Here at the industry arm of TCH Platinum, we collaborate with some of the world's best companies to help them stand out from their competitors. We specialize in developing ideas to help brands move into the new, niche Cool Age niche.

We also develop ideas to take TCH into the offline space, starting with TreeLife and now our Pop-Up skate park.

This innovative concept sees art, design and extreme sports collide creatively in an awe-inspiring, customized skate park entirely unique in the skating world. Using pop-culture icons and the latest trends, the Pop-Up Skate Park by TCH creates ultra-cool skating environments, designed to garner the ultimate media exposure through their incredible appeal and popularity.

Currently, we are creating two Pop-Up Skate Park themes – Transformers and Space Invaders — both ideal promotional media for high-energy brands that want to attract serious attention.

For Transformers Skate Park, we commissioned Christiann Klaassen and his amazing team from Rockhunter in London to visualize the recreational and promotional space where design, technology and skate culture meet with a cool Skate Park.

This is a fully customizable skating environment, designed for each specific location’s surroundings, and incorporating a range of innovative ramps, bowls, half-pipes and landings.

Two oversized Autobot Transformer robots, impressively positioned at either end of the skate park, signify guardianship of the ramp and those who use it, echoing seamlessly the Transformers film concept of robots protecting humans.

En all-encompassing landscape of illumination and light-projected designs enhance the skating environment. There is also the option of showcasing a range of rotating art works to further emphasize this hyper- real environment.

Space Invaders, in turn, are arguably the biggest pop-cultural icons of the 80s! The original characters that introduced the world to the realm of video gaming through their pixilated aesthetics, enjoy the unique advantage of multi-generational appeal. Globally, from children of the 80s through to Generation Y, the public has recognized and appreciated these characters for their cool simplicity.

The Cool Hunter is taking these alien invaders and super-sizing them for their unique skate park. A pair of larger-than-life Space Invader characters frame the two ends of the skating environment. Made from translucent Perspex, these illuminated figures create the visual masthead for the Skate Invaders Park.

The skating surface itself reflects the playing environment of the original 80s game. This design comprises of illuminated alien ships, fighter units and laser beams as seen in the games architecture.

The entire Skate Invaders environment will be visually enticing and provide innovative user functionality for Skate Invaders. Skate Invaders has been rendered by Per Krogsgaard and Jason Idris Alami from What!

If your brand is ready to launch a Pop-Up Skate Park by THC in your city, get in touch.

Mini Cooper by TCH is also another project we'll soon announce online.

 

Sick of going to the opening of an envelope new store opening party? The tried and tested formula is safe, uninspiring and obvious. (Eg. celebrity invites, cult dj spins some safe retro tunes and the real consumer is supposed to be inspired by this out pouring of elitism to then visit said store.) Always ready to challenge the status quo, Diesel's new store on Fifth Avenue in New York took a decidedly different approach at a time when consumer behaviour and creative marketing is not only revered but essential.
 
Titled "Five on Fifth", the guerrilla marketing campaign for Diesel allows the consumer on the street to witness real life installations in their store windows. Intimate dinner parties that would normally be held behind closed doors were staged in the windows featuring famous New Yorkers. Each night was a different theme (cleverly organised to appeal to a cross section of consumers) with a club night featuring key dj's like Richie Rich, Kenny Kenny and Patrick McDonald,  a sports night with the key players from the New York Giants and then a Fashion night featuring the girls from Ford Models.


 
Street teams also gave out free goodies in key spots alongside the intimate window dinners in an attempt to catch the busy eyes of the press who were running with blackberries in hand from Fashion week's shows to parties.
 
Bravo to Diesel for their creative, inspiring and well executed campaign that should hopefully set the bar for economic-chic alternatives for store openings! - Kate Vandermeer

Truth: prostate cancer kills thousands of Australian men each year — equal to the number of women who die from breast cancer. We know, definitely not cool. But the Cancer Council of Australia is far from giving up hope. This year they are asking Aussie blokes to participate and help raise funds for Daredallion Week from March 2nd-6th.



Dare: register to take on the Daredallion challenge — dare someone to do something they normally would not do — or else challenge yourself to something completely outrageous and raise money that will be used to promote awareness for men’s cancers.  Eugene Tan, our friend over at Aquabumps, photographed one of the first dares this year — a guy unsuccessfully attempted to float away from Bondi beach strapped to a bunch of helium balloons.  Check out the Daredallion site and either register a dare of your own, or use their Dare Generator and take on one of the challenges already developed — we dare you! - Andrew J Wiener

Held between June 14 and September 14, 2008, the International Exhibition Expo Zaragoza 2008 is already a distant memory but its effects still reverberate.


