Panama: A Personal Photo Journal

I recently had the opportunity to travel to Panama for professional and personal fulfillment; it was an unforgettable experience. Everywhere we looked we were surrounded by ocean and lush mountains, although as a designer my eye kept returning to the built environment. In Panama City, the built environment is a mixture of old and new, often right next to each other, often backdropping one another. It was difficult to take a snapshot without the mixture in the viewfinder.

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The Back to School Issue

At SweisKloss we understand the importance of designing for children’s needs. And having school-aged children reminds me of this importance every day. Simply put, kids need a place to focus, a place to unwind, a place for storage and a place to sleep.

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Scarcity

I have been listening to a great NPR podcast series lately, Hidden Brain with Shankar Vedantam, and the latest episode really struck a cord with me. The “You 2.0: Tunnel Vision” episode about the psychological phenomenon of scarcity is about how our brains react to scarcity. The examples in the episode center around poverty and the scarcity of money, hunger due to a scarcity of food, and loneliness. My thoughts went to a recent temporary experience of scarcity in which my brain behaved just as the podcast had illustrated.

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5 Great Lounge Chairs

During the dog days of summer, nothing sounds better than relaxing with a good book and a cold drink. So we thought we’d show you 5 great lounge chairs to unwind in at the end of the day.

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To AC or Not to AC…

I write this on what is forecasted to be the hottest day of the summer so far this year. Our office, in a beautiful old building near the beach in Santa Monica, has a lot of windows but no air conditioning. Every summer we play a game of window and door roulette, opening some, closing others, to get the right balance of cool ocean air cross breezes. But when there is no breeze, well, we have no choice but to take frequent breaks to get popsicles!

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Barkitecture

I often say that I wish I could live the life of my dog. She is spoiled. She wants for nothing. Except for maybe a custom doghome. Creatively called “Barkitecture”, there are many clever doghouse designs out there, there is even a book by the same name published in 1999 by Fred Albert. As a design + construct professional, I see the design possibilities in this genre are endless. Just a few moments perusing the Internet yields a dizzying variety of barkitecture homes, and of Barkitecture events. Many communities have doghouse design competitions as fundraisers for their local shelters.

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5 Great Outdoor Features

Ah summertime and spending it in the great outdoors. Your own outdoors! At SweisKloss we love to design + construct these 5 outdoor elements into our client’s projects. A pergola with a retractable sun shade. The pergola extends the living space from the indoors to the outdoors; the sun shade allows the pergola to be a functional and enjoyable space in the Southern California climate.

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Small Town Feel

It surprises a lot of people to learn that Santa Monica is a city unto itself. Pushed up against the Pacific Ocean by Los Angeles on three sides, it is easy to think of Santa Monica as a neighborhood of the metropolis of LA. But step into the City of Santa Monica and you immediately get the vibe not of a part of the second largest city in the country, but of a small town. The small town feel is most apparent during the summer when everyone is out and about, and especially at the Main Street Fourth of July Parade. Even those who “don’t go out much” will run into dozens of people they know at the parade.

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Toes in the Sand

The kids are out of school, the air is warm, the sun is up longer and the sandals have come out of storage… it’s Summertime!! Summer feels like the season of energy, of excitement, of freedom; somehow it feels just a little more liberating than the other 3 seasons. Maybe it is because we spend more time outdoors during the summer, and the outdoors feels expansive, the outdoors gives us more room to breathe and to move our bodies. 

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Sum of its parts

When you imagine your brand new or newly renovated space what does it contain? Walls, ceilings, windows, stairs, doors, drywall, paint, baseboard, doorstops, subfloor, railings... OK, I am willing to bet that you are not picturing the drywall, but you are instead imagining the overall feeling of the space. It is the interaction of the design elements, like the cabinetry, the tile, the sun-drenched hardwood floors, and the view to the outdoors from a couch that make you feel like you want to be in that space.

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5 Great Light Fixtures

Limiting a selection of really great light fixtures to five is really difficult! Just like a lot of design elements, what fixture we like depends upon the style of the space, the location of the fixture, the effect we wish to create, etc. But there are some fixtures that transcend “it depends.” One is this funky bedside wall fixture that is simple yet highly functional.

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Scholarship Season

This has been another successful scholarship season for the Kiwanis Club of Santa Monica. Handing out over $46,000 worth of academic, music and arts scholarships to our high achieving local students is always our favorite activity of the year.

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Closets, Closets, Closets!

Whether custom made or prefabricated, walk-in or along a wall, it can’t be denied that closets are a necessity. Closets are for storing items we use every day, items we won’t pull out until the next season, and items we just as soon forget we have. A home renovation is a great time to reevaluate your closet needs. We thought we’d help by listing a few of our suggestions for a closet re-design.

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5 Great Coffee Tables

The coffee table. A piece of furniture that is both useful and decorative, and whether for coffee or cocktails, when missing makes the space feel almost awkward. Picture your own living room without a coffee table, feels weird right? In honor of this ubiquitous furniture accessory, we thought we’d share five that have caught our eye. 

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Never Just a Wall

Our design + construct team knows a wall is never just a wall. Whether residential or commercial, we create design elements that provide shade, afford privacy and dial down the volume outside. They’re art pieces that stoke the imagination. I love building walls.

Take our work for DCG. In 2013, the IT services company challenged us to transform a 2,000-square-foot, empty store into a functional office space.

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Happy Earth Week

Although I would like to believe the expression, “Everyday is Earth Day”, until it is, we can at least go as far as wishing you a Happy Earth Week. In celebration of Earth Week here at SweisKloss, we have started office composting. Most of us either bring lunch to the office or order in and eat here together, or even make lunch here.

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Green Spring Cleaning

If you are jumping on the tidying-up movement made popular by Marie Kondo’s “Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” and motivated by the season to do some “spring cleaning,” we thought we’d share some of our favorite recipes for green cleaning. These solutions are easy to make, easier on the skin and the airways than commercial cleaners, and they contain no dyes that can discolor your furniture and fixtures. If you don’t love the odor of any of these ingredients, you don’t have to bear it long because the odor dissipates quickly.

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The Center of the Home Universe

The kitchen. Intended to be a place to prepare food, the kitchen has metamorphosed into a place for many activities, in addition to preparing food, and sometimes not even used for food prep at all (some of my New York City friends store sweaters in their kitchen cabinets and shoes in the oven!). As a place to cook, bake, eat, entertain (and store items), the kitchen is the room that all others in the house seem to revolve around spiritually and in the case of an open plan home, physically.

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Depends on How you Define Necessary   

In a bathroom design, unarguably a toilet, sink, bathing ability, mirror and privacy are what we think of when we consider what is necessary in the design. There are other design element options that are perhaps not “necessary” but, arguably, really nice to have.

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