" and after all, your my ................."

The Japanese connection.   Masamichi Katayama and his company Wonderwall are producing some great retail designs. Wonderwall produce some slightly surreal shops that seem like a lot of fun. These guys have a great website. It's well worth a look for its origami approach to display. This Godiva Chocoiste shop has a clean almost cartoon feel. Chocoiste what a great word. Minimal palette with a fantastic effect. The shop is in Tokyo.

Chocolate Dali

Fantastic detail, surreal raised and fielded panels.

Photos by Kozo Takayama

Karim Rashid Corian House

Taking Corian a little further.

Let it Thaw.

It's been a busy week. I'm working on the Box Seven Design Website. Should have something other than a holding page to show soon. After two weeks of freezing weather its all starting to thaw. But the garden looked something like this.

which lead me on to this shot I had on my phone from the time of the London Design Week.

These were in a shop on Redchurch Steet. If you know it let me know. They had some lovely stock.

And from here while looking through my reference photo file. I came across these which continue the snow theme. If I remember correctly its a confectionary shop.

theurel and thomas in San Pedro Mexico

Tenuous snowy connections from my back garden to San Pedro.

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

Wanderlust

The Wanderlust Hotel in Singapore is a real eye opener. Its rooms were designed by a number of different Singapore design groups phunk Studio, Asylum, DP Architects and FFurious. The building is located in the city's little India area and the four agencies were each given one of four levels to sort out with a design solution. A good way to keep your designers on their toes trying to out-do the competition. The results are fantastic in the original sense of the word. I've been to Singapore and found it to have much of its colonial past still in evidence, very English with a lot of vast shopping centers. A hotel like this will certainly push the edges of convention. The four levels according to the hotel are
   
Lobby. Industrial Glam. sounds more like the north of England in the seventies or was that Industrial Glam Rock either way there is an oxymoron involved but irrespective of the title I like the results.

Level 2. Eccentricity Rainbow Colours


Level 3. Is it just Black and White Speaks for itself


Level 4. Creature Comforts Can you spot it.

Photos Via the Hotel

Red

Dusk in a rainy November Dublin time for the Red Antidote.