 
The 25 hectares along the river Ebro near Spain’s fifth-largest city, Zarazoga, hosted thematic pavilions and thematic squares plus the pavilions of more than 100 countries, all exploring the overall theme of the Expo, “Water and Sustainable Development.”


 
Some of our favourite Expo mementoes are these spectacular images from the Portuguese Pavilion. Theming the Portuguese participation in the watery event, Lisbon-based Bak Gordon Architects envisioned a river’s ever-changing flow from its trickling source to a river mouth by the sea.


 
BAK created the pavilion’s spaces as versatile, changeable and changing surroundings for audience participation at levels of each individual’s choosing. The three main areas – Alert, Consciousness and Change – explored water and sustainability and featured a red “river” of pavement that helped the visitors track the flow of the exhibit.


 
From an alarming tubular “jungle” of Alert, to Consciousness where Nuno Cera’s photography highlighted the three mighty rivers of Iberia – Guadiana, Tagus and Douro, the visitor ended up in the hopeful Change, where the promising movement of citizens was depicted, literally, with the movement of images and words spoken in various languages. - Tuija Seipell



Photography by ultimasreportagens.com

Fashion launches are a bit like romantic comedies; pretty people in pretty clothes in pretty places - and they all start to look and feel the same after a while. Louis Vuitton broke the mould with its latest launch for its new Stephen Sprouse collection. The mega party was held over three venues in New York, starting with a cocktail party at the Louis Vuitton store, followed by an exhibition of  Sprouse's artwork. The night ended with a packed after party at the Bowery Ballroom, where Debbie Harry took to the stage for a mini concert.

Louis Vuitton did the late designer proud, celebrating his unique Punk couture aesthetic by creating mini 'Sprouse worlds' - referencing his work at every turn, from the walls to the ceiling and the furniture, culminating in a spectacular 'hall" of graffiti, a 'tower' of vintage TV sets and custom neon signs. Even the food paid homage to Sprouse - neon coloured hors d'oeuvres and desserts spilled out in a kind of punk colored rainbow.



Sprouse, who was part of Andy Warhol's set, become famous in the 1980s for pioneering the uptown pop punk look; a wild and edgy mix of elements such as day-glo colours, high-tech fabrics, sequins, velcro, superb uptown tailoring and hand painted silks. The designer and artist, who died in 2004, also created elaborate costumes for the likes of Mick Jagger, Axl Rose, Trent Reznor, Courtney Love, David Bowie and Duran Duran.

And now, thanks to Louis Vuitton, a whole new generation will have the opportunity to discover his work. - Laura Demasi

TreeLife by The Cool Hunter. A public interactive outdoor exhibition of cutting edge tree houses designed by of the world’s top artists, designers and architects.



After four years of spreading the latest word on cool online, The Cool Hunter is proud to announce the launch of its first "real world" public event, TreeLife by The Cool Hunter which is set to land in iconic park locations in New York, London, Sydney and other exciting cities in Europe, New Zealand, Canada and Asia during 2009 and 2010.



TreeLife by The Cool Hunter will showcase cutting-edge eco design by the world’s best architects, designers and artists.

Tree houses have become creative eco-statements in the design world; structures that don’t impose themselves on the environment, but blend into it with harmony, respect and grace. They allow people to literally live in “nature,” a place of peace and tranquility high above the street level of life where stress dominates.



The Cool Hunter will invite the world’s most exciting established and emerging architects, designers and artists to design a tree-house for the event. TreeLife is a thoroughly green event, and tree houses will be crafted from sustainable or recycled materials. The participating designers  will be briefed to design the tree houses as ‘stand alone’ structures that only appear to be suspended in the trees, so the exhibition does not impact on the trees or the environment.

A board of curators will work to select the participating architects, designers and artists, both established “stars” and rising talent from across the globe as well as the event’s home city. 

TreeLife by The Cool Hunter will be held over four weeks, and will feature a program of cool sustainable entertainment events happening around the exhibition.



Sponsorship Opportunities

Design: The new frontier in brand alignment

The consumer marketing landscape is changing. A decade ago brands rushed to align with fashion, music and celebrity but as these worlds have become ubiquitous their value as vehicles for brand positioning is decreasing.

