The Designer's Muse

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Snow Day Inspiration: Snow Art by Simon Beck

These amazingly cool snow patterns were created on frozen French lakes by Simon Beck. He creates them by walking on snow shoes. I have no idea how he maps out the shapes out so perfectly. They kind of look like crop circles in the snow. I love them...maybe my son and I can do something similar in our yard tomorrow!

Monday, February 4, 2013

Manor of the Month: Lyons Demesne County Kildare Ireland

Have you got a spare $65 million? If so you might want to consider buying this beautiful Georgian Manor House in County Kildare, Ireland. It was commissioned in 1785 by Lord Cloncurry. The estate was purchase in 1996 and meticulously restored by Dr.Tony Ryan, owner of the discount airline Ryanair. It is rumored that Dr. Ryan spent around $120 million on the restoration project. Dr. Ryan passed away in 2007 and it seems that the estate has been on and off the market for quite some time. It is currently listed by Christies with about 300 acres of land. But it was also listed by Christies in 2010 with 600 acres of land. I'm guessing the other 300 acres has been sold separately....how sad. Enjoy the photos, I know I did.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Modern Love

Olson Kundig

Most of the work we do is very traditional, however at the moment we have a client who has commissioned us to do a modern lake house in northern New England. When we were in school, this was the way we were taught to design...and after so many years of working on traditional homes, it's very exciting to be coming back to our "academic" roots. As we do at the beginning of all of our design projects, we look at other projects for inspiration. Below are some of the projects we admire and are finding inspirational.