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Launch Party Heats up the December Cold

2007-12-17T23:05:00Z

Last week, 30elm and Designmyroom teamed up to celebrate their official launches. Even with the frigid cold outside, more than a hundred of New York’s most fashionable home design professionals and enthusiasts made the trip to 535 Galleries in the Chelsea gallery district.

Fashion and interior designer to the stars, Robert Verdi, brought his entourage of hip up-and-comers.

Of course, Robert wasn’t the only big name in design, with Ernest de la Torre, Rebecca Cole, Eric Cohler, Laura Kirar, Bella Mancini and Amy Lau among the many design celebs in attendance.

Co-founder Matt Myers felt right at home with other web gurus such as Avi Flombaum of Designerpages, Gabe Zichermann of RMBR the famed Aleks Jakulin and Timothy Dahl, web producer for PointClickHome and the founder of CharlesandHudson.

Rumor has it that famed New York Times food writer Amanda Hesser just may be working on a web startup of her own, as well.

Maybe the team of online experts at andCulture, Peter, Josh, Jason and Dori, can help her get started.

30elm’s co-founder, Chris Conley, tried his best to demo some of the newest features of 30elm- launched just that day. His task was made all the more difficult after a few cocktails provided by our friends at 360 Vodka.

A good time was had by all. Be sure to see even more pictures here on flickr courtesy of our crack photographer, Brian Van Nieuwenhoven. And stay tuned for more hot events!

Dwell

2007-11-10T04:02:00Z

We were excited to get this email from Chelsea Holden Baker, the online editor for Dwell. Dwell is one of our favorite reads here at 30elm, they’ve really brought new attention to modern design in the last ten years since their founding. We’re honored to get this attention from them.

Click here to read the full review. Not too shabby, the only thing they knocked us on was our name.

Hi Matt + Chris,

Congratulations on what looks to be several months of success!

I sent the site around the Dwell office yesterday (we were excited to see some of our favorite architects like Aidlin-Darling, and even the Dwell Home!). Owner/Founder Lara Hedberg Deam says, “I like the rating system and the architect profiles section on 30elm. I can never get enough of those quick q and a’s with anyone!”

Anyway, I thought our readers would enjoy it too. Check out the Dwell Blog (30elm is on the homepage right now).

-Chelsea Holden Baker, Online Editor, Dwell

Zen Minimalism

2007-09-17T17:43:00Z

The blog zenhabits recently picked up the project Minimalist Living by Swatt Architects.

The project is used in their post A Guide to Creating a Minimalist Home to highlight how clean and simple a home can look. The article goes on to give tips on how a homeowner can take steps to achieve the same for themselves. The article (and home) was so popular it even showed up on Digg with over 2400 fans.

There’s been so very minor debate on 30elm over whether this truly constitutes a minimalist house, but, based on the home’s rating, everyone agrees it’s gorgeous.

Swatt architects is a full-service firm based in Emeryville, California. With more then 30 years of experience the company has racked up an equal number of local, regional and national design awards. This project was an addition added onto a home in Saratoga, California in 2005.

You can find out more about Swatt Architects here on 30elm, or at their website SwattArchitects.com Also be sure to checkout their recent book, Livable Modern filled with more luscious photographs of their gorgeous projects.

Tastemaker (and Rulebreaker): Todd Haley

2007-07-20T00:29:00Z

Todd Haley is a Chicago area interior decorator who designs for clients in the Chicago and New York metropolitan areas. Todd was given a “Stylemakers and Rulebreakers Award” by the Fashion Group International. We got a chance to speak to Mr. Haley about his unique style.

How did your design style start out?

I started out slick, clean, and minimal. Part of this is because I often correct the architectural bones of the room first- raising the height of doorways for example. When I used to work with lower budget and younger clients, this left less money for the décor so I became well versed in how to decorate minimally. The major change is that I now integrate traditional elements in my design.

The Franklin Report called your work “a traditional look that reads modern.” How do you achieve this contrast?

