Newsbytes

edited by Sheila Kim -- Interior Design, 5/1/2004 12:00:00 AM

Going Twice

Former Elle Decor editor in chief Marian McEvoy has organized New York's second annual eBay Showhouse, inviting eight designers to make over a room—given a budget of $100,000 to purchase furnishings exclusively on the auction Web site. The event, which benefits Alpha Workshops, goes live on June 12. . .

Best of Beard

Winners of the James Beard Foundation Awards, North America's premier honor for the restaurant industry, were announced May 10. New York's Public, by Avro Ko, captured "outstanding restaurant design." Other nominees included Belzberg Architects, for Patina at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and Philip Wu Architect, for Jefferson in New York. . .

Creative Carpets

DuPont's Invista textile division has presented the Antron Product Innovation Awards for 2004. Top billing went to Tracing from Atlas Carpet Mills and Design Connect from Lees Carpets. Bold coloration distinguishes merit winner Biomorph, from Interface Flooring Systems. . .

Utopia Now

At the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, "Inverted Utopias: The Avant-Garde in Latin America" presents more than 200 mid-century works. Joaquín Torres-García's Composition Abstracta Tabular epitomizes how art of that time and place reacted to modernism. . .

The Shipping News

Jumping on the shipping-container bandwagon, "Solos: FutureShack" is spending the summer in the garden at New York's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The design, by Australia's Sean Godsell Architects, was a finalist in Architecture for Humanity's competition for low-cost, mobile refugee shelters. . .