Yes, we all saw Lost In Translation and thought, ‘hang on a minute, if
Bill Murray can seduce Scarlett Johansson by singing ‘More Than This’
then maybe we could too!’
Let’s face it, karaoke has always been the butt of bad movies, and its
reputation is currently languishing somewhere between Japanese
businessmen necking methylated spirit and hen parties ‘cutting loose’.
But recently, it has started to reclaim its cult status from
half-tanked brides-to-be, and become a little bit more palatable.
This new karaoke bar has been quietly, or rather, loudly,
winning acclaim for its alternative approach to the nation’s favourite
pastime.
Rather than the dark booths of your standard karaoke club, this
new private members’ sing-along has incorporated young artists to help
liven up the interior. Think Manga cartoons but with a
Lichtenstein edge.
Each booth has its own distinctive decor, and every surface has a
graphic to reflect the spaces they fill. Which is a far cry from
the matted walls and vinyl floors some bars choose. And most of
all, it’s members only, so there’s no need to worry about being
harassed by a woman with oversized fairy wings stuck to her back. By Matt Hussey. See also - WALL ART
Cave men decorated their dwellings with drawings depicting the events
of their lives. Mayans hacked their stories into the stone walls of
their enormous structures, and the pharaohs' talented artists decorated
pyramid walls with art celebrating the magnificence of the pharaoh.
Michelangelo painted biblical scenes on the walls and ceilings of the
chapels of his day. You get the gist - for thousands of years, humans
have not been able to leave the surface of the walls around them
untouched.
So how have we allowed our walls to morph into boring expanses of
beige, bland blank? Are we afraid to let our lives and our passions
show on our walls? Are we too wimpy to move away from the white and
sparse designer look with the obligatory three accessory items
'casually' displayed on the mantel?
Or is there so much visual noise in our lives that we need the peaceful
and calming effect of blank walls when we finally crash at home or in
our hotel room?
We feel that there is no right answer, but we do like walls that get us
thinking or make us smile. We may not want them in our homes, but we
love the ones we've seen in restaurants, hair salons, cafes and shops.
We admire the work of artists and designers who are not afraid to move
beyond the limits of canvas and create visions that should forever
alter the meaning of "staring at the walls" and "watching paint dry."
But all is not lost. Together, we can accelerate that change. Let us
know where the best wall art and feature walls are so that we can do
our part. By Tuija Seipell.
To the relief of many, a visit to a winery no longer has to resemble an
agricultural outing with the mandatory trudging along dirt paths and in
dark cellars listening to winegrowers go on and on about the terroir of
their cru. Wineries – and not just in the newer wine-producing regions
– are starting to wake up to today’s design sensibilities.
With winery buildings now often designed by famous architects, and with
spectacular winery hotels, wineries with luxurious spas, cool
wine-tasting bars, and imaginative wine shops popping up everywhere,
the once stuffy wine culture is beginning to feel a bit more like
something that even someone without a burning interest in either viti-
or viniculture could enjoy.
Wineries are now full-blown brands, where everything from the buildings
all the way down to the towels used in the winery’s spa reflects the
brand story and the brand identity. This is not to say that the wine
itself no longer matters. On the contrary. Most often, the more
passionate the wine growing and the more distinctive the qualities of
the wine, the more attention is paid to the overall brand. Of course,
money plays a role here as well. If the wine is no good and nobody buys
it, there isn’t likely to be a designer spa on the property.
An early example of a winery that took the winery visit idea a bit
further is the Wilson Daniels estate winery Pegase di Domaine Clos in
California’s Napa Valley. It’s often touted as a
place of pilgrimage and “America’s first monument to wine as art.”
Designed by Michael Graves and completed in 1987, the intriguing winery
structure with its 20,000 square feet of caves now houses 1,000 works
of art including Salvador Dali, Henry Moore and Francis Bacon.
A more recent example of winery-as-design-destination is the Frank Gehry-designed Hotel Marques de Riscal
in the medieval Spanish village of Elciego. The startling Gehry
building, located at one of the oldest vineyards in Spain, has 43
rooms, a cooking school and two elite restaurants. The spa offers
specialized wine therapy treatments that with the help of the wine’s
antioxidant properties are said to relieve stress and slow ageing.
So although we are duly impressed with those who are fluent with
appellations, terroirs and crus, we must admit that we are more drawn
to all things beautiful to the eye. So we’d love to see more of the
world’s most amazing wineries, wine-tasting bars, wine showrooms and
winery hotels. Let us know where they are, so that we can share the joy
with the world. Send your tips to
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. By Tuija Seipell
Call it the relentless march of capitalism, or the material
manifestation of our fickle society, but the high street is in a
constant state of flux. Shops change hands at the drop of a hat, and
most of the time, it’s not for the better.
It is precisely this commercial whimsy that inspired Canadian brothers Ben and Hall Smyth to create GrandOpening,
a space that will constantly reopen every three months. Except, rather
than hand over the keys to new owners, the Smyth’s will completely
overhaul the 400-square foot space into something new.
