Designs

Home is where not only the heart is these days — but also the elderly parents, the boomerang kids and the aging-in-place Boomer homeowners. To accommodate the new generations-stacked-upon-generations lifestyle spawned by one of the most severe economic downturns in decades, builder Lennar Corp. on Saturday will unveil a house with something few others on the block can boast about: another house. The company has built two San Bernardino County models of its so-called NextGen designs for its master-planned Rosena Ranch community.

You can draw a straight line, in terms of architectural history, from William Randolph Hearst'ssprawling estate in San Simeon to the corner of Broadway and 11th Street in downtown Los Angeles. It was at that downtown site in 1913 that Hearst commissioned architect Julia Morgan to design a headquarters for his Los Angeles Examiner newspaper, which he'd founded in 1903. Morgan produced one of the most remarkable designs of her prolific career, a 103,500-square-foot Mission Revival building draped with Italian and Moorish touches, including domes covered in yellow and blue tile.

The world's most expensive wrist watch, encrusted with 1,282 diamonds, was unveiled by Swiss watchmaker Hublot, according to a report by AFP . The price? $5 million. The white-gold watch was revealed this week at the world's biggest watch show, Baselworld Watch and Jewellery Show in Basel, Switzerland. According to the AFP report, it took 17 people at Hublot 14 months to set the more than 140 carats of diamonds on the watch. Jean-Claude Biver, president of the watch company, told AFP that it would be difficult to make a more expensive watch "because the surface of the watch is limited.

State safety regulators have ordered stringent inspections of a downtown Los Angeles rail junction for the newly opened Expo Line because of a serious design flaw that poses an increased risk of train derailments. Officials of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority insist the intersection of the region's newest light rail service and the older Long Beach Blue Line at Washington Boulevard and Flower Street is safe for now because of small modifications to the tracks.

It was fashion versus fashion as luxury retailer Gucci America Inc. faced off in court against Los Angeles clothier Guess Inc. over a multimillion-dollar trademark lawsuit. In the opening day of trial in Manhattan, Gucci accused Guess of copying its designs in a "complicated scheme" to knock off the Italian fashion company's most iconic trademarks, according to Bloomberg. The saga began three years ago when Gucci, a unit of the French luxury conglomerate PPR, filed suit against Guess alleging the California company tried to "Gucci-ize" its products by crafting logos that closely imitated Gucci trademarks.

I may not be a fashionista, but I wear clothes as often as the next person — I'm wearing some right now as a matter of fact. And stung into curiosity by that withering monologue about the cerulean blue sweater in "The Devil Wears Prada," I am interested in how certain styles wind up dominating major commercial outlets like Macy's, H&M and Saks Fifth Avenue. What I am not interested in is another reality program in which a carefully selected group of poignantly back-storied and teary-eyed "up 'n comers" attempt to leapfrog the traditional rigors of their craft to win a competition guaranteeing them a contract.

The look of motorcycling is largely defined by leather ? most of it in cringe-worthy designs that are long on protection and short on style, especially for women. Indeed, "motorcycle fashion" is something of an oxymoron. There are motorcycles, and there is fashion, but rarely do the twain meet. Scooters? That's another story. Rooted in European design, the small number of designers devoted to scooter wear do a far better job of equalizing form and function, merging crash-worthy materials into styles that allow riders to step off their rides and into a restaurant without looking like they've been in a race.

"Carnage" production designer Dean Tavoularis also helped create the look of some of the classics of 1970s cinema. 'Carnage' He designed a comfortable but lived-in Brooklyn apartment for Roman Polanski's version of the dark stage comedy. 'The Godfather Part II' Tavoularis won an Oscar for his production design of Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 classic, creating Sicily and New York in the early 1900s and Cuba and Lake Tahoe in the late 1950s. 'Apocalypse Now' For Coppola's 1979 Vietnam War epic, Tavoularis designed sets that included a French plantation and Col. Kurtz's jungle command post.

It's fashion versus fashion as luxury label Gucci faced off in court against Los Angeles clothier Guess? Inc. over a multimillion dollar trademark lawsuit. In the opening day of trial Wednesday in Manhattan, Gucci accused Guess of purposely copycatting its designs in a "complicated scheme" to knock off the Italian fashion company's most iconic trademarks, according to Bloomberg. The saga began three years ago when Gucci filed suit against Guess alleging the California company tried to "Gucci-ize" its products by crafting logos that closely imitated Gucci trademarks, including mimicking the iconic interlocking G pattern that has appeared on numerous Gucci items over the years.

Eva Zeisel, one of the most influential industrial designers of the 20th century who created lyrical yet practical tableware and ceramics, has died. She was 105. Zeisel, whose deceptively simple designs first became popular in the 1940s and are still sold at major design outlets, died Friday in New York City, it was announced on her website . "Eva Zeisel took industrial design and made it more human and sensual. She trusts that a good curve is enough," David Reid of design studio KleinReid, which features her work, told The Times in 2005.

