Home & Design Links We Loved This Week

A dune-cooled home, DIY glowy wall letters, a Shaker-inspired kitchen, and more...

• Three "urban meditation retreats"—cozy hideaways as design-minded as they are mindful—that are now open to the (paying) public make it clear that to some, good design is as influential on your mental health as your practice is. (New York Times)

• Covered baseboard to wall in dusk-green paint, this Shaker-inspired kitchen from DeVol is minimal without feeling lifeless—thanks to a few smartly placed, aged brass accents (and one classic arched window) throughout. (Dust Jacket Attic)

• Using large acrylic lettering and a few layers of spray paint, these DIY-able glowy letters are the next best thing to rigging a neon sign on your wall. (The Design Confidential)

• Designed by Bates Masi, the same firm that helped Athena Calderone realize her dreams for a thrifty rope ceiling in the same neighborhood), this house in Amagansett, Long Island, is constructed so that a series of vents and openings actually cools the house by playing off the environment of surrounding dunes. (Inhabitat)

• Set design is the new interiors porn—especially when we're talking period films. Nick Hornby's new adaptation of the novel Brooklyn chronicles one immigrant's passage to the neighborhood, complete with room after room of nostalgic interiors pulled off by the production designer François Séguin. (Architectural Digest)

• In Madrid—where severe weather in the form of "blisteringly" hot days, droughts, and flooding, is becoming too unusual and uncomfortable to ignore—the city is spending millions to landscape abandoned lots, city squares, and even a former highway with an abundance of trees and plants to combat global warming. (Fast Company)