Aspiring mini-chefs take note: now there’s no excuse not to get the
kids involved in the kitchen with this sweet range of kids cookware
made specially for little fingers. Created by Melbourne based brand, Little Kitchen, the range will inspire little people everywhere to help mum with dinner.
The innovative brand also runs a kids' cooking school from their
North Fitzroy retail store in Melbourne, Australia. The space features
a custom-built kitchen designed specially for children where kids can
learn basic cooking techniques and the joys of cooking with fresh,
organic produce. They also hold cooking parties; a great choice for
parents looking for interesting (and healthy!) ways to celebrate their
little one’s birthday. By Lisa Evans
Little Kitchen
371 St Georges Rd, North Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia
One of our favourite auto magazines, the ever-stylish Intersection
(think of it as I-D for car buffs), has always made its mission to
mix man and machine, art and design and all things culture into their
its of the automotive world. Its latest project is no exception In an
aim to portray cars as more of a reflection of the
human race then simply a way to get from A to B, Intersection asked 6
different fashion designers from 6 different cities to create a
car cover that represents their individual fashion styles.
The designers were chosen for their conceptual yet sensual, witty
approach and because they each represent the city they're based
in. From the real-size print by Parisian Martin Margiela to
the mammoth box of Sydney's Ksubi, each piece offers a perspective true
to the designer's style and method, while also portraying an aspect of the car's personality.
The car that each cover is modelled on is the Alfa Brera that will now
be parading at events from New York to London, Tokyo to Sydney, Paris to
Berlin, and finally back to Milan where she will be showing off her
exclusive new clothes. If this approach proves popular, look out for a
couture-covered car on a street near you. By Brendan McKnight
Bauer is the newest chic bar and eatery in Södermalm — “Stockholm’s
Soho.” Opened on February 28, 2008, Bauer is a refurbished neighborhood
watering hole on Götgatan’s northern end, an edgy-stylish area
constantly changing and looking for a new form. Suitably, the job of
designing Bauer was handed to Stockholm-based Dizel&Sate,
known for aptly fusing street-art subculture with upscale style for
retail and hospitality clients, including Hotel Birger Jarl, and stores
for H&M, Hugo Boss and Peak Performance. Bold walls are their
signature feature. For Bauer, they took inspiration from the Bauhaus
style and from Berlin’s bar and gallery culture. Bold, graphic images
depicting various forms of enjoyment achieve a casual and fun feel
while punching up the black-and-white space and furnishings. By Tuija Seipell
Samu-Jussi Koski’s Spring/Summer 2008 collection for Marimekko
is a combination of Art Deco angularity and summer-breezy ruffles and
girly pleats. The styling and colourways remind us of the early 80s, but
the two main fabric designs he has used for the collection are much
older. The collection includes pieces made of the Sireeni pattern but
the star is the geometric Attica, designed in 1959 by Marimekkos’ most
prolific and famous designer, Maija Isola (1927-2001). Isola created
more than 500 fabric patterns at Marimekko from 1949 to 1987, including
the iconic Unikko, Kaivo and Lokki.
Koski’s spring collection is a soft take on stylish simplicity with
salmon, pink and black as the main colours. Feather-weight silk dresses
and tops, 100% cotton dresses and tops, and the long cotton Akemi
anorak are all perfect for urban life, which is something that inspires
Koski. He’s designed for Marimekko since spring 2005, and sites people,
old photographs, jazz, cigarette smoke and city life as the sources of
his ideas.
The large Marimekko Spring 2008 bag collection includes two gems by a
14-year Marimekko veteran, Mika Piirainen. The Horisontti carry-all
(size 54 X 47 X 18 cm) and the Ankkuri shoulder bag (35 X 30 X 11 cm)
are both made of 100% cotton canvas in another Maija Isola pattern,
Dyyni, form the 1980s. Piirainen has also produced a fashion collection
for Marimekko this spring. By Tuija Seipell
With their new album 'In Ghost Colours' to be released next month, Cut Copy
are going to be everywhere very soon. Radio, TV, car stereos and who
knows - maybe they’ll go down the Pnau path and put their tracks on
slick commercials.