Consumers are moving on, looking to more exclusive, less accessible disciplines of design such as architecture and art for distraction and inspiration. We have entered an age where architects, product, furniture and industrial designers and other design and visual creatives are becoming the new pop icons.

An age where names like Zaha Hadid, Marc Newson, Karim Rashid and Philippe Starck have entered the popular culture lexicon.

Yesterday, mass market consumers cared who designed the dress. Today and tomorrow, they will care who designed the chair, the building and the artwork.



The challenge for brands is to learn how to engage this increasingly design-literate consumers, who are not only spoiled for choice, but also developing an almost inherent expectation of innovation in everything they consume.

As evidenced by Apple, innovation - from product development through to all facets of brand communication - isn’t just desirable. It’s everything.

TreeLife by The Cool Hunter offers brands an opportunity to align with a design brand event that will reach a large audience. The event is about casting green as innovative, cool and the only way forward for the future. 

For sponsorship enquiries please contact bill@thecoolhunter.net or laura@thecoolhunter.net



TreeLife illustration created Andy Gilmore

Magical spiritual powers are not the only talents Miami-based art collaborative FriendsWithYou can claim as theirs. They also have a special skill for creating cuddly, cute and somewhat clever toys, events, experiences and other playthings for us mere mortals. We would never imply that their Fun Houses and other entertainment are just for kids because if they were, we’d be too envious to be nice.


 
This past summer, the FriendsWithYou duo – Sam Borkson and Arturo “Tury” Sandoval III – participated in the Hexagone (A hex is gone) group art show in Miami curated by Jose Mertz. The FriendsWithYou playroom was filled with gigantic inflated buddies and called Wish World. Miami-born artist Bhakti Baxter created a fantastic mural for the space.
 
A FriendsWithYou Fun House was also part of the 944 Magazine’s Crime on Canvas surrealistic pop art show in July 2008 at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas.


 
Earlier this month, FriendsWithYou created another Fun House interactive exhibition for the SCOPE Miami lounge. This year’s SCOPE had nearly 90 exhibitors from more than 20 countries in a new 60,000-square-foot space in the Wynwood Art District where FriedsWithYou’s new studio is now also located.
 
The Fun House is a giant, anthropomorphic bounce house intended to help unleash the visitors’ inner brats and in doing so, take advantage of the healing power of fun. This is in keeping with FriendsWithYou’s mission of sharing the message of “magic, luck and friendship with the global community.” - Tuija Seipell

Hector Serrano Studio has curated and designed the exhibition Spain Emotion as well as the communication campaign of the Spanish participation at this years Tokyo Designer's Week. The event is organized by the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade (ICEX) and will take place in the Spanish Embassy in Tokyo from 30 October to 3 November 2008.



More than an exhibition, Spain Emotion is a celebration of the best Spanish design in the Tokyo Designer's Week that encompasses not only this exhibition, but also conferences and seminars; a forum that provides with an exceptional opportunity to get to know at first hand those who are behind the products. The aim of Hector Serrano Studio this year is for emotion to be the guiding threads of their story, and the products its main characters. To this end, they have created a space that aims to surprise, entertain, seduce and encourage, rather than simply showing; four large stages where light dramatises and bathes the surroundings and the pieces in colour. Colour to communicate the vitality and energy with which the Spanish character is so often identified. In short, an experience aimed at revealing the latest in Spanish design, in a most emotive way. - Tuija Seipell

A glass of expensive champagne on a swanky rooftop bar just doesn't cut it in the competitive world of product launches, which are all vying for VIP attendees and press coverage. 

Chanel decided to think outside of the square for the launch of the brand's new perfume, ‘Eau première,’ staging the event at a private Parisian apartment. Chanel recruited acclaimed set, window and interior designer Jean-Marc Gady to create an experiential event for guests, a "scenography" tasked with bringing the new fragrance and the heritage of the brand to life. Gady has created spaces for the likes of Louis Vuitton, Moet & Chandon and Apple.



