CasaSugar

Vern Yip's Transformation in the Tenderloin

CasaSugar — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:00:31 -0800

Vern Yip and Bank of America recently teamed up to transform a worn community center at an affordable housing complex into something much more vibrant. You can see the before shot here. To see how the space was transformed, check out the slideshow.

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Before and After: Tenderloin Family Apartments, Transformed

CasaSugar — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:00:19 -0800

Remember when I told you about how Vern Yip was teaming up with Bank of America to transform two Bay Area nonprofits? Well, this morning, I was fortunate enough to attend the unveiling for the Tenderloin Family Apartments. Managed by the Chinatown Community Development Center, it's a safe, high-quality affordable housing property in the heart of the Tenderloin district, one of San Francisco’s lower income neighborhoods challenged by issues such as homelessness, safety, and drug use.

Renovations of the community room were just completed, with the reveal and ribbon-cutting ceremony taking place this morning.

Here's how it looked before Vern worked his magic:

To get a sneak peek of the transformation, read more.

Here's how the room looked for the ribbon-cutting ceremony. There's so much about this room I adore, from the George Nelson Bubble Lamps to the renovated kitchen space and updated flooring. Check back on Monday for more photos of this great space!

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Cool Idea: Deserving Designs For Families in Need

CasaSugar — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:15:33 -0700

Remember when I told you about the Boys and Girls Club in West Oakland that Vern Yip, host and designer of HGTV's Deserving Design is renovating? I've been so curious as to what Vern might do to improve the space.

In one episode, Vern makes over a garage into a game room for a military family's children. He cleans up the space and stocks it with interactive games, spaces for gathering, and lots of kid-friendly storage space. I think that this design might be a good indication of what the deserving kids in West Oakland might get.

To see the video, read more.

Stay tuned for my interview with Vern, as well as the after pictures from this community center!

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Is Antonio Your Choice For Design Star?

CasaSugar — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:00:08 -0700

Last night, Antonio was announced the winner on HGTV's Design Star, after he and Dan battled it out in the final challenge. Do you agree that Antonio deserved the win, or were you a Dan fan?

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Cool Idea: BloomFrame Balcony

CasaSugar — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 10:00:22 -0700

BloomFrame, designed by Amsterdam-based Hofman Dujardin Architects, is the coolest thing since slicest bread. Essentially it is a window frame that transforms into a balcony with a flip of a switch. In addition to at least five other awards, the design won the Wallpaper* Design Award 2009 in the most life-enhancing category, which is well deserved. If you live in a compact city apartment, it allows you to step outside and enjoy your own private outdoor space. It's available in a range of sizes, materials, and colors to be customized to your builiding. The only problem I see with it is that when the balcony opens, it lets outdoor air (and bugs) into your apartment. Watch the video! The music is pretty funny!

Coveted Crib: Malibu Minimalist

CasaSugar — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 09:00:22 -0700

Hollywood interior designer Michelle Workman has designed spaces for celebs including John Travolta and Jennifer Lopez, but in my opinion, this Malibu pad deserves a starring role as well.

Michelle explains,

I was brought onto this job during the construction phase, and I wanted to bring the organic feel of Malibu into the home. My main focus was on the surfaces: flooring, countertops, tile and lighting. We ended up with a home that feels as if you are out of doors at all times; even the kitchen countertops look like swirling tidal pools. In an effort to mirror the many banks of windows that constitute the front of the house, Lucite chairs, occasional tables, and hardware were used in the kitchen. Everywhere you look organic is juxtaposed with steel or man-made materials.

Take a full tour of this wonderful space when you read more.
Like Michelle's style? Check out the three-day Champagne Sale this weekend at Michelle's retail store, The Red House Interiors, in LA. From Thursday through Saturday, enjoy extended sale hours and markdowns between 20 and 50 percent off at the store.

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Cool Idea: Daddy's Fatties Chair by Tracy Deramus

CasaSugar — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:30:18 -0700

The Bertoia Diamond Chair ($909) is a classic that needs no fiddling with. But a little reinvention never hurt anyone. Or has it? In this case, I think Tracy Deramus deserves some props for Daddy's Fatties Chair ($2,750), which features vintage neckties hand-woven into Harry Bertoia's steel masterpiece. The new design looks more like one of the Campana brothers' showstoppers than a 1952 archetype. I've seen neckties woven before by Alabama Chanin, but this guy employs less country sweetness and more bravado. What do you think?

