A 10 hour nap, a quick stop in frankfurt, and suddenly here i am in gloomy Berlin. More specifically, currently curled up at Soho House Berlin ~ the german outpost of the international member’s clubs and boutique hotel. For fun history - “Originally opened in 1928 as a department store, the property was seized by the wartime government before being occupied by the post-war, Communist regime until 1956. It was then used to house the Communist Party archives and the Central Committee’s Historical Institution. After German reunification the building was legally returned to the descendents of its original owners, but has remained derelict until now.” The boutique hotel aspect has 40 rooms, and while you still can’t take pictures anywhere (restaurants, bars, rooftop pools, gym, spa, art in the lobby, etc), here’s a peek into my room… it’s all the lovely little vintage product details that are adorable… also adore all the Cowshed goodness… and there’s a “Time To Tease” minibar of toys under lock and key (which include a dumbell-esque lolly-for-two)… and even tampons/condoms in cute little linen bags in the bathroom… check out all the fun details on the next page!
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What a roundup from NOTCOT.org. This week we’ve seen rattan cars, gyrocopters, xylophones in the forest, LEGO in the museum and more. To find out more about each post, click on its individual image.
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food+drink - 04.04.11 -
We’ve always been big fans of how much our friends at Veuve support design! And we love origami! This year
at the Salone del Mobile, during Veuve Clicquot’s Milan Yellow Week, the company will debut their latest design collaboration, Clicq’Up, an origami inspired design object by Belgian designer Mathias van de Walle.
Clicq’Up is the first foldable Champagne bucket and is based on a concept of origami on ice, marrying form and function to create a contemporary, reusable design object that can be folded for easy transportation, set up, and storage. Ultimately, van de Walle’s design creates a playful home for the iconic sleek Yellow Label bottle. See how it unfolds on the next page!
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The Design Museum, London is celebrating Dutch graphic designer Wim Crouwel with his first UK retrospective. Crouwel is renowned for his bold typographic designs that captured the essence of emerging technologies during the 1960s. The exhibit opened on March 30th and runs until July 3rd. You can find out more about the exhibit at the Design Museum’s site for the exhibit: ‘Wim Crouwel - A graphic odyssey’ and see more images of the exhibit below.
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food+drink - 04.02.11 -
Yay for twitter ~ which introduced me to the folks at one of my favorite yummy vodkas, Firefly. On Saturday adventures, just joined them for a Hollywood crawfish bowl with Jackson, our Tasteologie Editor. It was my first! Delicious! And so fun! He took some awesome pics, so i’ll let him fill you in on everything… check out his post below!
The Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka people and their RV have come a long way. They’ve gone from just distilling a vodka made of Southern grown muscadine grapes to 7 varieties of artisanal flavored spirits. Just this spring they’ve worked their way out from South Carolina, down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, through Austin for SXSW, through Arizona, and finally out to California. Despite the company’s base in Wadmalow Island, South Carolina it has strong Louisiana roots, so a crawfish boil at Five 0 Four in Hollywood is a perfect fit. It was a great afternoon spent getting to know Firefly, sipping sweet tea cocktails and sucking crawfish heads!
Firefly’s Sweet Tea Vodka is a wonderful combination. Talking to Scott Newitt, Firefly founder, I learned that its more than just a simple vodka infused tea… through a bit of chemistry magic it is a combination of both cane sugar sweetened tea and vodka without being watered down. Firefly is a passionate bunch. They fought to get legislation passed to make it legal to distill again in South Carolina. Now they are starting to work outside of the bottle and just last month they launched Firefly Records with a huge presence at SXSW. Come check out more of the deliciousness up close on the next page…
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Though we first had these on NOTCOT.org, some things are just more fun in person and up close! Like these Potting Shed Creations Grow Bottles! Cut wine bottles recycled into micro herb hydrogardens! From the felt tongue to soak up the nutrients from the reservoir base, to the clay marbles that sit in the main growing top ~ this doesn’t look quite like any of your other gardening set ups! It’s such a fun gift idea… next step is to see how it grows… but first! An unboxing of the beautifully simple packaging and fun graphics! (As well as a peek into the refill kits!) ~ check it all out on the nextpage!
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travel - 04.01.11 -
It’s been an incredible week of wanderlust worthy posts at NotVentures. Want to find out more about St Barths, chateaus, or how you can have dinner in the sky? To find out about each destination, click on its individual link.
