Built in 1925 to house the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company, this fantastic red-brick building is currently home to Cucina Toscana, an Italian restaurant on the main floor and two living spaces above. It’s a prime spot, to put it lightly: the lucky owners are hovering above Pioneer Park on the corner of 300 south and 300 West. These two homes encompass the perfect way to live downtown without sacrificing outdoor space.

The designers started stripping away much of what the last tenant had installed in order to reveal all the raw and simple beauty of the space’s original form. From there, they started carefully adding layers back on that worked harmoniously with the industrial vibe. The magic lays in the richness, created with specific materials. Aged, natural, cherry-finished cabinets in the kitchen, dark colors, black painted metalwork: it’s all delightfully juxtaposed by bright white walls and massive windows that allow for copious amounts of natural light throughout the space.

A smart move in retaining this building’s old charm was by keeping the brickwork exposed. The brick walls offer a new look while preserving the history and the original character of the edifice.

The master bath is a dish of gothic industrial: a metal/chain chandelier over a custom, matte-black-enameled tub that’s perched opposite the ebony-stained cabinets. The walls are lined with 48” wood tile planks, which add a lot of texture and a touch more drama. The designers managed to add an organic element to an otherwise very hard and raw space with the grass-cloth wallpaper, and to accentuate the high ceilings, we hung 72” pendants from the ceiling over each nightstand. But the highlight is that double-sided fireplace (so you can take your romance in the bedroom and the living room).

This a phenomenal space. It’s a converted commercial space with 18 foot ceilings with an industrial feel at roomy 2550 square feet. It’s a very open floor plan with two bathrooms. It’s furnished with vintage furniture and art.

The kitchen is commercial grade with a six burner Imperial Stove and Viking Hood. I have everything you might need to cook up a storm. There is a barbecue and Traeger pellet stove if you want to cook outdoors.

One bedroom is upstairs with a king bed. The bathroom upstairs has a large steam shower that sits at least two if you want to get cozy. The bedroom downstairs has a queen bed. The bathroom downstairs has a massive concrete tub and shower that fits a small village.

The interior of the apartment is contemporary and rich in details, integrating artistic elements with industrial ones. The predominant color on the walls and ceiling is white and a dark reflective floor offers contrast along with the dark tones of the side walls that are painted black.

The overall neutral tones create a very elegant ambiance with long white curtains adding privacy and large windows allowing a good view of the surroundings. The lounge area is separated from the kitchen through a large island and the second floor is accessed through a spiraling staircase that also acts as a sculptural element in the living area. Another interesting characteristic of this space is that there is a separate room for the motorcycle so that it also becomes a part of the ambiance.

The Wrigley Lofts are the real deal. This is the type of place you picture when you think of a hard loft. No cookie-cutters here. There are multiple lofts in this former factory – each unit is unique with different finishes and layouts – from the floors to the lighting. The first owners got the space from the developer about as raw as possible so each person put their own stamp on their unit. Because the ceilings are so extraordinary, many units have a mezzanine level and some even have direct freight-elevator access. Like in the movies. Except you are the hero.

Suites feature original industrial windows, 14-foot ceilings, original concrete mushroom-style columns and the exposed pipes and duct work that one would expect in a true hard loft conversion. One of the best things about this building is the uniqueness of individual suites. Original purchasers of this building bought raw space from the developer for about $100/square foot, and each owner made these blank canvasses their own – consequently no two suites in the building are alike.

Yet, in the end, made the decision to give the loft a complete modern transformation, creating a striking visual aesthetic with open spaces for entertaining that the homeowners could enjoy for years to come. Greater functionality, clean lines and an enhanced material palette are just some of the details that were improved.

The kitchen features custom stained oak cabinetry and White Macauba quartzite countertops. The upper cabinets are covered with perforated metal panels. The oven, steam oven, cooktop, and warming drawer are Gaggenau. The refrigerator is Sub-Zero. The barstools are from Holly Hunt.

