brastilo

The Architectural Digest Round-Up

This past weekend Brastilo was on location at the Architectural Digest Home Show in NYC.  Our booth rocked (don’t you love the mock Portuguese mosaic?), and we had tons of visitors. 

And, true to the beauty of a show like this, we heard some wonderful feedback about being able to touch our pieces and see them in real life.  People really liked the Blue Paper Bowl, and they were impressed by the details of the 2-Door Pine and White Lacquer Cabinet, including the wood veneered wheels.

 

The show was attended by people who are in the furniture trade, architects, interior designers and, of course, consumers. It’s always great for us to interact with our consumer and we really appreciate everyone who visited our booth.  We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you!

So what else was on view?  Quite a bit actually, and it ran the gamut from contemporary to old-fashioned.  One trend I noticed was repurposing wood for flooring.  There were a number of booths that seemed to focus on the use of reclaimed wood, and we’re in full support of the many environmentally friendly ways to source wood.  Despite the plethora of flooring booths, one in particular stood out.  The Mountain Lumber Company specializes in antique flooring sourced from old mills.  Founded in 1974 in Virginia, Mountain Lumber scours the depths of the world to find the best wood that can be re-used for commercial and residential purposes.  The best example?  They’ve reclaimed wood from handcrafted vats once used in the Guinness factory in Ireland.  That’s right, folks – all you Guinness drinkers can now have Guinness on your floor, and not from simply spilling it.  The wood is gorgeous.  Grainy, grey, with a healthy layer of patina to boot.  I fell in love with this idea and I hope you do too.

One of the weirdest things I saw at the show was the EcoSmart Fire.  The fireplace is very contemporary looking and is “fuelled by a renewable modern energy (Denatured Alcohol), [that] burns clean and is virtually maintenance free”. It also doesn’t require a flue and is therefore able to be placed anywhere in your home.  The versatility of this fireplace really is something and, as a city girl, that’s definitely appealing.  I have to admit though, while I love the idea of an eco-friendly fireplace, there’s something romantic about a brick fireplace with wood a-crackling.  You snuggled up under a blanket with your big bushy dog and a hot cup of cocoa.  Sigh.  But, seeing as I can’t build a fireplace in my 60 year old building in my one apartment on the 4th floor, the EcoSmart might have to suffice.

Finally, one of the most amazing organizations I found at the show is Green Demolitions.  In short, the program allows you, the consumer, to donate any of your old architectural elements – be that a full kitchen, a generator, an HVAC system, or simply some antique furniture.  The organization will come in and remove everything, if you so desire, at a discount.  Then, they bring everything to one of their 3 stores in the Northeast and sell everything back into the community.  And then, and this is the part that amazes me the most, 89% of all profits made in the stores are donated to Recovery Unlimited “whose mission is the sustaining and expansion of the All Addicts Anonymous program.”  89%.  Astounding!  So, in short, the organization does great things for the environment by preventing you from trashing your wonderful kitchen cabinets that you simply decided to change because those orange lacquer things are so last season.  And then, to top that off, it donates almost all of the profits it makes from reselling those orange lacquer cabinets to help people in need.  I don’t know about you, but I suddenly feel great about my fellow man. 

That’s the round-up everyone.  Hope you enjoyed it and we can’t wait to see you all at our next show...ICFF, perhaps?

The joys of a customizable home

If I walk from one corner of my apartment to the other – a task that, in NYC, should only take about 5 steps total – I’m struck by the way furniture can define a space.  I know which part of my tiny room is to be the “work” section – there’s a desk, a chair, a computer.  It’s obvious the part of my room that comprise the entertainment section – there’s a TV and a stereo.  Each of these elements is highly designed (even if it’s design from a decade ago).  The elements that weren’t immediately customizable through the manufacturer (such as the color cover on my old PC) have been customized by either me or the slightly more talented - incorporating fun bumper stickers or etchings (such as the awesome engravings being done on Zune players).  My tiny little room is filled with personality and spunk, making seemingly banal objects like a desk, appear awesome and inviting.

And then you walk into the kitchen.  At least here, in New York, the kitchen is the bastion of New York City funkiness, and I don’t mean that in a kitschy way.  The cabinets don’t stay shut, there are gaping holes between the oven and the fridge large enough to attract piles of dirt but not wide enough to actually clean.  And the fridge is usually a monstrosity – a relic from 1945, when the so-called pre-war building was built.  Even if you own your home, it’s hard to stay contemporary with such a massive piece of equipment.  It requires a major financial layout and usually a malfunctioning fridge. 

