Olivia's bedroom.

The staircase’s open treads and slim, cable railing avoid blocking sight lines outside. A modest material palette, including a concrete floor, wood cabinetry, and charcoal laminate counters, cedes to the views.

Wood sculptor Silvia Song's studio is located in her former garage in Berkeley, California.

Song waxes poetic about her medium. "Wood is constantly in flux, even when it has been felled," she says. "It is a breathing material. It expands and contracts, depending on its environment. I work with wood because it primordial to me. It feels like an intuitive process to study wood. I need to understand and work with it and allow it to become what it wants to be." The round cole jaw and chucks she uses on her lathe hang on a wall in her studio.

A dramatic departure from your typical cabin on the lake, this unique retreat adds shades of black to a tiny island awash with local color. A modern brick outdoor fireplace, tall and slim, is flanked by Philippe Starck’s outdoor chairs for Kartell for cozy fireside seating.

A slim, open-tread staircase contributes to the lightness of the gallery.

Slim, white, brise soleil-like beams run along the length of the ceiling in the mid-section of the apartment.

Song exhibited these wood vessels at Heath Ceramics. "I first started with the very basic form, which is a bowl," Song says. "While it may seem pretty simple, I feel that it took me months to understand the technical aspects of working with wood and the lathe. After a year of turning, 500 or so bowls and pieces later, I am bit more comfortable but I am many years away from fully understanding the craft."

Song's inspirations include Dieter Rams, Isamu Noguchi, Buckminster Fuller, and Peter Zumthor ("The use of materials in each of his buildings is ethereal," she says). Books about the icons rest on her studio's shelves, along with an armada of chisels, clamps, and hammers.

She produces everything herself, by hand, without any assistants in her studio. For a bowl, she typically starts with a block of wood, inspects it for cracks and knots, trims it down to size on a bandsaw or chainsaw, and then cuts it into a round blank that gets mounted onto a lathe—a tool which rotates an object on an axis. She shapes exterior of the bowl, sands the exterior, then mounts it onto a chuck to turn the inside using a bowl gouge. After mounting the bowl onto a cole jaw to remove the tenon (a stump of the wood that's used to mount the bowl to the chuck), Song then applies oil and wax to the finished piece. She typically uses sugar maple and claro walnut, two woods that are readily available. "Sugar maple is quite dense and the grains are very consistent whereas Walnut is much more porous," she describes.

Song collaborated with natural dyer Kristine Vejar on a line of indigo-dyed maple bowls for March. "She is an expert natural dyer, a teacher and an artist who's received numerous accolades for her work," she says. "Vejar spent some time as a participatory artist in the Berkeley Art Museum's The Possible exhibit. I had not worked with traditional Japanese indigo dying before but have had some curiosity to dying wood with a natural dye, instead of chemical dyes."

Slim, full-height Milgard windows bring in light, yet allow for privacy between the main house and the Granny Pad.

Mouser Cabinetry’s textured laminate flat-front doors were used throughout. The slim, black hardware is Europa by Top Knobs.

By reconfiguring the stairs as a switchback and locating it in the middle section of the house, the architects could fit a slim, tall bathroom between the switchback and the main bedroom.

Sitting on a 24-foot-wide plot, the house is uncharacteristically slim. With a width of 18 feet, it is the same size as a single-wide mobile home.

In a guest bedroom, the “Olivia” pendant from West Elm.

Vintage brain print in Irvine Slim, boat photo via Unsplash in Bolton, “Deep Dive” by Samantha French and “Welcome to the City of Champions” by Playtype via The Poster Club in Mercer Slim; Source: Framebridge/Parachute

Song's walnut nesting bowls are available from Kaufman Mercantile.

At first, Oil/Lumber solely produced furniture. Drawing from slim, minimalistic Japanese silhouettes, the white oak dining table pairs well with the hardwood stool, which can also be used as a side table.

Jonathan+Olivia Transplanted from the original Vancouver location, this designer clothing boutique brings with it an air of sophistication to the Ossington strip. Local designers like Horses Atelier share space with international labels such as Isabel Marant, Helmut Lang, and Rag & Bone.

If letting your bed linens drape onto the floor or the platform bed frame just isn’t your style, keep your bedroom feeling sharp and tidy by tucking your sheets under the mattress and removing any extra blankets or fluffy comforters. A slim, white bed frame such as this one feels skeletal enough to still convey airiness.

To add more space to her petite Florence apartment originally designed by Roberto Monsani, architect Silvia Allori incorporated fold-down furniture and storage into the white laminate walls that also support bookshelves.

A sliver of a creation by textile designer Bridie Ross Mowat.

The slim, steel staircase is designed to allow maximum light and sight-lines.

The Slim Backpack (shown here in Mid Grey) is a slim, stylish way to carry. bellroy.com/pro...

The new structural support at the island is a slim intervention that enabled the firm to open up the kitchen to the rest of the home.

The slim, black frame on the Marvin windows in the bedroom are visually unobtrusive and keep the focus on the view.

Joaquin Altamirano and Silvia Martín worked with Daniel Bergman Vázquez of Estudio Untercio to create an open-plan oasis in an apartment building in central Madrid. Estudio Untercio designed the medium-density fiberboard cupboards, which are coated with lacquer paint matching the ceramic-porcelain countertops. The tubular hood above the island is by Teka.

Mateo and Olivia lounge in the living room that doubles as a screening room.

This bottle opener designed by Pat Kim is a slim, portable instrument made of solid titanium.

#concrete #modern #architecture #modernarchitecture #glass #angular #ramp #openair #exterior #Lima #Peru

Tall, yet slim, our Monarch lamp adds beauty and function to your table.

Amanemu in Ise-Shima, Japan

Tall and slim, Barlow has a hexagonal stem with an exposed channel that holds the fabric-wrapped cord.

The home’s north face is an abstract alabaster box with just a sliver to provide light into the interiors.

In 8-year-old Olivia's room, minimalist bookshelves and a comfy hideaway make for the perfect retreat.