Based in Norfolk Street, New York, GrandOpening is currently a
ping-pong parlor equipped with full-sized table and recording
facilities so you can watch your performances on YouTube. For $6 you
can get the table for twenty minutes, and for $50 you get the whole
room for an hour with access to the projector screen and bleachers.
But it won’t be around for long. Come July, it’ll be gone, replaced by
something equally quirky. Perhaps a cinema, driving range or even a
dominoes emporium, who knows. Even the Smyths are at a loss. All we
know is, in spite of the homogenization of the high street, there’s
still room for a spot of table tennis. Game on. By Matthew Hussey
Every once in a while, a song comes along that flattens you. The
kind of song that make you pull the car over, turn the engine off and
wrench up the volume. Right now, Gui Boratto's 'Beautiful Life' is that song.
Gui Boratto is a Brazilian architect/musician/composer/producer and his
new album 'Chromophobia' will likely be the first you've heard of
Brazilian electronic music. In short, it's bliss.
'Beautiful Life' is the album's clear standout, the kind of song that's
as much pure pop as it is electronic. As the female vocal repeats,
'What a beautiful life, what a beautiful life', Boratto brings a
heartbeat to the often metronomic precision of synthesizers, lifting
them up euphorically as the song builds in pulsing, melodic
waves. Running at over eight minutes, you might imagine things
dragging on too long. But as the beat whirrs to a close, you'll be
reaching for the repeat button, wishing that the 'Beautiful Life' would
never end. By Nick Christie
On the gentle art of selling yourself,
confidence, and first impressions. "It is said that we are all three
different people: the person we think we are (the one we have
invented), the person other people think we are (the impression we
make) and the person we think other people think we are (the one we
fret about). You could say it would be a lifetime's quest to reconcile
this battling trinity into a seamless whole.
Viacom is rumored to be close to a deal to buy Last.FM, a London-based online social music network, for $450 million.
Hangs out at the Chateau Marmont, M Café, Fred Segal Mauro Cafe, Bodhi Tree Book Store, Vedic Meditation centre
What book are you currently reading? "A prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving
What magazines are you reading? French Vogue and POP for visual
inspiration, New York Times, and The Economist to keep up with world
events.
What TV shows do you love? Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office, Entourage, but I only watch them on DVD
If you could fill your wardrobe with the collection of any fashion designer in the world, who would it be? Tom Ford
Who are you listening to on your iPod? Ray La Montagne, Jose Gonzales, Mike Hudson
In your opinion what are the powerful brands in the world right now?
Brands that are committed to embracing environmentally sustainable
practices. For example, Volkswagen with their "green diesels", and
their plans to release a vehicle that gets 190 MPG.The Toyota Prius
gets 50MPG.
What is your favorite hotel in the world? Bora Bora Nui
What’s your favorite city in the world and why? Sydney. The lifestyle, the beaches, the people, the food.
What can’t you live without? Proximity to the ocean.
Here's one for parents nostalgic for the retro art of "customization" - a baby bed made of cardboard that comes with the implicit invitation for creative mums and dads to paint it, graffiti it....um, decoupage it. Delivered plat-packed from France, it's an assemble yourself deal (perfect for the IKEA generation who still think living in a converted warehouse is a groovy idea) and apparently ticks off all safety standards. Until, presumably, a small child decides to suck on it. Cute, simple, chic....and soggy. By Sarah W
The skeptics that we are, we get a bit suspicious
when talk of big plans starts sounding a bit too promising. Words like
word-class, cutting-edge, sensational and head-turning just don’t do it
for us. But we’d like to make an exception with the dreamers in
Middlesborough (in North East of England) whose grandiose plans to
revive the Middlehaven docks and the redundant waterfront are actually
starting to become reality.
Practically gushing at their own daring, the town leaders unveiled an agreement between the Tees Valley Regeneration
and BioRegional Quintain, one of the UK’s biggest developers. The
agreement will apparently bring £200m of investment to Middlesbrough
plus 1,000 new jobs; 750 homes designed by top architects, shops,
stylish bars, cafés and restaurants and a luxury hotel.
This will also - or so we hope - mean that the master plan of the daring architect Will Alsop will start to materialize in the form of some of the crazy “Meet-the Robinsons-esque” new buildings we’ve seen in the plans.
Alsop
is the man who has designed, for example, the Palestra Building, the
Peckham Library and the Ben Pimlott Building at Goldsmith College – all
in London – Hotel du Department des Bouches du Rhone in Marseille, and
the Sharp Centre for Design in Toronto. He’s known for fun, playful
buildings with strong colors, unusual shapes and angles.
