our year in review...

2010 has been a fantastic year for us! We started it off with a foray toward establishing our online identity, and are finishing it off with anticipating the official launch of our company website.

Over the last twelve months, we…

- started our company Facebook page.

   + http://www.facebook.com/projectdome

- began working with a photographer to build content for our forthcoming website.

   + http://www.flickr.com/photos/wzrdry

- started collaborating with fellow designer Lori Steeves to enrich our Kitchen Planning service.

   + http://simplyhomedecorating.com

- attended Kimberley Seldon's Business of Design course for design professionals.

   + http://kimberleyseldon.com

- started this blog.

- joined Twitter.

   + http://www.twitter.com/projectdome

- took Kim Page Gluckie's webinars "How to Tweet" and "How to Blog". …Then actually started using Twitter!

   + http://www.mpoweredmarketing.com

- revised and streamlined our Kitchen Planning Services.

- completed our contract and assembled our renovation dream team.

- expanded our services to include residential interior renovation project management.

- attended talks, seminars, and events with a view to gaining connections and insight within our industry.

photo credit: + http://blackbelo.blogspot.com/

- did a photoshoot to put the last touches on our forthcoming website.

photo credit: + http://www.flickr.com/photos/wzrdry

This year has not been without its personal excitements, too. Good friends, travel, a wedding, and the occasional sauna were just some of the features of 2010. From the Winter Olympics to the Vancouver International Film Festival, there were lots of sites to see and things to do. We can't say this year was free of struggles and challenges, but were are making it a priority to learn from it all - good and bad - to make 2011 even better.

photo credit: + http://www.ameris.ca/

We hope 2010 was a banner year for you and that you have a million times the success in the coming 12 months. Wishing you a truly Happy New Year from the Dome Team!

All the best!

daily inspiration...

Very inspiring indeed.
+ http://abduzeedo.com/daily-inspiration-697

Favourites:

See you in a few days when we post a DOME Yearbook reviewing the highlights of the past 12 months...

Happy Holidays,
Lisa (for the Dome Design Team)

baby steps...

Proudly hit 100 followers on Twitter today. If all goes well, we'll look back on this blog post a year from now and say to ourselves "We thought THAT was exciting? Little did we know where we'd be today..."

Am I putting too much pressure on us? Nah. Even if we're just at 101 this time next year, it's all moving in the right direction.

Here's to celebrating the little milestones.

Oh, and did I mention our website is online?
+ http://www.projectdome.ca/

Baby steps...

Take care,
Lisa (for the Dome Design Team)

getting technical...

Announcement! Company website is up and running! You'll see it is very simple right now, but we'll be sure to post about it again when we have a release date for the full-content site.

Please check it out to see all the ways you can keep track of us.

+ http://www.projectdome.ca

Cheers!
Lisa (for the Dome Design Team)

dream on...

There do not seem to be enough hours in the day right now... I have been planning to blog the wonderful photos taken by Jugana of BlackBelo at the Kimberley Seldon Business of Design Vancouver Book Launch two Fridays ago, but I have not had the chance. I still plan to do this today or tomorrow (fingers crossed), but for now I'll leave you with this:

I couldn't sleep last night because I was fantasizing about purchasing my rented condo and renovating it. Dreams of a custom window seat, hardwood-looking-ceramic tile, a new walk in closet, and more kept swirling around in my head. Along with those dreams a vision persisted; I could not get the sofa we saw at IDS West from 18 Karat out of my head.

  

+ http://www.eighteenkarat.com/

+ http://blackbelo.blogspot.com/
+ http://kimberleyseldon.com/books/books.html

Keep dreaming and take care,
Lisa (for the Dome Design Team)

drawn in...

A very dear family friend of mine is also an artist. She has recently started posting her work online on her blog. Absolutely worth checking out...

+ http://mikailamaidmentart.blogspot.com/

Enjoy,
Lisa (for the Dome Design Team)

catalog living...

A friend recently sent me this link with the note "If you like Unhappy Hipsters, I think this will be right up your alley."
+ http://catalogliving.net

My dad's name is Gary, so each of these is just a little extra amusing for me. Particularily like this one...
+ http://catalogliving.net/post/1454156942/one-cup-of-cluelessness

And just saw this one today...
+ http://catalogliving.net/post/1477920371/polar-opposites

Hope you enjoy them as much as I do. If so, remember to check out Unhappy Hipsters, too.
+ http://unhappyhipsters.com/

Do you have any recommendations for similar sites?

Have a great weekend, All!
Lisa (for the Dome Design Team)

a day full of treats...

This year was our first time attending...



We were excited! We started our day off by participating in one of the Industry Only seminars - NKBA Understanding the Guidelines for Kitchen and Bathroom Design. It was terrific. The speaker, Al Pattison, was thorough and fun. It was a great review for us kitchen designers.

