Category: Architecture

Re-design Your Children’s Room With These Tips

Posted on by Paloma Leé

There many aspects parents care about when having children, probably one of the most important are to keep them busy with activities that enhance their growing experience. Children are always active, running, jumping, climbing and there isn’t always time to take them to the nearest park. On the other hand it is important for a child to relax and rest too.  There are many ways where good planning and the design of your children’s room can offer you the best of both worlds.

In order to start this process, if it is possible, parents could try to find their children’s interests, this would give them a good idea on what can be focus when designing the room interior.

I have put together a few ideas that can help with this process:

  • The colours in your children room can influence them in different ways, check this article explaining the effect that colours can have on children. Independently of the colour chosen, you can also decorate the walls to spur different interests in your child, like a big map of the world, perhaps the letters of the alphabet, drawings of different animals, their names or the planets and stars.

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Leé Goes To Leh And Brings The Windows Back With Her

Posted on by Paloma Leé

In 2014 I went in an 8 month trip through India and South East Asia. India was one of my favourites countries, I spent 2 months and a half there, for such a big country this was very short time. The first place I arrived was Leh, it is in the north in the Himalayas and used to be the capital of the Himalayan kingdom of Ladakh

There were many aspects I liked about Leh, for now I will try to focus on the architecture side of it. Leh is a Buddhist town hence the many monasteries around, most of them centuries old, I will talk about them in a later post.

The first place I visited the day I arrived was the Leh Palace.

“Leh Palace is a former royal palace overlooking the Ladakhi Himalayan town of Leh. Modelled on the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, the palace was built by King Sengge Namgyal in the 17th century. It is nine storeys high; the upper floors accommodated the royal family, while the lower floors held stables and store rooms” (Wikipedia) Its construction started in 1553 and was finished in the 17th century. The palace was built with stone mud, wood, and sand.

Nine storeys is very high for the time it was built, it is impressive, although one of the things that impressed me the most were the windows, not only from the palace but from the houses in Leh and surroundings.

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How to Change the Look of your House with Flowers

Posted on by Paloma Leé
“Flower Power”

The influence of flowers in our senses is proven and not only in sight or smell, there are many studies (here and here) demonstrating how flowers positively affect our mood and our psyche.

We are attracted to flowers from earlier than we believe, there are studies that show pollen deposits found in burial sites dating back from 100 000 years ago. Historically we are attracted to flowers not only for its colours, smells and shapes but because flowers mark the place where later there will be fruit, so our attraction to them is ingrained in our brain. Even more, there are theories that talk about how flowers may have evolved to attract humans in addition to attract insects to help them reproduce.

Aside from the many studies, in architecture, flowers can change the whole look of a house, change the feeling of a business or change how much we enjoy a city.

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Three Aspects to Consider When Designing Your Home

Posted on by Paloma Leé

Dark RoomThere are three things you should expect your home to be, functional, beautiful and sustainable. An architect is a listener, he or she will listen to your requirements carefully and will explore how you are and how you live so he or she can deliver the best solution for you. An architect will help you to accomplish this, but there are things that even when you are working with an architect you should be careful about and you should enquire, a few of them are listed below:

The orientation of the house: From the beginning, you should make sure the house is facing north, that the bedrooms and the rooms where you spend the most of your time receive as much sun as possible, this will not only help to have a warm house in winter, but this can affect your economy, as depending on how much sun the room receive you would expend less energy on heating systems. A house facing south will be cold and dark.

Illumination: an architect should work on the position and size of windows in the house. A dark bedroom for example won’t inspire you to get up in the morning, a bathroom without natural light will make you feel colder, a study room without enough light will make you sleepy and you will feel uninspired to work, read or study. Illumination is so important that I will write a whole post on it.

Sustainability: your architect should come up with options like solar heating systems, rain water collection, or a suggestion on different type of glass for windows to avoid heat escape. These ones are only a few examples of the many ways a house can be more sustainable, in recent years there are more and more options to use and explore.

You should expect your architect to come up with these or better solutions, but if he or she doesn’t you are on your right to demand what you think will be better for you, your family and your pocket. An architect is a problem solver too, to design a house is like solving a puzzle, how to combine what you like and need with how the site is, to make it functional, beautiful and with less environmental impact.

A Story

When I was growing up my room in my house was the one everyone wanted to be, my room has this huge window overlooking the city and facing north, it was so warm in winter I never needed a heater, in the morning it was very easy to wake up as just by opening the curtains the sun would shine bright on my face. My sisters room has big and many windows too, but was facing south, it was cold and never got the sun in the morning, she wanted to be in my room most of the time and only in the afternoon when the sun shone on her bedroom she enjoyed to be there.

Welcome!

Posted on by Paloma Leé

“Without an adventurous spirit nothing new can ever be born” – Murakami

Welcome to my website and welcome to my notebook, in this part of the web I will write about a variety of topics, the most important architecture, urban design and business but about trips, books and topics that I find interesting too.

My aim is that through these posts you find solutions, recommendations and ideas for your home or for yourself and furthermore you get to know me a little bit better and feel motivated to work with me.

Once again, Welcome and enjoy!