Envy Apartment

The long retail spine of Sydney Road, Brunswick, just north of Melbourne's CBD, was once a prosperous trading outpost on the way to the goldfields. These days it's a bohemian mix of variety stores, op shops, halal butchers and Lebanese bakeries. Take a side street to the west, however, and a different picture emerges. Sandwiched between Sydney Road and the Upfield train line is an area undergoing rapid and widespread transformation. Light industry is fast being replaced by mid- rise apartment buildings , their inhabitants attracted by the short commute into town and cheaper prices than in the city's south-east. The quality of these units is, on the whole, depressingly bad; think poor ventilation and bedrooms that "borrow" natural light (a weasel word for being dark and windowless). The occasional jazzy façade tries feebly to make up for otherwise cheap construction amid a chorus of greys. At ground level, carpark roller doors alternate with mean pocket garden...

The iconic London landmark uses its public spaces to counterpoint the unbridled growth of London’s luxury private structures I recently found myself staring into a stranger’s living room, waiting for something beautiful to happen. I was standing on the 10th- floor viewing terrace of the Tate Modern’s new wing, a twisting ziggurat of perforated brick and mortar that rises above the museum’s home in the old Bankside Power Station . The terrace allows for 360-degree views of the building frenzy that has consumed much of London’s skyline. Cranes dip and dive in every direction; to the east, the Shard, an overwhelming ice pick of a skyscraper, dwarfs the Victorian roofs of the surrounding neighbourhood; to the west, the pregnant monolith of One Blackfriars, a 50-storey mixed-used building, looms over the Thames like an alien mothership. As is the case all over the city, many of its £4 million (Dh19 million) apartments will be scooped up as investments, only to stand empty. Idle butlers ...

There's a certain character that vintage lighting can add to a room; a certain something that's just hard to buy new. But if you're not one to dig through flea markets and estate sales, then Etsy, which offers up a great selection of lighting that can herald back to anywhere from the 1950s to the '80s, is a solid bet for you. To get you started on your quest, ahead are some of the best Etsy stores for lighting. Loading Email Sign -Up Form... If the form doesn't load, you can try our mailing list page instead. Fand F Vintage is all about the sophisticated, minimalist look, opting for brass accents and quiet lines. While they have a whole separate furniture section , they also offer upwards of 40 different lighting options, ranging from desk lamps to pendents. If you're looking for eclectic options to add some contrast to your room, then Urban Americana can offer you a treasure or two. They don't focus on just one vintage aesthetic so you can find anything...

September 11, 2010 at 12:00 pm news By Kevin Plummer Every Saturday at noon, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today. One Sunday evening in 1959, after a screening of the Toronto Film Society , architect Gerald Robinson and engineer/builder Irwin Burns chatted over coffee. The two shared a common viewpoint that the city’s urban core was in decline. The same was happening in cities across Canada as municipal governments were more interested in improving traffic and encouraging sprawl rather than revitalizing their downtown districts. The very next day, Burns heard from real estate developer Murray Webber that a lot with Bloor Street West frontage was going to become available for a hundred-year lease from Victoria University. “There,” Burns told Robinson , as he recalled in the Globe and Mail of October 18, 1963, “is the place to demonstra...