The 2020 International Design Awards (IDA) receives entries exhibiting the highest design standards in its 14-year history

The International Design Awards (IDA) exist to recognize, celebrate and promote legendary design visionaries and to uncover emerging talent in Architecture, Interior, Product, Graphic and Fashion Design.

Los Angeles, United States – Each year architects, interior designers, product designers, graphic designers, and fashion designers are invited to submit their work for the IDA design competition in order to gain worldwide exposure and enter one of the most respected and prestigious global design awards.

The IDA jury saw entries exhibiting the highest current design standards across the five Award disciplines Architecture, Interior, Product, Graphic, and Fashion Design and evaluated submissions from more than 80 countries. Each design entry was evaluated by the professional IDA Jury panel on its own merit.

Among thousands of entries, the jury was able to score and select some of the best and most innovative designs as the main winners of IDA. The Architecture discipline award was handed to One Sino Park by lead designer Qun Wen. The project highlights relationships between architecture, nature, society, and the people of Chongqing, thus enhancing the spatial experience of the building’s visitors through a design-oriented rethinking of modern lifestyles.

By: Russel Carr

Lotus Evija by Russel Carr received the Product

Joshua Homes design offered in Cedar Hill

The Dallas Builders Association’s Home of the Week is the Joshua Homes design at 2607 Wells Court in Cedar Hill.

Joshua Homes has been in the commercial and residential construction industry for over two decades. In the Lake Ridge community of Cedar Hill, Joshua Homes helps clients take advantage of expansive lake views from the highest bluffs in DFW, said a company spokesperson.

This fully custom home is clad in brick and stone and has a roof accented in copper. The foyer leads to a château-inspired interior with hand-scraped solid wood flooring and white Himalaya marble. The living space has a barrel-vaulted ceiling and opens to a kitchen with double islands, marble counters, stained cabinets, integrated stainless-steel appliances and a walk-in pantry.

The primary wing features a center-stage luxury bathroom with hand-laid marble, dual sinks and an expansive walk-in steam shower.

Across the home is a theater outfitted with leather seating and the finest sound and picture, said the spokesperson.

Joshua Homes provides quality building and service. For more information or to schedule a design consultation, call 888- 854-2415, visit www.joshuahomes2415.com or email manager@joshuahomes2415.com.

This Home of the Week is presented by the Dallas Builders Association. For details, visit

Alan Carr has awkward moment on The One Show as Priyanka Chopra Jonas mistakes him for interior designer

Alan Carr may be known to UK audiences as one of the nation’s leading stand-up comedians and chat show hosts, but to busy Hollywood star Priyanka Chopra Jonas, he might as well be an interior designer.

Alan Carr standing in front of a computer: During an appearance on The One Show, Priyanka Chopra Jonas mistook Alan Carr for an interior designer.

© BBC
During an appearance on The One Show, Priyanka Chopra Jonas mistook Alan Carr for an interior designer.

And, to be fair, considering the Chatty Man host was appearing on The One Show to promote the next series of Interior Design Masters, you can definitely forgive Priyanka for thinking that’s exactly what Alan does for a living.

Priyanka posing for the camera: Priyanka Chopra

© BBC
Priyanka Chopra

Also appearing on the BBC show to promote her new book Unfinished, Priyanka provided awkwardness vampires with an absolute feast when she told Alan that what he does is “an integral part of most people’s lives”.

“We just finished doing up our house, just now in LA,” she began. “And it was the first time in about 15 years that I’ve spent time picking colours and cushions, so I think what you do is such an integral part of most people’s lives. So thank you,

Commercial Mortgages: Lenders of some commercial real estate loans look for better times in 2021 | Business News

Like Led Zeppelin’s classic hit “Good Times Bad Times,” lenders and real estate owners experienced the ups and downs of 2020 in a variety of ways.

Along with owners of hotels and mall owners, conduit lenders were clearly on the bad times side of that riff.

Conduits make a business of originating loans, packaging them together and selling them as commercial mortgage-backed securities.

Like many industries, that business came to a screeching halt in March, but, unlike other real estate lenders, conduits never really rebounded for much of the year. In fact, volume for commercial mortgage-backed securities in 2020 was down some 43% from 2019.

The primary reason is commercial real estate didn’t change hands as rapidly in 2020 as in 2019. Investment sales of commercial real estate in the U.S. dropped 32% when compared to 2019, according to Real Capital Analytics, a New York-based commercial real estate data firm.

The other reason is hotel and retail properties are a tough sell for any lender. Loans backed by hotels make up 10.24% of all CMBS loans outstanding, while retail properties currently make up 14.46%, according to analytics firm Trepp LLC.

Even though 2020 was a bad year for loan volume

Super Bowl Causes Soup Kitchen Wing Shortage

Masbia Soup Kitchen has relied on a consistent list of affordable products to feed the many New Yorkers who are facing food insecurity during the pandemic. But the charity network found itself taking on an unexpected challenge over the past week as one of its most important items was flying off the shelves because of the Super Bowl: chicken wings.

Alex Rapaport, director of Masbia, a kosher soup kitchen, said at first he didn’t know why there was trouble buying the kitchen’s usual order of wings from suppliers, but then realized it’s because of the big game.

“Throughout the pandemic we’ve relied on chicken wings to stretch our charity dollars and buy a lot of protein, but the last couple of weeks I was wondering ‘why is this such a problem?’ Then it hit me, oh it’s the Super Bowl, when everyone likes to munch on chicken wings, which is causing this shortage,” he said.

In past years, the Super Bowl never caused a supply issue for the local charity, but Rapaport, said that part of the issue is because there’s been a 500% increase in demand since the pandemic hit the city last March.

