Design Editor, Danny Sinipoli, of GlobeandMail.com (Canada’s leading source for online news) wrote a great article on patchwork, “‘All patched up.’ From rugs to table runners, patchwork patterns are everywhere. Danny Sinopoli explains why designers are going to pieces.”

I recommend taking a visit, not just to read what he too has to say, but his slideshow examples are fabu! It doesn’t hurt that he’s quoted me in the article too….thank you Danny, but he’s also got a great pulse on patchwork, showing its more modern side for today’s more contemporary would-be purchaser.

top image from Casasugar: Tal R, designer, used materials from as far away as Istanbul and Denmark.

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According to New York Times fashion critic, Cathy Horyn, and “On the Runway” blog fame, Bill Blass once said you should dress for the room you will be in.

I’ve been pondering that sentiment for awhile now and finally needed to blog on it. Like what would the room look like that would match one of Balenciaga’s Spring 2008 pieces from the catwalks of Paris?

And I decided this room would work with that color composition. It had to be at the very least contemporary….and white.

But this room would work as well:

How about you? Do you wear clothes that match the rooms you’ll be in?

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Of course if you are a color, light, and texture junkie like I am, you’ll love the collaboration of Dupont’s Corian (known mostly as a wonderful and seamless kitchen countertop material) and Missoni Home (Rosita Missoni and her husband were the original founders of Missoni Fashion) introducing Corian’s five new translucent colors while the material itself is used for all manner of things around the home. In that respect, it was a brilliant pairing….Missoni known for their vibrant color and their unique patterns was the perfect choice to help introduce Corian’s new colors but to also show just how well rounded and fascinating Corian as a material can be….

To highlight the pairing, the above picture illustrates the many colors of Missoni in a giant spool of yarn, the “Spool” itself made of Corian using the color Nocturne (black and polished). The flooring beneath the “Spool” is also made with DuPont™ Corian® (Cameo White and Nocturne colours) and features a pattern designed by Missoni rythmically inserting in the “background colour” a series of small squares of contrasting colour (glossy background finish and white matt squares). In an adjacent space is a “Ball” of yarn, also made of Dupont Corian. Who knew you could bend it like Beckham?

A familiar theme throughout the exhibit, Rosita Missoni, the designer played with the negative space black and white can create by alternating and juxtaposing one black/white color pattern against another.

The “CORIAN® loves MISSONI” interior design project is a loft-style apartment (extending over the two floors of the “Corian® Design - Milano Store” showroom) with a series of functional “rooms” - an entrance area, reception, hallway, dining room and kitchen on the ground floor and living room, bathroom and bedroom on the lower floor. In the dining room, above, the table is made of Corian using MissoniHome’s Bolt pattern. Echoing the aesthetics of the table, the MissoniHome “Bolt” pattern is stencilled on the wall behind, in a larger scale. The chandelier was designed by Rosita Missoni, is made of Corian’s Glacier White and spells Missoni. The chairs around the dining room table are Moroso’s “Ripple” chair.

A hallway area dedicated to showcasing the five new translucent colours of DuPont™ Corian® - Glacier Ice, Strawberry Ice, Blueberry Ice, Mint Ice and Lime Ice – take on an enhanced luminosity when back-lit. The area features five cubic stools made in each of the five translucent colours of DuPont™ Corian®. Contrasting with tops featuring a smooth surface, the sides of these stools have been carved with “Onda” (Wave) pattern by MissoniHome, which is also repeated, on a larger scale, on the back-wall in pale green DuPont™ Corian® Mint Ice. The cubic stools are lit from within by an LCD system developed by Artemide, run from rechargeable batteries, making them totally wireless and mobile. On the wall, a backlit circular curved fixture made in translucent DuPont™ Corian® Mint Ice is engraved with Missoni’s “Esmeraldas” pattern allowing lights to elegantly diffuse with varying intensity.

So, let’s get to the living room……..

Descending to the lower floor, visitors find themselves in the living room area where they are surrounded by a combination of multi-coloured and monochrome forms. The “Relaxer” chair and “Wengen” rug by MissoniHome are set against a large backlit screen: a wonder in terms of both aesthetics and technology. Made in DuPont™ Corian® Glacier White and carved with the “Esmeraldas” pattern from MissoniHome, the four parts of this screen are slim boxes illuminated using Artemide’s “My White Light” system, integrating RGBs and LCDs, to give different coloured lights and varying shades of white light, from warm to cool.
The two low tables in the living room space feature bases in DuPont™ Corian®, created using a new assembling technique reminiscent of mosaics: small rectangular elements in DuPont™ Corian® in black and white colours (Glacier White and Nocturne) are jointed together with metal rods to create a sort of “flexible surface”.