The 3,000-square-foot home is an open-plan space designed for entertaining.

The fireplace is located at the original chimney stack of the building. Robb Studio created a sculptural fireplace using exposed concrete, steel, and Shou-sugi-ban wood for the hearth seat.

A SHY 04 pendant light from Bec Brittain adorns the master bath. The custom vanity is made from oak charred with Shou sugi ban. The fixtures are Grohe.

Chicago-based STUDIO GILD is the compelling story of three talented designers — Melissa Benham, Jennie Bishop and Kristen Ekeland — who have joined forces to create a fresh and approachable interior design firm. Founded in January 2014 the collective draws from its principals’ experience in residential, hospitality, retail, commercial and graphic design. Taking inspiration from fashion, art and architecture, Studio Gild infuses each project with whimsy and sophisticated style.

Time makes us grow and mature, but we have to always keep our souls playful, no matter how old we are

claim the talents behind tAMINN Design studio. Proving their point, in July 2015, they completed the “Fun House”, a redesign of a 165-square-metre apartment in a brand new residential building, in Zhubei, Taiwan. The interior designers carefully abided by the client’s request that the final result hint at industrial style, albeit infused with colour.

The most important guideline though set by the clients, a young couple who now live in the apartment with their child, was that their names, somehow, appeared in their home. As a result, the main feature of the flat became “Mike & Isa”, a big light box that has become the centrepiece of this strange mix of styles, including French, industrial and country seen in the bistro-like dining area, a big barn door that is cleverly split between a storage room and the master bedroom, tough concrete walls and soft wooden doors which all fall playfully into place.

The designers’ ingenuity also brought together a large variety of materials, endowing the house with a unique character: iron accessories, titanium plating, brass, vintage wood, coloured plywood, handmade and metallic tiles, wallpaper, all seem to have been used in harmonious excess. As the designers claim: “We tried to divide the flat’s central, open space by using the diversity of various materials, especially on the floor. Wood and rugs were placed in the living room, black metal tiles at the entrance and concrete was used for the kitchen and the dining room”.

At the same time, the space remains connected through the dialogue encouraged between its different parts: the floor tiles at the entrance extend to the living area, while the kitchen island imposes itself on the dining table. In a similar vein, the desk shares its presence between the living room and the dining hall, while the bookcase is placed behind the dining table with its metal plated finishing clearly reflecting the TV area, thus blending one part of the room into the other.

The harshness of the strong materials used is lightened up by little details that have given a homey feel to the place, such as the brass, wood, iron and concrete “hello” carved on the floor, the metal coffee table that resembles a suitcase and an old railway clock placed strategically between the windows offering a breathtaking view of the city below, a big frame that looks like traditional Asian art is actually a magnetic blackboard that invites the young family to leave each other loving memos on the wall.

Exposed pipelines, exposed-concrete room dividers and unrefined woodwork create a half-done, “in progress” feel. Begging the question as to what this may have to do with maturity, the answer perhaps lies in maturity not as seriousness, but as something full of life, and when one us fully aware of the importance of fun and surprise in our lives.

Looking at this huge, honest-looking industrial loft with the old walls of rough brick, cracked wood beams, rusty mechanisms and flaky creaking doors, instantly forgetting that it is located on the top floor of a modern business center, and more recently was a new, blank and impersonal space.

The idea of converting  an empty floor of an apartment buildingto a loft was brought by a customer, and Leo Lugovskoy was happy to help, skillfully transforming a bare concrete space into a lively industrial interior. Good thing, he had plenty of space to work with: the area of the space is 130 sq meters and the ceiling height is 4.2 meters.

The master room all was imagined as a bachelor pad, along with a host experiencing a midlife crisis!

says the architect. Such description says that the customer is okay with humor and irony. In addition, he is an intellectual, lover of music and reading; so the main areas of the loft became a music library and a living room.

