apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

We first learned of New York photographer Masood Kamandy in relation to his effort to create a four-year bachelor's degree program in photography at Kabul University in Afghanistan — a major feat considering that photography had been forbidden in Afghanistan under the orders of the Taliban. We fell in love with his hauntingly beautiful images then, so we were excited to learn that he's finally joined the world of e-commerce.

It's no secret that we derive a lot of inspiration from hotel design, (we've written about it here, here and here) so we were pretty psyched to learn that Ace Hotel New York will be open on February 1. The hotel already has some serious buzz. We've written about Ace Hotel Portland, and it looks like the hotel will be infused with a similar rocker vibe, but with a serious nod to its New York location.

DNA11 makes personalized art from your DNA or fingerprints. We've before posted about the fingerprint portraits from DNA11. They've just introduced a new line of more affordable DNA Art--a smaller scale version of their DNA portraits.

We love this DIY from the Nettleton Hollow blog. This light, which closely resembles the Bertjan Pot's Random lamp from Moooi, is made entirely of branches.

As we move into the Holiday Season, Keep It Simple will be our mantra. This screen print is the first print of London-based type designer, Seb Lester for the Keep Calm Gallery. The lettering used is part of a 19th century alphabet by the brilliant 19th century lettering artist, Daniel T. Ames.

www.nettletonhollow.com

Nettleton Hollow was launched in March 2005 by Justin Brandreth Potter. Potter had just moved to Brooklyn and wanted to decorate his first apartment with pieces of nature to offset his city life. He started shopping online for decorative branches and other lasting botanicals but only found junky crafty options. Nettleton Hollow was conceived to fill this void.

It seems there is nothing that glass-maker extraordinaire Andy Paiko won't attempt to make in glass. From traditional tableware to an absinthe fountain, to a glass chair, he seems to have tried everything. And should you need a fully functional spinning wheel or a working seismograph made of glass, Andy has you covered.

Name: Max Miller, Carla Hoke Miller and LouLou the dog
Location: Downtown New York
Size: 2,500 sq. ft loft
Lived in: 15 years

Enter Gallery Slideshow

This is one of those amazing spaces typifying a downtown New York City of 20 or 30 years ago, when downtown was the domain of artists. Max and Carla have made this place their own.

http://aandgmerch.com

We wrote about the launch of Future Perfect's e-commerce site last week, but we also wanted to mention that Future Perfect's little brother A & G Merch has launched a new e-commerce site too. A & G Merch has the Future Perfect aesthetic that's a little easier on the wallet. It looks like they're still working on uploading inventory to the website, but we rounded up our favorites under $55.

After seeing Jeanine's post on Desks and Furniture Designed From Plumbing Pipes, we thought we'd share a DIY we did a few years ago. For some reason, we decided to build our own bed. Out of pipes. We've used it every night for four years, and it still looks pretty good. Detailed plan follows.

We love the Moroccan pouf--just not quite enough to spend the $250+ that they're often sold for. So we were excited to find a much more affordable version.

We don't know about you, but winter has barely begun and we're already feeling a little dried out. So we were intrigued to stumble on this radiator humidifier from Blue Ribbon General Store. And we did a little digging into the subject of Radiator Humidifiers...

We're digging these Christmas tree decals from Artware. Each die-cut vinyl wall-sticker Christmas tree is created by a New York City artist and is reflective of their fine art work. These life-size, self-adhesive vinyl trees can be applied directly to the wall by either removing the paper back or simply pinning it.

Judging by all the traffic around books on this site, there are some real readers in the AT community. We were a little surprised to find that one of our favorite books hasn't received too much attention.