In realising “CORIAN® loves MISSONI” exhibition, Rosita Missoni, Luca Missoni (Rosita’s son & the project supervisor) and their design team have worked in close collaboration with architect Massimo Fucci, consultant of DuPont Surfaces to the architect and design sector, who coordinated the whole project and the creative contents.

For more details and images, visit Corian’s website. For more about MissoniHome, visit missonihome.com.

Art Direction: Rosita Missoni; supervision: Luca Missoni
Organizer/sponsor: DuPont™ Corian®
General project: MISSONI
Project manager: Arch. Massimo Fucci, DuPont™ Corian®
Partners:
Artemide (lighting solutions)
Boffi (kitchen and bathroom)
Listone Giordano (flooring systems)
Moroso (furnishing)
Zehnder Group/Runtal (radiator technology)
Hasenkopf (fabrication of DuPont™ Corian®)
TechLab Italia (fabrication of DuPont™ Corian®)
Esarc Hi-Tech (invisible audio systems)
Antica Gelateria del Corso/Nestlé (decorative ice cream compositions, served throughout the showroom and during the show)

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Midwest Living “Future Thinker” trend room

If you read my post on the Meredith Corporations trend rooms for the National Kitchen and Bath Show, then you also saw images from these rooms corresponding to the stages women go through during the course of their lifetime.

To clarify my own thoughts on the Idea Center, while these may not be the most exotic kitchens or even contemporary kitchens, say for instance like what Trendir features in their online publication, for what is happening in most of America I think Meredith Corporation and their designers and trade publication editors got it right….for the most part this is the way Americans do live and they do experience each one of these stages.

I did like how they (Midwest Living) emphasized the baby boomers choice aging in place and theirs is oddly enough the most modern of the rooms represented (left and above image).

Even if style-wise I may not have agreed with everything they did, there were two overriding trends to take note of and that is the built-in dining table (or even built-ins in general) and the office/mudroom/laundry room additions off the kitchen or in a galleyway. It does make the kitchen a more practical place to function from with all of these extras, built in or easily accessible from the kitchen. It leaves less shelving to purchase from the home centers, but more baskets or accessories to purchase to support the built in. A representative of the Meredith Corporations brand magazines said that customizable storage solutions were one of the most sought after additions to housing these days, particularly in the kitchen and bath.

When it came to sustainable solutions, the Better Homes and Gardens room tended to focus on this aspect more so than the other magazine titles. It wasn’t that other lifestyle stages weren’t interested in sustainable solutions, it is just that it was a particular focus of that title publication and their designer. In fact, Better Homes and Gardens has a completely green home that is traveling throughout the United States….to 15 different cities. More information will be coming about that tour, with the dates and places it can be seen. At the show, this Organizer-In-Chief lifestyle room had many sustainable ideas built into the fabric of everyday life, such as a compostable bin built into the cabinet beneath the counter, and access to it from the countertop as opposed to opening up a cabinet door or putting scraps into the disposal. There were several methods of recycling built in to make it more convenient to recycle as well as flooring by Armstrong that was a lineoleum made up of recycled wood chips, cork and linseed oil. Further, that lovely circle pattern behind the cooktop is actually recycled glass from beer and wine bottles. Bamboo had been worked into the counters at various places for cutting.

In the Kitchen and Bath Trends room, I really liked the cheeriness of the room with the yellow curtains and lighter blue seating mixed with yellow walls along with paring beigey double sinks and lighter cabinets with walnut or espresso cabinets. Looks like we are breaking a few rules here, a kind of anything goes design ethic.

But the real noticeable difference from years past would be how upscale the young savvy professional his and hers bathroom was. They’ve spared no expense here. Close-ups of this room reveals a customized tiled wall, his and her shower stalls, his and her dressing areas, built in shelving in the bathroom…just a flurry of customized touches that speak to how someone thinks this demographic is the one spending the big bucks!

his bathroom/shower

built-in towel warming drawer

As it was explained to me, the magazine responsible for representing this room, Traditional Home, has the most upscale demographic of all their publications represented and in terms of age that could span decades, and isn’t just confined to the late 20’s early 30’s female (who, as was represented as a lifestyle stage Young Savvy Professional, is single and either living with someone or about to be married), and in general luxury was heavily featured throughout the show. This of course follows suit with what many of the international labels are doing….going for the luxury markets, those that still have the expendable income during these difficult economic times.

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