Bow & Truss North Hollywood: Modern design, to go

Bow & Truss, the new North Hollywood restaurant and lounge crafted from what had been an auto body garage, may not sound like the kind of place with design elements that could translate to a residential environment. But as envisioned by Beth Holden, principal of the West Hollywood architecture studio New Theme, in collaboration with her client, Morgan Margolis of Knitting Factory Entertainment, the updated 1930s building will indeed hold some design solutions with high visual impact that diners just might bring home.

The restaurant, scheduled to have its grand opening Friday, has a stunning showpiece: a richly patterned bar that's actually just formaldehyde-free medium density fiberboard, or MDF, finished with paint that’s low in volatile organic compounds. The pattern, inspired by the jali screenwork common in Islamic design, was cut with a router by hand, then set on sanded plexiglass backed with dimmable LEDs. This particular pattern may be intricate, but the concept and simple materials could be deployed as an accent wall, adding ambient light to a stairwell or entryway. At Bow & Truss, the geometric cuts of the MDF are meant to blend with the restaurant's Spanish bent and with Southern California's architectural traditions.

"We studied different patterns and abstracted it to look a little more modern,” Holden said. “We wanted it to have that cross-referencing."

Summer style: Outdoor chairs that strike a chord

We're calling them airy chairs: outdoor seats whose wire or cord construction makes for an easy, breezy sensibility — the it look of summer, light in silhouette but not on style. We've chosen a sampling of chairs in a range of prices. Higher-end designs tend to have more refinements: Ligne Roset’s Fifty chair and ottoman, pictured here, has a steel frame that has been treated to protect against corrosion and lacquered in polyester so it’s cool to touch (no sear marks on thighs, thank you very much). Nearly 1,150 feet of UV-resistant polypropylene rope are strung into a cool silhouette that  cocoons you in comfort. The Ligne Roset chair retails for $1,435, the ottoman for $525, but we have some other picks that are as much a comfort to your wallet as they are to your back and feet.

Palisades house aims to make modern feel warm

Designer Jill Wolff narrates a pictorial tour of Vision House Los Angeles, a luxury demonstration home in Pacific Palisades, in this latest installment of Pro Portfolio. The occasional feature looks at a recently built, remodeled or redecorated home with commentary from the designer.

Project: Green demonstration home dubbed Vision House Los Angeles.

Interior designer: Jill Wolff, Jill Wolff Interior Design, Calabasas. Architects: KAA Design, Culver City, and P2 Design, Newport Beach. Builder: Structure Home in collaboration with Green Builder Media.

Designer's description: Normally, I work collaboratively with clients, but because this is a spec house, I had to imagine a family with a son about to leave for college and a younger daughter. I want people who view this house to come away with a feeling of surprise about its comfort, coziness and warmth. I want them to see that sustainable design really can be comfortable, and that if they’re clever, they can use their creativity to make their own home more sustainable.

Dwell on Design 2012: Modern fun this weekend

It's time to play: Dwell on Design, the annual expo of furniture, fixtures and finishes for the modern home and garden, is running this weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Staff writer Lisa Boone and producer Dianne de Guzman walked the convention floor on Friday to get some early impressions.

They found Misha Tome sliding down the Cuba playhouse by Play Modern, above. The modular system consists of cubes that can be configured in different ways. Indoor models are made from Baltic birch plywood with a clear finish, and outdoor models are made from marine-grade plywood with a dark finish.

MORE PICKS: Dwell on Design 2012

Above right: Lori Erenberg, left, and Saehee Simmons looked at color samples for Kohler's new sinks in a range of bold hues.

Below right: The BeSpoke Creative console throws some curves, with a sleek white exterior complemented by maple and birch plywood interior.

Malibu modern: New house makes most of every inch, every view

You could admire the ocean view from the second-floor deck — coastal bluffs covered with wind-sculpted cypress trees to your right, pretty Point Dume off in the distance to your left, 10 miles of prime Malibu beach in between.

Or you could admire the architecture from the street below, looking up at a first floor that juts out from a cliff and hovers over nothingness.

Or you could contemplate the house from the front, where the weathered redwood siding turns out to be planks recycled from olive and pickle tanks.

You could do all of that, but then you might miss part of what makes this house special. This dream of a retreat — set along exclusive Broad Beach, among the mansions that Steven Spielberg, Robert Redford, Goldie Hawn and Steve Levitan have called home — holds smart design ideas that could translate to houses that are miles and miles away, in geography, budget or style.

PANORAMAS: Interactive 360-degree images from inside this house

After all, on paper this house is merely 1,700 square feet of living space: open kitchen and living room, powder room, small office and guest bedroom with bath on the first floor, master suite on the second. That's it.

