Watsons Bay House

Much of the critique of suburbia, especially in America, is the isolation and lack of interaction. This newly renovated single dwelling home in Australia, "has been reorganized and opened out to engage with Robertson Park opposite." By blurring the lines between public and private space, this home stands at the forefront of home design. Completed by the architecture firm Super Colossal, Watsons Bay House was built to take advantage of the sweeping views of Sydney.

Kathryn Ireland, Michael Smith, and Kelly Wearstler: The Best of 21st Century Interior Design

Kathryn Ireland, who has offered design her worldly view on Interiors, continues to inspire with her latest book, Creating a Home. Her designs are comfortable, traditional and create a unique identity for each home she does. Creating a Home looks at specific projects from the exterior landscape down to the finest detail of a room. This book has wonderful images of homes and that offer inspiration on every page.

Michael Smith can no longer be associated with a new style or moment because since he has entered the design world, his designs have become the canon. His book Elements of Style explains this canon of design brilliance. He enters every spatial arena and turns it into a place of purpose and belonging. The greatest aspect of Smith homes is that he accentuates the best that each house can offer. When you walk into a Smith home, you think about how wonderful your world just became. “Balance” is Michael Smith. Balance in art, balance in antiques, balance in texture, color and balance in luxury. Smith’s designs push each space to the edge, its furthest point of perfection without being ostentatious. He is the interior designer of the White House, a designer who establishes the canon in each work he produces.

As Los Angeles based Interior Designer, Kelly Wearstler has made an international name for herself. Wearstler’s approaches interior design much like a painting yet incorporates form and texture in her designs with the same determination as a sculptor. Her most recent book Hue inspects her design intelligence with the importance of color and spark in the visual plane. This visual plane that Wearstler designs for is not a room but the flooring, walls, ceiling, windows, doors, entryways, and landscape at which the building is situated. A view into the thought process of this design diva is very well explored in Hue through Wearstler’s latest projects.

A House or A Painting?

In a world that is ran by consumer culture, it is not often that we ask why things are priced the way they are. Late last year, entrepreneur and architect David Galbriath commented on The Penthouse of Villa Stein that hit the real estate market at what he thought was a surprisingly low price. Designed by Le Corbusier, the Villa Stein stands to symbolize the work of an architect credited with the creation of architecture’s modern movement. Galbraith poses an interesting question about our world’s consumer culture in his post, “If Famous Architecture were priced Like Paintings, a Le Corbusier Would Cost the same as the Entire American GDP”. A building that is arguably one of the top 500 most important houses of the late 19th/ early 20th centuries is going for the same price per square foot as some of the suburban homes in Paris designed by unknown architects. “In other words, a work of art that you can actually live in has zero premium over a commodity item, but one that you can look at has a premium factor of 13 million over a commodity one”. Is it that our commodity driven mentality has lead paintings and objects to rapidly increase in price or has our practicality with money and value completely been erased?

Tallest Building in the World

As we trace our history back in time, monuments of height have served as universal symbols to mark the places we claim. From Stonehenge to Burj Khalifa, structures have been erected in order to demand recognition of taken territory. Humans have become trained to associate height and mass with prestige, intelligence and wealth.

In Paris, the Exposition Universelle of 1889 was to celebrate the 100^th Anniversary of the French Revolution. The Central Dome, The Gallery of Machines and the Eiffel Tower were all designed to show the world France’s dominance as a colonial and technological super power.

Architecture has been used as a way for people to compete in engineering, wealth and tourism, as exemplified in Chartres Cathedral in France, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Empire State Building and the CN Tower in Toronto. Most recently, we can observe mankind’s latest architectural triumph in India with the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. This structure stands at 2,720 feet from ground level as the world’s tallest building, surpassing the previous record of Taiwan’s 1,667 foot Taipei 101. Burj Khalifa has 56 of the fastest elevators in the world (traveling at 40 miles per hour), a 37-floor hotel and 700 apartments and commercial offices.

As technology progresses these engineering feats are barely holding their titles for more than a few years. Moscow has proposed the Crystal Island, which is intended to be the tallest tower in the world with seven times the floor area of the 80,000 square foot Burj Khalifa.

The Burj Khalifa is estimated at a total cost of $1.5 billion. With this said, the average skilled carpenter was making US$7.60 a day, that in turn lead to a worker's riot in 2006, ending with a compromise of a 20% increase (Architectura, Elements of Architectural Style, 2008). Additionally, due to the completion in this economic crisis, the building is projected to continue to have an extremely high vacancy.

Looking at other projects, it is estimated that somewhere between two and three million Chinese died in the construction of the Great Wall of China and King Louis 14^th of France nearly bankrupted the royal treasury in the building of Versailles. These examples show that at any and all sacrifices, humanity cannot restrain itself from the competition that architecture has made possible.

Welcome to Silky Steel!

This blog will incorporate the art and design world focusing on interior design, architecture, fine arts and furniture design. I will be exploring the various aspects of design development throughout the world from residential to commercial projects. Topics will include material use, visual experience and the overall aesthetic appeal of our built environment.