My method is more clean and edited than normal traditionalism. I still keep all the major components of my decorating clean and neutral. Keep in mind- neutral isn’t necessarily black and white- but the colors and texture remain mostly the same throughout a room. This allows the eye to be lead towards certain key pieces in the room. Key pieces can be anything from artwork, to antiques, to views;

even people if a room is meant to host gatherings. Also, and not to knock traditionalism, but often something with a lot of patterns is not only busy but if a lot of money has been spent on fabrics and furniture sometimes other, more subtle, features such as stitching will suffer. By keeping certain things simple, I can demand the best workmanship and still be very cost effective.

Certainly Antiques play strongly into your design, how do you like to employ them?

One thing I often do is use a piece out of context. For example, an antique chest can go at the end of a bed for storage but it can also be employed as an extra seat in a living room. Many antique objects can be used as anything from a table surface to a lamp fixture. Sometimes when I’m antiquing I find something so good that I ask myself “how can I use this.” I think of the antiques and artwork in my design like the jewelry and bag on an otherwise plainly dressed woman. Her style is defined, and can be changed by a change of these pieces. Similarly, a room that’s otherwise minimal can pick up an art deco undertone with just a few art deco pieces; and this undertone can be replaced by other styles with simple replacements, without a whole change of outfit.

One of Todd Haley’s projects can be seen below

-Luke Thomas

A cultural past influencing modern design: an interview with Carlos Rodriguez

2007-07-10T21:18:00Z

“My goal as a designer is to try to improve all the time.”

Carlos Rodriguez, the founder of the boutique architecture firm Rodriguez Studio, took a break from his busy schedule to tell me a little bit about his inspiration, his approach to design, and some tidbits you want to know about this up and coming architect.

“My goal as a designer is to try to improve all the time.”

1) I see that you grew up in Puerto Rice. How did the culture there help define your style?

Well I lived in Puerto Rico until I was 5, then I moved to Kansas, then to Madrid, and finally back to PR for high school. So it is tough to say how my past has defined my style.

But my past has influenced me in different ways.

In Puerto Rico, everything is fairly modern and everyone there strives for modern, not traditional, designs. Materials also play an important role in Puerto Rican design. Living in Europe I got to experience a lot of great culture and old architecture; and seeing that gives you a sense of grounding. My exposure to old architecture has given me a reason not to design according to a particular style. There is something dishonest about copying a style.

2) When did you discover that you first had a knack for design?

I don’t think I even discovered that I have a knack for design. In high school a friend of mine invited me to go to an architecture program in Washington DC and I really enjoyed it. But I actually dropped out of architecture after my first years and to study economics and business. But then I decided that I wanted some sort of a lasting legacy that was meaningful to me, and I had to accomplish that through building and creating things.

3) Where you always attracted to modern design (or whatever else he said) or has your style changed over time?

As a firm, we definitely do modern work cause we do live in the 21st century. We are interested in a certain minimalism and using different materials. We definitely do not apply style to the building like a paintbrush. We don’t like to say we do X style or Y; we apply a certain style when it applies. For instance crown moldings used to make sense because of how buildings were made, now you don’t need them and you can just buy them at the store.

I could see, in the right setting applying a different, traditional design, for instance if it came up on the conceptual level. But my goal as a designer is to do something unexpected that will withstand the test of time.

5) What are some distinctive features that you include in your work?

We are a young firm, we are three and a half years old, and we don’t have any distinct features in our work. Our goal is to defy classification.

However, we especially value our use of materials. We play materials off of each other: Hard and soft, vivid and light. Using materials has to do with transitions; there is a dialogue between two distinct systems. Additionally, a lot of residences are in fact these systems that have to do with how two people interact, like husband and wife.

-Rebecca Bootin

Tastemaker: Danny Colvin of Colvin Design

2007-07-01T05:25:00Z

“I came to New York City in the early 80s as a professional dancer.” Says Danny Colvin, principal and founder of Colvin Design, who spent 10 years as a Dancer and choreographer before becoming an architect. “When my body started to give out I went back to architecture school.”

