Extreme Makeover in Dumbo: Biggest Bklyn Designs Ever

It was a great weekend in Dumbo for design fans as thousands flocked to the biggest Brooklyn Designs (Bklyn Designs) ever. Contemporary furnishings, home decor and accessories by about 70 Brooklyn-based designers filled four venues this year -- the DUMBO Arts Center, Smack Mellon, St. Ann's Warehouse and the Tobacco Warehouse.

Sustainability was a common theme, as was modular. Here are a few design-type things that caught our untrained eye:

Palo Samko (top photo) was showing really touchable pieces made from solid woods and recycled materials. (Ooh, feel that table!)

UM (middle photo) -- we're not sure what it was, but even we knew that it was just as cutting edge as could be.

Uhuru, based in Red Hook (third photo from top), makes their furniture out of wood, metal and found objects. Looks comfortable, too.

Post Logic Studio (below) was exhibiting wall surfaces, architectural wall panels and "Victorian-inspired" animal motif wallpaper. Lots of people seemed to be taken with it.

For the first time, accessories and smaller items were on sale (cash and carry) in the BD+ exhibit in the Tobacco Warehouse.

Heroes Will Rise was selling these odd bone-shaped flexible toy kind of things with magnets at each end, call Geemo (photo, right). They stuck to each other and to metal. People seemed to get a kick out of building free-form shapes out of them.


Now here is what got McBrooklyn all excited: We loved this tiny little Airstream, designed by architect Chris Deam (the husband of "Dwell" founder Lara Headberg Deam). It was parked right behind the Tobacco Warehouse in Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park.


This little silver bungalow on wheels comes with a full-size bed, complete kitchen, storage areas, huge windows -- we seriously want one.


Photos copyright MK Metz