What is Alternative Interior Design
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Alternative Interior Design is about looking at what “is” and asking “what if”.
What are our other options?
What’s popular? What’s common?
Is there something I can replace it with?
In this edition of Design in Translation, we are shining a light on Japanese interior designer Atsuko Henmi.
Ms. Henmi has had extensive design experience including consulting on interior design exhibitions and model rooms for high-end condos.
She has won design awards including a 1995 award for a wheelchair accessible home for a disabled client.
Currently, she is also a special lecturer at a university and enjoys inspiring the next generation of designers.
Alexander the Great established a Grecian empire ruling from India to Egypt. And it was in Alexandria, Egypt, that his successors founded two institutions that are close to my bookworm-heart: The Mouseion (Hall of the Muses; Museum) and the famed Library of Alexandria.
The Greeks are renown for their sculpture, like this 3rd century BCE sculpture of a muse.
For nearly 2,000 years its existence was questioned and often dismissed as legend. Then in 1843 French archeologist Paul-Emile Botta discovered the ruins of the ancient civilization that was a dominating world power for roughly one thousand years – Assyria.
One of the outstanding features of the Assyrian palaces were their wall reliefs. The relief above was found by archeologist Austen Layard in the 70 room palace at Nineveh. It depicts the Assyrian conquest of Lachish.
Some modern graphic designers have taken a page from Assyrian design, like this rug design from Society6:
In a trip to the British Museum lovers of design will find delight in an exhibit unearthed at the city of Ur.
Ur was a city of Ancient Sumer – Sumer (and not China) being the oldest civilization in the world. At one time both it and it’s mention in the record of the Hebrew Torah (the “land of Shinar”) were considered pure mythology. That is until archeologist Sir Leonard Woolley dug between the Persian Gulf and the city of Baghdad and found its ruins.
The magnificent headdress above features interwoven beech leaves made of gold. The large gold lunate earrings once hung from the pierced ears of a Chaldean queen.
Ur gives evidence of advanced construction. City streets, two-story houses with brick stairs, and complexes of palaces and temples.
