Beasley and Henley Interior Design

Contemporary interior architecture firm I Love Architecture from The Netherlands has designed an amazing interior: Apartment Weteringschans. The interior architecture of the space is split into a clean, grid-like structure. The kitchen island, which is a monolithic figure of marble and wood, serves as both the cooking and serving area.

The colors and materials of this interior space are kept to a minimum. Other than the white walls, ceilings, and floors, there are splashes of primary colors seen in the lighting, pillows, and accessories. Everything — from the dining table, kitchen, and living room — is laid out in the open.

Contemporary Interior Architecture Coupled with Conceptualizing

Aldrich House in Perth, located in Western Australia, uses curves and changing ceiling levels to create an amazing effect. Using digital terrain modeling, the group at Enter Project designed the non-parallel roof as an extension of the surrounding landscape. The changes in the curves of the roof allow for the height of the ceiling to change depending on what room you are in. The ceilings in the bedrooms are lower, offering more intimacy while the spaces open up in the more public living areas.

The home consists of three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and two living rooms. Between the curves of the roof and the lack of 90-degree angles in the house, the house feels open and full of visual interest. The viewing deck on the roof offers beautiful views of the surrounding landscape.

In architecture and interior design, spacing can speak volumes. Styling a space with furniture that continues the color profile throughout the room keeps the room feeling open. Keeping it simple can highlight the surrounding architecture. All in all, this is just one interesting example of skillfully using spacing to make a great visual difference.

By using window treatments, such as full length curtains, it should be relatively easy to create atmosphere in your dining room. When opened with coloured rope or classy beaded tiebacks, full-length curtains add a certain sense of grace and style to a room.

Curtains for Bay Windows

Jacquard or damask curtains can achieve a look of sophistication and elegance. These fabrics offer a medium weight, along with the range of colours and patterns. Curtains are available with deep headings as they produce some very beautiful pleats and subtle folds. There are also curtains designed specifically for bay windows, such as eyelet curtains. These are very economical but very trendy.

The drape and fall of the curtain is also important to the look of window dressings. Through the use of different curtain tracks  or poles, several styles can be achieved. Bay window poles are made to fit the size and shape of the windows, and they are best used with light or medium-weight curtains. For heavier curtains, traditional curtain tracks are better, allowing curtains to be drawn or opened with little effort.

Curtain Styles to Fit Your Furniture

For rooms featuring dark furniture, long curtains in darker colours work best. They provide a sense of warmth on cold evenings and create a cosy atmosphere in traditional-style homes. You can fit them with a pellet and tiebacks that match. This kind of curtain looks very refined and classical.

If you’re trying to enhance pale dining room furniture, use cream-coloured curtains with boldly contrasted edges of faux suede and within the pelmet. For small dining rooms, pastel-coloured ready-made curtains can set the proper tone of sophistication.

Floral Curtains

To bring a feeling of freshness and friendliness into a dining room, florals in either modern or traditional styles are an interesting choice. Curtains featuring pale background colours with flowers or blooms look very lavish in larger bay windows.

Neutral Tones

Neutral tones are perfect for contemporary interior design styles, especially in corded or faux-suede fabrics. These types of fabrics and tones coordinate very well with modern styled furniture and compliment less formal lifestyles very well. Faux suede is very soft to touch. The curtains can be hung on pleated headings, or they can be used with curtain rings and poles and finished with beaded tiebacks for a very smart look.

Adding lining to curtains will help them hang better, provides heat insulation, and reduces the risk of fading.

Ready-Made Curtains: Versatile

One of the greatest advantages that comes with ready-made curtains is the availability of so many sizes and colours. The textures vary widely to compliment the many differing home interior and design styles. They can be used alone, or they can be used with blinds or other window accessories to provide some privacy and control the amount of light that is let in.

When creating a space for lounging and dancing the night away, there needs to be elements of sophistication and motion — and the magical. The Samba Room in Los Angeles includes a mesmerizing display of lighting that transports guests into the world of motion. Properly designed lighting and atmosphere energizes guests and even accepts music as a complementary design element.

Images by © Fotoworks-Benny Chan

Delta Light, a market leader and trendsetter in architectural lighting, announced the use of advanced LED lighting technology for the most recent renovation of the Sandton Group’s Grand Hotel Reylhof in the heart of the city of Gent in Belgium.

Delta Light, together with the hotel architects and lighting designers, developed a lighting concept combining their vision of tomorrow’s hotel design while remaining true to the original Louis XIV architecture and atmosphere.

Delta Light chose Bridgelux LED arrays for their very high color rendering (CRI), excellent color consistency, and energy efficiency. LED lighting also strengthens the hotel’s bottom line by:

• Eliminating infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV) radiation
• Preventing bleaching of the hotel textiles and wallpaper
• Reducing demands on room air conditioning

The hotel was originally built in 1724 in the Louis XIV style and was last renovated in 1964. The hotel estimates that they will save 75% in cost savings from energy in both lighting and reduced air conditioning costs plus greatly reduced lighting maintenance costs.