A special pride of the architect is the texture of the walls, beams, decking. The effect of the old shabby, “seasoned” surfaces appeared thanks to the artists studio Gregory Protasov.

The effect they have created is so natural

says Lev Lugovskoy

that people, once here, always asked me the same question: Why did you not paint the wall? Did you need to leave the wall to rust and with old paint ?

And that is the main evidence that the decorative component turned out to be very natural.

Equally convincing is the window, with a typical industrial look, old handles and a beautiful arched masonry of old bricks. Many of the objects and ideas in our interior were produced a long time ago – says the architect. We were hunting for them in stores, waiting for weeks of inspiration and joining solutions, dug antique shops in search of the object corresponding to the time and place.

For all his scrapes and authenticity of an old-fashioned loft, it is packed with modern technology: lighting equipment for organ concerts, high-tech sound system for high-quality audio playback and video projection installation to accompany private concerts.

In 1997, Aderhold Properties began the renovation and redevelopment of the historic Fulton Cotton Mill in Atlanta into a community of 505 loft apartments.

Heirloom Design and Build has outfitted this loft in the Fulton Cotton Mill Lofts.

The loft is called ‘recall house’ in Taiwan; the client intentionally requested for the dwelling to instill a vintage ambience. Balancing an industrial and rustic aesthetic, this is highlighted in the open plan arrangement consisting of the living, dining and kitchen, all three spaces have been unified and simultaneously, scaffolding-influenced and wooden features have been chosen for the shelves and dining table.

The residents have three pet cats whom they have requested the designers to specially create an individual nook next to the dining space as well as miniature arched doors for them to freely roam about. The unique character has been further enhanced by the materials used, shown in the careful combination of exposed brick, timber and metal, allowing the home to feel industrial but not cold. From the punctuated iron panel to the the vintage and collective pieces adorned around the house, the project achieves the harmony between comfort and contemporary.

The project was documented on the 100th episode of the TV show Grand Designs. The show spends far too much time focusing on Osborne, a real estate developer spending beyond his means, as he tries to raise the nearly £2 million ($3.4 million) to complete the project in a short eight months. Still, the documentation of conserving such a large building is fascinating at times. The completed project, which cost an additional £380,000 ($638,000) for the tower purchase, is pretty faithful to the original when seen from this vantage, though we can see the modern apartment buildings encroaching on the Victorian relic.

But the project isn’t just a conversion of the nine-story tower into a seven-story dwelling. A gym, five bedrooms and a living room occupying the water tank atop the building are squeezed into the tower, but the bathrooms are housed in a new vertical appendage that also includes an elevator. The garage, kitchen, another living room and a terrace occupy a 90-square-meter (980-square-foot), four-story cube in front of the tower. Here we see the cube and its 6-meter-high (nearly 20 feet) sliding glass walls opening to the kitchen below and living room above.

The kitchen in the cube is very modern and indicative of the level of detail the couple put into the project. Osborne could have spared expense on the finishes and the fixtures, but not surprisingly (given his developer mind-set and knowing what sells), he opted for high-end and modern choices in the addition and the old tower.

The lift tower also acts as a service tower, where the bathrooms and their plumbing are stacked. The master bath includes a custom tub that was too large to snake up the tower’s stairs. As shown in the Grand Designs episode, the tub was hoisted up the elevator shaft before the cab was installed.

The only stair in the whole project is the original stone stair within the tower. Therefore, moving from the kitchen to the living room in the cube means using the stair within the tower, a circuitous route but one that leaves each floor of the cube open.

To give you an idea of the tower’s scale, the stair takes up about a third of the footprint of each floor. This means that each of the seven floors is relatively small (about 12 by 11 feet).

Not surprisingly, the raison d’etre of the project is the top-floor living room and the view through the openings made in the cast iron water tank. The 360-degree views are what kept Osborne and Voce going through the financial and other troubles during construction.