LifeEdited:Maui was designed with two main objectives: get a ton of functionality out of 1,000 square feet and make it incredibly low impact (off-grid!). We were able to squeeze four very pleasant, functional bedrooms in so of course they needed some bathrooms to be paired with. We decided to make a nice en-suite for the master bedroom featuring a gorgeous, luxurious KOHLER Abrazo freestanding bath, and a identical tub in a semi-outside room where one can bathe “au naturel” and then two half-baths shared between the 3 other bedrooms. We were able to design them such that they fit in minimal square footage yet deliver tons of functionality and also feel great..even dare we say….luxurious! Below are the various products and approaches that helped us achieve these goals…all in an ultra low impact fashion.
KOHLER – Fixtures
LifeEdited:Maui is about small and is about green…but it’s also about luxury. We wanted to show you could live a very comfortable, compelling life within little space and off-grid. A key area of luxury in our minds is related to bathing and KOHLER delivers in spades. There are the pair of unbelievable Abrazo freestanding baths – one in the master bathroom and the one in our semi-outside bathing room that overlooks the garden. They are beautiful sculptures in their own right but besides that they are very comfortable, fit two people and have really smart detailing such as center drains, ergonomic lines and sleek Purist floor-mounted faucet and handshower. With all the hiking, surfing and other sports on Maui, it’s a real treat to take a nice hot soak at the end of the day while taking in some of the lush nature around the house. And let’s not forget that the energy used to heat the water and the water itself are coming from the skies! No guilty soaking here. Luxury is also about touch. Something well designed and made out of quality materials that just looks and feels right…and the Purist faucets, Verdera mirrored medicine cabinets and Contemporary Round Rain Showerheads that grace our bedroom bathrooms and outdoor shower deliver. We’ve used KOHLER in our past projects and will use them again…there are many reasons they are such a huge company!
Ann Sacks – Stampino and Savoy Tile
Beautiful, durable, and green. An excellent combination. The Ann Sacks Savoy Collection has a wonderfully wide set of styles to choose from, including a nice assortment of artisan glazes. Made from 21% recycled content, including, “ceramic waste material from discarded clay and smashed tableware.” We love the colors, the textures, the durability and the ease of maintenance. We used Savoy penny round tiles in lotus for the bathroom floors, Savoy herringbone in lantern for the floors and walls of the outdoor bathing room It all looks, feels and works extremely well. They are indestructible, seriously waterproof and look and feel terrific.
Boll & Branch – Organic Towels
The fabrics that are part of the house needed to also be sustainable and beautifully designed. Boll & Branch was an obvious choice. They come in great colors, lovely textures and are even made out of organic, fair-trade cottons. They feel great, look great and should last a long time due to their high quality.
Plumen – 003 Dimmable LED Pendant Set
Almost a decade after their original bulb was made part of MoMA’s collection, Plumen moved from strength to strength with its 003 bulb. Designed by a jeweler, the bulb looks fantastic before even adding a shade or lamp. It combines a directional spot (down) with an omni-directional glow (to the sides) such that the area below is highlighted but the stuff to the side is also bathed in a warm, yellow candlelight kind of light. It lasts 10,000 hours and is highly dimmable. Looks and substance. We threw one of these in each of our bathrooms as they look terrific, use minimal energy and make you look your best!
Richlite – Vanities and Sill
We’re green. Richlite is 65% recycled paper and yet highly durable. And beautiful. And uniformly colored throughout, so we can cut or sand as needed. Need we say more? We fell in love with it and used it as the counters in our bathrooms and covered the sill in the semi-outdoor bathing room with it and also ended up using it all over the house – lanai railings, kitchen counter, table tops, shelving. It looks terrific and will last forever. We understand that you can also use it for furniture, millwork, musical instruments, aerospace applications, and even skateparks! It was a great discovery and we plan to use it in many future projects.
Rich Brilliant Willing – Seed and Crisp Lighting
Remember when energy efficient lighting was ugly – compact fluorescents and LED bulbs with big cooling fins? Well, you can forget that now. Witness the gorgeous and energy-efficient Mori Seed lighting in the master bath. Simple, organic, woven. Each Mori Seed emits a warm lantern-like light. Rich Brilliant Willing makes other wonderful lighting products – you’ll see that we used the Mori Crisp Copper in the semi-outdoor bathing room and the Monocle elsewhere in the house. We also love that they are dimmable, which is not always possible with LED lights. Great design, lovely company (cool founders!), quality…RBW nail it in our opinion.
Separett – Composting Toilets
Quite simply, combining precious drinking water and a high quality compost material to create a toxic mess that often requires multi-billion dollar treatment plants doesn’t make much sense to us. Modern composting toilets such as the swedish Separett Villa Series can save us a huge amount of water and build our topsoil in a simple, design forward, cost-effective manner. In Hawaii, where there are restrictions as to the number of water fixtures per home, composting toilets don’t count and therefore enable the addition of more water fixtures. For example in LifeEdited:Maui, by using three Separett composting toilets we were able to add a dishwasher and clothes washer to the house! Their designs are the sleekest out there and are extremely smart as they have two input areas…one for solids (back) and one for liquids (front) thus the solids can dry out easier while the liquids can be collected (lots of nitrogen for your garden!) or simply routed into your sewage system. Save water, build topsoil…Separett!
Airlite – Purelite Interior Paint
We never expected to be excited about paint. But we are. Purelite Interior Paint is pretty amazing. Very green. Certified Zero VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds). Certified by the U.S. Green Building Council. Known to greatly reduce bacteria formation via surface oxidation and high alkalinity. And of course it looks really good. They say you can actually eat it…that’s the kind of paint I want on my wall!
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This post is one in a series that describes LifeEdited Maui. LifeEdited Maui embodies our green, space efficient, and minimalist principles. We view it as a lab for experiencing things that are consistent with these principles. The products described in this post were given to us, which we appreciate, but we would not have accepted if we didn’t believe in them.