The Monastery is the name of this project by Arild Eriksen, Joakim Skajaa of Eriksen Skajaa Architectsfor Netlife Research. Netlife wanted their new spaces to feel creative, yet offer spaces for privacy, reflection and silence. Inspired by a monastery garden, the architects designed a brick and wood building partition in the center of a wide open office space that features niches for plants and privacy, and windows for air circulation. One of the niches outside contains a bench to sit and read or relax.

Luxurious homes are the order of the day for Paris firm Jouin Manku, which was commissioned along with architecture firm YTL Design Group to take on this large-scale integrated architectural and interior design project. This modern and luxurious home was the first of Jouin Manku’s architectural designs to be built, and talk about first impressions! Located in Kuala Lampur, place says a lot about this home’s unique style of luxury.

Luxurious Homes | Examples of Modern Design

From the outside, this house is a contradiction – inside meets outside; private meets public; traditional meets modern. It’s peaceful, yet full of movement in its interesting stacked architecture featuring gently curving walls. Huge facades of glass create an endless, open effect, making these already expansive spaces spill out onto the horizon. Inside, this modern house is dripping in exotic luxuries, ideal to cocoon in comfort, or entertain on the grandest scale. White with rich, natural wood is the color palette of choice, mirroring the nature that surrounds this house, and presenting it with a luxurious twist. Just when you thought this contemporary house didn’t have any more to offer, you’re surprised to find nine bedrooms, two dens, a family kitchen and a private dining area, a private library, a game room, a study, a foyer, a formal dining room, a ballroom, a chapel, 21 bathrooms, a swimming pool, indoor parking, two guest suites and guest parking. Vying for centerpiece of this palatial home are a sculptural winding staircase, which resembles a sea shell when viewed from above; and a shimmering chandelier of 13,000 custom-designed cast-porcelain petals. This spectacular 3,000m2 house is home to three generations of family.

Images: Jouin Manku

Japanese architect Kazuhiko Kishimoto, of architecture firm acaa, designed the Wind-Dyed House overlooking the ocean on a cliff in Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Japan. The structure becomes almost embedded in the terrain because of the low-lying nature of the house, which also allows for the least amount of impact on the environment.

Each floor is composed of different materials to allow the residents a different view to the outside.

Stone floors and plaster-coated concrete walls on the first floor are juxtaposed with the soft shadows created by the outside landscape through the paper screens. The open concept living space of the second floor is vastly different with its ability to open up completely to the outdoors with sliding glass doors. To maximize the ocean views, glass and slotted screens along the perimeter of the top floor of the house give a sense of transparency.

BeasleyandHenley

Living in a loft is trendy. And for good reason. Lofts are unique, quirky, and adaptable. They shout uber-urban sophistication. Cool people live in them.

Traditionally, lofts were converted industrial spaces. As manufacturing businesses left New York’s SoHo in the early 1970s, artists created studios in the former factories to take advantage of the large, open floor plans and natural light streaming through huge windows. Ultimately, they set up house and the residential loft movement was in full swing.

Now, lofts all over the country are coveted living spaces and in a large part responsible for much of the urban redevelopment that has been taking place over the past decade.

Create a Loft in a Single Family Home

If you live in a single family home, you can replicate a loft-like atmosphere. Here are a few tips and tricks to help you get it right.

» Many homes feature open floor plans for shared living areas. Great rooms are a direct descendant of the loft movement. With their soaring ceilings and large windows, your own loft isn’t all that difficult to achieve.

1. Start by defining space with furniture, area rugs and lighting.
2. Think you have to butt all your furniture up against the walls? Think again.
3. Moving furniture away from walls makes for a more interesting and intimate room. No more shouting to the person sitting in the chair across the living room.

» Create distinct areas that have their own function and reason.

1. Putting a rug beneath a dining table automatically sets it up as its own space.
2. A cluster of comfy chairs and sofas makes a nice socializing spot, especially when you hang a funky chandelier above, puddling it in light.
3. Don’t think you have to align everything at right angles. Take a chance and skew the orientation of your furniture. You’ll be glad you did.

Loft living is the perfect opportunity to build an eclectic mix of furniture and accessories. Your flea market finds fit perfectly with contemporary pieces and traditional heirlooms alike.

» If your windows don’t stretch from floor to ceiling, it’s easy to create the illusion that they do.

1. Take window treatments all the way to the ceiling. Just doing that adds instant height.
2. Consider installing mirrors above and below the actual window. This inexpensive trick throws reflected light back into the room and tricks the eye into thinking the windows are larger than they actually are.
3. Further the illusion by adding faux-muntins (the wooden pieces that separate window panes).

If you have enough space between the top of your window and the ceiling, add architectural interest with half-round mirrors.

» Surfaces are an important element.

1. Look at hardwood and cement floors for inspiration — the more distressed the better.
2. Concrete provides wonderful opportunities. It can be tinted, acid-washed or polished to achieve the effect you’re going for. Not many other flooring options are that malleable.
3. Think beat-up plaster and exposed bricks on walls for the finishing touch.

Loft living isn’t limited to lofts. With a little ingenuity, you can create a loft-like space that will have you believing you’re living in the middle of your favorite city.