Public Transport

Sweden's underground transport system. When you travel on public transport everyday the environments you travel through are bound to affect you if even only in a small way. This blog is about all aspects of design that affect our lives. These pictures of Sweden's underground system caught me with the way colour emphasises the monumentality of the spaces it is applied to. These travel through spaces are not all clad in a corporate veneer. The texture height and colour might give you the feeling you are journeying through a strange underworld. Maybe the Norse sagas play an influential part in the design process.

Sweden's underground transport system. When you travel on public transport everyday the environments you travel through are bound to affect you if even only in a small way. This blog is about all aspects of design that affect our lives. These pictures of Sweden's underground system caught me with the way colour emphasises the monumentality of the spaces it is applied to. These travel through spaces are not all clad in a corporate veneer. The texture height and colour might give you the feeling you are journeying through a strange underworld. Maybe the Norse sagas play an influential part in the design process.

SOFT lab

I came across this piece by SOFT lab  on the Behance Network. I love it just as a piece of colour and structure. The panels that make up the installation were worked out on computer, very hi-tech, and held together with 17000 bulldog clips, very low-tech. Simplicity and colour. You really don't need much more.

The whole piece was constructed of 4,416 panels of high gloss photo paper. Each panel is a specific color and geometry to fit its unique placement within the larger form. 

Images via Behance

Mix your shop up

 I have always been a fan of mixed up retail. You know the type we Irish used to do so well like a Pub- Grocer- Funeral Director business where you could have a few pints then buy a half pound of tea and some rashers for when you got home and all this from the same pub.

I've been to a few strange mixed shops but one that stands out was a hairdresser - denim shop - vintage vinyl record shop in Spitalfields London. In the coiffure section you sat at vintage dressing tables to have your "do" done. The "dos" were all post Hoxton Fin and asymmetric fringes.  The dressing tables were from different decades 20's 40's and 50's, very cool. The basement was home to the denim and vinyl records with ABBA playing on a little Dancetron set on the floor.

The LeCool group have catalogued these mad little shops in London and other cities

Mat Osmon of LeCool describes the London book thus

"It's for people who love the city, People who love scooter shops that turn into coffee shops, and flats with aeroplane wings through them, and manga libraries, and doll's house furniture shops, and bubble-and-squeak stalls, and hairdressers-cum-art galleries-cum-nightclubs, and rollergirls, and so on and so on .

So if its for people who love the city, any city then it's for me.

There is a LeCool Dublin Website but this lists events rather than places. Maybe its time to catalogue Dublin's more eccentric shops.

Which one would you put at the top of your list? I know a lot of my readers are not from Dublin. Let me know of the quirky places where you live?

With corporate multinational similar streets you just don't get a mix up, a shop where you could  buy some boots and buy a painting. Let me know if your thinking of getting one off the ground.

London Design Festival

I'm just back  from the London Design Festival and I managed to get through quite a lot while I was over . We ( I had the fine company of Mrs Seven ) started on Friday at 100% Design in Earls Court. Then on to Tent at the old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane. Saturday morning was set aside for visiting Tramshed in Shoreditch. The One Room Hotel was the highlight of the remainder of Saturday. On Friday night we had dinner at Les Trois Garcons and drinks at Lounge Lover and finally home to The Hoxton Hotel. I will get through the highlights of the trip but first up its the work of Zoe Murphy who exhibited at Tent. She Upcycles pieces of furniture she comes across using screen printed designs based on her home town of Margate. The work had a lovely crisp printed and lacquered finish to it. Mid Century Modern brought back to vibrant life.

Upcycled Furniture by Zoe Murphy at Tent.


Pictures Via Zoe Murphy

Twisting Architecture