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1 month ago | 
canadianinteriors.com | David Lasker |Peter Sobchak
With affordability such a hot topic these days, how are designers navigating their clients’ desires for luxury retail? A look at two recent projects, Château d’Ivoire in Montréal by Archi-, and The Modern Bride in Guelph, Ont. by Urbanus Interiors, demonstrates that the eternal rules of retail merchandising still apply. The first rule is counterintuitive: a high construction budget is not a prerequisite for luxury retail design. Extravagant materials per se don’t convey luxury.
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2 months ago | 
officeinsight.com | David Lasker
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2 months ago | 
officeinsight.com | David Lasker
Celebrating 25 years, Toronto's Interior Design Show (IDS) assembled 220 exhibitors, including a strong Canadian contingent, on the 250,000-square-foot show floor at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre North Building last week. Every big design expo has its concept space. Here, it was Night & Day, the Evolution of Hotel Design. The zone featured concept booths exploring the growing trickle-down influence of hospitality design on residential and office design.
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Nov 13, 2024 | 
canadianinteriors.com | David Lasker |Peter Sobchak
Nienkämper Furniture Inc. president, CEO and founder, Klaus Nienkämper, was the public figure journalists would tum to for an insider quote. He was the unofficial public face of the industry, perhaps because Nienkämper always hosted the smartest launch parties. “We had a big responsibility because we were always looked at as bigger than we were,” said Nienkämper in his booming basso voice in an interview, who sponsored a student furniture-design competition. “We always wanted to do the right thing.
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Jun 5, 2024 | 
canadianinteriors.com | David Lasker |Peter Sobchak
To TV or not to TV? That is the question we put to a few veteran interior designers who have appeared on network television, asking if such a vehicle is the best form of promotion and how the experience helped their business. Among the new generation of designers, the topic interests those who dream that their YouTube podcasts will be picked up by HGTV.
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Apr 12, 2024 | 
canadianinteriors.com | David Lasker |Peter Sobchak
Dominique Cheng modestly describes Nonument, his firm with the spellchecker-triggering name, as an architecture and design practice. Yet he’s also an accomplished furniture designer and architectural-drawing master.
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Oct 21, 2023 | 
boldtraveller.ca | David Lasker
A friendly, welcoming vibe is part of Amsterdam’s architectural DNA. You sense it stepping into the city’s oldest bar, the Café In ‘t Aepjen, dating from 1544. A picturesque example of a brown café, so-called for the dark wood and smoke-stained walls, the place is blessedly free of the deafeningly loud ambience of bars and restos in, say, New York.
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Oct 5, 2023 | 
canadianinteriors.com | David Lasker |Peter Sobchak
Among the dignitaries attending the official opening and blessing of the new Catholic Central High School (WCCHS) in Windsor, Ont., none could have been more relieved than its designer, Paul Sapounzi, president and managing principal at +VG Architects. “The story here is that we prevailed through inflation, COVID, supply-chain challenges and the Ministry of Education’s changing guidelines,” he says.
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Jul 24, 2023 | 
officeinsight.com | David Lasker
Last month’s NeoCon was a personal triumph for Nick Gillissie and Paul Krüger with the launch of their Res cupcake-like upholstered soft seating on a rolling pivoting storage space, for Allseating; and Collaborative Spaces, a collection of mobile tables, team and hospitality carts, for Global. Two more Global launches are in the pipeline. Krüger’s new wall systems, which he can’t discuss yet, will launch next year.
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May 15, 2023 | 
officeinsight.com | David Lasker
What does the post-pandemic “new normal” look like? There has been a surfeit of-return-to-the-office stories, but they have been told, for the most part, by commercial real estate giants who provide an overall, 30,000-foot view based on their leasing data. Here, however, is a Ground Zero case study told from a “boots-on-the-ground” granular perspective of how the new office is configured. POI, with seven Ontario locations (Barrie, Kitchener, London, Sault Ste.
