This week's Home & Garden section of The New York Times celebrates do-it-yourself design on a strict budget &mdash inspiration from college students. These are great spaces on tiny budgets that are the resuly of a blend of scavenging, creative reuse, and savvy shopping. We've broken the ten examples into three posts and this first one focuses on lighting and color...
Maxwell Tielman, (his apartment is at the top, left) a student at FIT uses intense color to transform street finds, clearance furniture and his once-white Brooklyn apartment: Anything But White.
Sarah Lupton and Carolyn McDaniel, roommates at Princeton, transformed their dorm room with color: Antidote to a Grungy Beige Dorm Room.
Tyler Velten, an architecture student at Yale, transformed his small New Haven apartment with his experiments in lighting — including the puffy chandelier (top, right) he made with plastic grocery bags:
Lighting Changes Everything.
All part of a larger story — Thinking Like a Student and a slideshow.
Pics: Phil Mansfield, Sara D. Davis
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
The plastic bag lamp I don't think it works. It looks like an enormous cocoon for a giant moth,
view hrhprincessfiona's profile
Hmmm. I was thinking it looks like a bloody wedding dress.
view Anna at D16's profile
The bag lamp was the first thing I noticed too. I'm ambivalent... it's fabulous lateral thinking but it makes me sick about the things we waste as a society. (Maybe that's the point?) I also wonder if it's a fire hazard. Mostly, though, I want to see what it looks like lit up! (Er, it does, doesn't it?)
The hanging lamps are entertaining, too.
view whytephoenix's profile
whytephoenix,
in the article the guy says he has 5 compact flourescents in wire balls, so the bags are touching the wire and not the bulbs. He says it gives a pink glow when it's lit up because the bags have red string lining.
view UWSretreat's profile
Much awesome stuff on that slideshow. I need to paint my scruffy side table like that cute blue one.
view whytephoenix's profile
I'd be worried the plastic bag lamp would catch on fire - isn't it a hazard somehow?
tabitha from http://www.fromsingletomarried.com
view Tabitha (From Single to Married)'s profile
eek. that plastic bag lamp would bug the hell out of me. it's so entrusive. and it would be a big dust trap.
view dM's profile
I agree with dM- that's exactly what I think about when I see some of the decor featured on AT, fabulous they might be. Don't these people have any dust in their homes?? *is jealous*
view yukirei's profile
I thought the lamp were a lot of bath sponges sewn together, but then it got even creepier.
view La loca's profile
This NYTimes article is really inspiring. Well executed (at least as seen from afar in the pics) and thoughtful ideas with amazing ingenuity and creative re-use (by students BTW).
view reb's profile
I'm a student, and I'm not that impressed.
view CGfromMN's profile
OMDog, Anna: I thought the EXACT SAME THING! eep!
view Dusa's profile
Wow, so much inspiring creativity! I love the plastic bag chandelier (which reminds me of some of the more avant garde pieces I've seen at high-end shops like Liberty of London, somehow), and the yellow walls, and that loft bed is fantastic! Lovely to see beauty in everyday, or cast-off objects. (Also makes me grateful that my bathrooms and kitchen are well seperated! Eek!)
view paintitbright's profile
that plastic bag lamp, while creative, would give me nightmares. and allergies.
view formosagirl's profile
I'm sorry, my first thought when I saw it was dirty panty liners.
view Snugglitas's profile