I’ll be reviewing one of Kovacs-designed lamps soon. So some background on him before I do:

One of the most recognizable names in the lighting industry, George Kovacs wore many hats throughout his forty-plus year career. Part lighting designer, part lighting manufacturer, part lighting importer – Kovacs’ design aesthetic stood out above the rest and helped to define modern lighting as we know it today.

Born in Vienna, Kovacs moved to the United States after the Second World War, finding work at a lamp store in Manhattan. It was most likely here that Kovacs was bitten by the lighting bug, soon after which he started his own business selling Kalmar lamps. The perfect blend of both form and function, his vast collection included everything from table and floor lamps to hanging pendants and wall sconces. His creativity and skill attracted other prominent modern designers including the likes of Karim Rashid and Ingo Maurer, amongst others.

As much an innovator as he was a creative genius, Kovacs introduced the first American-made halogen torchiere to market in the early 1970s. Popular in Europe since the 1960s, Halogen lamps were far longer-lasting and able to illuminate an entire room with one bulb. Soon after Kovacs started manufacturing Halogen lamps, other manufactures began to follow suit.

For many years, Kovacs designed and manufactured his products from his own Brooklyn-based facility but in 2000 he sold his studio, designs and naming rights to lighting manufacturer the Minka Group. Kovacs passed away in 2007 at the age of 80. A true design visionary, Kovacs left a lasting impression on the lighting industry and the design community as a whole.

Kamal Meattle reported the results of his efforts to fill an office building with plants, in an effort to reduce headache, asthma, and other productivity-sapping aliments in thickly polluted India.

He presented his innovative idea at the TED Conference this year.

A review of global studies into the impact of modern office design found the switch to open-plan spaces had been overwhelmingly negative, with 90 percent reporting adverse health and psychological effects.

Open-plan offices not so good? Contrary to the popular opinion in business circles, Australian researchers have found open-plan offices counter productive and in fact, harmful to the health of the employees. Now let me get back to my cubicle and get some work done. Hopefully.

Quirky home decor is not only fun but also helps your home to stand out in the mundaneness of cookie-cutter furniture. Home Decor for Absolute Geeks celebrates the geekiness of our culture by unabashedly decorating homes with uber-cool gadgets and appliances. Of course, as they mention no wife in her right mind will allow these in her home so enjoy it while you’re single.

PUNK HOUSE documents a journey that most of us will have never taken; it shows us homes that most of us have never seen; it gives a small taste of a way of living most of us have never lived, and it does so in an easy yet successful way. The photos range from disgusting (the bathroom at Casa de Otto comes to mind —is that blood or hair dye?) to the artistic (is this a junk pile of sticks or is it considered sculpture?).

Timothy Findlen along with photographer Abby Banks spent three months driving cross-country to visit and photograph sixty-five punk houses—communal, low-rent houses typically crammed full of punks, squatters, and artists.

Abandonment especially abrupt always fascinates us; just like those abandoned cities in 28 Days Later or I am Legend. Apart from the ghost towns of the West, we also have the ghost offices from our changing economy as captured by photographer Philip Toledano.

I love IKEA’s simple and elegant designs (although I hate their cashiers). What better way to get the word out than to pimp out your local transit train?

Now if I had one of these, I would grow roots in this thing. Really innovative [via Boing Boing].

Hackers are not always bad especially when they are called Ikea Hackers. These funky DIY-ers create innovative and eclectic furniture mods from existing models and since Ikea allows you to play around and assemble your own stuff, they couldn’t have looked too far for inspiration [via].

Alexander  Gelfand and his percussion-crazy wife found themselves in a similar predicament when neighbors vowed to boot them out of their New York apartment. But they decided to be proactive and soundproof their apartment. They sure have some interesting suggestions and I had never heard of green glue or mass-loaded vinyl before. But of course, it didn’t come cheap:

Our total labor and sheetrock costs were around $4,000, with an additional $3,000 for materials. (We also invested $1,000 to have fiberglass insulation pumped into our walls to give the apartment a smidgen of sound isolation before the real work began.)

So unless you are really serious about your percussion skills, it may not be worthwhile. And of course, your spouse must love it too. There is no way to soundproof a marriage.

