Hester Street Playground

JM Lifestyles worked with Hester Street Collaborative to create blocks for one of their community projects.  

"Hester Street Collaborative is a design/build non-profit organization created to improve the physical environment in under served NYC neighborhoods. HSC works with residents and students in affordable housing developments, public spaces, and schools on participatory architectural projects. It is our belief that a design-build process can improve the quality of life in underserved communities in two ways: By creating compelling places, which serve the local residents; By building social capital through the process of articulating and realizing a shared vision."  http://www.hesterstreet.org/

Information about the project is below that I got from their facebook posting on the project, 
"HSC together as part of the SDR Coalition has been involved in bringing community members to the table with the parks department around the design of this playground. Back in 2006, HSC and the SDR Coalition held a series of events to get community input about how people used this playground and what they need and would like to see in the renovated playground. Each member of the SDR coalition helped with a different activity to get people thinking creatively about the park. Over 1000 people became involved.
We were really interested in getting youth involved, students from M.S. 131, or the Chinatown YMCA who use the park every day, to hear what they think. Ultimately this input process expanded the conversation between the community and the parks department and a design was developed for the playground that incorporates a lot of the ideas and suggestions from people that have participated. Something that grew out of this was a desire to get kids involved in making things for the park to beautify it temporarily over the last few years like lanterns for each lunar new year. Now students from M.S. 131 and the Chinatown Y have created mosaic blocks that will be permanently installed within the new brick walls of the playground to leave their mark on their new park!"
For more information about Hester Street Collaborative visit their website or blog:
 http://www.hesterstreet.org/
http://hesterstreetcollaborative.blogspot.com/2007/03/pavers.html

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Concrete in the Shower, Yes it is Concrete...

The designer of this completely unique shower is, Rae Design Group.  The designer applied all of what they learned about what could be done with our material and expanded.   The designer wanted to have corrugated steel and wood, a very industrial look, we used our concrete wood to wrap panels cast on corrugated metal and used a pearl in our sealer to enhance the metal finish.

The shower pan was molded to accommodate the water dripping off the glass doors and run back in.

A stainless frame holds the glass sliding door with adapted track and glass panels.

  The realism and completely unique look created by the designer has given an environment to the client that is very personal and an extension of her eclectic personality.

Darwin's Kitchen...

The tops were to capture a time frame of the turn of the century and the the naturalist movement during the time of Darwin.  The tops were to be individual sections of stone carved out of the earth and joined with Japanese joinery having the illusion of being held together with the integrally cast bronze embed pins.
 

The custom carved fossil sink and the face panels produced a virtual environment that married the minimal color scheme throughout.  The realism of the fossil beds far exceeded the expectation....

The design behind this kitchen was to create a unique presentation of countertops in the main kitchen in and around the atrium.  The kitchen extensions looked very institutional akin to the original buildings in the bronx zoo.  While keeping true to the exploration and discover of nature through the period in which the home was built, we are experimenting with the leaders in science of the day; whereas, the process of evolution theorized by the naturalist Charles Darwin, the discoveries of new forms of life throughout the world and the discoveries of the vast beautify nature held and still holds are presenting in a tangible form.   And held within these surfaces are delicate fossil discovers like that of Carl Akeley, but these are peculiar fossils that seem to be left behind in an anomalous process that turned them into metallic form of Trilobites, ferns fish, etc.

This kitchen has select concrete drawer faces, custom edge detail and the home owner's children made imprints hidden within the fossil beds.

Not to mention fiber optics in the fossil sink and a shell depression  behind the farm sink.