Glass Houses From Design Star Challenge 7

By Vern Yip

This final challenge, located in Manhattan's beautiful Bryant Park, was designed to showcase the abilities of our two remaining designers to literally and figuratively "think outside the box." Given identical 12' x 16' glass rooms, replete with pitched glass ceilings, David and Alice were allowed complete freedom to let their imaginations roam in order to showcase their best efforts and demonstrate to America why they should be HGTV's new Design Star. With atypical walls and ceilings, David and Alice must rely on ingenuity, creativity, fast thinking, along with the assistance of Tym and Temple, to pull off their most critical rooms to date.

Firmly rooted in a lively dynamic between sophistication and playfulness, this children's room demonstrates that Alice has real design instinct and knack for picking color. Although most children's rooms are themed to a level where kids will outgrow them soon, Alice's version blends timeless modernist design classics from the 1920s (Marcel Breuer's Wassily chair in cowhide and Eileen Gray's famous round side table) with storage reminiscent of lockers popular in the 1950s, and juxtaposes them against a playful metal and colored glass light fixture and clean-lined polar bear rocker. This is a great example of blending elements from different eras and styles to create something amazing that is unique and representative of personal design aesthetic.