Perhaps this is why it’s so much easier to make the bedroom or living room look more personable.  At least in these rooms we can buy furniture that is moveable, malleable, conformable.  We also tend to have more options.  If we don’t like the staid look of a PC, we can buy a Mac.  If we don’t like those boring bookcases from cheap, flat-pack stores, we can get a fun looking one from…oh, I don’t know…Brastilo.   But in the kitchen?  You’re forced to decide between another banal white fridge or a sort of high-tech silver number that looks like it belongs on Star Trek.  Okay, so maybe if you’re a hipster living in Brooklyn you’d buy a Smeg.  But let’s be real – that avocado color went out of style 40 years ago for a reason!

The solution?  Customize your own fridge.  That’s right folks.  Brazilian fridge manufacturer Brastemp is allowing you to create your very own fridge using different color combinations with all sorts of doo-dads like water filtration systems and fruit trays.  The new line is called “You” and was featured on the Josh Spear blog last month.  Unfortunately the site is in Portuguese, but it’s still lots of fun to play with the “over 19,000 possible combinations.”  You can even choose which way the door should open and how to organize the inside shelves.  As customization grows throughout various consumer products, we can expect to see similar items at Home Depot in no time.  With something like a fridge, however, we have to remind ourselves that we’ll have to stare at this thing for a long time.  And it’s a bit more expensive than those Nike Free sneakers we bought that one time in Magenta and never wore again.  Or that Zune player we got with an engraving that now reads, “Dara loves Menudo”.  So even though magenta is the color of the season, it may not translate onto a fridge 20 years from now.

But still, Brastemp has me salivating for my own place for which I can purchase a well-designed fridge to match my new MacBook and fancy LCD television (and that darned Zune player I can’t seem to unengrave).  I can see my dream fridge dancing before my eyes; turquoise on top, black on bottom, hinged on the left with a water-filter on the front door - a tool I’ve dreamed of owning since I was a little girl staring in envy at my best friend’s fancy new refrigerator.  I love that one day I’ll be able to fully customize everything in my home, making it truly reflect my tastes, aesthetics, and sense of kitsch, and that with the same products, we can all have very different looking homes.

Sizing and placing your new TV

I remember the first time I went over to my friend’s house to watch her 60” TV.  It was the mid-90s.  The excitement, the outright jealousy; it was all-consuming!  And then I got there and realized that this so-called TV was a hulky mass – an ugly monstrosity consuming the room.  Sure, it was fun to watch ABC’s TGIF shows on a TV that size, but talk about an eye-sore!

Fast forward to today’s slender HDTV and tomorrow’s even thinner OLED TV.  These are much more attractive, take up far less room, and provide a much clearer picture, but present a very different design challenge.  A lot has been written on the technical differences between plasma versus LCD or 1080i and 1080p.  But, is your 60-inch flat screen fantasy TV the right size for your living room?  And where should you put it – on the wall or on a media center?  With Christmas on its merry way, many of you out there can expect to receive a surprise TV from a loved one or friend (I think I need to find different loved ones – all I’m getting are tube socks and a calendar!).  Here are some helpful tips so you can make the best use of that fancy TV and transform your living room into a neighborhood hangout!

1) As a focal point, your TV should be in proportion to the room size and all the furniture contained within.  Contrary to the mid-90s oversized TVs, the new, slender models should never dominate the space unless you are creating a separate screening room or starting your own personal sports bar.

2) Too large a picture or sitting too close will cause major eye-strain and headaches.  When sitting down, the middle of the screen should be at eye level. “Matching a media center to the size of the TV is overlooked but it is so important,” cautions William Oliver, one of Brastilo’s esteemed furniture designers.  “Hang your TV correctly or choose a media center whose height will put you directly in the middle of the picture”.  Don’t make the mistake of placing it too high or over a fireplace mantle.  This will only cause neck pain!

3) It’s also important that you have the right-sized picture for where you will be sitting relative to the screen.  As a guideline, when viewing wide-screen sets, you can sit as close as 1½ times the screen’s diagonal measurement without noticing a loss in picture quality.  But don’t go too far into the nosebleeds - sitting more than 3 times the screen size means you’ll more than likely miss out on the immersive feel of the program. 

4) After all this painstaking effort to get the perfect view of your television, don’t forget to minimize glare.  Make sure you consider the location of your windows relative to the placement of your TV.  Media centers with wheels can help you make minor adjustments as the sun moves throughout the day.

We hope these tips were helpful!  Now you can fully enjoy the next episodes of “Larry King Live”, “Charlie Rose”, or “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila”.

Brastilo Low Media Unit with Floating Shelves