Don't Design Boxes Cutting People Off From Nature

Tony Cenicola / The New York Times

Irwin Weiner ASID - Look at the beautifully designed apartment in the photo above. They live in the country, right? Well, not really. They're on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and the principles of biophilic design are hot at work here (click on this link for a scholarly explanation, but click on the photo above for a less academic take on the subject). This school of design tells us (here I paraphrase) that when humans are cut off from nature, we start to feel sensory deprivation. How many of you stuck indoors during the recent Hurricane Irene blow felt extreme "cabin fever" and couldn't wait to get outdoors. That is exactly what we're talking about with biophilic design. Watch this video to learn more about how incorporating nature into residential and commercial architecture is imperative to bringing us back to a more natural, humane, enjoyable living and work experience. The goal is to create spaces where we want to stay, work, play, and live - and it will be healthier for everyone. Even though I can't keep a single houseplant alive for more than a week, I second that motion.

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Update on the Three Little Pigs' Straw House

Making This Home

Irwin Weiner ASID - It's impressive to see natural and local building materials used for new construction. The carbon footprint is tiny when eco materials like soil, flowers, straw, and local timber are used to build a new home. Hats off to blogger Katie and her Making This Home blog for inspiring us with many different eco-house stories (the blogger lives in a home made from recycled tires, bless her heart). In the above photo, the blog shows you a home with bales of straw for cozy insulation (click on the photo to learn more). And in our featured video, an architect and family in the Czech Republic build the natural house of their dreams using straw and other local, natural materials. What a wonderful example they're setting for their children, too!

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Thom Felicia Home Collection for Vanguard Furniture

Irwin Weiner ASID - Some day, I aspire to having my own furniture collection. But until that time, I'm taking good notes from mentors like interior designer and TV personality Thom Felicia, whose video for Vanguard Furniture (thanks to The Home.com for putting this together), shows a great backstory and strong reasons for this line's existence. I like the green story behind the Thom Felicia Home Collection as well as the practical aspect of adding fresh, new pieces of furniture to a home in a thoughtful way, versus throwing out everything and starting from scratch. If you're at all green at heart, you'll be reusing and recycling what you've already got and carefully adding some new pieces to reinforce your new design scheme. Well done, Thom.  

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Mother Nature Gave These New Homes Good Bones

Photo: Art GrayIrwin Weiner ASID - The homes you decorate always start from what we like to call "the bones." These are the architectural features of the house, from the walls and ceilings to the floors, doors, windows, and room shape. One of the first jobs in interior design is to "get the bones right," or to make sure that any weaknesses in the architectural decisions are addressed. It helps when a home is newly made, but even new construction can be a nightmare for decorators, e.g. open-plan spaces need to be better defined by their function and still maintain good flow with the rest of the house. We admired theseAndersson-Wise "natural houses," new-construction spaces that celebrate nature through the use of beautiful building materials and clean lines. The natural homes in this video are what we mean by good bones!

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