HGTV’s latest home giveaway will fulfill one lucky winner’s dream of a aspiration house. Considering that a plush pad in Big apple City is something that a very selected few can actually afford. The winner with the sweepstakes will be declared right after October 20. Followers can log onto the official web site of HGTV to enter the contest. For those who are dying to obtain a sneak peek into the kind of indulgence that they're competing for in the sweepstakes, HGTV gave its viewers the first on-air tour with on the HGTV Urban Oasis 2010 Unique on Monday, September 6th.

The entry period for the sweepstakes started on September 1 and will run till October 20. The followers can also see their dream home in the form of nonetheless pictures through the web site of HGTV which provides slideshows of the interior of the residence. The apartment is created by celebrated designer and HGTV host Vern Yip. HGTV President Jim Samples revealed that the provide will appeal to the followers who are fascinated by city life. He added that the design and location of the residence will permit the individuals to experience the very best in New york with museums, restaurants and shopping centers all round the corner.

The 900 square feet full furnished apartment also consists of designer furniture and a state-of-the-art Plasma TV. It has a luxurious bath along with a gourmet kitchen. There's one master bedroom and also the living room offers plenty of natural light. Designer Vern Yip has revealed that the apartment was designed as a homage to New york Metropolis with contemporary and conventional artefact’s and antiques becoming a component of the style.

Source: Thaindian News
 
 
Perhaps the only factor harder than building the proverbial much better mousetrap for an entrepreneur is knowing when it's time to step away from the company he produced.

Peter R. Bressler, an industrial designer who founded Bresslergroup Inc. of Philadelphia, 40 years in the past, has done both.

Over the last two years, Bressler has been transitioning the ownership and management of the 20-employee product-design consultancy to three longtime senior managers: Mike Flanagan (in control of advertising and technique), Mathieu Turpault (style), and Andrew Weiman (commercialization and engineering)!!!

Bressler remains chairman and adviser, but he has stepped far from day-to-day operations.

In interviews with all four experts, I kept hearing the exact same phrase. All wanted to see Bresslergroup expand to the next degree. The objective would be to double in dimension inside the subsequent three to five years.

Is that even feasible throughout an financial recovery by which business seems to be stuck in initial gear?

Well, thinking about what Bresslergroup has accomplished more than the years with large customers, for example toolmaker Black & Decker Corp. and medical-device-maker Becton Dickinson & Co., that's not an outlandish ambition.

Bresslergroup has built its own brand in the small professional community that is product design, having amassed 80 design awards and 150 patents. Bressler himself last month received a lifetime-achievement award from the Industrial Designers Society of America trade association.

Large corporations certainly have their own product-design teams. What would Apple Inc. or Ford Motor Co. be without them? But companies also tap outside designers for fresh perspectives, for expertise they may not have in-house, or for flexibility of not adding permanent design staff.

What Bresslergroup does involves more than designing pretty packaging or cool-looking products. After all, these products must be mass-produced. Optimizing manufacturing costs, employing new technology, minimizing raw-material waste, and understanding how customers will use a product are critical towards the design process.

Back to that mousetrap. More than the years, Bresslergroup has worked with Woodstream Corp. , the Lititz, Pa., company behind the Victor brand of mousetraps. Recently, Bresslergroup redesigned the Victor Quick Set Mousetrap so that Woodstream could reduce assembly and parts costs and bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States from China.

In part, increasing shipping costs and wage rates in China prompted the privately held Woodstream to consider a redesign. Turpault said the project enabled Bresslergroup to demonstrate how companies can build "sustainable" practices into their product lines.

For example, the firm substituted cardboard packaging for the blister packs that had previously encased the mousetraps. Plus, for the trap itself, designers chose a type of plastic that can be recycled rather than tossed in the trash.

Finding ways to limit the environmental impact of products is an area that Turpault says he believes should be a priority. "We are responsible for what is delivered to a landfill as item designers," he said. "We have a huge impact on the types of materials used and on the packaging."

Some design houses specialize in only one particular item area, for example consumer electronics. But Bressler has deliberately tried to keep the firm out of pigeonholes, taking on commercial, consumer, and medical products.

That's how it winds up designing a 10-inch table saw for Black & Decker, a hypodermic safety needle for Becton Dickinson, and a smoke alarm that wakes up children not with beeps but with the sound of their parents' recorded voices.

"I love the excitement of learning new stuff all the time," Bressler said.

But product-design firms, like all consulting firms, are among the first to feel when the economy is beginning to crater or climb.

"We tend to be a bellwether," Bressler said. "When people start to get scared, they cut back on consulting services because they can."

Flanagan said that business had been going like "gangbusters" in 2007. But that changed in early 2008, when customers slowed down projects or halted them completely.

Thus, 2008 was the "pit of despair," Weiman said. "There was no place to go but up."

Fortunately, product designers are among the early beneficiaries of an improving business cycle. The initial half of 2010 was pretty good for Bresslergroup, Weiman said. The outlook for the second half remains unclear.

What's crystal clear is the fact that this move by the 64-year-old Bressler is not being made out of a desire to retire.

In fact, after 40 years of designing things for others, Bressler said he had learned something: "Unbeknownst to myself, I seem to be an entrepreneur."

He's the chairman of SRS Energy, which is trying to commercialize Bresslergroup-designed solar-power roofing tiles. SRS has offices next to Bresslergroup's studio in the basement of the Marketplace Design Center at 24th and Market Streets.

Bressler started to tell me that he has never been bored in 40 years, only to catch himself remembering some lean times.

