Inspired Rooms by Devjani

13/05/2016

A bijou space overlooking the tallest building in the world undergoes a major overhaul to emerge as a perfect lair for a young doctor with a flair for fashion and adventure. What makes this pad even more special is that we managed to incorporate some major functional hacks in order to make home for what appears to be a serious fe**sh for designer clothes and shoes. Bollywood and clean lines make for strange bedfellows but the result is 'grown up glamour' for a city girl. Oh yes, there's also Costa the cat and Cadbury, the friendly spaniel who also call this space home.

A bijou flat in the Downtown area gets a complete overhaul to emerge as a young girl's dream domain complete with amazing functionality hacks.

11/12/2015

It does feel good to be in exalted company. Scroll to the second featured designer :)))

They dress homes of the rich and influential, giving it their characteristic spin. A look at projects by three international names in interior design.

27/05/2015

http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/about/news/a-new-film-for-kettles-yard/

In creating Kettle’s Yard, Jim Ede championed excellence, innovation and ambition in the visual arts, as well as a love of classical music performed in a domestic setting. His vision has created a unique space that fuses art with life. For many it is a place that has the rare power of changing how w…

31/03/2015

Better late than never is the excuse I am going to use for my sporadic posts. Much as I would like to populate this page with regular updates, it has been a crazy few months, and somehow this page took a backseat. Had lots of personal stuff to take care of PLUS a rather upmarket project had to be put on hold. Why? Because my client had this wild idea of installing a very fancy whirlpool bath in the middle of his living room, which led to a storm of issues (pun intended) for the architect and building owners alike. Whilst all this drama was engulfing everyone in a sea of emails and visits by various inspectors, the water proofing guys were gluing everything in their wake. My decorating, had to then, naturally, take a back seat and as a result, the furniture ordered by me now sits in various storage sites around Dubai. While Mr. Architect gets his act together, I spend a lot of time poring over swatches of colour and fabric for the home and while doing so, came across these scrumptious photos which I am sharing with you guys.

06/10/2014

Super excited to embark on a new project from the 15th of October. Belonging to a young man who has just splurged on a large three-bed in the Burj Khalifa, this will be a fun one to do. Having grown up in provincial obscurity, somewhere in Northern Italy, he is an artist in his spare time and a busy entrepreneur for the rest. The brief was succinct; utter abstraction. I showed him this picture and he was sold. The best part, total carte blanche.

03/01/2014

A very very happy New Year to you guys. Hope it is suffused with love, good health and beauty. Thought I would kickstart the New Year with a blog about a colour that has hitherto occupied a contentious position in interior design.

Pink has always been a hue associated with all things feminine. But today, I realised that used cleverly and subtly, you can add this colour to any surrounding to startling effect. Walking along Shoreditch High Street in East London today, I was drawn to a restaurant that had Venetian mirrors hanging on every available wall space with flashes of pink in the shape of Kartell lucite chairs. The tables were beautiful old oak and I could barely concentrate on my salad as I was so taken with my surroundings. Check out these pictures that have used the colour to great effect and see if any of them inspire you enough to want to use this colour in your own surroundings. You can add instant impact even if you are brave enough to inject just one object!

16/12/2013

Let's face it, Christmas decorations can be quite naff. All that clashing red and green, all those twinkling lights twisting around every upstanding structure or worse, gold and silver tinsel that wheedles its way into every cranny of the home making the Yuletide an aesthetic non-starter as far as I am concerned. Before I get pelted with a faux Christmas tree branch or worse, some gold sprayed red bauble, I am going to duck out of the way but not before posting a few pictures of some Christmas decorations that still retain the narrative but with a more stylish edge. The Scandinavian sensibility really lends itself to a more grown-up Christmas feel.

04/11/2013

Explore and shop the Autumn Winter 2013 collection at http://www.mulberry.com Mulberry Autumn Winter 2013 celebrates the beauty of the English countryside, i...

25/10/2013

It seems like a hundred years since I posted anything on this page but in reality it has been three and half months. Still, that's long enough. I have been busy setting up a couple of gardens, which is new territory for me but projects that I thoroughly enjoyed. Anyway without much ado, let me post some pics of a photo shoot conducted recently that encompasses all aspects of the a project in Palm Jumairah including the outdoor areas as well as a brand new reading room which was built from scratch.

12/07/2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYoNDh7D3pc

This video is a rare opportunity to view iconic modernist designer Irving Harper's paper sculptures in the inner sanctum of his home in Rye, NY. He is credited with sculpting some of the most revered designs of the 20th century.

http://www.hermanmiller.com/whydesign About Why Design At Herman Miller design is the language we use to ask questions and seek answers to the problems our c...

06/07/2013

ART INSPIRED BY FRIDA

Frida has been described as: "…one of history's grand divas…a tequila-slamming, dirty joke-telling smoker, bi-sexual that hobbled about her bohemian barrio in lavish indigenous dress and threw festive dinner parties for the likes of Leon Trotsky, poet Pablo Neruda, Nelson Rockefeller, and her on-again, off-again husband, muralist Diego Rivera." Today, more than half a century after her death, her paintings fetch more money than any other female artist. A visit to the Museo Frida Kahlo is like taking a step back in time. All of her personal effects are displayed throughout the house and everything seems to be just as she left it. One gets the feeling that she still lives there but has just briefly stepped out to allow you to tour her private sanctuary. She is gone now but her legacy will live on forever….
Her last diary entry read: "I hope the end is joyful - and I hope never to return - Frida.".

All images from Saatchi Online.

02/07/2013

Since I have been one of acclaimed designer Paola Navone’s biggest fans ever since I can remember and have been salivating over photographs of her home in Paris for some time now, I thought I would share some of the images. When it comes to design, this Italian’s aesthetic sensibility of the ancient, meeting midcentury modern, topped off with everything avant-garde converge in a uniquely vibrant way. I giggled loudly as a funny thought entered my head. Imagine, just imagine, if I had the gumption or the wherewithal to design a home like this one in Dubai, or even recreate mine somewhat on these lines, what would the reactions be? Let’s see, one set of people would drool over the home, and you know who you are; yet others would be like WTF, but we don’t really care as long as it’s not our home, then there is the set who THINK they know the finer nuances of modern design and feel the need to opine; but who (if their homes are anything to go by) should steer well clear of the subject. Then there would be the Richie Richs of Dubai, all thronging one particular area, the nexus of brand new moolah, renowned for its huge homes and excess- to- impress motto. The gathering pace of bad taste in some of these homesteads almost always keeps me in bed for a day or two. Although I do have friends there who have gone for a more restrained approach which does look lovely. The rest, (and this would be the majority) would be like: aww…. poor things, they have no money so they have had to tie their chairs up with rope, they couldn’t even afford matching seats and what!… no LLadro, no Fendi, and, horror of horrors, no copious amounts of silver. Thus ‘loser’ status bestowed, they walk over to their front doors past gilded cherubs spewing un-recycled water that Dubai can ill afford to waste. With this little tirade out of the way, I present to you Paola Navone.