design-phan

My first LifeStyle column, in the Philadelphia Inquirer's Home and Design section. Look for me there every Friday. Happy 4th!

Really, what's not to love about Terrain at Styers, the garden center in Glen Mills that's brought to us by the folks who run Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters? Maybe the prices. They can be a bit steep, but the plants and merch here is usually special enough and of such good quality that those numbers are justified (or, at least, we can easily justify them to ourselves). No justification is needed this week, though, since Terrain is running a rare and excellent sale--nearly everything's 30%-50% off.

I had the good fortune of visiting today with my friend, Melissa, who's a manager there and is very knowledgeable about everything to do with plants. She even won the 2008 window-box design contest in her neighborhood, which prompted a blogger to blog about her impressive urban garden. She's amazing, and she leads the book-club discussions at Terrain--the next one is July 21st.

Without further ado, some Terrain porn:

So Terrain: ceramic containers; succulents; weathered wooden table; colorful folding chairs just like the ones in Paris at the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Gorgeous tableau of ball and tear-drop lanterns, woven baskets, and other goodies. I love the tree-stump table base.

The terrarrium fixins' bar.

Baskets of Fog Linen Work products: The servers at the Café at Terrain at Styers wear Fog linen aprons, and they look so comfy.

And, the most exciting part of my visit to Terrain: I bought this wooden grape-crate planter (just under $20 on sale), and Matt Muscarella, one of the talented designers on-staff at Terrain's Design Services department, agreed to put it together and to plant it for me. (He kindly offered to do so after I started asking really stupid questions like, "Will I need much soil?")

It was so fun to watch Matt at work. My only input was that I like the Carex grass (the grass that looks like hair). He took that and ran with it, dashing from annuals to perennials before bringing the booty to the Container Services shed to put it all together. 

The "after" pic, on my patio. Here's what's in the box, from R to L: sweet potato vine; Carex grass; a maidenhair fern; Leycesteria golden lantern; geranium ivy; and silver fog euphorbia. I am so in love with my grape crate, and will definitely consult Matt whenever I'm at Terrain. If only I had the $$ to have him come to my house and Terrainify my backyard, but alas I'll have to figure it out myself. C'mon, thumb: Get green.

Alissa Parker and Ryan Walker, co-owners of HORNE, a beautifully curated Philly-based online boutique with a modern, organic aesthetic, are guestblogging this week at design*sponge. They're using this platform to call attention to some Philadelphia treasures, including Egan Day and Material Culture. I can't wait to see what they have in store the rest of the week. (The porcelain vase below by Brooklyn-based KleinReid is for sale at HORNE.)

Top: Plaster ceiling at the Quilt and Textile Museum.
Bottom: Quilt by a local Amish woman for sale in the museum shop (around $1500).

Yesterday afternoon, I stopped by the Design Center at Philadelphia University where Tord Boontje is installing his work for the Lace in Translation exhibit that opens this fall. Boontje is apparently not aware of his celebrity status, as he is an incredibly nice, gentle person. (I don't know why I expect big egos. Ahem.) He patiently answered all my questions and then pulled out his Powerbook G4 to show me his vision for the installation and photos of his assistants working on the installation pieces at his studio outside Lyon, France. Incidentally I noticed that he also sticks Post-It to-do lists around the touchpad of his Mac laptop. Superstar designers: just like us!

Anyway, he spent two days two years ago going through the University's archives of Quaker lace, and that inspired him to go in two different and equally fascinating directions--one could eventually have commercial application and the other is purely art and fantasy. He's spreading out his installation over three rooms at the Design Center: the rooms' themes are black, gold, and white. 

The black room (in progress, above) will have mannequins wearing lace ensembles from Phila U's archives, and the light coming through the floor-to-ceiling windows will filter through sheets of machine-made black lace (on the floor, above). The pièce de resistance in this room is the couch Boontje fashioned from a tough, black cord used on sailboats that he's tatted into a sinewy lace patchwork. It attaches to a boxy silver frame (still in bubblewrap in this photo) for a spiderwebby effect. (This is what we might see a few years down the road in a showroom.)

Here's Tord sitting on/in his creation. It's very comfortable. He says his nine-year-old daughter loves climbing all over the couch and wishes he'd used bouncier string for a trampoline effect. Clever girl--I nominate her to design a Boontje children's line!

