Diva Design Diary

By Holly Peterson

Diva Design Diary is about bringing the latest interior design trends and tips to our existing clients, as well as future clients...enjoy!

Kartell Marks a Decade of Polycarbonate Innovation

By Holly Peterson

I had to share this article...
I just used a Kartell Ghost Chair on a project, earlier this year!
Read entire article HERE
Article from INTERIOR DESIGN
By Nicholas Tamarin

Project pic:

Happy Monday!
- Design Diva

By Holly Peterson

Summertime... http://bat.ly/lmItr

SOLAR STAR by Solatube

By Holly Peterson


Solatube can help!

Limited Time Offer - Free Installation!*

SALE STARTS MONDAY 8/23 AT 8 AM!!


Contact Design Diva Interiors on how to integrate a Solatube into your home!

Trick or Treat...

By Holly Peterson

Yes - That time of year is approaching!

Do you have children, grandchildren, nieces/nephews, friend's children?!
SHARE THIS....
www.potterybarnkids.com





Potterybarn Kids just came out with the most AMAZING costumes I have ever seen!
Classy, original, and affordable!

Even if you don't celebrate this particular holiday,
it's always nice to add to the "be whatever you want/costume" bin!

SO MUCH FUN, I can hardly stand it!
- Design Diva Interiors

Kühl Air Conditioning

By Holly Peterson

Meet the smartest window air conditioning solution ever designed. Everything about Kühl has been engineered to lead the category — conditioning more air with more intelligence and more efficiency.



Kühl is the first window air conditioner to provide the programmability and convenience of a central air conditioning system. An advanced 7-day programmable thermostat lets you program up to four settings daily, allowing each day of the week to have its own schedule. Easily adjust the temperature by using the arrow buttons on the unit’s LCD panel or the wireless remote from across the room. Or choose to wire one or more units to a wall thermostat for simple, centralized control. Kühl can raise the room temperature while you’re out and still have it back to a perfect 72° before you return. Save energy, money and maintain total control of your environment every day. Kühl control is also evident in the product’s design. Kühl’s engineers developed the unit’s 8 directional louvers to be deeper and more robust to optimize airflow placement within a space. And Kühl features both a fresh-air intake vent and an exhaust vent that give you additional comfort options.


Find a FRIEDRICH dealer near you!

DogZZZZ

By Holly Peterson


Spoil your pet today...
www.dogzzzz.com

Oslo, Norway

By Holly Peterson

Having spent a month living in Oslo, Norway (Aker Brygge to be exact) in the
Summer of 2009, I had to share this most recent article from the writers @ dwell...

“You won’t get to heaven without skiing,” observed Norwegian archi­tect Sverre Fehn. If the Pritzker Prize–winning master, who died in 2009, made it to the great slope in the sky, he’s undoubtedly looking down with pleasure on the Holmenkollen ski jump. The Oslo icon has been upgraded 18 times since it was built in 1892. The latest iteration, by the design-forward Copenhagen-based firm Julien de Smedt Architects, is a glass-and-steel cantilevered structure that projects a slash of light into the night sky—–a sweeping gesture that mimics the kinetic thrill of the event. It’s a double triumph of aesthetics and sport, and, as the Norwegian tourist board’s website puts it, “one of the first designer ski jumps.”

That’s appropriate for a city that is starting to take contemporary archi­tecture seriously. Other than the 14th-century Akershus fortress, the adjacent Kvadraturen, and other remnants of the Renaissance city built by Denmark’s King Christian IV in the 17th century, Oslo’s architecture is rooted in the 19th century. In March 2008, however, King Harald V presided over the opening of the exhibition hall at the National Museum—Architecture, Fehn’s renovation and expansion of an 1830 bank designed by the nation’s great 19th-century architect, Christian Grosch. A new opera house—–the first in Norway’s history, and step one in the redevelopment of Bjørvika, the city’s harbor district—–debuted in April of the same year. Just on its heels arrived Grims Grenka, Oslo’s first design hotel—–all of which suggests a capital committed to new design and culture.

The fjord overbrims with boats in warm weather, and cross-country trails and downhill slopes enliven the hills located to the north. Museums featuring impeccably preserved Viking ships and Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki raft and venues such as architect David Adjaye’s Nobel Peace Center present provocative cultural experiences. Oslo’s music scene is internationally famous—–it’s home to the Norwegian Wood rock festival—–and the Grünerløkka district offers the rarest of distillates: hipness without attitude.

And, as demonstrated by Aker Brygge, Oslo is undergoing a familiar port-city transformation. The 19th-century shipyard was updated in the 1980s and 1990s into a development combining residential, office, and retail venues—–plus countless restaurants and bars—–in a mix of maritime and contemporary architecture. Fjordside, Aker Brygge’s popularity heralds Oslo’s shift from a centuries-old emphasis on the port to a 21st-century economy abetted by North Sea oil revenues and an expanding population—–resulting, says Tarald Lundevall, “in what is the liveliest, most rapidly changing capital in Scandinavia.” Lundevall—–a former professor at the Oslo School of Architecture and advisor to the Minister of Cultural Affairs, presently a partner and architect with Snøhetta, the firm responsible for the nearly $700 million opera house—–ought to know: He’s lived in the capital for most of his 62 years.