After attending the seminar, we took a break for a tasty treat near by at Giovane...

Re-fuelled, we had lots of time before the general public was being let in to take in all of the product treats...

By mid-afternoon, it was time for a brain treat with a talk by Karim Rashid about the world of design being shaped by new social behaviours/languages/materials/technologies/needs/desires...

His talk was interesting and thought provoking. It sounds like he lives in a beautiful and frustrating world, and I'd be scared to work for him. Even so, I really enjoyed listening to him. We watched his talk with Lori Steeves and Liana Sipelis.

+ http://www.simplyhomedecorating.com/
+ http://www.lianasipelis.com/

I also attended Sarah Richardson's talk in the evening. It was fun and was very interesting to hear a bit about her journey so far as a designer. The advice she had to give was pretty much at odds to what we'd learned from Kimberley Seldon's Business of Design seminar series. That particular aspect of her talk definitely provided some food for thought.

All in all it was a fantastic experience. The new Convention Centre is a terrific venue. The number and quality of booths was pitch-perfect. The seminars and talks offered covered a range of topics. We will absolutely plan to attend again next year.

Did you go this year? What was your favourite booth or product?

For more on the products/companies pictured above...

+ http://www.associatedplastics.com/

+ http://www.savagewoodworking.ca/

+ http://www.callgaris.it/

+ http://informinteriors.com/

There were even more special visual treats that caught our eyes in the form of various textures...



The visuals were absolutely fantastic overall and the vast majority of booths had a great deal of captivating sights.

Special nods to...

+ http://www.rentfluff.com/

+ http://www.bowermans.ca/

+ http://www.eighteenkarat.com/

+ http://www.mubi.ca/

+ http://www.luprints.com/

+ http://www.preforma.de/

And keep your eyes peeled for Mint Interiors (also pictured above) - opening soon in Vancouver...

+ http://www.mintinteriors.ca/

Hope to see you there next year for many more delicious treats at IDSwest 2011!

Take care,
Lisa (for the Dome Design Team)

+ just to add that my favorite feature was a full-scale modular home by Preform Construction.  I have started saving up for one already!
http://preformconstruction.com/

....and I would just like to leave you with this inspiring quote by Karim Rashid:
"New, not for the sake of new, but in order to evolve"


Get inspired!
Ivana

vancouver is special...

There is a huge mix of architectural styles employed in residential structures in Vancouver. Obviously we have our share of “West Coast”, but there are so many others visible along our streets and often very much mixed together. Sometime we’ll post a photo array of the styles we see repeated most often.

For now, we’re focusing on the Vancouver Special. And, more specifically, on the second annual Vancouver Special Tour put on by the Vancouver Heritage Foundation (VHF).

+ http://www.vancouverheritagefoundation.org/

+ http://www.vancouverheritagefoundation.org/projects/vancouver_special.html

A quick primer (to save you the trip to Wikipedia):

Vancouver Special is a term used to refer to houses built in a particular architectural style in the period from roughly 1965 to 1985 in Vancouver, British Columbia and its suburbs. They are characterised by their "box-like" structure, low-pitched roofs, balconies across the front of the house, and brick or stone finishes on the ground-floor level of the facade with stucco elsewhere. Vancouver Specials have similar floor plans with the main living quarters on the upper floor and secondary bedrooms on the bottom, making them ideal for secondary suites. These homes were favoured by new Canadians, often from Hong Kong and Italy, for their spaciousness and were often a first house purchase.

+ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver_Special

They are designed to work with Vancouver’s density and smaller-than-average lot sizes. The basic design is a series of squares, shifted around to provide multiple configurations within the same envelope. Nowadays people are continually modifying these basic floor plans and boxy exteriors in an effort to add a stroke of individuality to the module.

The tour this year included four houses. All were originally built between 1968 and 1973 in East Vancouver and all have since been renovated to some extent.

I attended this year’s Vancouver Special Self-Guided Tour with local interior decorator Lori Steeves. She made the astute observation that it seems – because of the very flexible interior plan – the largest struggle with Vancouver Specials is to create interest on the exterior. Last year, the Vancouver Heritage Foundation featured a particularly successful West-Coasty-style-reno’d Special on the post cards advertising the Tour.

Follow this link to see that:

+ http://www.vanspecial.com/special-house-tour/

Two of the houses on the tour this year made strides towards distinguishing their exteriors from other Specials. We did the tour in reverse order, so those were saved for last.

The tour did have its good points. The four examples used were effective in illustrating how flexible the floor plan of a Special can be with each house’s interior having been modified into different configurations. They showed how the spaces can be converted to serve different functions with one divided into two suites, one split into residential-plus-business spaces, one being used as a transitional home run by a local charitable foundation, and the last housing a single family with minimalist tastes. So, overall, the selection of these particular properties to be included on the tour was handled well.

Unfortunately, the positives end there.