In the gold room, Tord is hanging lace headpieces, jewelry, and a dress made from grass and raffia to create a kind of fantasy storyboard about a girl who lives in the forest, comes across a Hollywood magazine, and decides to make some of the garments and accessories she sees in the mag out of the materials at hand. Wait until you see the dress and the video he's going to project onto the rear wall. He took it in the forest that surrounds his studio. It's breathtaking.  

The white room is a "process" room where he'll display the models he made for the couch and other pieces of furniture that weren't realized in life-size. He'll also display small snatches of lace he made using grass (currently in those piles of boxes, above) when he was beginning the thought-process for this installation. The raffia curtain in the photo above is going to hang in the gold room. He brought it in pieces, and students at Phila U helped put it together.

As a Philadelphian, I have a thing for so-called second cities. As much as I love Paris, I felt a real coup de coeur while visiting Bordeaux in southwest France last week. Bordeaux is the seventh-largest city in France and the capital of the Aquitaine region, and it's enjoying a rebirth since mayor Alain Juppé was elected in 1995 and initiated some long-term plans to bring back the city's luster. In 2007, Bordeaux made UNESCO's World Heritage list.

Locals told me the city is completely different today from how it was just 10 years ago, and that the cleaning and modernization processes were messy and expensive--sandblasting; digging up of streets to install a tram system that's powered by underground cableless technology--but very much worth it.  The Cathedral of St. Andre, pictured above (behind the spanking-new tram), is being cleaned very slowly by laser instead of by sandblasting. The latter can be a little rough--a taxi driver told me some gargoyles lost their noses in the process. Juppé has also revitalized the riverfront which went to seed since Bordeaux lost its status as a major port. Now it's lined with cafes and with gleaming yellow-limestone facades.

The bustling urban center; the healthy student population; the resurgence in tourism; and the considerable wealth in the region due to the wine trade, all add up to Bordeaux being a great design destination. There's the architecture, of course, but there's also the shopping. The Rue Sainte Catherine, the famed mile-long pedestrian-only shopping street is great but packed with chains (including H&M!); Cours de l'Intendance is where you'll find the big names--Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Bernaudad, etc. Look in the Quartier Saint Pierre and in Chartrons for the independent boutiques. Some highlights:

Macarons originated in Bordeaux. They're all over the city, but my favorite were at Larnicol/Hotel Lulu (1, place de la Comédie). Larnicol is downstairs; upstairs, Hotel Lulu sells vintage clothing by American designers organized by dark chocolate, milk chocolate, cream, and sweets. The shop is owned by a Seattle-born ex-pat, Lucinda Larnicol, and her Bordelais husband, Georges.

This is the Inedit boutique--Inedit is a new skincare line from a former pharmacist from Bordeaux; nothing in the line is more than 10 euros.

At Florence Kooijman on Rue des Ramparts, you can design your own shoe by mixing and matching from hundreds of styles, colors, and fabrics. Take a kitten heel from one, a pointy toe from another, a t-strap from a third, etc., to create your ideal chaussures.

Lots of local designers' wares are on sale at La Cour de Joséphine, also on Rue des Ramparts--a great shopping street. The aesthetic here is a mix of romance, comfort, and 18th-century flair. 

At M le Macaron (intended double entendre: "M" and "aime"), on Rue des Ramparts, you can sample a foie-gras macaron.

And among the countless antique shops along Rue Notre Dame in the quartier called Chartrons, I stumbled into RKR, an expansive, airy shop selling modern objet d'arts like these clever coat-hook hands. 

The Style Map I wrote about Philadelphia for the New York Times' T Design magazine is online. I think that means it'll be in this Sunday's paper.

It was really difficult to be limited to eight spots as there are so many stars on the Philly style/design map. I started out with a pretty long list and the editor and I went back and forth, whittling it down according to different criteria. A few of the others I wanted to include were Lisa M. Reisman et Cie whose vintage art nouveau posters and prints, jewelry by Baccarat, and fin de siècle furniture and housewares make it such an exciting addition to the Rittenhouse area;  XIX, because no matter how many people tell me how much they dislike those pearls dripping from the ceiling, I love them and the rest of Meg Rodgers' redo of the grande dame; the new Bahdeebahdu, because they're fabulous in any location; Liao Collection's gargantuan, raw space filled with exquisite Asian objects and antiques; and Abakus Takeout, the Chinatown storefront that looks like another Chinese takeout joint but actually peddles streetwear.

And there are so many more. See what I mean about this being a tough assignment? What would you add to this list?