Design Star - Episode 5 - Designing for Heroes

I absolutely loved this weeks challenge. What would be more exciting and rewarding than designing for NY Firemen, To be able to design the room where they get to relax after a long hard day of serving all of us is a design dream come true.

The Design Star candidates were divided in two groups; Red and Blue.

Blue Group: Alex, Michael, Emily, Casey



This space was stunning. Floorplan was well designed. It was both functional and beautiful. Designers had divided the space into various zones and added lots of details paying homage to the great city of New York and its heroes.

Alex did a wonderful job creating a NY city skyline on the main wall. Casey painted a figure of a fireman on a canvas, that was very impressive. Another great detail by Emily was the customized coffee table featuring the letters "FDNY"

Michael again challenged himself with a large task of creating a workstation with tv, laptop, desk and display space. It was both well built and visually pleasing.

All this combined resulted in the Blue team winning the challenge.






Red Team: Nina, Courtland, Tom & Stacey




....ouch!........what happened? All this talent in the team, and the result was...."this".... The effort was there, but the outcome was not successful.

First of all, the space planning was a mess. The furniture placement was claustrophobic, furniture pieces were too big and massive for the space, the exercise equipment are definitely something that the fireman will use, but looks like they were just randomly thrown in the space. Looking at the space, it seemed to me like a designer had never come near this space...ugh...

Nina yet again wanted to create a customized art work, result: odd scribble on the wall that no one understood....

Tom wanted to expose the original architectural detailing on the ceiling and bring more height to the space. Wonderful concept, but then he decided to paint it in black....... The colors in this space were just gloomy.

Courtland focused on creating a wood-paneled wall and entertainment center. Idea was great, put there were so many other materials to choose from, and he picked this ugly wooden panel. I just don't get it.

Stacey brought a little light of hope into this room by the vintage-inspired engine number plaque, but it was not enough to save the space.

Both spaces could have used more storage space to make it easy for the firemen to keep it organized.

There was again some drama, when Michael shot himself in the finger with nail gun and was taken to the ER. He spend a good amount of time bashing Alex in front of the camera in the beginning of the episode, so I particularly enjoyed the successful work that Alex did this week with the beautiful skyline painting.....and not only that...he also finished Michael s project while he was in ER ;-)))

Nina & Courtland, the two meanest designers, ended up in bottom three. Justice was served and Karma kicked in ;-)