xx

Balancing Barn, Suffolk, by Mole Architects with MVDRV (Photo: RIBA)

This year’s award-winning buildings have been announced by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Highlights include an amazing 17 private houses (out of 89 UK winners) receiving an award, whilst school and university buildings collectively racked up an impressive 23 awards. Below are just a few of the winners in pictures; for a full listing please visit: http://www.architecture.com/Awards/RIBAAwards/Winners2011/RIBAAwards-winners2011.aspx

Enjoy and congratulations to the deserving winners!

Reception Hide Complex, Norfolk, by Haysom Ward Miller Architects (Photo: Mike Page/RIBA)

Love Shack, Cumbria, by Sutherland Hussey (Photo: RIBA)

Loft Garden, Istanbul, by Tabanlioglu (Photo: RIBA)

McManus Galleries, Dundee, by PagePark Architects (Photo: Andrew Lee)

Sandal Magna Community Primary School, Wakefield, by Sarah Wigglesworth (Photo: Mark Hadden Photography)

This bookshelf is simply too cool! Australian architect John Leung with the help of ClarkeHopkinsClarke has translated a form appearing in isometric perspective into 3D form; the amazing result is a bookshelf entitled “Bias of Thought”. The shelves are lined with glass allowing iPads, books and magazines to be stored. It’s a great optical illusion that I think would impress most (how could this not impress you?!). Enjoy!

Photographer Irina Werning’s ongoing project entitled ‘Back to the Future’ re-visits people’s childhood photographs and re-creates the images mimicking every last detail. The idea is creative and intriguing, allowing the audience to appreciate how much can change over a few decades, whilst yet so much is able to remain the same.

Take a look at Werning’s website to see some more photos from ‘Back to the Future’: http://irinawerning.com/back-to-the-fut/back-to-the-future/

All Photographs © Irina Werning

In a bid to liven up a recent clients’ coffee table I took it upon myself to do what I do best and get creative! To be fair, the coffee table as it stands is perfectly fine and very practical with very good hidden storage space.  It was originally bought in IKEA, but can only be described as a very ‘safe’ piece of furniture. My biggest issue with the table is quite straight forward – it’s a bit umm… plain (in my opinion that is!).

I wanted to make the table original, a bit different and more importantly – FUN!  I’ve had a recent fascination with wall stickers – they sit beautifully on pretty much any smooth flat surface. The coffee table seemed like an ingenious place for a wall sticker to reside; it’s completely unexpected on a coffee table, making it a great match in my eyes! The sticker that I chose for this particular table is of British street artist’s Banksy’s ‘Laugh now, but one day we’ll be in charge’ monkey (I absolutely love it).  The sticker cost around £25 and comes in many different sizes but luckily the one I selected for my clients covers most of the table surface and has completely brought the plain piece of furniture to life.

The fact that the table has been well used, complete with a few indents on the table-top, adds to the new urban style of the table.  To add a touch of chic and to also prolong the sticker’s life, I’ve placed some clear glass on top of it (the glass in it’s former life belonged to a display unit – it was pure luck that it fit the length and width of the table surface, but ordering a made-to-measure piece of glass would have been the next option).  The end result is an urban-chic coffee table that has been hugely well received by kids and adults alike!

Take a look at this year’s Mortar & Pestle Kitchen Tools winner. Shira Keret is a young Israeli designer. The simplicity and beauty of this collection encapsulates everything modern design should be.The designer has incorporated materials such as glass, oak, marble, silver, cast iron and porcelain making this collection timeless for any generation. Admittedly, I have a few favourites below, but if I really had to then I’d choose no. 1.  I love the incorporation of glass; it captures the light beautifully, showing off the graduated intensity of the colour purple in the pestle.

Designer: Shira Keret

Source: Yanko Design

I am loving this amazing collection of alphabet furniture! French design company, TABISSO® focus on high-end contemporary lounge furniture and their collection of typographic furniture objects allow you to spell out names, acronyms (“OMG!”) and any other personalised message. Simply mix and match the chairs and floor lamps for endless possibilities; the chairs include all letters from A to Z and numbers from 0 to 9, whilst the floor lamps come in 25 different punctuation marks! The concept is extremely imaginative and the execution is superb. Yet another amazing way to express yourself within your home!

As part of the National Geographic Channel’s (NGC) new series called How Hard Can It Be?, a team of scientists, engineers and two world-class balloon pilots thought it would be a great idea to bring to life the unforgettable floating house with balloons from Disney/Pixar’s hit film Up! On March 5th the NGC successfully launched a 16 x 16 ft house attached to 300 multi-coloured weather balloons that reach up to 8 ft when inflated from a private airfield east of Los Angeles. Their fantastic and crazy efforts were rewarded with a new world record for the largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted! The entire aircraft from top to bottom was an impressive 10 stories high and made it to an altitude of 10,000 ft. What’s even more amazing is that the house ‘flew’ for approximately an hour. Well done NGC!

See the house in action:

Photos by Stewart Volland, copyright 2011 National Geographic Channel.

Welcome to my new blog! My website has been up and running since July 2010 but I’ve decided now is the time to take the next step and join the world of bloggers!  I’ll be writing about all things creative… home interiors (obviously), design of all aspects, art and anything else that I find to be pretty, interesting or inspiring (or maybe even a bit of all three)! I hope you enjoy the website and if you don’t want to miss out on any of my future posts please don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed!