Posts from — June 2010

Homeowner Francie Rehwald wanted to make a green home from recycled materials. She had this harebrained brilliant idea of chopping up a retired Boeing 747, once the largest aircraft in the world, and using its parts to build his home. Rehwald commissioned architect David Hertz for this very unique project.

Transportation was one of the major problems. Some of the larger parts were flown by helicopter whilst other parts were transported along major freeways during the night. Closure of freeways as well as the unique proposition of this home required clearance from 17 government agencies in total.

The math behind this home makes sense. A new 747 would cost close to 200 million dollars. Rehwald paid 35,000 dollars for the scraps. Albeit the transportation costs will amount to quite a bit, what price can you put on living in a home made up of 4.5million parts of a Boeing 747?

Here’s a video of the home, featured in Fox News

What can you think of to one-up Mr Rehwald’s Boeing 747 home?

As your plants grow, the need to repot arises and here is a simple 4 step plan to help you repot effectively

*note: this should be done only when the soil in the existing pot is dry

1. Choose a pot ONE size larger than the existing one

2. Now put the the smaller pot inside the new larger pot and fill it with soil/compost. Be generous with the soil/compost and pack it in. Remove the small pot

3. Carefully lift the plant and soil out of the old pot and drop it into the new pot. Firmly tap around the soil/compost ring and top up with more soil to fill in the remaining gaps.

4. Water well and that’s all there is to it!

Here’s a video tour of Rintala Eggertsson architects’ ‘Ark’ – an intimate 3 storey living space which houses over 6,000 books (bookworms start going ‘ga-ga’ now!). The ‘Ark’ was built for the ‘Architects Build Small Spaces’ expo and I’m sure many booklovers would love a similar implementation in their homes.

Check out the video below for a full tour of the ‘Ark’

embedded by Embedded Video

vimeo rintala eggertsson's Ark

Homepride.com.my approached me to do an interview which I gladly obliged. Being part of the Catcha Group, Homepride is both a print magazine as well as an online portal on all things home & living for urban dwellers. The interview mainly focuses on my thoughts and experiences with home design and living. The last question was a nice touch.

Read the full interview after the jump

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Looking for contemporary Asian style/Oriental furniture? Look no further than Greenteadesign.com – an online retailer of quality Asian inspired furniture. The guys at Greenteadesign have definitely done themselves well as they offer a large variety of furniture, all categorised smartly to ensure a pleasant user experience on their website. The ‘green’ from Greenteadesign doesn’t just refer to the oriental drink but also an environmental one – all their furniture is made from reclaimed wood salvaged from Korean farmhouses.

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We always want the wall of the homes and offices look clean and remain the same on the day they were painted. It has been observed that with time, we cannot avoid stains and spots to appear naturally on the pristine walls. These wall stains make the appearance of the walls look dirty and hence it is very much necessary to remove stains.

Wall stains can appear on the walls in various forms and you must know how to clean each one of them. If you want to remove cello tapes from the walls, take a lightly heated tea spoon and press it gently against the cello tapes and they will come out without making any mark on the wall.

If you have a fireplace at home, stains may appear on the wall from the smoke. Make mixture with half cup borax, 2 spoonfuls of soap flakes and 1 spoon ammonia with requisite amount of water. Just clean the wall around the fireplace with it and you can see that all those wall stains have been removed.

Pencils marks are another common form of wall stains and you must know how to remove stains. Take some baking soda and mix it with some water. Rub the walls with the mixture and you can see that all the pencil mark stains have disappeared. The pencil marks which are very deep can be removed by using a non-gel tooth paste.

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The Bauhaus movement of art and architecture goes back to its origin to the controversial school of art and crafts established in the year 1902 in Weimar. At that time, another art school founded in 1860 was also creating a lot of disputes in the society. The leading architect Walter Gropius took the initiative of combining these two schools of thought into a Staatliches Bauhaus on 1^st of April in the year 1919.

The basic idea of the Bauhaus movement was based on certain philosophies. Their basic teaching was based on productive workshops. It is for this reason, it contained a carpenter’s workshop, a pottery, a metal workshop and also offering facilities for painting on glass, weaving, printing and also stone and wood sculpting. The Bauhaus movement showed the functional aspect of the design and it was very much against the Gothic architecture of Germany.

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Have you ever seen a more elegant set of knives? Designed by Mia Schmallenbach who was then studying in the Brussels Visual School of Arts, the underlying concept behind the knives was a famous mathematical formula – the Fibonacci sequence.

The mathematical equation was used to determine how much the sides curved in relation to the constant that she had measured which is the width of an average human hand hence subjecting the handle sizes to be fixed.  The real visual appeal of the knives is apparent when they’re nestled together in one block.

The Deglon Meeting knives set comes with:

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Not only does the Cape Town stadium look magnificent, its design has an ace up its sleeve. Like no other stadium in the world, you’d literally not be able to hear any noise coming out of the stadium from the cheers and jeers of supporters during the matches because this is literally a soundproof stadium.

This concept of soundproofing was put into consideration due to nearby neighbourhoods voicing their concerns over the decibel levels during the world cup. German engineering firm Schlaich Bergermann was tasked to come up with a solution and boy did they come up with something elegant.

Here’s how the soundproofing works

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Feast your eyes on this magnificent structure!

This is not a house, obviously, but it has been called the “World’s Most Exciting Hotel,” and it blends contemporary styles and facilities seamlessly with a time-honored culture and first-rate service. Or, that’s the reputation of the new Yas Hotel, anyway… I’ve never actually spent a night there, but after perusing their website, I really want to!

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