About 50,000 Burners, as attendees of the annual Burning Man festival are called, were expected to journey to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada this week for days of revelry in a makeshift city where art is everywhere but showers can be hard to come by. The festival, which began on Monday and runs through Monday, sold out in advance for the first time in its 25-year history.

Among those attending this year are neophytes Rachel Horn, a Los Angeles interior designer, and Justin Kreizel, her husband and business partner, who gutted and renovated a 180-square-foot 1969 Airstream trailer for the trip. The trailer, which they found on Craigslist for $5,000, has a working kitchen and a full bathroom, a living room, a bedroom and plenty of storage space. (Their budget for the entire project, including the trailer itself, was $20,000; as of this writing, what they actually spent had not been determined, but Ms. Horn said they had “gone way, way over budget.”)

The couple splits their time between Los Angeles, where they have an interior design firm and a showroom for Rachel Horn Home, their furniture and accessories line, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where Ms. Horn grew up, and where they have another office and a retail store. Ms. Horn recently spoke with a reporter as she and Mr. Kreizel rushed to complete the interior design for the Airstream in California, for its maiden voyage to the festival.

How does it feel to go to Burning Man for the first time?

It’s definitely a big trip, especially if you’re a person like me who’s never even been camping. That’s part of the reason I’m providing myself with such a comfortable cocoon.

Why haven’t you ever been camping?

My parents were not campers — they were expatriate hippies who were living in New York and moved to Mexico, and had this very bohemian lifestyle. They just took us on trips in their tricked-out Volkswagen van. My dad put a Porsche engine in the van so it would go quite a bit faster than the normal 1972 VW van would, and so that it would run an air-conditioning system and an awesome stereo.

Then you have been car camping.

Well, we never slept in the car. Maybe it’s just that we didn’t have time to actually camp. We were always picking up and moving.

Have you done this kind of gut renovation to a home of your own before?

Top to bottom, in terms of gutting the space and starting over? Yes. But we have redone every single house we’ve ever leased, and we tend to move a lot because I like to be in different houses and do more projects. I get bored in a space when it’s done.

What was your vision for the Airstream interior?

It’s this beautiful, serene, elephant gray environment that has all these nomadic touches, and it’s really comfy and inviting.

What do you mean by nomadic touches?

The big thing is the Moorish influence — we have Moorish arches that separate the spaces. I’ve chosen Moorish-inspired fabrics, and then we have some wonderful lanterns and other accessories that are Turkish- or Persian-inspired.

So the design elements are meant to evoke nomadic cultures, as opposed to “We got this couch because the fabric is durable and we’re going to be tromping around in muddy boots”?

Actually, I have one bucket outside for muddy boots, and one bucket that you rinse your feet in before you come in. So yes, nomadic is about bringing in all the different cultures that were at some point or another, or still are, nomadic. But it isn’t really built to withstand a serious nomadic living situation. It’s luxe-nomadic.

Are the buckets part of the design?

They are. They’re galvanized buckets. They have to travel inside and then just be pulled out.

Most of the work you do is for clients with large homes. This must have been a big change for you.

Yes, that’s one reason this Airstream has been such a challenge. Most of our houses are over 10,000 square feet. That’s not to say we wouldn’t take projects that are smaller, because we do everything, but somehow we end up mostly doing very big homes. The average size of a master suite bathroom is the size of this Airstream. It’s made me really have to think differently about what’s going in.

I picked this gorgeous bamboo floor that I was just in love with. Well, we get the sample, and just one small piece of it was incredibly heavy. I loved it, I was so excited about it, I was all ready to order it. And Justin said, “It’s gorgeous, but we can’t use it. I can tell right now that by the square foot it’s going to be too heavy. You can’t add 500 pounds to this thing, the whole thing only weighs a few thousand.”

Do you have air-conditioning?

Oh, yes. We installed a fabulous, heavy-duty recirculating air-conditioner — it recirculates the air from the inside, and doesn’t bring in any air from the outside. That was something we specifically did for Burning Man.

For someone who has never been camping, Burning Man seems like a pretty extreme experience. What made you decide to go?

Justin has always wanted to go to Burning Man, and we have friends who go every year. There just has never been the right time — we either had too much work, or we were traveling. We have the time right now, and so he said, “Let’s do it.” And that’s the whole reason for the Airstream. I can definitely go be in the desert for the whole week, but I can’t just go and be in a tent. I definitely need a little something to hide in. Well, not hide — but a place to call home.

What are you going to do with the trailer after Burning Man?

I’m excited to go camping more. My husband calls it “glamping.”

What exactly does that entail?

I think having a bed, a shower and a cappuccino machine are requirements for glamping.

The grand living room

The loft has a total area of 600 sq meters, across the four levels of the building, originating from the early 1900’s. The first floor has a 114 sq meters studio, a guestrom and the guest bathroom. The second floor (third for you in the US!) has the owner’s living area, while the third floor has the grand living room of 114 sq meters. The fourth level (up in the tower) contains a spa with its own pool, a library and an open-air observation deck.

