeping with this theme each piece features clever storage spaces to help prevent clutter from accumulating on its working surface.
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INTERVIEW: Lowline Creator James Ramsey Discusses the Challenges of Building an Underground Park

James Ramsey (right) with co-founder Dan Barasch (left)

October 26, 2015

INTERVIEW: Lowline Creator James Ramsey Discusses the Challenges of Building an Underground Park

By Diane Pham

The hottest destination in the Lower East Side is not a bar, but rather a cutting edge installation hidden inside a vacant warehouse at 140 Essex Street. Just over a week ago, partners James Ramsey and Dan Barasch launched the Lowline Lab, a high-tech, miniaturized precursor to the city’s first underground park. James is the co-founder (alongside Dan) of the park, which will occupy a 40,000-square-foot abandoned trolley terminal below Delancey Street; and creator of the technology that will fill it—a remote skylight system that redirects light underground thorough a maze of optic tubes and diffuses it over a canopy to produce a subterranean environment where plants can grow and flourish (phew!). 6sqft recently took a private tour of the Lowline Lab alongside James, and he gave us some insight into the science, as well how he and Dan are approaching the challenges that come with bringing a park below ground to life. We of course asked all those questions you've been wondering about, like: Who's paying for this whole thing? And what about the rats?
Read our interview with James here

October 26, 2015

Turn Your Old iPhone Into an Elegant Desktop Lamp

Industrial designer Ivan Zhurba came out with a brilliant idea to tackle the planned obsolescence of iPhones. His "iPhone Lamp" is an elegant luminaire for the desk or bedside table that gives new use to Apple's retired smart phones. The lamp follows the tech giant's sleek, clean lines, so you don't have to worry whether it'll fit in with your interior; just throw it into a modern upstate home or a teensy Upper West Side studio and enjoy the light.
Learn more about this brilliant hacked lamp

October 25, 2015

Claire-Anne O’Brien Designs Chunky Woolen Stools to Cozy Up With This Autumn

Using traditional textile techniques such as weaving, knotting and basketry, London-based textile designer Claire-Anne O’Brien creates beautiful "Knit Stools" that are perfect for cuddling up at home. The creative designer specializes in the construction of 3D textiles, which she applies to both interior furniture and decoration. Made using an ash base and topped with super soft lambswool upholstery, these stools are just the item we'd like to get our hands on this autumn.
Learn more about this tactile stools

October 20, 2015

Families Test Out Garrison Architects’ Post-Disaster Housing Prototype in Downtown Brooklyn

By Annie Doge

Last June, Garrison Architects unveiled their ingenious modular post-disaster housing solution. Now, as we approach the three-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, news comes that the city has finally begun testing out the units on a lot located at 165 Cadman Plaza East in Downtown Brooklyn. According to the Times, about 46 city employees and their families have spent the night in the shelters, and the reviews are most definitely favorable. “Almost everyone tells us these are nicer than their own apartments,” James McConnell, an official at the Office of Emergency Management, told the paper.
More here

Inspired by Dumpster Living, Kasita Is the Micro-Apartment You Can Take Anywhere

Jeff Wilson's new design, Kasita, is a radical approach to apartment living. Now like never before you can literally move your entire apartment from one city to the next with the push of a button. The design of the tech-packed home was inspired by Wilson's radical experiment in apartment living when he spent the better part of a year living in a converted dumpster. The alternative lifestyle was supposed to provide commentary on the excessiveness of the typical single-family house, but it did far more than that.
More about Kasita Here

October 7, 2015

Real Money Gets Recycled Into New Fabric for Designer Furniture

Did you know that most money only has a lifespan of 18 months before it is decommissioned and sent to the incinerator? In reality, your cold hard cash is nothing more than a fancy blend of cotton and linen, and as we move deeper into the digital age, our tactile dollars are being used less and less. So what will happen to our coins and bills when they become obsolete? Well, London-based designer Angela Mathis is thinking ahead with her new project VALUE, which recycles shredded notes to form a new textile that can be applied to a variety of upholstery needs.
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September 25, 2015

Wallpockets: Cool Cardboard Wall Decor That Doubles as Storage

No home feels complete without a little wall decor, and what better way to decorate your city digs than with art that doubles as storage! These colorful pentagon-shaped pockets for your wall were brought to you by industrial design students Tim Karoleff and Shea Springer, known collectively to the world as Ampersand.
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September 23, 2015

These Lamps Are Made From Old Espresso Machine Boilers

6sqft has featured lamps made from natural elements like mushrooms and seaweed, but it's always nice to see design that upcycles materials that would otherwise end up in the landfill. Though you wouldn't know it by looking at these beautiful pendant and standing lights, they were created from discarded espresso machine boilers. According to Design Milk, Finnish designer Willem Heeffer embarked on a project called "The City as a Mine," which explores ways to turn trash from local factories in Helsinki into stylish home decor products; these copper Boiler Lamps served their first incarnation for ten years at the Paulig coffee factory.
More on the lamps

September 18, 2015

SHoP Architects Are Bringing a Wooden Condo Building to Chelsea

In March, an Austrian architecture firm announced plans to build the world's tallest wooden skyscraper in Vienna. They noted that by using wood as opposed to concrete they'd save 3,086 tons of CO2 emissions. Then, a study showed that timber buildings actually cost less to build. These benefits really must have stuck with SHoP Architects, who are developing plans for a ten-story residential building in Chelsea, overlooking the High Line at 475 West 18th Street, that will be made entirely of wood, according to the Wall Street Journal. SHoP's project came via a competition hosted by the United States Department of Agriculture, in partnership with the Softwood Lumber Board and the Binational Softwood Lumber Council, that asked architecture firms to design buildings at least 80 feet tall that employed wood construction technologies. SHoP's design, dubbed 475 West, won the competition along with a 12-story building in Portland. The firms will split a $3 million prize to "embark on the exploratory phase of their projects, including the research and development necessary to utilize engineered wood products in high-rise construction."
More on the project here