'In Ghost Colours' is certainly one of the most hyped Australian
electronic albums ever. With the release of the first single
'Hearts On Fire' followed soon after by 'So Haunted', musical appetites
were whetted worldwide. Then came a freely downloadable mixtape which
dropped Cut Copy gems in between indie classics like Panda Bear's
'Bros'.
Backed up by a national tour and a support slot at Daft Punk’s
Neverland shows, Cut Copy have well and truly done the groundwork to
build the excitment. Now when we can't take any more, the clip
for 'Lights And Music' emerges. The tension is palpable. People are
dying to hear the record in its entirety. Bring on March! By Nick Christie
The opening of a museum is just about as much fun as ... what? The
closing of a museum? We can quit this sort of kidding now that we’ve
seen the star-studded opening gala of Lacma — the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art. Tom Cruise, Christina Aguilera, Katie Homes and Tony
Bennett were just a few of the luminaries enjoying the lavish Wolfgang
Puck-catered, Lionel Ritchie-entertained dinner as a prelude to the
opening of the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum building of Lacma.
Urban Light, a fantastic forest of vintage lampposts by Chris Burden,
lit up the entry to the cocktail reception where life-size
ice-sculpture waiters served champagne. Event virtuoso Ben Bourgeois of
J. Ben Bourgeois Productions called the party itself a contemporary art
installation and he knows what that means. Just to create the “wrapper”
for the dinner party, he brought in a 22,000-square-foot steel frame
and covered the interior walls, tables, chairs and 12 massive light
cubes with white Ultrasuede. All of the surfaces served as screens for
the evening’s entertainment.
The 72,000-square-foot Broad Contemporary Art Museum building was
designed by Renzo Piano whose work includes Paris’s Pompidou Centre and
the New York Times headquarters. The initial 160-piece exhibition
includes works by Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons. By Tuija Seipell
Architecture and adaptation go hand in hand - many of the types and
styles of buildings created in the past will not translate into our
current design discourse. Only when architects acknowledges the world
around us is changing, becoming more complex, can they successfully
create functional space.
Japan's NKS architects design
buildings that re-frame space - adapt to changes in their surroundings.
The small wooden Onigiri House in the countryside of southern Japan was
built for an older couple in attempt to keep costs down whilst
maximising space.
The house's main structure forms a triangular tube-shape and is made
from thick cedar boards, traditionally used for ship scaffolding.
Windows are spaced along the top where the boards lean together as well
as in intervals along the base of the house. Additional glass doors
within a glass frame fill the end of the tube. An obvious connection to
nature is essential to most Japanese architects - and here the
placement of windows and doors allows light and wind to penetrate the
entire space. By Andrew J Wiener
Here are the first pictures that Alfa Romeo have released of its
sexy 8C Spider, to be introduced to the world at next months Geneva
Motor Show.
Based on the hard-topped 8C Competizione, the two-seat Spider featuring
a twin-layer fabric roof which can be raised at the press of a button,
is expected to hit 60mph in 4.2 seconds with a top speed of around
180mph. The mechanics will be similar to that of the Competizione as it
uses the same 4.7-litre V8 engine and six-speed semi-automatic gearbox.
As the limited run is just 500 vehicles, we expect to see all of these
selling like hotcakes and commanding more than their £130,000 price
tag. So roll up your sleeves and have your cheque books ready; the
fight to get one of these beauties is not going to be pretty. By Brendan McKnight
If you are lucky enough to have a home theatre, most of us would be
happy with a projector, surround sound and perhaps a comfy sofa or two.
Not so for these homeowners.
Pentagram Architects
partner James Biber has designed this home theatre in Montauk New York,
taking inspiration from Radio City Music Hall and 2001: A Space
Odyssey. The theatre has a series of round arches, which house 600
five-watt dimmer-controlled light bulbs that provide a soft ambient
light for when you need to find that elusive remote control. And as in
the Music Hall, the lights are positioned to glow away from the viewers
– because we all hate to have lights in our eyes when watching the big
screen.