But as conceived by the young Los Angeles firm W+D, this Malibu house plays out as a case study in the efficient use of space. Wedged next to noisy Pacific Coast Highway and set snugly between neighbors, the house also is inspiration for anyone trying to balance a love of the outdoors with the need for quiet and privacy.

Bubbletecture: Step inside CasaBubble and Airclad inflatables

A pair of exhibitors at next weekend's Dwell on Design show will have a new take on living in a bubble. AirClad, a British company that makes an inflatable pool house, and CasaBubble, a California firm that designs pneumatic backyard guest rooms, are trying to capitalize on the outdoor-living and small-space trends with structures built using little more than lightweight PVC and air.

“The idea was to be able to spend the night under the starry sky as comfortably as in a hotel bedroom,” said Frederic Richard, a native of France who splits his time between Paris and Santa Ynez, where he began distributing CasaBubble in April.

CasaBubble, pictured at right, is a sphere that holds its shape with air blown by quiet turbines, which use less than 100 watts of electricity per hour to run — roughly the equivalent of a light bulb. The sphere is fully pressurized in as little as 15 minutes, and the air inside is refreshed as often as seven times per hour, preventing humidity and condensation from clouding the bubble. The design has two doors, but only one can be open at a time or the structure will collapse.

CasaBubble was designed by Frenchman Pierre-Stephane Dumas and is manufactured in France. The portable living space is designed to be used as an outdoor guest room, a dining room, a children's play area or a pop-up shelter at the beach. It's available in 30 colors and five sizes, weighing 53 to 190 pounds.

Dwell on Design modern home tours begin Saturday

Tickets are still available for Dwell on Design modern home tours this weekend, in advance of the annual design exhibition June 22 to 24 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The self-guided East Side Modern Home Tour this Saturday includes Simon Storey's 960-square-foot Eel's Nest, shown above and featured by L.A. at Home earlier this year, and designer-developer Jerome Pelayo's sustainable Sunia Home, both in Echo Park. Farther east, the tour will include OKB Architecture + Construction's colorful addition in Pasadena, shown at right, as well as a Buff, Straub and Hensman home in San Marino and Fer Studio's modern update of a 1980s La Cañada Flintridge residence, which we featured back in 2009. 

A Prefab Plus Home Tour on Sunday will highlight a pair of prefabricated town houses designed by Whitney Sanders, Linda Taalman's Back Yard Plug-in Module, a hybrid prefabricated structure using Blue Sky Building Systems in Santa Monica, a Ray Kappe-designed LivingHome in Santa Monica and a Venice residence by Marmol Radziner Prefab. (A West Side Home Tour on June 24 is sold out.). Homes will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; tickets are $85 per tour.

Los Angeles freeways inspire Jeni Tu's curvy new Linea chair

Few would revel in sitting in gridlock a single moment more than necessary, but Jeni Tu's new Linea chair just might bring a little appreciation for L.A.'s freeways. Introduced recently at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York, the Linea chair takes its inspiration from aerial views of L.A.’s freeway system.

“I was interested in exploring how a continuous 2-D strip of material can become a 3-D form," Tu said, which then led to thoughts about how freeways curve and twist over and under themselves.

Tu, 32, grew up in San Diego, studied literature at Harvard and began pursuing a career in design three years ago. Her Linea is made of powder-coated steel topped with a Wilsonart walnut laminate. The chair’s surprise pop of cherry red may remind some of Christian Louboutin's signature red undersoles. For Tu, it references the endless ribbon of freeway taillights.

Cappellini hits sweet spot with Candy table, Lace lamp

No, it's not some Don Draper-devised take on Rodin's "The Thinker" staged with midcentury modern accent tables. This is Giulio Cappellini, artistic director of Cappellini, the Italian furniture manufacturer known for more than 30 years for discovering talent and producing works by designers such as Jasper Morrison, Marcel Wanders and the Bouroullec and Campana brothers.

For those who equate high design with out-of-reach prices, here's a pleasant surprise: The new Candy table, pictured here with Cappellini, is set to land in the U.S. this fall with a price around $300. 

On a recent visit to Los Angeles, the dapper Cappellini, 54, sat down with L.A. at Home and answered some questions about his life, his work, the current state of design and the surprising material used for that Candy table.

Bend's Geometric Trophy Heads: cool minus the kill

Hunting-lodge taxidermy may have outstayed its welcome as the ironic home accessory of the last few years, but at least people looking for a different animal-inspired design to hang on the wall have a new option — no rifle required.

Marina del Rey-based design firm Bend just introduced geometric wire animal heads at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York. The collection, called Geometric Trophy Heads, is made of powder-coated iron. No stuffed fur, no glazed eyes, just the animal kingdom evoked with clean and simple lines. At least they look simple. “They're actually created with bends and angles that are based on complex formulas,” Bend founder Gaurav Nanda said.