Back to architecture school? That’s quite a pirouette to make with a career. “Actually, it’s not as surprising as you would think.” says Mr. Colvin, ”Several of my architecture professors at Pratt had backgrounds in Dance.” Mr. Colvin goes on to observe that like in design, in dance “form, movement, and structure are all taken into consideration.”

Mr. Colvin’s open-minded approach carries into his design process. “I’ve done so many wildly different things.” And this isn’t just referring to the contrast between the Modern, Industrial, and Asian tone of his work in Calm, Warm, and Collected and the suburban traditional, cottage inspired Friendly Neighbors. No, the wildly different projects Mr. Colvin has worked on include a trapeze installation and an 11 million square foot programming project for a corporate merger.

Yet as an architect, Mr. Colvin has always favored residential design. “I spent years in corporate design when I started; doing residential work on the side.” Colvin Design was formally established in 2004, though even with total control over project selection, Mr. Colvin still pursues more than just home design, still dabbling and commercial and notably, graphic design.

One of his projects is a photography series of Christo and Jean Claude’s “The Gates” installation in central park. Each photograph is digitally manipulated to show different versions of the moment each shot was taken. He was inspired by the Akira Kurosawa film, “Rashomon,” which examines the effect of perspective on storytelling. The series, which was exhibited in Chelsea’s Lot Gallery, shows Mr. Colvin’s ability to pool several aesthetic methods into one final product.

With an eye that looks for aesthetic appeal in everything, Mr. Colvin knows the importance of respecting the myriad possibilities offered by perspective in home design. He says with each project “I do different things and reflect the personalities of my clients.” After all, people perceive things in different ways, but Mr. Colvin also knows how to bring out the potential of a site, and how to serve clients’ perceptions and tastes.

An example of this creative site work is seen in Calm, Warm, and Collected, where the exposed brick is actually the outer wall of adjacent building that was incorporated into the space. To maintain the spirit of the site, the brick remained completely uninterfered with. “We didn’t even clean it, there are still bits of string and metal that were there before,” says Mr. Colvin. Not just the brick but also each little scrap that was there before harkens back to the history of the building and the meatpacking district.

Open mindedness is at the core of Mr. Colvin’s philosophy, but his diverse history of artistic endeavors shows that he has the ability to bring out the best in every type of project. As an artistic thinker, however, he is not wholly controlled by circumstance. “If something is left completely up to me, I prefer the clean lines and large, beautiful surfaces of modern design.” admits Mr. Colvin.

In home design, Mr. Colvin has another, more concrete, signature. “I often use millwork raised above the floor and embedded in the drywall.” This propensity for insetting millwork allows for intricate detailing and clean lines to coexist.

Mr. Colvin brings immensely diverse artistic ability to a project. And certainly he commits every bit of this to designing each home. When asked what projects he liked working on best, he replied without hesitation, “It’s like trying to choose your favorite child.” All children of Danny Colvin’s design are created from one of the most varied and creative artistic gene pools in home design today.

-By Luke Thomas

In the top part of this picture, Mr. Colvin’s signature inlaid millwork is displayed.

A piece from Danny Colvin’s series, “Rashomon Gates”

Rick Bayless of Frontera Grill Shares his Musts & Lusts

2007-06-20T21:31:00Z

Renowned for introducing America to authentic Mexican cuisine, chef Rick Bayless knows his way around a kitchen. Here’s his recommendations to help you do the same…

Renowned for introducing America to authentic Mexican cuisine, chef Rick Bayless knows his way around a kitchen. His award-winning Chicago restaurants, Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, turn out regional Mexican fare using the freshest, most wholesome ingredients—many of which are grown in Rick’s own kitchen garden, where he carefully tends a colorful array of organically grown tomatoes, chiles, tomatillos, epazote, and more. As an active member of Chef’s Collaborative, a non-profit organization of chefs promoting environmentally sound agricultural practices, and Share Our Strength, the nation’s largest program dedicated to ending childhood hunger, Bayless practices what he preaches: that the spice of life is turning out delicious meals while respecting the earth and giving back to those in need.