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food+drink - 03.31.11 -
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food+drink - 03.30.11 -
On the most indulgent of chocolate gifts i’ve yet to come across… Vosges’ “Travel The World Through Chocolate Steamer Trunk” is quite the spectacle. Amazingly, every “vintage steamer trunk filled with every truffle, caramel, bonbon and comfort food in the Vosges Haut-Chocolat line. This grande gift was inspired by Katrina’s creative process and the Travel the World through Chocolate theme. Each vintage steamer trunk was hand selected by Katrina and includes notes and musings about her creative process and a map to plot your “travels” with each chocolate bite.” Insane, no? But can you imagine one of these appearing at your office? House? Party? Wow… see more close ups as well as a full listing of products included on the next page!
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A week of fashion’s finest from NotCouture. To findout more about each post, click on its individual link.
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playful - 03.29.11 -
On things that look like one thing but are really other things, these notebooks i found at Merci while in Paris are just that. From Japanese stationery line, D-Bros ~ these notebooks have images of tools on them… particularly tools that can hang! And then there is a hole so you can hang the notebooks as if hanging the tool… with hammers, scissors, paint brushes, shovels, and even ladles… they look great hanging in your office! While black and white on the covers, they are colorful within, with dotted pages in blue, yellow, pink. Check out the details of the hammer and scissor ones on the next page!
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What a roundup! This week we’ve seen a Gehry birthday cake, time lapse cities, the classic Eames lounger in the making, microcameras and so much more! To find out more about each post, click on its individual image and for more design inspiration, be sure to drop by NOTCOT.org.
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tech - 03.28.11 -
In a TV near you, there is an upcoming TV show, National Geographic Expedition Week. Far, far away in a room… there is a tiny train track - that goes through the Himalayas, London, Ancient Rome, and Papa New Guinea… and on this track, is a tiny train… with a tiny camera. A camera that YOU control through the internet. And when you find artifacts while driving this tiny far away train… you can take pictures. Then a person in the far away room with the tiny train looks at your picture, and decides if you found something. And he tells you through the internet, and if you DID… he pulls a REAL life-sized artifact off the shelf, and packages it up, and it appears on your REAL doorstep. Where you might be sitting on the couch, watching National Geographic Expedition Week.
PHEW ~ did you follow that? so that’s… digital - physical - digital - physical - digital - physical - digital? How many layers of real world/digital interaction is that? I love Deeplocal. Oh, and if you do win a real world artifact, and then proceed to photograph it, and feed it back to the internet… bonus interaction layers?
So, to recap, National Geographic Channel and Deeplocal, the team behind GAP’s Project Reindeer, have teamed up to create Mission Expedition where viewers can go on a photo safari using telepresence cameras to explore miniature sets… and it’s AWESOMEly fun! See more about the project, the artifacts, and behind the scenes on the next page.
p.s.
OH, and to know its real, when i had a call with them this morning pre-launch ~ they even waved their giant hand at me via the tiny train’s tiny camera while we were talking!
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Photo credit: Tom Swain
On more awesome London window discoveries, Justine has been working on this post all week ~ but we got a bit distracted while running around in Paris!
“The craftsman’s heart rate will be monitored while he works and transferred to a computer, which will in turn convert the data into commands for a sewing machine.” Interactive installation art from Fendi over at Harrods! I spotted these gorgeous windows at Harrods and was intrigued by the intricate leatherwork and prominently featured machinery. While many of Harrods’ other windows are under construction, window number five features the work of British artist-designer Rowan Mersh and artisan Cyril Letellier. The collaborative performance and is a part of Fendi’s global project, ‘Fatto A Mano’, which translates to hand made. From leather to heart rate to machine to more machines… the out put is a fascinating sculptural form of sorts… see it all in action on the next page!
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Hello, jetlag! Europe back to LA is always a rough one… this one had me up around 4am unable to sleep… so while cooking breakfast, reading magazines, catching up on the internet, and looking for other jetlagged/insomniacs on twitter… the idea of Sun Stalking came up to give purpose to this eerie morning hour… found a few others who were up on this time zone in the dark too, and took some pics of the sunrise!!! Take a peek at my sunrise (many from the view of my skateboard swing)… and also some fun silverlake shots from @meganwest, and i’ll add more if others come in too! See what we’ve got so far on the next page…
Oooh ~ just added, some amazing pics from @Tornadoliese at the Colorado Street Bridge…
p.s.
if you’re into the idea ~ maybe we should start regular sunrise/sunset rituals! It’s just a nice way to force yourself to notice the passing of time, and the beauty of each revolution of the earth…
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