And we
are not the only ones noticing the Middlehaven plans. In March, a team
led by Tees Valley Regeneration, developer BioRegional Quintain and its
architects Studio Egret West
emerged as a winner in the “big urban projects” category at the MIPIM
(Architectural Review) Future Projects Awards, against other
short-listed projects Plot-Scape in Bursa, Turkey and the massive
redevelopment of the King’s Cross Station area in London. By Tuija Seipell
Camouflage, or cryptic coloration, is something living organisms have
developed over millions of years in order to remain indiscernible from
the surrounding environment.
Buildings, something humans have designed and built for thousands of
years, have never been indiscernible from the surrounding environment.
If anything, our egotistical fascination with conquering nature has
meant our buildings are designed to triumph over its
surroundings. Of course, nature inspires building design. But it
rarely seeks to mimic it.
That is, until this twist on nature landed on The Cool Hunter doorstep.
Set among shrubs and budding fir trees, this home has been encased in a
façade matching the greenery around it. The concealing mesh is
permeable to let the sunshine filter onto the house. But it also allows
the light from inside to radiate out. Allowing the build to sit
anonymously by day, but emerge discretely at night. Blurring the
boundaries between what is human, and what is not.
Inside, the materials are organic and neutral. Wood decking and
paneling cover the inside and outer reaches, while neutral colors blend
rooms into a seamless array of angles and hard wood furnishings. But
perhaps what’s more inspiring, is the building’s impact. The structure,
while inherently human, isn’t trying to dominate the landscape it
resides in. The single-storey house will soon be engulfed as the
surrounding woodland matures, and the materials used to give the house
its shape, will darken and merge with the backdrop. It’s an idea based
on nature – to evolve with nature, and to mimic the concept of
nature. Something in our opinion, there should be more of. By Matthew Hussey
The “Chalet” is by far the most famous product of Swiss
architecture. The wooden dwellings with sloping roof and
overhanging eaves, are as much a part of the Swiss landscape as the
Alps themselves. The single storey bunkers traditionally served as
seasonal farms for dairy cattle in the summer months, and haven’t
changed much since these humble beginnings.
But high up on a mountain pass in the Bernese Oberland, a new type of
seasonal home has emerged as a stark contrast to the timber heavy
squats the country is so famed for. With its back turned to the
harsh northerly winds, this contemporary take on the log cabin
straddles the vistas to the south via a huge five meter glass pane that
invites the landscape to fill its vast, open plan spaces.
Swiss planning regulators favor lots of small, pokey windows, this
house is anything but. Rather than shielding its inhabitants from
the outdoors, the house embraces the mountainous terrain, with large
glass doors opening out onto the wooden terrace that appears to float
alongside the house.
With its elegant, concrete slab base, it juts out into the landscape
like a beached vessel. The domineering fireplace runs through the
core of the building, dragging its brutal lines from the basement to
the roof three floors above.
Up the handsome open-tread staircase the bedrooms and bathrooms blend
into a continuous passage that invites you to keep moving. The
large, panoramic windows throughout keep the house light and airy,
while the double insulated walls and thick wood decking keep the cool
temperatures out. The sparse furnishings and sleek lines are a bold
statement that matches the buildings unrelenting exterior. Rather than
cluttering the house with gaudy ornaments and stuffy fixtures, it plays
on the sparse landscape it so elegantly sits in.
Traditional chalets have a tendency to shy away from the landscape,
sealing off its inhabitants to the beauty of the environment it
inhabits. This building however, embraces the countryside with an
unyielding arrogance and swagger. Perching precariously at the
tip of a mountain, it stares boldly at its surroundings. The
interior eschews its contemporary credentials with clean, simple lines
and muted colors. But at the same time, it feels traditional,
homely, and welcoming. A small homage to the portly abodes that
continue to dominate the Swiss landscape. By Matthew Hussey
Some cities put their drinking holes on bold display, all glass
frontage and brazen invitation. Some don't. Melbourne is certainly in
the latter camp, and, not surprisingly, its latest bar offering, New
Gold Mountain, is a hole-in-the-wall affair found down a cobble-stoned
lane way and somewhat reminiscent of a womb. Or the inside of 'I Dream
of Jeannie's bottle.
New Gold Mountain,
is brought to us by a team of four locals who've worked in leading bars
in Melbourne and London. They've teamed with young Australian architect
Cassandra Fahey,
who (for those who follow such things) designed the controversial house
for Australian football sensationalist Sam Newman back in 2000 (the one
with the two story glass frontage embedded with Pamela Anderson's
face). For this project, Fahey took the old tailor's studio on the
outskirts of the city's Chinatown district and created a space that
works to a distinct opium-den theme. Downstairs speaks of colonial-era
Shanghai, with two fireplaces decorated with the Chinese zodiac.
Upstairs is the Poppy Room featuring plush pink fabrics suspended from
the ceiling. And nana-esque furniture. Pretty and comforting. Just as
Jeannie would like it.
And the drinks? They specialize in sours. The music? Something
described as "nouvelle-vague Joy Division revisions". Which certainly
pegs the clientèle into a certain age bracket. A space you might have
to track down yourself, but will certainly envelop you once you're in. Sarah W
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