Biber has designed the theatre to function like a TV room, in that it
is comfortable and intimate enough for a romantic night in with a
bottle of red and a Hugh Grant movie, but can also easily accommodate
up to ten people to watch the big game, or perhaps a slumber party with
the girls.
All of the surfaces in the room are covered in orange felt to help with
the acoustics, and seating on the floor has been taken care of by
Edelman Leather who custom made the beanbags.
This house, which also boasts a large private outdoor space looking
onto the Atlantic Ocean, recently won an American Architecture Award
for distinguished buildings and a Citation for Design in the AIA New
York State Design Awards. By Brendan McKnight
Our first book, the World’s Coolest Hotel Rooms, will come out June 1.
Published by Harper Collins Publishers (US) and designed by the Sydney
based War Design, the inaugural Cool Hunter book will soon be followed by the next volume, the World’s Coolest Houses.
To make that happen, we are on a furious hunt for supremely cool
projects from beach homes, country homes and city pads to holiday
houses and ski retreats, we want to know where the coolest houses are.
We are looking for the most unique houses from Sao Paulo to Sydney.
Slightly cool, standard-issue luxury won’t do it. The houses we want
must think like Zaha Hadid who said “I like architecture to have some
raw, vital, earthy quality.” So, if you are an architect of such a
house, please submit your project for consideration or if you're a
photographer who has photographed such a house, please get in contact -
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We always thought that fables
anthropomorphized animals, plants and inanimate objects, giving them
human-like character. For us, the word fable evokes thoughts of rich,
organic colour - a sort of Cirque du Soleil Varekai world. So when we
heard that the new office of the Amsterdam-based UXUS Design was inspired by the fables, we expected a riot of colour.
Instead,
we saw a predominantly white interior with transparent walls, white,
gauzy drapery and residential-style floor lamps. A few wall graphics
and some organic furnishings do give a nod to nature and, without
doubt, the office is a cool background for colourful ideas. It is a
stylish base for UXUS, founded in 2003 by USA-born co-creative director
Georg Anthony Gottl, Costa Rica native Erica Gottl, and French-born
co-creative director Oliver J.P. Michell. Their collective experience
spans the globe and their work includes interiors, architecture,
retail, hospitality, identity, graphics and packaging projects for
clients such as Levi's, Nokia and Adidas. By Tuija Seipell.
For eons, walls of greenery have surrounded people and creatures living
in jungles, rainforests and other lush places.
Ancient Asians and
Europeans since Roman times have paid gardeners to create green art and
sculpture for their gardens, from elaborate topiary sculptures and
mazes to vine-covered walls.
And, of course, we’ve seen inventive uses
of built outdoor space — including rooftops, patios and balconies — as
places to bring more green into our overly concrete-covered lives.
Smudging the line between indoors and outdoors, and playing with the
illusion of greenery where it doesn’t really belong, are also the basis
of some recent installations that we like.
Mass Studies, founded in 2003 by Minsuk Cho in Seoul, Korea, has produced some great examples of this. Among them is Ann Demelmeester’s store (pictured above) in Soul. It is one of only four concept stores showcasing the fashions of the Flemish designer.
Green walls are not just visually interesting and environmentally
beneficial, they add a sense of calm and peace that is difficult to
achieve by other means. The inclusion of real, living plants on a large
scale in places where you don’t expect to see them, also adds other
sensory elements — the scent of the greenery, the sound of water,
perhaps the feeling of humidity around the installation. The organic
texture invites touch and inspires conversation — how was this
installed, how is it cared for, who did it?
We’ve found some interesting green installations, such as this school
in the UK and a hair salon in Japan, but we’d love to see many, many
more. We think there’s room for much more creativity and daring in this
arena, so let us know if you spot remarkable and unusual examples. By
Tuija Seipell Send to
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