“We use chicken wings as

Introducing The Expert, A New Digital Platform For Interior Design, Founded By Designer Jake Arnold

Entering into a new business with your childhood best friend might sound risky to some, but for British, Los Angeles-based interior designer Jake Arnold and tech entrepreneur and high school friend Leo Seigal it was a no brainer.

A spacious living room with a neutral color palette. — A living room designed by Jake Arnold.

Jonathan Hokklo

The 30-year-old Arnold, who moved to Los Angeles from London years ago, is a celebrity interior designer who has designed homes for Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, Rashida Jones, Aaron Paul and Sophia Bush. When the country began lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the duo moved in together. It wasn’t until Arnold began receiving hundreds of direct messages on Instagram from people all over the world asking for design advice.

“I was blown away by the number of people every single day messaging Jake with design questions as if he’s design Siri,” Seigal says. “Jake didn’t have the time, as he was working with his retainer clients.”

A screenshot of The Expert's digital platform. — The Expert’s platform is incredibly easy to use and features more than 60 designers to choose from.

The Expert

Seigal, who has helped launch several startups in Silicon Valley and beyond, and Arnold came up with the idea to create Zoom consultations for a fee

3 High-Dividend Real Estate Stocks to Buy in February

In times like these, with indexes at highs and investors getting crazy (e.g., short-squeeze mania), buying a high-dividend-paying real estate stock or two can help you focus on other things. You know, like tracking the income your portfolio produces instead of the ups and downs of volatile stock prices. If that sounds like a good thing, here’s a primer on high-yielding W.P. Carey (NYSE: WPC), Broadmark Realty (NYSE: BRMK), and National Health Investors (NYSE: NHI).

1. Smooth sailing

W.P. Carey owns a portfolio of net lease assets, which means its tenants are responsible for most of the operating costs of the properties they occupy. Generally considered a fairly low-risk segment of the real estate sector, W.P. Carey takes things a little further. It also spreads its portfolio across industrial (24% of rents), warehouse (23%), office (23%), retail (17%), and self-storage (5%) property types. But that’s not the end of the story — it also generates around 37% of its rents from outside the United States, largely Europe.

You know diversification is good for your portfolio, but it’s also good for a real estate investment trust’s (REIT’s) portfolio. The proof of that comes from early in the 2020 coronavirus

Ideas offered on new use of North Little Rock’s Ole Main building

A task force has presented the North Little Rock School Board with a plan to turn the vacant Ole Main High School building into a place that would house the school district’s central office and provide a home to various programs from around the city.

School Board members on Thursday discussed ways to prioritize a facilities-project list that could take advantage of projected savings from bond refinancing.

“The potential project list are just things we have discussed in the past,” said Brian Brown, chief financial officer for the school district. “We have looked into these projects and got estimates on what those things may cost.”

One of the projects was a complete renovation of the Ole Main building. The estimated cost for renovating the old high school into an office complex was $11,418,570.

Created in 2019, the Ole Main Task Force has spent the past year gathering community input to create a list of recommendations on ways to preserve Ole Main, which was built in 1928 but has stood empty since May 2016.

The proximity of the vacant building to North Little Rock’s current high school at 101 W. 22nd St. limits what can be done with the building. Officials

PGIM Real Estate completes nearly US$30 billion in transactions worldwide in 2020

President and CEO, PGIM Real Estate (Photo: Business Wire)

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Feb 8, 2021–

PGIM Real Estate completed nearly US$30 billion in transactions worldwide in 2020. The volume represents a total of 911 transactions and includes $10.2 billion in real estate equity investments and dispositions on behalf of third-party investors, in addition to $19.5 billion in real estate financing. PGIM Real Estate is the real estate investment and financing business of PGIM, the $1.4 trillion global investment management business of Prudential Financial, Inc. ( NYSE: PRU ).

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210208005176/en/

President and CEO, PGIM Real Estate (Photo: Business Wire)

“While COVID-19 brought on challenges in 2020 that we couldn’t have anticipated or specifically planned for, PGIM Real Estate has been preparing for a market downturn for the past several years,” said Eric Adler, president and CEO of PGIM Real Estate. “We entered the pandemic from a position of exceptional strength and resiliency, with rigorous investment and operational risk infrastructure in place globally and considerable liquidity across our debt and equity businesses.”

The total transaction volume includes approximately $25.3 billion through 835 transactions in

Celebrity Chef Bobby Flay Buys Home in Los Angeles

Bobby Flay and the home (Photos via Getty/The Society Group)

Celebrity chef Bobby Flay spent the last few months looking at a Midcentury Modern–inspired home in Los Angeles, but it was missing something he dreamed of: a chef-worthy outdoor kitchen.

The owners of the home happened to be designers. They agreed to work with Flay to build an outdoor kitchen to Flay’s specifications, including a pizza oven and an Argentinian-style grill.

That sealed the deal: Flay bought the home, on Rising Glen Road in the hills above Sunset Boulevard, for $7.6 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The sellers, Michael and Arya Martin, designed and built the 5,800-square-foot home. They run the design-and-build firm OSKLO.

The boxy house has floor-to-ceiling glass windows and a largely open floor plan. It was recently featured in Architectural Digest.

The Midcentury Modern inspiration is clear in the built-in floating shelves and interior glass atrium. Each of the four bedrooms opens to a private terrace and pathway connecting to the rear of the home.

The small, fenced-in back yard centers on a patio area and the pool. There are lawns, sculptures and landscaped trees.

L.A.’s residential market, particularly the top end, remains hot nearly