My dear friends and family,
Thank you for your support during Exposure Award times. My photos were honored at a private reception at the Louvre Museum in Paris on July 13th, 2015 and are included in the Candid Collection book which is available to see/share/purchase here.
I browsed the book and I am blown away by the images taken by photographers around the world. Links to a few of my favorites are below. Follow the links, browse and get inspired, the collection is truly magnificent.
Алмата продолжает радовать погодой (сегодня даже жарко, около +35с) и своими кафе, а вернее их дизайном. Очередное кафе в индустриально-скандинавском стиле “My cafe” на Фурманова + Кабанбай Батыра. Все очень продуманно и красиво от дизайна меню до сustoms-made ламп. Обратите внимание на индустриальный смеситель в туалете.
P.S. Выяснила, что дизайн алматинского “My cafe” делала российская NB studio. Вот интервью с дизайнером: http://indress.kz/creative-people/vstrecha-s-dizaynerom-intererov-nataley-belonogovoy.html
В Алмате пахнет осенью. Еще раз убеждаюсь, что Алмата – город очень приятный: зеленый, чистый, относительно спокойный (Ташкент мне кажется более динамичным) и главное умно спланированный. Дорожное движение напоминает цивильную часть Европу – пешеходов пропускают и водят спо-кой-но. Короче, система штрафов делает свое дело . Ещё бы урезать количество машин и построить велосипедные дорожки, цены бы этому городу не было.
Встретились с подругой на обед, которая мне дала список заведений, которые я обязательно должна посетить. В списке кафе “Льдинка”, которое недавно открылось в новом скандинавской облике со старым лого. Та же подруга посоветовала погуглить творчество алматинского дизайнера Тимура Актаева, что вывело на следующую статью, которая очень была бы полезна 95% людей, которых я знаю.
I saw this in the past, loved it but forgot to pin it. I re-discovered “the formula” today (courtesy of Melissa Boyer’s blog ) and am bookmarking it everywhere including my own blog. This is a formula for decorating a night stand, end table, anything which has a purpose of creatively displaying things.
Those in Uzbekistan – pay attention to a blue ikat bowl – made in Uzbekistan, cherished around the world!
I came across this photo and could not believe my eyes at first – Uzbek kazan, a quite modern one too, (a kin of Chinese wok) placed in one of the most visible spots in the living room as a decor item. And it looks like it really belongs there!
I must say, this is something that will work only outside of Uzbekistan or even post-Soviet territories. Why? Because for people who had a brilliant idea of using a kazan as a decor accessories it is probably considered a cultural object fused with sweet memories of the Silk Road. For us it is the most utilitarian pot that belongs to one and only place – the kitchen!
When I need to get inspired one thing I do lately is go to google and type in “Bjarke Ingels interview”. Bjarke Ingels is a Danish architect, a founder of BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group – which has offices in Copenhagen, New York and a small office in Shanghai.
I have read numerous interviews with Bjarke, watched hours and hours of youtube lectures and interviews, read “Yes is More” and about to start “Hot to Cold” and I am still obsessed. If our passions are the breadcrumbs that lead us on a path to our destiny, then there is some key message I need to unveil in this obsession with BIG. Below are some pearls of wisdom I have been collecting along the path of BIG discovery which I feel deserve a larger audience than my Evernote app.
“For Ingels the details are not that important. What’s much more important is: what kind of social impact does it have? Are people playing—having a laugh, rather than being self-contained, serious, aesthetic people? So it is more childish in that respect, but in a good way.” © Martinussen
But Ingels seized the challenge posed by Per Høpfner: “Make it interesting, make it attractive, and make it dirt cheap.”
“…whereas with Koolhaas, though he had a style, each project was informed by a certain take on a certain condition, so that it always started with a story about the city, a story about art and technology, a story about the institution of the library. Suddenly, I could see that architecture was really part of society and was even informed by what was occurring in society. And I was hooked.” (c) Bjarke Ingels
“BIG is not a service-oriented company that does whatever people ask us to do. We often give the client something they hadn’t imagined, but is still what they want.”