The designer transformed the apartment into a set, which guests were encouraged to explore as the event played out. While they played with artfully arranged test sprays,  a fountain sent drops of the new fragrance into the air, sweetly permeating their senses. The evening ended with the unveiling of large format photographs of Chanel's iconic "faces" over the years, from Marilyn Monroe through to Nicole Kidman. - Lisa Evans

Forget the sport..some of the most interesting things happening at the Beijing Olympics are coming from clever sponsors who have dreamt up creative ways to promote their brands at the mega global event. We're loving the offering from Mini Cooper, who have dragged traditional Chinese street transport into the 21st century with these great bike-powered Minis. Samsung has been equally creative, giving Olympics' fans a chance to view all of the action from their own "private" alien-like pods. Both of these offerings are a lesson to global brands: get creative and innovative in your marketing or risk being drowned out by the noise. - Laura Demasi

What’s an hourglass? Oh yes, it’s an ancient time piece, flowing fine sand quietly marking time in a perfectly balanced glass. Or, as everyone should know by now, it is the main prop at Never Stand Still. It was the kick-off party to start the countdown for BMW’s European launch of the latest model of BMW 7 series, slated to take place this fall. The car, displayed in the world’s largest hourglass in the Red Square, has not received much coverage but as soon as the construction of the hourglass marvel began four months ago, online buzz about it has been consistent. The 12-meter-high glass contraption was the centerpiece of the party thrown to 400 invited guests and celebrities. At the start of the build-up, more than 180,000 silvery balls concealed the car that was gradually revealed as the balls fell to the lower level. Moscow is a strong and growing market for BMW, and what better place to strut its latest but the historic location against the backdrop of the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral and G.U.M. — all veterans of many a communist-era motorized military parade. By Tuija Seipell

The team behind the Danish pavilion at the World Expo 2008 in Zaragoza, Spain consists of three Copenhagen-based firms – architects Spektrum Arkitekter, graphic agency Loop Associates and communications agency 2+1.

The Danish pavilion houses Círculos de Agua (Circles in the Water), an exhibition about sustainable living and lasting solutions that echoes the World Expo 2008 theme of water and sustainability. Círculos de Agua highlights Danish technologies that have started out small yet have the potential to affect global change. The underlying message is that everything we do spreads like ripples through water. The pavilion will be used again at the COP15 Copenhagen – United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009.



The pavilion consists of five cylinders with five themes. The Wind Cylinder explains how the tiny country of Denmark with only five million inhabitants has become a leading supplier of wind power technologies. The Water Cylinder explores the planning of cities to cope with rising water levels and the extreme climate of the future. The Daylight Cylinder showcase natural light as a vehicle for both style and sustainability. The Biomass Cylinder extols the virtues of bio fuels produced from harvest waste. The Restaurant & Shop Cylinder, dedicated to creativity, showcases the latest in Danish design and crafts. The World Expo runs till September 14, so it's not too late to see it. - Tuija Seipell.

Karl Largerfeld never puts a pedicured foot wrong and hispresentation for Chanel at this week's Couture shows proves that he isstill one of the most innovative and creative minds on the planet. Largerfeld unveiled his collection amid an extraordinary 50-foot setmade up of steel-grey tubes inspired by organ pipes. Lagerfeld worked the tubes theme into the collection, showing tubular shapes in severaldifferent manifestations.

Lagerfeldis one of the masters of catwalk theatrics, dreaming up incrediblelarger-than life sets that seem to get more elaborate each season. Forsome of the best of recent shows check out Runaway Runway Success. By Lisa Evans via Fashionation

In 1877, Antonio Fluxá went all the way from the island of Majorca to England to learn about shoemaking. Whatever he learned there, he put into action immediately and founded a shoe company that his grandson Lorenzo turned into Camper Shoes  in 1975. Today, the family's fourth generation is at the helm, the company is still based in Majorca and its shoes are sold worldwide. If you were lucky, you received an invite to this fun-and-games Campy party held in Germany recently, to celebrate the launch of the Spring/Summer 08 collection. AstroTurf, retro gear, great music and sand in your sandals. We're in. By Tuija Seipell

Berlin’s Magma Architecture won several awards for its entry in the JETZT | NOW series of temporary installations at the Berlinische Galerie, Museum for Contemporary Art, Photography and Architecture. Magma’s installation, 11th in the series, was called fittingly “head-in | im kopf” and its concept is based on exploring the properties of materials, form, color and light.
 
The main feature of the installation is an alarmingly orange flexible fabric (polyamide-elastan mix) stretched between the walls, ceiling and floor. The fabric is the most visible part of the exhibit, yet it is also the tool with which the viewers can focus on smaller details.