Musts

Soapstone countertops —they don’t stain or burn
Large butcher-block surface so you can chop anywhere
A great chef’s knife
Professional range
Vita-Mix blender, KitchenAid mixer, Cuisinart food processor
Espresso maker
12-inch non-stick sauté pan

Lusts

Wood-burning fireplace with a rotisserie, oven, and grill
Commercial 90-second dishwasher
Built-in Kohler steamer next to the sink
Commercial salamander
Built-in Gaggenau deep fryer
A different set of dishes to suit each mood

ApartmentTherapy NY Design Meetup

2007-06-09T01:02:00Z

30elm presented yesterday at ApartmentTherapy’s New York Design Meetup. The Design Meetup brings together some of the brightest and most creative interior designer and product designers in the New York City area. It was a great experience to get feedback from this influential bunch.

Maxwel Gillingham-Ryan was our host, and also founder of Apartment Therapy, now one of the most popular and inﬂuential design weblogs in the country. We were pleased to learn of the comprehensive writeup he gave of us and of 30elm.

Nice Writeup from Mashable.com

2007-06-06T02:19:00Z

Kristen Nicole wrote a bit about 30elm this morning, which is always nice to see. It’s true, we have some of the most beautiful rooms and houses, and the best designers in the country.

It’s true, we have some of the most beautiful rooms and houses, and the best designers in the country. We’ll be adding many more in the coming months, and if you’re a top design professional be sure to signup for an account (it’s free) or email me for more info.

In regards to project planning tools, we want to make the whole process of home design easier, from conception to completion. What we have now if a good start, but make sure to stay tuned, there will be much to see in the next few months.

If you have some other ideas for things you’d like to see just email us. Soon we’ll get some forums setup so you can contact us that way as well.

-Matt

Daniel Boulud Shares his Musts & Lusts

2007-06-02T21:33:00Z

Though raised in a modest farmhouse in Lyons, renowned chef Daniel Boulud is no stranger to cutting-edge kitchens… Here are some of his kitchen essentials…

Though raised in a modest farmhouse in Lyons, renowned chef Daniel Boulud is no stranger to cutting-edge kitchens. Noted for fresh interpretations of simple, seasonal cuisine steeped in his French heritage, Daniel believes cooking should be a personal expression that awakens the senses and inspires the eye and palate. His philosophy of paying homage to the simplicity of highest-quality ingredients extends to kitchen design. “Daniel” headlines Boulud’s collection of four top New York City restaurants. Here are some of his kitchen essentials:

Musts

Plenty of work surface/counter space
Convection ovens large enough to accommodate full-size sheet pans
Quality marble countertops
Well-thought-out lighting for all work and storage areas, ideally on dimmers
A 6-burner stove with griddle and all three energy sources: wood, electric, and gas

Lusts

Best-quality custom cabinetry
Open gas rotisserie
Electrical equipment in its own storage area that slides out for easy access to appliances
Mini smoker
Wood-burning pizza oven
Plate warmer

NextNY

2007-03-05T18:40:00Z

As our company has taken shape over the last six months we have often needed help & support. One resource that has been invaluable is the great NextNY group. NextNY is a group of more then 600 pros in the internet & tech space here in NYC who communicate via a Google Group, and increasingly, through social outings, panel discussions, etc.

The New York tech scene (aka Silicon Alley) has had a bit of a renaissance in the last year or two. One example of this can be seen when Chris & I attended an workshop on financing & term sheets at the NYC offices of Wilson Sonsoni. They wrapped up this session by asking each branch (Austin, Chicago, Seattle, etc) if they had any questions. When the videofeed turned on for New York it was obvious that at least twice as many startup entrepreneurs were present in New York then any of the other locations- including Palo Alto. There is a lot of great energy in New York right now- and the NextNY group helps work as an outlet for it.