Cyberspace is a-twitter with the news that Ryan Seacrest is expected to close escrow this week on Ellen Degeneres' Beverly Hills compound, but there's been nary a peep about where she and spouse Portia de Rossi have decamped. Look no further than the Hal Levitt-designed midcentury in Beverly Hills that changed hands in April, according to area real estate agents familiar with that deal. The 8,500-square-foot house, built in 1958, features walls of glass, soaring ceilings, multiple fireplaces, a library, a black-and-stainless-steel kitchen, a sunken living room, four bedrooms and six bathrooms.

Architect Thom Mayne has been chosen to design a new Cornell University building that is to rise on Roosevelt Island in New York. Mayne, head of the Los Angeles architecture firm Morphosis, won a competition to design the first building for the CornellNYC Tech campus. The proposed building is to be approximately 150,000 square feet in size and will feature classrooms, lab space and offices for Cornell's high-tech graduate school campus. The $150-million building is scheduled to be completed by the start of the 2017 academic year.

"Dark Shadows,"which hit theaters on Friday, not only revives long-dormant vampire Barnabas Collins, it also brings back some giggle- and cringe-inducing fashions of the early 1970s. Leisure suits. Mirrored aviator sunglasses. Bell-bottoms, chunky sweaters, macramé jewelry. These all contrast with the stand-up collars, cravats and capes worn by Johnny Depp as Collins. Costume designer Colleen Atwood was more than up to the challenge after numerous previous collaborations with director Tim Burton (her efforts for the director's"Alice in Wonderland" earned her a 2010 Academy Award)

When I discovered I was pregnant with our second child, I pulled out the storage bin containing the maternity clothes from my first pregnancy and was instantly depressed. After nine months of wearing a Diane von Furstenberg maternity wrap dress and Lilly Pulitzer maternity shift in heavy rotation — and I mean heavy in every sense — I couldn't face another pregnancy in these same few outfits. But at $300 for designer maternity dresses I would wear another half a year at most, I wasn't prepared to splurge on an entirely new pregnancy wardrobe.

Fashion jewelry design is in the midst of a renaissance the likes of which we haven't seen since the 1980s. And Alexis Bittar blazed the trail. In the last two decades, the New York-based jewelry designer has gone from selling his signature colorful, hand-carved Lucite pieces on the streets of SoHo to bejeweling leading ladies in Hollywood and beyond, including Lady Gaga, First Lady Michelle Obama, Madonna, Cameron Diaz, Meryl Streep and Rihanna....

Question: Can I be a greener hotel guest? Answer: You can and you should. But, as Kermit the Frog noted, it's not easy being green. The May 6 "On the Spot" column focused on behaviors of hotel guests that are wasteful and harmful to the environment. But, we should note, it's also up to the hotel to practice what the green gods preach. The question for those of us who are environmental novices - and I am one - is what is a best practice? I'd love to know if housekeeping is using environmentally sound products, but I don't have the expertise to assess that.

Airstream has long enjoyed a following among moneyed campers whose idea of roughing it includes a refrigerator, TV and toilet. Now folks who think the call of the wild is best heard from the muffled and cozy confines of a studded sheet-metal trailer, outfitted with down bedding and a designer pedigree, can do so with Airstream's new Eddie Bauer model. It is available and on display through Sunday at the California RV Show at the Pomona Fairplex. The $75,000 Eddie Bauer model is based on Airstream's popular 25-foot Flying Cloud trailer, only its interior materials were designed by Eddie Bauer.  Airstream Chief Executive Bob Wheeler said Eddie Bauer shares “core DNA,” fusing an affection for adventure and the outdoors with style and performance.

The creations of Colombian fashion designers Pepa Pombo, Silvia Tcherassi, Esteban Cortazar and others have lighted up fashion shows around the world in recent years and raised the country's profile in the world of haute couture. But the high-fashion clothes of Amelia Toro, a Bogota-based designer, are perhaps the most uniquely Colombian. She incorporates handicrafts made by indigenous communities, including the Wayuu, Kuna and Putumayo tribes, into dresses and coats that retail for $4,000 or more.

Pocket doors slide away to connect the indoors and outdoors at this sleek contemporary. Designed for entertaining, the modern house features a massive concrete fireplace, a glass-walled loft and walls of glass looking out onto the swimming pool and deck. Location: 1060 Woodland Drive, Beverly Hills 90210 Asking price: $6.995 million Year built: 2009 House size: Four bedrooms, 41/2 bathrooms, 5,868 square feet Lot size: 20,420 square feet Features: Porcelain tile floors, walnut floors, bar, breakfast bar, office, recessed lighting, media room, service entrance, alarm system About the area: In the first quarter, 60 single-family homes sold in the 90210 ZIP Code at a median price of $2.85 million, according to DataQuick.

Carroll Shelby, the charismatic Texan who parlayed a short-lived racing career into a specialized business building high-performance, street-legal cars, died Thursday. He was 89. Shelby died at Baylor Hospital in Dallas, according to an announcement by his company, Carroll Shelby Licensing. A cause was not disclosed. He led a colorful, outsized life that touched virtually every corner of the automotive world, said Leslie Kendall, curator of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.