Coveted Crib: Emily Walker's Canadian Charm

CasaSugar — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:00:01 -0700

With talents like Philippe Starck and Tord Boontje and magazines like Living Etc and Marie Claire Maison, Europe always gets props for turning out great interior design. But our neighbor to the North, Canada, deserves a round of applause as well. Canadian House and Home is one of my favorite shelter magazines, and it comes as no surprise that the pub's staff has envy-inducing style as well. Merchandise department designer Emily Walker turned her rundown bungalow into a stunning home with a perfect balance of patterns and solids, a smart mix of splurges and steals, and a unique, cohesive color palette.
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Casa Interview: Interior Designer Leslie Bamburg (Part 2)

CasaSugar — Wed, 13 May 2009 05:30:00 -0700

On Monday I brought you the first half of my interview with Labexperiment founder Leslie Bamburg. Two years ago, Leslie Bamburg formed her company Labexperiment, an interior design business that offers an affordable professional decorator option to the design fiend who lacks mad cash. Labexperiment works on the premise that beautiful design can be affordable, individualized, and integrated to meet the resident's needs. Leslie notes that she doesn't believe there should be separation between people's fashion, media, tech needs, music, and interiors. With this philosophy in mind, she makes diagnoses of clients' homes, notes what they need to add, subtract, or rearrange, and then prescribes the elements needed to improve a room or home. Check out the rest of Leslie's interview below.

CasaSugar: What are some of the ways you’ve integrated technology into your prescriptions? I see you’re not a fan of hiding televisions, etc. How do you make them part of the big, cohesive picture?

Leslie Bamburg: Technology can be really beautiful, or really out-of-place, just like anything else you’d buy for your home. I spend as much time thinking about what technology looks like as I do any other piece of furniture or accessory. Just like you’d want a high-quality, well-proportioned and beautiful oven or refrigerator in your kitchen, the TV in the living room or the computer on the desk doesn’t deserve any less consideration. I am a huge geek, so I know that technology is a big part of our modern, futuristic lives.

Want more advice? Then read more.

CasaSugar: What’s the biggest dude decorating faux pas?

Leslie Bamburg: Stereotypically, I think guys tend to not use enough softness in a room. There is a welcoming, comfortable quality in a room that has pillows on the sofa, a throw over the arm of a chair, a cushy rug and soft drapery. They tend to think more functionally, and are the primary target market for large, black leather sofas.

CasaSugar: What’s the biggest lady decorating faux pas?

Leslie Bamburg: Conversely, some women use too much softness. I like a balance of soft and hard lines, and I do think there is a place for black leather, if not used in huge quantities. I think a room should reflect the client’s personality, but still be welcoming to guests - male, female and everyone in between.

CasaSugar: What have been some of the reactions from your clients that have surprised or delighted you?

Leslie Bamburg: Every time a client tells me they are happy with their design, it makes my day. And even though it happens often, I’m still always surprised when a client who claimed to not be interested in design gets inspired after we work on their home. The next time I see them they might have bought lime green patterned pillows for their sofa, for example, which totally work. You know who you are.

CasaSugar: How do you recommend a reader do a home prescription of her own? How can she look objectively at a room and see what’s missing/wrong?

Leslie Bamburg: You can never be objective about your own home. So get a prescription from Labexperiment. Seriously, though, it’s really hard to get distance from your own stuff, so the best thing is to bring in a friend you trust who will give you an honest opinion. You can also start tearing out magazine photos of rooms you like, then lay them all out and think about what is different between your space and those, and see if you can implement changes to make it feel more like the rooms you like. I don’t mean just copying the photos, but if a room you like has a focal element like a wallpapered wall, think about your space to see if you can make a similar statement in the same scale, like hanging fabric panels on the wall, or just painting it with stripes.

Check out some of Leslie's work in the gallery, and then head over to her site to start your prescription.