“One thing that can attract you to a girl is if she’s very attracted to you. I think they felt that we really want to do this.” (c) Bjarke Ingels after pitching for Kimball Arts Center project
“In general, I think, if you’re cool, then you don’t have to worry if what you do is cool.” (c) Bjarke Ingels“Architecture is most appealing with simple lines and clear ideas. A city, on the other hand, becomes alive when it is rich with experiences and surprises” Bjarke Ingels (Yes is more!)
“A successful building is a living building” (from an interview on the steps of Sydney opera)
“Good design is careful, bad deign is careless”
“The more waste you create in the design process, the less waste you will end up building in the city” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_W48ZsIqSo
“Whenever we get invited to look into a situation or to make a building we try to analyze how is a status quo – have things changed since the last time somebody built a school or a workplace. We try to look for potential changes and at some point, once you a find a thing that has already changed but nobody has realized a potential of it or it could change but nobody tried it before, then you get the altered factors like in science fiction that can then trigger a whole cascade of consequences and the design work becomes an architectural exploration of the potential of that idea” Architecture as a Science Fiction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKaG-XuCo9A
Image courtesy by astonishingsecrets
I am working on the 3rd project this month where garment storage is torturing me simply because there is not much physical space where you can have an open or closed storage without making a place suffocate for air. The thought of downsizing has been running through my head until I got to an underlying issue – people owning and storing things they are not really using.
One apartment I am working on is a rental property where first I was opting for an open storage until we agreed with a client that we would move some walls and create a small walk-in garment closet. However, if you think about it, if you are renting, shouldn’t you be as light as air?
I admit, I am guilty of this myself partly because in the past I used to work in the office and I still have my business clothes (something needs to be done with those), partly because my clothes last me ages. My philosophy for this summer has been to limit what I wear to a few things leaving 2 boxes of summer clothes peacefully resting in my parents’ garage.
“A Practical Guide to Owning Fewer Clothes” is a post on living a minimalist lifestyle with fewer clothes, which will decrease your needs in a storage space making your living space wider, lighter and airier. The only thing I would add as item 11 is “Be in a good shape” because once you have a toned and beautiful body chances are anything will look good on you.
On items 6,7 and 9 from the article – in my humble opinion, love for shopping or its obsessive form shopaholism is a search for a joy that’s missing in life. People think they will buy a new something and that something will buy them happiness. Maybe for a few days but then they go back to the same state of “something is missing”. So, it is not the physical things that need to be bought, it is something within that probably needs to be discovered and filled.
Interview with Bjarke Ingels on a design for WTC. It is not a secret for anyone that I am neither impartial nor objective when it comes to BIG work – I love BIG by default – and the more I dig into their projects I feel that the coolest part of BIG work is their playfulness paired with a cool idea., but mainly playfulness, otherwise, how would you explain those cubes with gardens stacked on one another facing Tribeca?
A few days ago I came across a Thonet chair which I want to buy for a project. Today, as I was googling Thonet chairs to identify the one I found, as it always happens, I got distracted and found myself in the world of Fred Gonsowski’s guidance on interior decoration. This is something I want to bookmark for myself and feel that a lot of other people will find very useful.
Fred Gonsowski’s blog: http://fredgonsowskigardenhome.com/
This is a great resource for interior decoration – anything from arranging decorative accessories, pictures over a sofa, furniture layouts, pairing lampshades with side tables and much much more. There is also a gardening section which I still need to dive into.
Many thanks to Fred Gonsowki for making the resources available to us. Also, I love his hand drawn illustrations.
Dear friends,
I am participating in See Me Exposure Award 2015 and submitting 3 of my photos to the contest. I would greatly appreciate you following the link, voting and leaving a comment. I need 100 votes, I am currently at 51.
Here is a link: https://npulatova.see.me/exposure2015
Thank you!
Nilufar