yeah, thesedays it’s very trendy to do a pop-up shop (temporay shops, showrooms – at that time people use to call it guerilla store but now it’s the pop-up shop) or to build a pavilion (like frank o.gehry did for the serpentine gallery). this is another in south bank in london.
yesterday evening I attended “an evening spent understanding how to add value to your innovation and design process” at the soho gallery, west london.
I came back from dublin on sunday. I’ve felt a bit sick but I needed a little walk and went to the hyde park in london. next to the serpentine gallery, in the park, frank o. gehry has build his first ‘object’ in uk. I call it an object on purpose because I think this is the poorest thing from gehry I’ve ever seen. think about the walt disney hall in los angeles, guggenheim museum in bilbao, the dancing house in prague and his beloved chairs and compare this.
so here are 6 pictures and the reasons why I don’t like the pavilion at all. but before I wanna quote this: ‘the architect has likened the complex glazed roof structure to a network of stylized wings’.
serpentine gallery pavilion – let’s play mikado
oh, I see – nice wings. innovative.
oh, they realized that it’s not leak proof
it’s always good to have a snack stall next-door.
luckily some wood was left
hey, when I am planning to a unique piece of design I always use do-it-yourself store balustrades
and because I am at the do-it-yourself store I can buy some other nice widgets to make my work perfect
just see what olafur eliasson did last year and you will get what I am taking about.
I was browsing through the pictures I took during the london design festival and found some more designs. this was exhibited at designersblock on covent garden. chooi-leng is a industrial design MA student at central saint martins, london.
pouring light by chooi-leng tan
josh meyers checked in the jacobs inn dublin just after we did it. he is travelling trough europe for 3 months and this is his beloved pimp watch that supportes him on his trip.
josh meyers from Idaho, usa
tokyoflash watch
you think that you are going for a nice trip to dublin and it ends up to be a the most expensive, cold and wet weekend of your life. don’t get me wrong, dublin is a nice city but we were not prepared for all this. and I haven’t seen anything I really liked or anything that surprised me in the capital of ireland. but we had 1 great night out and 1 day at the sea. at least we spend the last night at the airport because our flight was at 5.30 am. I always wanted to sleep at starbucks – yeah
irish life – beer, umbrellas, walking around ‘almost naked’ in cold days (english people tend to do the same)
I liked the central post office in the city center
jack walking by julian opie, 2007 moving, digital installation
a wooden house in howth (13km from dublin) looks like a caravan
a deluxe spar supermarket – never seen this before
on friday afternoon I took a flight to dublin, ireland, for the weekend. it’s a short trip from london, takes maybe an hour, but I always like to use my time efficiently. this is my belief of a perfect doughnut. a symbiosis of doughnut and bagle. thank you for the painting book, krispykreme.
before
after
limited edition design dolls’ is the graduating project of olivia lee a recent graduate from central saint martins college of art and design. you can have your very own zaha hadid, jaime hayon or karim rashid.
karim rashid ‘I want to change the world’
opened at london design festival this exhibition is still on at the biscuit building (where is the chocolate one? haha) from now to eternity presents designs (most people would tend to call it art) which celebrate plastic. you can discover ways to re-think our growing mountains of discarded plastic or just how versatile plastic is – transparent or opaque, hard or pliant, able to take on a myriad of colours and forms.
millenium light by stuart haywarth
1000 used party poppers
plastic nostalgia by raw edges
fisher price toys from the 70ies transformed to furniture
musical chair by committee
I guess it’s just an object. and it makes music
british designer debbie smyth created ‘pins and threads’ a drawing of electrical pylons. to create the piece she stretched threads between pins. each point was plotted and measured to ensure that the pylons were illustrated accurately. her ‘pins and threads’ drawing was on display as part of tent london. debbie, it’s a shame that you don’t have a website!
debbie smyth
I have been in manchester on saturday (uk has more cities to explore than just london) to be honest, I havent been very impressed by the city. just the fact that the city was destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1996 and has been already rebuild is amazing. when I heard the story I thought it is just a joke, but it’s true. and you can’t find any traces. so, I was there, the sun was shining and I visited the urbis, an exhibition centre about city life and also one of manchester’s most recognised buildings. there was the best of manchester awards 2008, annual awards which are now in their second year celebrate innovation in three categories: art, music and fashion. I present you the work of jai redman. it’s a project which intended ‘to give commuters a few precious moments of peace and beauty in a city otherwise plagued by the incessant noise of advertising.’ jaj hasn’t won the award but I give him my credits.
‘trees breath – adverts suck’
last week I’ve been in a little gallery, called 1.1, close to bethnal green (the place where I live right now and the best area of london). I saw this work of vincenzo di maria. In the first moment I haven’t recognized that he just used 2 chairs. It’s still the simple things that are best.
vincenzo di maria
london design festival is over today. there is still a lot I want to show, even when I am missing a real highlight of the week. one of the things I’ve also visited is the tom dixon showroom in south kensington. unfortunatly I couldn’t make it to the book signing of ‘the interior world‘. I really wanted him to draw for me. besides there is a 70% friends sale at 5 cromwell palace upcoming friday and saturday for everybody who wants to spend his money on a tom dixon piece.
the interior world, the new book by tom dixon (in the back)
blow light on floor by tom dixon – the new collection
mirror ball on stand by tom dixon – the new collection
spin by tom dixon
cuts of the wingback chair by tom dixon
wingback chairs – process
the back of a unfinished wingback chair
some dancing at the kith-kin pa-ah ty last saturday in covent garden.
pa-ah ty
jochim mayr, derya inanici and marion fussi
– my company for the night
robert andriessen – mr. designguide.tv
rory dodd – one of the temporary hosts of the venue
pencil bench by boex is made of 1,625 pencils, each of which is individually sprung. you can remove and use them, should an idea occur to you while you’re sitting on it.
twins: the funny sam boex and the good looking will boex
something else than design.. a couple of days ago a friend took me to e pellicci in bethnal green, london. I found myself in a small cafe full of people and activity. a real greasy spoon caf’ with italian charm. It is owned by the pellicci family for over a century. mama pellicci is standing in the kitchen and prepares you a proper dish. if you go there don’t miss the chips. these are mama’s best. lovely nevio even remembered what I had to eat the last time. to sum up: e pellicci is the social institution of london and is on the right track to become even mine.
lukasz czarnecki, tony pellicci, nevio pellicci – polish-italian power
pellicci london – since 1900
the art deco interior
liver, bacon, onions, sweetcorn and some gravy – that’s what I like
definitely worth taking a look at, is the okaystudio exhibition at the aram gallery. okaystudio is a collective of individual designers and this is their first curated exhibition. they are coming from different countries and met while studying at the royal college of art. I guess their intention is to present work in a combined context to reach more attention. but what’s so likable about it? the fact that it still looked like a student exhibition because of the samples and models of the workprocess, which were hanging on the ceiling.
under the same roof, the title of the exhibition
tuesday evening, phillips de pury gallery, london:
rare table lamp by gino sarfatti, model no 594, c. 1962
large three-arm wall light by serge mouille, 1950s
conoid bench by george nakashima, 1985
exterior light by le corbusier, 1960
set of ten door handles with lock plates by walter gropius and adolf meyer, 1922
unique bed with pair of bedside tables by gio ponti, late 1950s
wall light by gio ponti, 1959
some of this designers aren’t alive anymore and there is nobody who updates a website of dead people. but I linked the designers with information on what they have done or with biographies. walter gropius is linked with an audio archive of the bbc from 1968. I think it’s worth listening to.
