Best Flowers: Sweet Nest Bouquet from Rose and Radish If sorry seems to be the hardest word, let a Sweet Nest Bouquet from Rose and Radish—a delightful pairing of fresh flowers in a collectible Nymphenburg porcelain vessel —do the work for you. The Hayes Valley retail store recently closed its doors, but its art-driven perspective continues on its Web site, now featuring an online gift registry.

Best Kid's Room Accessories: Clive + Sunshine Collection of Stuffed Animals



Recent SF transplant Jennifer Muskopf’s Clive + Sunshine collection of stuffed animals takes the form of less-traditional toy creatures: hairy water buffalo, squirmy octopi and one wrathful cheetah—judging solely by his furrowed expression, of course, and not from his utterly adorable polka-dot coat. Barney, who?


Best Design Contest: Architecture for Humanity’s Open Architecture Challenge



Thanks to Architecture for Humanity’s 2009 Open Architecture Challenge, which invites the global design community to create winning blueprints for safer learning environments, 10 million classrooms worldwide will be overhauled in the name of the other L word: literacy. Now that’s designing like you give a damn.

Best Domestic Design E-Tailer: 2modern.com

Mill Valley–based furniture e-tailer 2modern.com puts its national pride on display with a new Made in the USA shop on its Web site, highlighting the work of such domestic design companies as Flavor Paper, Dform (whose Pucci Drum pendant lamp is pictured above) and NorCal favorite Alex Marshall Studios. All that’s needed for this 100-percent American buying experience is a Lee Greenwood serenade every time you hit the “add to cart” button.

Best Kitchen Configurations: Nilus De Matran for Design Within Reach

SF architect Nilus De Matran had commitment-phobes in mind when he created his 2009 kitchen series for Design Within Reach. The portable modular system (pictured above) forms L-shaped, U-shaped or island-based configurations on a whim, and the lack of external hardware on the cabinet fronts maintains the sleek, inconspicuous visage emblematic of true players.

Best Local Stationery: Hello!Lucky

Sabrina and Eunice Moyle’s local letterpress company, Hello!Lucky, has introduced a new digital-printing service that creates custom-designed stationery in just five days (compared to two weeks for traditional letterpress orders). The winsome designs recently caught the eye of fashion designer Zac Posen, who collaborated with the sisters on his Fall 2008 runway invitations. Lucky is right.

Best Real(istic) Estate: SoMa's Cubix Yerba Buena High-Rise

The industrial-style studio apartments in the new Cubix Yerba Buena high-rise in SoMa may measure in at a diminutive 250–350 square feet, but in an era that values mini–carbon footprints, we think that inhabiting one of these tiny dwellings—priced from $225K—could fulfill your lifetime requirement of eco undertakings (though your continued recycling, car sharing and water conservation efforts are greatly appreciated). 766 Harrison St., 1-877-CUBIXSF.

Best Design Discussion Series: EcoSalon

Eco-architect Michelle Kaufmann’s new discussion series, EcoSalon, gathers the movers and shakers of the Bay Area’s green-design industry in the name of—you got it—the environment. With the likes of NYT columnist Allison Arieff and Branch Home’s Paul Donald leading lively banter about the importance of planetary first aid, we have high hopes that the invitation-only events will inspire a little less conversation and a lot more action.

Best Architectural Book: Phaidon’s Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture

Phaidon’s recent Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture beautifully showcases more than 1,000 of the world’s most innovative buildings, including three impressive local works: the copper-clad de Young Museum by Herzog and de Meuron, the SF Federal Building by Morphosis and 1028 Natoma by Stanley Saitowitz. The latter is a residential structure whose street-facing windows are sheathed in an aluminum privacy grating. Way to represent. Available at William Stout Architectural Books, 804 Montgomery St., 415-391-6757.

Best Notebook: Large Format Moleskines

If you’ve got an old-school Moleskine, you’re part of a legendary group of artists, naturalists and writers (including Picasso, Chatwin and Hemingway) who’ve been jotting down their life observations in the little black books for two centuries. If you’ve got one of the iconic brand’s new large-format folios, you’re keeping company with the likes of ID stars Michael Graves and SF-based FuseProject’s Yves Béhar, who use the A4- and A3-sized, FSC-certified pages as dream catchers. Feeling the pressure? Available at Kárikter, 418 Sutter St., 415-434-1120.

Best Architecture Confab: 2009 Architecture and the City Festival

The theme of the 2009 Architecture and the City Festival (September 1–30) is “Everyday, Design,” celebrating the ways in which architecture impacts our daily lives. This year’s home tour features a brilliant, 840-square-foot paradigm of adaptive reuse: Boor Bridges Architecture’s Ames Alley Cottage, formerly a tap-dance school. Hoping to see an overindulgent Pac Heights monstrosity on the roster? You heard it here first: Trusted sources say that this year, “showboats” are persona non grata.

Best Designy Keepsake: Geography Collection by Petaluma's Cat Studio

Alcatraz T-shirt? No. Hand-embroidered, one-of-a-kind pillow depicting a crafty-cute map of San Francisco? Yes. Each pillow in the Geography Collection by Petaluma-based Cat Studio is threaded by hand, which may make its owner loathe to recline on it, but that’s OK: They’re meant to depict recent travels and urban favorites. If San Francisco is too obvious a choice, check out Napa Valley, Sonoma County, Carmel or a darling Lake Tahoe version. Your visiting East Coast in-laws deserve no less. Available at Limonaia, 1506 Vallejo St., 415-440-9700.

Best Hotel Lobby Design: The Good Hotel

The Good Hotel, located on a seedy stretch of Seventh Street in SoMa, opened last year to rave reviews for its earth-minded MO, but don’t let us bore you with all of the usual details (reclaimed-wood bed frames, blankets made from recycled soda bottles, LED lights). What we’re really excited about are the Thomas Wold originals in the lobby: the Berkeley designer’s Piecemeal table, for example, made from an old skateboard and salvaged swivel-chair legs.

Best Cards: Lea Redmond’s WSPS (World’s Smallest Postal Service)

Screw those rambling Victorian love letters with their traffic jams of sentimentality. Artist Lea Redmond’s WSPS (World’s Smallest Postal Service) challenges the lovelorn to concentrate their emotions on an inch-long piece of paper. For $8, the Berkeley resident will transcribe the truncated messages with a microscopic pen tip and tuck the note into a miniature envelope with a dramatic red-wax seal. Be still your bleeding heart.

Check out our other 2009 Best of Picks

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