Visitors bend down under the fabric into which openings were cut. Through these holes, visitors pop their heads up into the orange space to view drawings, models and photographs suspended from wires. These items are from Magma’s work and include representations of the revitalization of the former GDR Radio Centre (Berlin, Nalepastrasse, 2007), a bridge over the Landwehrkanal river in Berlin (competition entry in 2006), the new Nexus Productions headquarters in London, and the exhibition Trial & Error in London (2003). Luckily, we have images to show how it all worked as the full effect of the experience is quite impossible to describe in mere words.
 
The project team for head-in | im kopf included Anke Noske, Hendrik Bohle, Dominik Jörg, Lena Kleinheine, Ksenia Kagler, Yohko Mizushima, Lena Kleinheinz, Martin Ostermann and Ben Reynolds.



Magma was established in 2003 by Martin Ostermann and Lena Kleinheinz. The Ohio native Ostermann is a former senior architect at Studio Daniel Libeskind. The Denmark-born Kleinheinz is an exhibition designer. Magma is known for its inventive, experimental and experiential approaches to architectural work. By Tuija Seipell

Publicity stunts don't come on much of a larger scale than this. To celebrate the launch of the new Fiat 500 in London last night, one of the vehicles was placed into a pod on the London Eye where it will live for the next 2 weeks.

The launch of this 'time capsule' was at 8pm, exactly 500 hours into the year and as one would expect for such an event, was a star-studded affair and included a light show that lit up the river Thames, and performances by Mika and The Feeling.

The car itself is a remodel of the original version which was first presented 50 years ago, and is Fiat's go at re-releasing a retro classic, as VW (Beetle) and BMW (Mini) have arguably both done quite successfully in recent years.

The 500 was recently named the 2008 Car of the Year and has been praised in numerous auto publications. By
Brendan McKnight

Villa Eugenie is an "events" company in the most impressive sense of the word. These are not people who organize bridal showers and baby parties for minor movie stars. For the Brussels-based team of Villa Eugenie, led by Etienne Russo, routine means orchestrating a major runway event for a major fashion house. And stunning everyone.



Best known for its catwalk extravaganzas, Villa Eugenie is now involved in not just creating spectacular fashion shows, but staging major events for luxury business in all of its forms - magazine launches, major celebrations, and jewellery, perfume, art and opera installations, corporate events and fairs around the world. The team also advises major fashion brands on store concepts, stores space searches, lighting and branding. Although based in Brussels, Villa Eugenie operates in all major fashion and luxury centers and has a permanent office also in Miami.



We do not envy their task of having to impress the time-hardened fashion buyer or editor, or the celebrities that line up the runways of the famous fashion emporiums. These events are critiqued like major concerts or art exhibitions, and the shows themselves are as much about drama and ever-bigger surprises as they are about the designers, or the fashions - most of which are unwearable by mere mortals anyway.



Villa Eugenie must be doing it right. Year after year, its client list reads like a Who is Who in the fashion world: Chanel, Dries Van Noten, Miu Miu, Maison Martin Margiela, Lanvin, Hermés, Hugo Bosss, Sonia Rykiel, Olivier Strelli, and the
Adidas-backed Y-3.



These are all major brands with huge production budgets. But even when you know that sky is not the budget's limit, it is still astonishing that the same production company can be creating several shows in one season - all attended by the same posse of cynical seen-it-all viewers - and not start to appear stale or formulaic. Boundless creativity and ruthless attention to detail, both most likely still sparked for each project by Etienne Russo himself, are the cornerstones of such a feat.



Russo started humbly in the 1980s as an artistic and creative barman at Mirano, a fashionable nightclub in Brussels. He was soon creating major events there and drawing serious attention. His first real fashion client was Dries Van Noten for whom he worked as a model, salesman, lighting engineer, cook and extraordinary producer of Van Noten's first fashion show in Paris in 1991.



In 1995, Russo started his own production firm, naming it after the charming villa where it was located. Since 2004, the Villa Eugenie team has worked out of a former factory close to Brussels South station (Bruxelles-Midi, Brussel-Zuid). The space, covered by a vast glass canopy, was redesigned by the Ghent-based architect Glenn Sestig



This is the same man who this year opened his first luxury hotel Sestig Hotel. In the cubic Huis Van Waes building in Ghent that he reconstructed. By Tuija Seipell



Seen any other interesting events we should know about? e-mail bill@thecoolhunter.net