I think the biggest problem with this Tour lay in the branding: I am not sure what was being sold, exactly. This was billed as a heritage tour. But the volunteers seemed to be trying to sell us on the changes that had been made – like they were advocating for the work done to redesign the properties. We saw too many examples of shoddy workmanship and poor planning to buy that tonic.

In the end we left feeling under whelmed and a tad confused. There was a limited amount of information provided on aspects of the homes that most intrigued us as designers. Without an un-touched example (via a house on the tour or just a floor plan included with the brochure) to refer to, it was left to our imaginations to interpret the actual changes made to these houses. And with the near-constant inundation of tid-bit information from the volunteers it was difficult to focus on one’s own reasons for attending the Tour in the first place.

I’m just glad we did the tour in reverse. Had we started at the first house and moved forward, I know I would have been expecting a lot more from the subsequent specimens. Not all renovations are made equal, and I have no idea why the VHF would want to pretend they were. I understand that the people who opened their homes to us volunteered their properties, and we should respect that and feel grateful for the opportunity. But doesn’t that very act of volunteering mean you are opening your house up for scrutiny?

I’m not suggesting that the VHF should have been running an in depth analysis on the homes to debate the validity of the changes made. In fact, this is the opposite approach I think should have been taken. The “Isn’t it fantastic?!!” attitude turned this from a study of made-over post-mid-century architecture into one big real estate pitch. I submit that this pretense established by the volunteers – that all the changes were positive ones – skewed the “heritage” angle almost beyond recognition.

Would I do it again? Definitely. But then, I’m an optimist. I’ll go in next year with a much greater level of skepticism and with a conservative hope that we will be pleasantly surprised. One thing to keep in mind is that this tour is young. Honestly, given time and some guidance, it could be a huge success. For this year’s effort, however, I have to give the Vancouver Heritage Foundation a 6 out of 10.

In writing this review I had debated with myself about whether to take the approach of critiquing the actual renovations themselves. But with the scarcity of cold hard facts provided about the renovations combined with the fact that there was no photography allowed on the properties, it seemed a natural fit to discuss the presentation instead.

Better luck next year…

Did you attend the Tour this year? Last year? What were your thoughts?

If you didn’t go, what would make you want to?

If you don’t live in or visit Vancouver regularly, do you have a version of this where you are? How is that handled?

I think these kinds of tours are a terrific idea in principle, and I LOVE seeing inside spaces I otherwise would never gain access to. Here’s hoping for a pleasant surprise next year…

‘Til next time,

Lisa (for the Dome Design Team)

hell freezes over...

Still waiting on finding time to post my review of the Vancouver Specials Tour, and now also a review (with photos) from IDSwest. In the meantime, check out this great news:

+ http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=15838874

Life as we know it is about to change...

Take care,
Lisa (for the Dome Design Team)

so much awesome, so little time...

We are keeping very busy these days with new client appointments, creating kitchen design packages for our clients, working on our new website, developing all our professional practices to expand our services.... There is a lot on the Dome plate. It's all good stuff, but it's a lot.

This means little time for blogging. So I'm going to post a photo pulled via Layers and Layers' blog from the new Dennis Basso collection. Because it's beautiful, and because it's the one I'd select from this shimmery collection...

I can just see a party filled with such beauties spilling into a kitchen and onto a covered patio. This one in particular requires a golden glass of sparkling prosecco in hand, carefully making a few choice pulls from the rustic-but-modern reclaimed lumber appies table, then leaning gracefully against a sculpted chair back looking fabulous in the middle of the whole glamourous, low-lit-and-twinkling event.

Enjoy. And be sure to follow the link below to see what inspired Layers to post about the collection.

+ http://www.layersandlayers.com/2010/09/1429/

Have a lovely day!
Lisa (for the Dome Design Team)

pool o' drool...

Okay this just created that painful feeling you get in your jaws when it's been, like, ten hours since you've eaten and you see something you simply must devour instantly presented in front of you:


http://mini.glark.org/post/845969148/wine-barrel-floors


Thanks to Meet My Ugly Baby for this find.
+ http://www.meetmyuglybaby.com/
+ http://www.meetmyuglybaby.com/shopping/laminate-pros-cons/


And to What's Up Whimsy for leading us to that blog.
+ http://www.whatsupwhimsy.com/


Huzzah!

"design your life"...

We are planning on attending the Vancouver Home and Interior Design Show:

http://www.vancouverhomeandinteriordesignshow.com

Lots of local and national companies to see. I'm particularily looking forward to viewing exhibits from California Closets, Color My Kitchen, Cookworks, Home Makeover Magazine, Midland Appliance, Nood, Paragon Surfacing, Recycled Patio, Renocon Design Centre, Tiles for Less, and Yaletown Interiors to name a few.

Hope to see you there,
Lisa (for the Dome Design Team)