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Archive Dec 07, 2015
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Elle Decor dropped some serious cash at Art Basel this year with their Modern Life Concept House, and if visibility was the goal, then the money was well spent.
Before we get into the finer details, let’s back up.
Art Basel is the country’s premiere arts festival and it storms through Miami each December. This year Patrick Cain Designs was invited out to display select works in the ever-growing design element to Art Basel, so I thought let’s spotlight some of the finer things for y’all.
Elle Decor, understanding the importance of design to the greater show and community doubled down with their two-floor apartment unit in top floors of of the largest building in Miami’s Wynwood District, which is without a doubt, their Arts District. You know, filled with hip graffiti but only livable if your have trust fund or your job is defending multinational corporate conglomerates against civil lawsuits. You know, the good guys…?
The new wave is contemporary. It is clean. It is stripped down.
Element 1
The couch.
Note its outer, almost basting stitch. It calls to mind a street fashion piece Bill Cunningham did a few years ago where he started seeing the uber hip in NY have basting lines and stitches on suit coats. In both cases the common element is stripped down, removing the garishness of prior trends.
Element 2
The room divider. Basic, clean cut plywood. Again, no frills, but it gets the job done. There’s the kitchen, here’s the living room. Unfortunately, and I’d love to know the designer’s logic – the panels don’t slide and there wasn’t any immediately obvious options or ways to customize the negative spaces.
Element 3
This lime hexagonal, animal skin-esque side table. No way would this have been acceptable just a hand few of years ago. But with contemporary design, comes contemporary colors. Look no further than Pantone’s colors of 2016… Rose Quarts (Pepto Bismol) and Serenity (Tylenol PM).
Element 4
Concrete. Here, we see two things: a concrete coffee table (cough cough get your own version here) and a hand-packed concrete planter. Both of which can be made right here in LA.
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