Things Are Looking Up for 2009 ASID Design Tour

It's a fact of barely contested sprawl that with little room left to build out, residences are being  built up. And so we now have high-rise living spaces popping up in Irvine, Santa Ana and places you really don't want to be caught dead in. And so we now have a charity tour of some bitchen high-rise abodes.  

The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) Orange County Chapter today announced that its 2009 Design Tour will trek through six living spaces at Astoria in Irvine's Central Park West, and that proceeds from "Urban Living @Astoria" benefit the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Besides this being ASID's first partnership with the Center, it's the first time the tour has ventured into an urban setting, previously focusing on luxurious single-family homes that scream suburbia--the walled, guard-gated suburbia, that is.

Astoria, a joint venture between Intergulf Development Group and Lennar Urban, is set in a planned community in a two-acre park setting. Among the units to be visited on the tour are four penthouse lofts and two flats on the Terrace and Garden Tier levels that have floor-to-ceiling windows. The residences will be decked out in the designs of 35 ASID Orange County members. We're talking stainless steel floors, indoor waterfalls, leather walls--things we shack dwellers can't even fathom.

The tour runs April 21-May 17. Advance tickets, which at $30 each are five bucks less than you'd pay at the door, will be available online beginning March 2 here.