Why is Oslo flourishing now?
Three factors. First, compared to the rest of Europe, Norway was late to urbanize. We are still in a process where people from the fishing areas in the north and west are searching for possibilities in the city. The next factor is that with huge global migration directed at Europe and Scandinavia, our population has really changed. This has given us a richer, livelier set of cultures. And third, you have a shift in the waterfront. Here we have had a broad discussion about what’s called the Fjord City project, which was started by the Oslo Kommune, the loc­al authority. It has convened an orga­nization of planners and given them freedom to investigate how to resolve the functional mix among commercial buildings, dwellings, and green areas.

With an emphasis on the commercial, no?
Correct. In Norway, there has been a tradition in which the government had wide responsibility to make decisions about land use, and it was expected that it should invest in commonly owned areas. This has been transformed in the last 50 years by the shift from the social democratic Norwegian Workers’ Party taking care of everything to power increasingly being in the hands of private investors. With Aker Brygge, nearly the only thing the Kommune did was to devise design guidelines. Private investors put up the money and actually did the thing. In such a situation, the pressure for increased height and fewer common areas is there all the time. You still have a professional bureau that comes up with solutions based on solid planning, but the bad thing is that it doesn’t discuss the consequences of this shift in power between the public and private sectors.

Are people pleased with Aker Brygge?
Aker Brygge, in most respects, is a good project. But after World War II, when the social democratic planners had the power and set priorities, they built a huge project called Groruddalen, which today has some 123,000 inhabitants, where people were given the opportunity to live in cheap, good housing. The older project demonstrates how the local authorities took care to devel­op housing, schools, and parks for the young and poor, for the workers. Today, as we know, the priorities flow from “How do we attract the rich buyers, how do we earn money?”

Yet the arts remain quite lively—–the opposite of institutional.
Oh, yes. We have an extremely wide, differently shaded music scene. When it comes to art, you can see a lot of things here that are rawer and younger than you see in the rest of Scandinavia. What people find interesting is that we are not well polished. Our society is more informal and therefore offers a richer opportunity for bright persons of all ages to come up with really rude things—–of which there are many.

Building is booming now, but is there a modernist tradition in Oslo?
From the 1920s until World War II, Norway had some very good functionalist architects who were inspired by Germany and France at that time and who built mainly villas and smaller buildings. One is the Ekebergrestauranten by Lars Backer, which was built in 1929. It has been restored rather nicely, and it’s a very good restaurant and a fantastic place to view Oslo. If you are interested in architecture from that period, I would give priority to visiting the villas, such as Arne Korsmo’s Villa Stenersen. In contemporary architecture today you have two schools. You have the pupils of Sverre Fehn, who taught many of the best young architects in Norway—–Jan Olav Jensen, Carl-Viggo Hølmebakk, the firm Jarmund/Vignæs, and five or so others—–who have done beautiful, experimental villas and bigger projects outside of Oslo. The other segment—–firms that have been influenced by Rem Koolhaas—–is working with urbanistic questions as its core preoccupation. Space Group and a firm called MMW both work in a tradition where the setting and program reflect broader discussions about a building’s task in the urban fabric. And as they tend to be politically more knowledgeable and go into all aspects of transforming cities, I’m optimistic that they can introduce a broader discussion into the process, which so far has been a closed thing between capitalists and bureaucrats.

I highly recommend a visit to Oslo, Norway - as well as the countryside of Norway!

A Dog Bed Made of Tennis Balls?

By Holly Peterson



Following the success of what the HEX Tennis Chair meant to the primary
consumer of the felted balls, the next logical audience was of the four legged kind.


The Dog Bed is the latest edition to the HEX Tennis furniture collection.


The Dog Bed frame is sustainably constructed entirely of recycled tennis balls from
the New York Metropolitan area that are woven together in a tight hexagonal pattern.


The bed features a removable 2-sided cushion, red on one side and black on the other.


Measuring at 26” in diameter the bed is sized for small dog breeds
(Boston Terrier, Dachshund, Pug) up to approximately 25lbs.


*A bed to accommodate larger breeds will be introduced at the end of summer,
join our mailing list to be emailed when its released.


**Ships in 2-4 weeks

$285

Great choice on selecting a Boston for the ad pic - I'm a little partial, as you know!
- Design Diva

Customize Your Walls...

By Holly Peterson







Wall Words offer over 3,000 standard quotes. They can produce a custom quote for you as well! You can preview your standard or custom quote on their website, wallwords.com, so make sure it’s just what you want. They offer not only quotes, but trees, animals, clouds, flowers, silhouettes, and much more! They have fancy initials, monograms, and can create your quote in an arched layout as well.

Wall Words can also create your logo in vinyl or in a digital format. Wall Words are also great for your company vehicle, to display your company name or domain name.

Wall Words'
customer service is amazing! Just use the Help Desk option from the home page of wallwords.com, located in the upper right hand corner. You will receive a prompt and personal answer to your questions.

Welcome to the world of words and more!