Mansion at O
I am finding all sorts of weirdly familiar and reminiscent things in my local newspaper this week. How strange it is to have these offshoot connections. There was an article about The Mansion on O in The Post, O, So Weird and Wonderful, but Zofia Smardz in the travel section. I could travel 20 minutes across town to be there. The odd thing for me is I have been wanting to go here for quite some time — ever since a client of mine was planning her wedding reception at this location back in the 90’s. I had never heard about this strange high-priced ($350 a night) hotel, off Dupont…
Park51
I’m trying not to get caught up in the political debate about the Islamic Center, Park51 Community Center, proposed near the World Trade Center site, but it is very controversial, particularly here in DC and I have my own firm views. Regardless of the political debate, I was taken aback by the official conceptual designs on Park51’s website, which I hadn’t seen until recently, described here by Philip Kennicott as an architectural review in The Washington Post. These are preliminary concepts by Soma Architects. Well, imagine my surprise as I tried to find their website, which surprisingly was hard to do, http://www.soma-architects.com/ and I discovered that they are literally right…
Atelier Oi’s Art Forms
After all of my interior design oriented posts last week, I thought I’d feature this picture on the cover of Interior Design Magazine. They describe it as “art forms,” which I agree but it also looks to me like a three-dimensional, hanging-from-the-ceiling mural that is fully integrated and actually “makes” the entire fantasy space. I find this enchanting. There’s more to the story here. This looks like such a happy place that I’m fully expecting fairies to go filtering across. I love the play with proportion. Here are more designs by the Switzerland firm Atelier Oi and their new headquarters in La Neuveville. Look how different this building can look…