September 11, 2015

Kim Hoover’s Sustainable Upstate Home Has Fossilized Bamboo Floors and a ‘Cool Roof’

Architect Kim Hoover, principal at Hoover Architecture, built a bold sustainable house and guesthouse within the picturesque Hudson Valley. The two-level property takes inspiration from a tree house, which is reflected through its open, casual spaces, use of wood and the great outdoor views it frames through its many windows. But the home's most interesting details aren't what you'd expect. This unique space boasts recycled porcelain tiles, fossilized bamboo floors and it has a reflecting "cool roof."
Learn more about this design

September 9, 2015

Space-Saving Chair Pops Up From a Single Sheet of Bamboo

"To what degree is the object you're creating capable of dictating its own design? Is it even possible for an object to 'tell' for which form its best suited? And if so, what will the end result be?" Following this train of thought, designer Robert Van Embricqs created The Rising Chair, a bamboo seat that assembles in just a few seconds. Made from interconnected, renewable bamboo slats, this pop-up seat starts off as a flat surface and only needs to be pulled upwards to create a chair.
Learn more about this sculptural bamboo seat

August 27, 2015

SUNplace: A Solar-Powered Mobile BBQ Concept for Cooking Al Fresco

Want to throw a Labor Day barbecue, but don't have any outdoor space? This mobile grill can be transported to the beach or park for the perfect al-fresco dinner party. SUNplace is a contemporary BBQ powered by the most basic, clean, and accessible source of free energy we have -- the sun. Conceptualized by the creative duo Francesca Lanzavecchia and Hunn Waithe, together making up the design firm Lanzavecchia-Wai, the table highlights both technical cooking and the social aspect that comes with it.
Learn more about this sun-powered grill

August 26, 2015

City’s Next Floating Park May Be a Giant Food Forest

It seems the way to create new public spaces in New York these days is to float them in the rivers. First there was the +Pool, then Pier55, and now we introduce to you Swale, a floating food forest that may grace our waters next summer. The New York Observer reports that artist Mary Mattingly is looking to embark on the project, which will "be created with collaborators and built from repurposed shipping containers, will stretch 50 feet across and will feature a gangway entrance, walkways, and an edible forest garden." The floating garden will move around to different docks in the harbor to serve various communities. Local students and gardeners are working on a wetland plant base that will filter the river water to help grow edible plants.
More on the project ahead

August 26, 2015

Construction Update: Perch Harlem, Manhattan’s First Passive House Rental Building, Rises

By Ondel Hylton

A tipster has alerted us that Manhattan's first market-rate rental building built to passive house standards has reached street level. Dubbed Perch Harlem, the soon-to-be-seven-story structure is located in the uppermost reaches of Harlem's Hamilton Heights section at 542 West 153rd Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues. "Perched"on a ridge 150 feet above sea level, the site overlooks the bucolic grounds of Trinity Cemetery, which is the only active burial ground on the island. The project's forward-thinking developers, the Synapse Development Group with its investment partner Taurus Investment Holdings, purchased the 10,000-square-foot former parking lot back in December of 2013 and have since been growing their Perch brand of passive house buildings that focus on low-impact living and community-oriented design. A second Perch building is slated for Williamsburg at 646 Lorimer Street.
Find out more about Perch Harlem

August 25, 2015

Used Plastic Containers Get New Lives as Colorful Stools with ‘Tachtit’

Have you ever considered turning your plastic packaging waste into something practical for day-to-day use? A group of designers at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design followed the waste cycle of several plastic containers at a local market and discovered that after being used just once, the vast majority went straight to the landfill. Disheartened by the wastefulness they saw, Avner Balachsan, Maya Shtrigler, Noa Rich and Yohay Alush invented "Tachtit," (which is Hebrew for "bottom," but conveniently also sounds a lot like "attached it") a series of metal legs that give large containers a second lease on life.
Learn more about these recycled stools

August 7, 2015

Luscious Grassland Carpets Bring Argentina’s Pampas Into the Home

Buenos Aires-based Alexandra Kehayoglou was born into family that's been working in the carpet business for decades. But rather than settling into an office or marketing job at her father's factory, she followed her own will and crafted an innovative range of rugs that bring Argentina's lush grasslands into interiors across the globe. Her designs are threaded with different lengths, and feature organic patterns with all shades of green—the perfect combo for channeling the feel of a barefoot stroll in the country.
Learn more about these soft green rugs

August 4, 2015

BedUP Saves Floor Space by Storing Your Bed on the Ceiling

By Shiloh Frederick

BedUP is out to challenge the Murphy bed as the ultimate space-saving sleep solution in increasingly tight city apartments. Designed by French inventors Decadrages, BedUP utilizes the ceiling to house your bulky mattress and frame. The bed retracts from the ceiling when you need it and can suspend above the room as you use the space below.
More on BedUP

August 2, 2015

Dan Hisel’s Mirrored Cadyville Sauna Fuses the Forest, the Building, and the Body

The Cadyville Sauna is a small, wooden hut, located along the Saranac River in upstate New York, that dissolves into the surrounding forest via the reflection on its mirrored skin. While its boundaries look unclear, architect Dan Hisel's design not only blends with the environment, but lets something deeper and intangible arise. The sauna’s intense thermal conditions make a human body heat up and relax, while the wood absorbs sweat and hot air, causing the body, the building and the forest to become one.
Learn more about this mirrored woodland sauna

July 26, 2015

Bernheimer Architecture’s Lightbox House Is Made of Stacked Boxes to Capture Upstate Views