We recently held our own workshop with a group of NextNY members. Our purpose was to get feedback on the design & functionality of the site, ahead of buttoning it up for beta. The panel was at the offices of Sportsvite with 10 top tech-heads. A range of experience was represented in various areas of the web; design, usability, marketing, IT/tech, etc. We got much interesting (and occasionally quite opinionated) feedback on what people would want the site to do for them and how. While we were only planning on an hour or two, we ended up talking for more then four hours. Much of this input we’ll use as we make decisions on how to arrange the homepage, which functions to push and which to let fall back a little. There’ll be much to see very soon!

Here’s a picture from the event by one of the of the core members of NextNY- Charlie O’Donnell. He wrote his own wrap-up post about the day.

Server's Here

2007-02-02T02:15:00Z

Well the server has arrived and is currently being configured by some of the best minds in the Ruby-on-Rails world (who have coincidentally just started a Google Group on Rails deployment).

For our first server we went with a Dell with Dual processor, Dual-core AMD Opterons, 2 GB of ram and a hardware Raid 1. It ended up being chosen by taking the servers we could afford and then dividing the price by the estimated SpecWeb score for web hosting performance.

Here’s the requisite just out of the box pic- soon it will be among thousands of friends in a co-lo.

We have the hardware and we’re fast making progress on the development- although there is still much to do. We expect to have the first version of the site opened up for testing soon- so be sure to signup now. If there are no big problems we’ll quietly open up to the public a month or so later. Then we’ll be rolling along and ready for a bigger launch with all the requisite fanfare. The countdown is on!

Hosting and such

2007-01-20T19:22:00Z

Being a techie, I’m preoccupied (probably more than I need to be) about hosting, the platform and hardware that will power the site. I’m a big fan of the Webhostingtalk forums. There is a ton of really experienced web admins on the site. If you are at all interested in web hosting tech, it’s all too easy to spend a ton of time in WHT forums.

We’ve been using a VPS on Liquidweb for over a year for our email and ftp needs, and just recently switched off of it to Google Apps for your Domain for our email. So far we’ve found it to be rock solid- although the lack of IMAP can be annoying.

For web hosting, we have been using shared hosting for testing and are going to move to our own dedicated server in the next few weeks. We had looked at a few highly recommended dedicated server shops, including Softlayer, Steadfast and ServInt, but decided that it made more sense to buy our own server, and put it in a co-lo. It’s amazing what 2 grand can buy you now in a server – two dual core Xeon processors and a 250 GB Serial ATA hardware RAID 1. It’s still up in the air what flavor of Linux we will be using, although lately Debian has been thrown around a lot.

We are lucky in having development partners that are also on the cutting edge of high-performance Ruby on Rails web hosting. They are giving us a ton of advice and will also be doing much of the initial setup and management. If we haven’t mentioned it before we are proud to say that we are developing fully in Ruby on Rails with PostgreSQL for our database.

We are still in the decision making stage for much of this so feel free to email me with your advice and I’ll be sure to post an update once everything is up and running.

Daddy, what are you doing?

2007-01-16T15:45:00Z

My 3-year old son, Parker, and I spent a little time chatting about 30elm tonight. Our conversation went like this…

PARKER: Daddy, where were you?

ME: Daddy was upstairs working. Do you know what Daddy does?

PARKER: What?

ME: He is making a website.

PARKER: That’s funny.

ME: Do you know what the name of the website is?

PARKER: No

ME: It’s 30elm.

PARKER: That’s funny.

ME: No, really, it’s 30elm. Can you say 30elm?

PARKER: 30e-m-m

ME: Can you say, “Daddy is making a website named 30elm.”

PARKER: Daddy is making a website named 30e-m-m.

ME: Nice job! Give Daddy a high-five! (Parker gives me a high-five with soul.)

Now that Parker almost has the name down pat, maybe I can start talking to him about some of 30elm’s more interesting features between the YouTube videos and Pixar shorts we normally watch at bedtime.