Tag: style

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Unique and dreamlike, a colonial style house in Alappuzha | Lifestyle Decor

Koshy and Roshni’s brand new house at Kozhuvallur near Venmani in Alappuzha district, Kerala, has become a head-turner in the locality for its splendid designer features and modern amenities. The design of this house has been inspired by the iconic house of noted architect G Sankar. Interestingly, the Habitat Group has designed and built this house.

The new house has been constructed just behind the couple’s ancestral home. The plot is a bit sloped from the road level. The structure is built by retaining the natural layout of the plot. This grand colonial structure that stands on a vast plot on the roadside easily attracts attention. Interestingly, the structure has unique looks on four sides, making it a design marvel.

The vast and elaborately designed landscape is the highlight of the exteriors. The long driveway is paved with tandoor stones and grass in alternate layers. A beautiful garden with shading trees and shiny pebbles is being readied on the two sides.


The structure has been built using interlocking bricks. Meanwhile, mud plastering is done in the interiors. The outer walls are painted using mud-textured paint that adds to the overall look of the house. The slanting roof on the front side has been paved with shingles. The rest of the roof is done in the filler slab technology where mud has been used for plastering. As this area receives amazing airflow, there are three more doors in this house that open to the interiors, besides the main door. The fabulous views of the garden and the landscape too could be enjoyed if these doors are opened.


Formal and family living areas, courtyard, dining, kitchen, three bedrooms and an upper living area have been arranged in this splendid abode. Unlike regular homes, a sit-out hasn’t been built as part of the elevation. The double-height courtyard that is decorated with warm-toned lights, attractive wall mirrors and customised furniture pieces is the highlight of the interiors. The interior spaces are designed in an open style to ensure amazing communication between the areas. Besides making the interiors look and feel vaster, this feature ensures cross ventilation too.


The inbuilt sitting spaces near the windows in the formal and family living areas is an interesting addition. The concealed storage spaces beneath these sitting areas are a fine example of a smart and space-efficient design. Meanwhile, the beautiful glassworks on the wall is an eye-catching feature. The Jaisalmer and Kota stones that are paved on the floor add to the rustic charm of the interiors.

The dining table set is minimal as the expatriate family is home only during the holidays. The simple marble tabletop has four chairs on one side and a bench on the other. There are doors in the dining area that opens to the yard. This brings lots of cool air and natural light into the interiors.


Roshni is an architect. So, she wanted a compact kitchen where everything could be arranged within the hand’s reach. A separate work area isn’t built as part of the kitchen to make maintenance easier.

The stairway leads to a living cum study area. A spectacular wall painting is the highlight of this area. From the upper floor, one could enjoy the mind-blowing views of the vast landscape. There are doors here that connect this floor to the terrace in the front and the area where the water tank has been installed in the back.

The vast and elaborately designed landscape is the highlight of the exteriors.


The lockdown was announced when the construction was progressing at an impressive pace. As a result, the works got stalled due to the unavailability of workers. Meanwhile, Koshy and Roshni oversaw the construction through video calls and messages. Their fathers often visited the site and kept them updated about the works.

The house looks like a classy resort that stands in the middle of greenery. The family is happy and proud that their brand-new house has become the talk of the town.


Project Facts

Location – Kozhuvalloor, Alappuzha

Owners – Koshy P Cherian, Roshni Mary

Plan and construction – Habitat Group

Year of construction – 2021

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Updated traditional style means a fresh, clean look

Decorating a home can imply lots of items: transforming your type, updating an artwork collection or seeking new colors and designs. What ever you do, Houston interior designer Janus Lazaris urges you to feel about type and purpose — and sustainability.

Lazaris, of Janus Design Team, was a speaker at a modern Access Layout function co-hosted by the Houston Style District and the Houston Chronicle. Her talk was on “From Classic to Transitional: Mixing Models to Make a Exceptional House.”