But I recall his declaration that he had decided a long time in the past not to do the same thing all the time, and I wonder whether it isn't true of this man whose firm finds new ways to catch mice or capture the sun's rays.

Source: Philly News
 
 
The company that owns the Galt House is spending nearly $2 million on an illuminated exhibit intended to provide residents and guests a brand new vacation spot attraction on the Riverfront Plaza/Belvedere this holiday season. The Galt Home Hotel & Suites exhibit, called “KaLightoscope” and featuring thousands of lights, along with music, sound and interactive elements, will be on display Nov. 18-Jan. 3. The exhibit will also include hundreds of holiday figures, most of them sculpted on wire frames 8 to 22 feet high, with lights inside and made of satin and other fabrics.

The event will also have a dinner theater show, a shopping Country House Plans and vendor mall and other vacation festivities centered at the riverfront hotel complex.

Mary Moseley, president and chief executive of the Al J. Schneider Co., which owns and operates the Galt House, said she hopes the exhibit will “create a buzz downtown, perhaps serving as the magical piece that Louisville needs.”

Moseley recalled that as a youngster she loved coming downtown during the holidays and looking at the retail window displays, which are mostly gone now. “Kids now have nothing big and fancy to go see,” she said.

The Galt Home sees the exhibit as complementing, not competing with, Light Up Louisville and other downtown holiday activities, said Schneider Co. spokesman Keith LaBelle. Galt House officials, he said, want to lengthen the holiday season downtown.

The KaLightoscope exhibit was developed primarily by two consultants hired by the Schneider Co. — International Special Attractions Ltd., an event and attractions design firm from Branson, Mo., and Hotopp Associates Ltd. of New York, an exhibit and special events developer and designer.

LaBelle said the consultants developed the concept from a centuries-old Chinese cultural tradition of using large fabric creations of dragons, pagodas and other iconic figures to celebrate holidays.

The exhibit will be laid out in a large, climate-controlled tent/pavilion attached to the resort. LaBelle estimated that touring the exhibit will take about 45 minutes. The exhibit will be divided into 12 areas, each with a separate vacation theme. Among them are a Christmas Derby with a huge Santa on a galloping horse; a “lovin' Louisville” zone featuring items from Louisville companies; “Toyland”; an interactive fun zone with a tree maze; and a nativity scene at the end. LaBelle said that Schneider Co. will own the exhibit, which will be exhibited year after year, with annual improvements.

Complementing the exhibit during the holidays at the Galt House will be a 30-booth Mistletoe Marketplace vendor mall, 30 performances of a dinner theater production called “Colors of the Season” and a “gingerbread village” for children in the conservatory.

Schneider Co. officials have spent more than two years planning the exhibit and related activities. They were not timed to follow closely the opening of the KFC Yum! Center, even though the new downtown arena may steer some company to KaLightoscope before and after events, business officials said.

The Louisville Convention & Visitors Bureau has been promoting KaLightoscope to tour groups coming to town. Bureau spokeswoman Stacey Yates said the exhibit is expected to be “visually spectacular. Seasonal attractions have a very broad appeal. This is the kind of thing families look for and are willing to travel regionally to attend.”

Source: Courier Journal
 
 
We bought our house nearly 30 many years ago, but even then the genuine estate agent was selling us around the large kitchen - fairly speaking.

The dining space and also the living room had been no bigger than sandboxes, but she created the point that families by no means spend a lot time in those formal rooms anyway.

So the builder had devoted most of the first-floor space to the kitchen, with space for a table and chairs, a highchair along with a toddler's playthings.

All these years later, the kitchen area - the heart of the home, I believe - has officially morphed into an entertainment area, exactly where pals and family collect although the cook cooks. Seems we were ahead of the curve.

Within the New York Times, Alexandra Lange writes about how we have traded efficiency within the kitchen area for this communal atmosphere.

She describes an exhibit which will soon open in the Museum of Modern Art in New York of a 1920s "Frankfurt kitchen area," which featured a lengthy, narrow galley of fitted appliances and cabinets. It allowed the housewife to turn easily from one side to the other, from preparation to cleanup. There also may be pocket doorways or swinging doorways in that kitchen area to ensure that family and guests by no means had to see the mess.

Today, not only has the shotgun kitchen area gone away, but the walls between the kitchen and also the household room have disappeared in house design so that it is tough to tell where one begins and the other begins. In some homes, there are fireplaces and comfy seating just across the counter from where Mom is cooking.

And all these years later, the kitchen remains the center of my house. Pals, neighbors and household sit in my kitchen area even though they would be much much more comfortable on the lounge couch or, on a cool evening, on the deck's chairs. We use the dining room only for Thanksgiving, Christmas and piling stuff that we do not know what to do with.

My husband sits in the kitchen area desk like a potentate while my daughter and I dodge each other in the "Dance with the Seven Veils" in front of the stove, chopping and sauteing and serving up his dinner. My son sits in the counter and argues politics with me as I slide food beneath his nose. Tough news has been delivered with hands clasped earnestly on top of my kitchen table.

Photos have been colored, homework has been done, bills have been paid - and now e-mail is study - at my kitchen area desk. If you want me, you are able to find me within the kitchen area - cooking, cleaning up or writing a blog post. I even record my favorite shows on the kitchen area tv simply because I know I will never make it towards the household room to watch them.

This recession has everybody talking about the cocooning of the American family. About how we're all returning house, making our personal popcorn and playing board games instead of going out for fast food and a film. About how we're cooking with pals in our kitchens rather than paying a premium for a night out at a restaurant.

This doesn't appear like news to me. It will be the way it has always been in my kitchen area. And there's no location I - or my household and pals - would rather be.

Source: Sacbee