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Casa Interview: Vern Yip

CasaSugar — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:30:47 -0700

Designer Vern Yip is a household name for many Casa readers, thanks to his judging on Design Star as well as his hosting and creativity on his tear-inducing show Deserving Design. Vern is currently contributing his design expertise to two very worthy community organizations, the Tenderloin Family Apartments, which are home to 4,000 low-income San Francisco families, and the West Oakland Boys and Girls Club, which has been serving youth in this neighborhood for over sixty years. I was thrilled to talk to Vern about his design renovations for these two community spaces.

CasaSugar: I’ve been out to both the Tenderloin Family Apartments and the West Oakland Boys and Girls Club, and they’re very excited about their renovations.

Vern Yip: This is such a wonderful and amazing opportunity for me. The renovations are being funded by Bank of America. This is part of their celebration of renovating their 118 Bay Area banking centers, so as part of the celebration they’re renovating two spaces for two Bay Area non-profits. Having been there, I’m sure you can tell that these are two organizations that are really deserving and could really benefit from a facelift.

To read more of the interview, read more.

CasaSugar: What's happening with the Boys and Girls Club?

Vern Yip: The Boys and Girls Club is providing such a huge service and a lot of these boys and girls would not have a space to go to otherwise. We’re giving them an activity room facelift so they can have a beautiful, and functioning place to hang out. That’s a really great thing. I’ve been talking to some of the people involved with the boys and girls club and gauging what they need . . . Initially I was looking at the floor in pictures and thought it was nice, but apparently it’s really worn, so we’re doing a top to bottom renovation including new flooring, new lights, and of course great new paint colors and a new space plan so this space can work much better with a new layout. We’re also going to do some really functional things like a new check-in desk and a new media corner. We’re going to use really durable materials so this facelift will hopefully last a good long time.

CasaSugar: I was reading up a little bit about your plans for the Tenderloin Apartments. What are you excited about with this project?

Vern Yip: You know, the really great thing about this space is that it’s used by the entire community. Everything happens in that space, from weddings to birthday parties to meetings and movie nights. So you want that space to really pull people together and feel celebratory. Right now it doesn’t feel celebratory. It’s a little dour and office-like, so I was talking to some of the Tenderloin Family Apartments staff trying to gauge who lives there and what are there needs. And it’s really a wide array of people, a mix of Russian, Asian American, Chinese, African-American, and Hispanic people.

I was doing some research to determine what were some key colors that represented all of those communities, and oranges and reds are two colors that are represented in all of those groups. So we’re putting in a new floor that’s going to be beautiful and patterned, but it will be made of VCT [vinyl composition tile], so it will be really durable. We’re going to do a custom mural on the wall that’s a tree with a large canopy done in a white silhouette on top of these wonderful warm orange walls, so it’s really going to stand out. A tree to me is really symbolic of bringing community together, it’s that life force. Another issue was, just like the boys and girls club, the residents didn’t feel safe hanging outside, so I thought, if we can’t bring them to the trees we’ll bring the trees to them. And then we’re hanging these incredible George Nelson lamps in a series, in two shapes, in a saucer shape and a cigar shape. We just want to make a space that the residents can be in and enjoy. That’s the goal and the purpose. I’m really excited that Bank of America made all of this possible because certainly these two non profits definitely deserve it.

CasaSugar: Definitely. And of course without outside funding they could’ve never done such an extensive renovation. Is this renovation going to be on Deserving Design?

Vern Yip: No! I wish it was. I wish we could fly our whole crew out and shoot this. I do hope it will be an inspiration to the show and network to tackle community-oriented spaces. We’ve been focused on individual spaces, and we’re just starting to branch out to community spaces. As you can imagine, it’s pretty cost-prohibitive to renovate such a large space. It really takes someone like Bank of America stepping up to the plate and saying, “We’ll do it as part of our renovation celebration.”

I’m very excited about this. My whole show and my heart and soul is all about giving back to the community through design, and the power of design to affect people’s lives. This is such an amazing opportunity to affect so many people’s lives in just two spaces.

CasaSugar: It’s going to make a huge impact. Thanks in advance for flying out and making such a wonderful contribution on the Bay Area community.

Vern Yip: I’m thrilled for the opportunity and thrilled that Bank of America brought me on board to do it. It’s a wonderful opportunity to change people’s lives.

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