• Choose the corner that is furthest from your entrance for your desk. You will then be in a position to control your work which enhances your confidence.
• Face in the general direction of the door when conducting business. This symbolism will help you remain open to possibilities.
• Mirrors create distraction and anxiety. They leach away your control of the environment. Keep them away from your work area.

Read the rest at Adkins’s Elemental Truth. Now I would slightly wary of following these guidelines without completely understanding their significance. Vaastu Shastra, the ancient Indian architecture guide has also been reduced to a similar set of specific guidelines that emphasize more on spirituality instead of climate orientation that it was initially based on. The effects of therapeutic landscape are psychological as well as elemental in terms of environment and climate (hence the advice to go live seaside for some ailments). I hope such guidelines do not cross the bridge to blind faith and remain rooted to factual findings as Ulrich did.

The advent of the web may have made this exercise redundant but it was always fun to browse through latest products in one huge place. You almost had instant ideas for your designs that you couldn’t wait to implement or sometimes saw an innovative product that redefined your perspective for treating interior space; be it a new material or bathroom fittings. But the best display was always by light equipment and fittings. In this light (no pun intended), I was asked to review the website for Starry Nights Lights. Note that this is a part of ReviewMe’s Paid Reviews for this blog. Remember that this is not a review of their products which I haven’t sampled but that of their website.

At first impression, the Starry Nights Lights’ website looks clean and simple to navigate. The name, Starry Nights (remember Van Gogh?) might seem paradoxical because you may not need lights on a fine starry night but they show support for reducing light pollution. The main body of the website displays their product offerings categorized broadly into interior lighting and outdoor lighting. Strangely the interior light products seem to be properly categorized into sub-categories like wall scones, chandeliers, ceiling mount fixtures, bath/vanity lights, etc, the outdoor section is not organized similarly and instead goes to the generic ‘store front’. They run their store based on Yahoo! Shopping and have a customized look but is powered by Yahoo at the backend. Alternatively, you can directly access the different types of light fittings from the sidebar where they are listed by name and brand.

But the feature that impressed me most was their emphatic coverage on light pollution and although being a light fixtures company, they provide advise on using their products with ‘responsibility’. This might be in line with the latest corporate trend of being socially responsible. You can read more about Light Pollution and browse through the news stories on the topic. They also provide information on how the company provides lighting solutions and customer testimonials to win you over.

Since blogs are such a trendy way to disseminate information, Starry Nights Lights has a blog too. The blog was started in March of 2006 and has been since infrequently updated with aspects of outdoor lighting, reviews of new products, and general news in the field of outdoor lighting. Their specific post on relating light pollution and human health is interesting. It collates interesting links from news media that focus on this largely ignored aspect. Natual light has always been suited for human existence and personally, I have alway favored using natural light and opening up your design instead of consuming energy. It also makes economic sense as energy costs continue to spiral upwards.

But considering Starry Nights focus on outdoor sustainable light, their store front on outdoor lighting seems lot to be desired. Also, they could do with more focus on selling energy-efficient products. If they serve as a front to sell energy efficient lights, some consumers might even stick around and buy some of their fixtures and fittings.

Overall, Starry Nights Lights provides a useful service couple with information on sustainable lighting solutions. However, the experience would be greatly enhanced if they also provided a savings calculator for different energy uses and even a special focus on the new energy saver bulbs that Walmart is trying to promote. The store interface also could be improved so as to make it more customizable. Currently, they are offering free UPS Ground Shipping on all orders of $100 or more. Check them out.

Technorati Tags: lighting, fixtures, outdoor lighting, light pollution, Starry Nights

…at the Propeller Island City Lodge.

[tags]hotel, design, Propeller Island City Lodge[/tags]

I have always loved abstract and unsymmetrical furniture designs. I had designed a bookshelf at home using parts of a old dismantled wallshelf but it wasn’t half as good as the ones featured at Tangram.

Technorati Tags: tangram, bookcase, furniture, art, abstract, design

However, after spending time with Page and Brin and the Google engineers that would occupy the building, Wilkinson realized that he was dealing with a distinctly different species of personnel. “We’ve always worked with people who were a mix of left and right brain,” Wilkinson says, “but engineers are very left brain. They might work in teams, but they require a high level of concentration; they sit in front of the computer and crunch formulas in the most extraordinary way.”

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