Whilst Houston’s architectural and design and style design has primarily been standard, shifts towards contemporary and present day models — or a hybrid referred to as “transitional” — are underway.

Here’s her consider on how to achieve it.

Classic v. Transitional

Layout design is in some cases tough to outline, but you know it when you see it. For instance, go to just about any home on the annual River Oaks Backyard garden Club Azalea Trail and it is likely to be traditional. You can count on plush furniture, wallpaper, lighting and artwork, but it can also be up to date to a additional modern design of conventional.

One particular of Lazaris’ clients favored conventional type, which integrated antiques, a herringbone pattern in wooden flooring, handcrafted Gracie wallpaper and hand-painted, gilded ceilings.

If you are finished with home furnishings and your close friends and family really don’t want it, think about consigning or donating it to regional nonprofits. Solutions incorporate:

Houston Household furniture Financial institution: 8220 Mosley and 295 Sawdust 713-842-9771 houstonfurniturebank.org

Habitat for Humanity ReStore: 6161 S. Loop East 713-643-1100 houstonhabitatrestore.com

Magpies and Peacocks: (Donate textiles) 908 Reside Oak 832-299-5609 magpiesandpeacocks.org

Blue Chook Circle: 615 W. Alabama 713-528-0470 thebluebirdcircle.com

The Guild Shop: 2009 Dunlavy 281-801-8055 theguildshop.org


The colour palette, finishes and detailing on furnishings and components all matter. Fewer ornamentation suggests you’re heading into transitional design. Feel of it as a fresher, cleaner consider on conventional.

Layers

When designers converse about levels, they are usually referring to the unique aspects in a place: rugs, household furniture, components, lights and artwork. Lazaris also details out that you can layer textures and kinds to make a place much more attention-grabbing.

When rooms are much more modern day or present day and minimalist, they can come to feel cold or stark. Layer in some rugs or include fabrics with additional texture — these types of as silk, wool or velvet — or use factors with cane or rattan panels, even seagrass window shades. Individuals layers of visual desire hold your home from feeling too “one take note.”

Mix it up

Maybe your dwelling and eating room are a lot more conventional. That doesn’t imply just about every room in the residence has to replicate that style. You can be extra present-day in a residence office environment, nostalgic in a visitor bed room, or whimsical in a craft area.

A person of Lazaris’ shoppers had extremely standard principal dwelling parts — and saved the enjoyable stuff for a craft room the place they like to be innovative. For her, Lazaris developed a mural of giant, multicolored florals that swirled about the place.

The very same goes for artwork. Change it up by placing a easy modern-day frame on a standard landscape or an embellished gilded body on an summary painting, Lazaris stated.

No matter what you do, though, make absolutely sure you have some original artwork in your property. If you’re heading to invest $500 on a piece of production artwork, use that revenue to have a regional artist paint some thing just for you, she stated.

Handle shortcomings

Lazaris noted that many earlier and new shoppers want to freshen up their households for the duration of the pandemic. They are home more and can see their home’s shortcomings. Or maybe they just know they need their properties to aid with new matters: they will need a residence workplace, a location to residence college, a purposeful gymnasium and, possibly, a cocktail bar in which they can chill out at the end of the working day.

One customer needed a property business and made use of a desk that her grandfather brought when he immigrated to the United States. “I can not imagine of a nicer way to commit your day than performing from this table,” Lazaris stated.

Keep what you like

Think of your residence as a journey to the beach, Lazaris explained. Do you dress in the swimsuit that tends to make you truly feel cute or the one particular that will make you truly feel unwanted fat? The solution is uncomplicated.

Maintain the factors that you like and the factors that make you come to feel excellent. The issues that don’t make you really feel fantastic? Get rid of them and really do not appear again.

So if you want to hold your grandmother’s desk or a piece of artwork you bought on your travels but you really do not know how to make it function, talk to a qualified for aid.

Be mindful of the ecosystem

For all of the new items Lazaris assists her shoppers purchase, some home furnishings receives thrown absent. As a substitute of sending items to a landfill, think about donating them to charity or sending them to a consignment shop.

