Ask Jen! Advice from a San Francisco Interior Designer
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
I’m happy to introduce “Ask Jen”! Send me your design dilemmas, big or small, and I’ll point you in the right direction.
Question: We have recently remodeled our home and we’re not happy with the expanse of the kitchen, dining room and family room. The room feels like a gymnasium. What can we do? –Vicky
Answer: Hi Vicky, There are a lot of things that you can do to break up a large space and make it feel more cozy. Paint is one of the easiest and most effective way to achieve this. You can paint the ceiling a darker color to “bring it down” visually. Installing architectural details such as beams will create more interest and achieve the same effect.
When you have one large space like this it’s best to break it up into logical seating arrangements, using your furniture plan to break it up. With a long sofa and a sofa back table you can separate the dining area from the living area while still keeping the connection between spaces. Best of luck!
Tags: ask the designer, design dilemmas solved, great room, great room design, interior design advice, interior design sf bay area, making a home cozier, sf interior designer
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The New Academy of Sciences
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
Last night we went to the Academy of Sciences Thursday night event, featuring cocktails, food and a Live 105 DJ. The best part (besides being able to drink a whiskey while watching penguins) was the living roof. Absolutely amazing! Hats off to the architects for this functional and beautiful creation.
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A Peek at the Farnsworth House
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
The Farnsworth House is one of the most celebrated modernist structures of the 20th century. The glass and steel house designed by Mies van der Rohe and built in 1951 in Plano, Illinois is now a historical landmark. We were in Chicago this weekend and were dying to see the Farnsworth House despite the fact that no tours were available until April 1st. I will skip the details on how we managed to experience it, let’s just say it was worth the trip. But, I highly recommend booking a tour to see the interior.
“The dominance of a single, geometric form in a pastoral setting, with a complete exclusion of extraneous elements normally associated with habitation, reinforces the architect’s statement about the potential of a building to express “dwelling” in its simplest essence. While the elongated rectangle of the house lies parallel to the course of the Fox River, the perpendicular cross axis, represented by the suspended stairways, faces the river directly. With its emphatically planar floors and roof suspended on the widely-spaced, steel columns, the one-story house appears to float above the ground, infinitely extending the figurative space of the hovering planes into the surrounding site.” (To read more please visit the Farnsworth Landmarks Illinois website).Posted in Architecture, Design Icons, inspiration | No Comments »