'70s Socialist-era furniture mixed with industrial elements and crystal chandeliers

The loft’s styling is true to the genre’s origins: mostly eclectic, mixed with industrial elements that come from the architecture, souped up with modern and even oriental touches.

The studio is often rented out for exhibitions

The kitchen - industrial chic

Pool on the top of the world

... but at least the tower.

The spa next to the pool

Master bedroom - probably the most eclectic part of the loft

View from the top

Guest bathroom

Guest bathroom too

What do you do, when you have a large, empty apartment and you want to fill it with something unique? You get something that’s been used for filling for a long time – like a tank from an oil truck. Unusual? At least. Cool? Sure it is!

The owner, Josh Morton got the idea from a magazine article featuring a loft, where the bedroom had been placed inside a shipping container in the middle of the space. Liked what he saw, he called the architects of that space, NY-based LOT/EK. The founders of LOT/EK, Ada Tolla, and Giuseppe Lignano, are noted for their use of heavy-duty salvage in their interiors. Their motivation, they say, is not simply a commitment to recycling. “It is about ideas of containment,” Tolla explains. It’s also about the iconic status of industrial containers. Logos are left intact, and visible signs of wear and tear are cherished for their authenticity and street cred.

For Morton’s 1,000-square-foot apartment, the tank of an oil truck has been sliced in half. One part is suspended horizontally across the apartment to form the bed pods, and the other stands on end to form two bathrooms stacked one on top of the other. Morton couldn’t be happier with this spaceship-style configuration, even though the “rooms” are a tad confining. He can’t stand up straight in one part of the upstairs bathroom without hitting his head on a concrete beam. This, he says, is a minor inconvenience offset by amusing features, like a peephole concealed inside a medicine cabinet, which allows him to see what’s going on in the kitchen.

The doors on both sides of the pod open hydraulically with a press of a button. This flashy, DeLorean-like maneuver is accompanied by a grinding noise like that of an old freight elevator.

The apartment is an art installation,” Morton says. The architects had the final say on almost every detail, including the paint colors, which they refer to as “safety yellow” for the inside of the bedrooms and “fake water blue” for the floor.

Safety was probably not the main concern, but the doors open hydraulically

Bathrooms are inside this part of the tank

And the Bathroom from inside

Industrial kitchen

Morton's friends either love or hate the pods

This is Oscar Niemeyerâ€s Refurbishment, a masterpiece brought to life by the talented creators Felipe Hess and Renata Pedrosa. The building was originally designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and is located in Sao Paulo.

This project entailed the conversion of an original devised three bedroom interior into an open space contemporary loft. A loft with fluid circulation and grand social spaces with no permanent partitions. In order to achieve this openness the architects cleverly divided the private from the social spaces by the introduction of a central block dividing the two activities. Facing the private areas the block contains linen storage and closets, and on the other side looking at the social area it hosts shelving with memorabilia, a built in concrete bench and the absolute naked concrete kitchen.

The overall design consists of what we call absolute sexiness. Raw exposed distressed concrete, exposed piping, stark white walls and ceiling protruding symmetry. In combination with these finishes lies the perfect merge with the introduction of wide floor boards and wooden shelving that introduce warmth and sensuality. This controlled order creates an interior which is the epitome of modern loft living with the ambience of contemporary living.

Everywhere within the interior there is a surprise element. A character that is dancing around the rigid concrete structure flirting with it. These surprise elements are present by the fun memorabilia on the shelves, by the selective bright coloured furniture & fixture pieces, by the free standing tub in the glazed partition, looking out to the social space. This is the true subtle line between strictly private and teasingly private. To our eyes this interior is full of quirks and imbalances for enthusiastic characters. It is a residence where you initially think that there can be strict perimeters between my entertaining and my solitude. However solitude is meant to be broken, and in this project it can be achieved through cleverness and discretion.

Throughout the interiors concrete is also introduced as solid fixed furniture unit. This material escapes the structural scope and becomes part of the usable everyday furniture units. In the kitchen the pure concrete island created by Onofre also protrudes to create a breakfast table. This in turn acts as a kitchen perimeter and in line with the white ceiling it creates a clear and clever division. This plaster white ceiling was introduced in the space to bring warmthness and balance.

Photos by Fran Parente

via CoolBoom

Industrial space? check. Wacky art? check. Recycled but nevertheless beautiful furniture? Check! The dream loft is white, simple and clean with art a little bit everywhere, thatâ€s a one of a kind home! This beautiful Madrid loft is occupied by fashion designer Davidelfin and his boyfriend photographer Gorka Postigo.

”Their residence may be perceived as offensive or censored to certain ages by some, but to us it is honest and artistic. Expression of a certain life style is as mandatory and healthy as expression of speech.”

”The minute you enter this house you appreciate that its owners are comfortable with who they are and express it with no inhibitions. The combination of the photographic art works together with the 1940â€s – 1960â€s furniture items create a language that expresses a historical modernity combined with the sexual frustration of the present.”