“Some of your home furnishings will be with you for a extremely long time. If it has excellent structure, you can reupholster it or use it in a unique place,” Lazaris claimed. “I’m significant on sustainability. If your youngsters really don’t want your china cabinet, you can upcycle it. Paint it with significant-gloss paint and set new hardware on it.”

diane.cowen@chron.com

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A new start after 60: ‘I started sketching at 72 – and graduated with a fine art degree at 96’ | Life and style

Archie White states he would like to retire, but I’m not confident I believe that him. This summer time he built headlines when he graduated with a fine art degree from East Sussex College or university. He was 96 a long time and 56 days aged – a couple months short of environment a new world document for the oldest graduate.

Graduation was only the beginning. “I’m really hectic all the time,” he states. A previous solicitor, he however does consultancy function on the aspect and is “painting furiously to fulfill the calls for of studios”. On leading of that, he is in the process of co-founding a charity, GradAid, with East Sussex Higher education.

As a pupil, White attended a degree display where he purchased “a pleasant piece of pottery”. Having said that, when he turned it above to glimpse underneath, he was shocked to discover there had been no marks built by the artist on the foundation – “no identify or date” – for anyone wishing to acquire much more. Graduates have been remaining to depart the nurturing surroundings of the school with out considerably forward aid or “notion of professional support … [Many students] do not have house for a studio, no funds to use or hire 1.” Without the need of aid, he suggests, “they are dropped, to the detriment of society … We are cruel not to consider of their futures.”

To that finish, he has negotiated with East Sussex School to make studio space and machines out there to graduates for a several decades. Not anyone is fortuitous adequate to have a spare bedroom to convert into an artwork studio, as White has carried out in his flat in Rye, close to the south coastline. He likes to sit and paint what he sees by means of the window – “the river, the people passing”. His crimson trousers are so splattered with oil paint that they are multicoloured.

Archie White’s flat is crammed with paints, brushes and canvases.
Archie White’s flat is crammed with paints, brushes and canvases. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

It does not audio a million miles absent from his earliest inventive ventures: as a teen he went on forays into the Devon countryside with his more mature sister, Kitty – despite the fact that he employed watercolour paints then. Off they would go for the day – to the area reservoir, its slopes a carpet of pink orchids in spring, or to Measures bridge above the river Dart (White’s favourite), or to Sir Francis Drake’s property – with their pochade containers of paints and collapsible stools. “Everywhere we went was pretty.”

Nonetheless for a long time, though White labored as a solicitor, artwork slipped out of his lifestyle. He subsequent picked up a sketchbook, age 72, soon after he marketed his exercise, when he and his late wife Joan “decided to splurge our capital and tour the world”. On their travels, he sketched or took pictures – like of the Drake Passage, the system of water at the southern tip of Chile, which will have to have reminded him of individuals watercolour expeditions with Kitty.

So why did he return to artwork immediately after five a long time? “Simply simply because I had never ever misplaced it,” he says. “The artwork I did in my youth ought to have been a robust memory which motivated me, without the need of my recognising the lead to.” Kitty, a dress and stage designer, died prior to White took up the brushes once more. “She by no means knew I was painting,” he states. “That’s a curious imagined.”

Now, two galleries in East Sussex would like to market White’s get the job done. “I really feel that each canvas is an encounter on the street to professionalism,” he says. But has a degree in fine artwork created a difference to him? “I suppose it signifies that I have accomplished something,” he says. “I really don’t assume that the duty of a university is to transform persons. Unless it’s to broaden their outlook or knowledge.”

Presumably, founding GradAid is evidence of that. “But the extra you find out, undoubtedly the increased your emotion of your very own insignificance.”

White states that his “has been a pretty life”, and I speculate what more he would like to do, past placing up the charity. “I do not know what I want, but I know that I will need a whole lot far more time.”