The new year has us updating our old routines around the house, and fresh linens seem like one of the easiest ways to make a clean start. This week, we’ve gathered up five beautifully crafted towels to help spruce up the bath and get us going on cold mornings….
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Avec sa série de clichés intitulée « Reflexion Autour du Bassin », le photographe français Alain Laboile nous propose des images fantaisistes dans lesquelles il met en scène ses enfants en utilisant le reflet de l’eau de manière poétique. Des créations originales et réussies à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.
Vera coffee table is inspired by natural flowing forms. Table main forms and lines are like flowing sea waves.Vera table is made from metal carcass an..
News: Swiss architect Peter Zumthor is now inviting guests to rent a holiday home he built for his family in the mountain hamlet of Leis in Vals (+ slideshow).
Zumthor, the most recent recipient of the Royal Gold Medal for architecture, built two neighbouring timber houses in 2009 for himself and his wife and named them the Oberhus and the Unterhus. “Annalisa had always dreamed of living in a house built of wood,” wrote the architect in the year of construction.
Both three-storey houses feature a similar vernacular design, with gabled roofs and large balcony windows, but it is the Unterhus that Peter and Annalisa Zumthor have made available to rent. Peter Zumthor has also designed a third house, named the Türmlihus, which is due to complete this year and will start accepting bookings in the autumn. “We are very much looking forward to having guests in our timber vacation homes in Leis,” say the pair.
The Unterhus contains five rooms and sleeps 4-5, while the Türmlihus will contain four rooms and will accommodate a maximum of four people. The Türmlihus will also feature a sauna and a cross-shaped layout that offers views in four different directions.
Zumthor is best known for designing buildings such as the Therme Vals thermal baths in Switzerland and the Kunsthaus Bregenz gallery in Austria, but his more recent projects include a memorial to commemorate witches burned at the stake. See more stories about Peter Zumthor, including an interview we filmed with him at the opening of the 2011 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion.
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Do you use a “down time” list? I used one often when I worked in the corporate world. It was a list of things I could work on when I finished my usual responsibilities. Now, several years later, I use a similar list, though it usually has things that I can do in five minutes or less.
One of the challenges many people often face is finding the time to unclutter. Everyone’s busy and has full schedules as well as other things they’d rather be doing. To combat the dread you might be feeling when it’s time to get things in order or to stop the mad dash when you’re looking for something, create a list of things you can get done in just a few short minutes until they become regular habits. To help you get started, consider adding these 10 things that you can do in 300 seconds to your daily or weekly routine.
Need help getting organized? Buy the DRM-free audiobook version of Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week today for only $8.99.
CES has kicked off in Las Vegas and we’re covering the show this year to bring an ID perspective to the usual fan boy tech banter. One project we have been tracking to its debut at CES this week is Definitive Technology’s Sound Cylinder. You may not have heard of Definitive, but these guys have been making audiophile gear since 1990, including the recently released SoloCinema XTR, a killer sound bar for your living room housed in an aluminum extrusion. Building off the learnings of the SoloCinema, Definitive brings us the Sound Cylinder, a sound bar designed for your iPad and Macbook. The Cylinder has a perffed aluminum housing with an injection magnesium kickstand and grip mechanism.
Side-firing driver on the Definitive Cylinder handles the bass
As nice as the minimal aesthetic is to look at, where this thing really shines is when you crank it up. We had an opportunity to test run a prototype here at the office in December and were pretty impressed. There are no shortage of bluetooth speakers out there, but most of them don’t play very loud, or the low end frequency starts to drop out when the volume is pushed. The Cylinder has two forward firing 32mm drivers that give great reproduction of the mid and high range, and a 43mm side firing driver that handles all the low end frequency. What that means is you get crazy bass from a small package even when you are 20 yards away. Playing video games and watching Mad Men on our iPad just got way more interesting. The digital signal processing on this thing is intense. The same engineers that design the acoustics on Definitives $6,000 systems developed the Cylinder and it shows. 20+ years of audio engineering definitely pays off.
Bluetooth means you can easily connect it to just about any laptop, tablet, or phone, and there is a 3.5mm aux in just in case. The silicone blades open wide enough to grab an iPad even with a case on it, and grip it snugly enough that we couldn’t easily shake an iPad out. The front blade has a little jog to dodge the camera on the top of for laptop or tablet which we thought was a nice detail. The pop out kickstand is great when you want to watch a full length movie, or stream some audio. The Cylinder is $199 and will be available next month. Check it out in person at the iLounge at CES and be sure to follow Rain Noe’s live posts from the show this week!
News: graphic design studio Barnbrook has defaced a classic David Bowie album and upturned a 1970s photograph of the musician to create the covers of his new album and single.
Jonathan Barnbrook, head of the London-based studio, explained in a blogpost why the cover for The Next Day, due out in March, recycles the artwork for Bowie’s 1977 album “Heroes” by placing a blank square over the pop star’s face.
“The “Heroes” cover obscured by the white square is about the spirit of great pop or rock music which is ‘of the moment’, forgetting or obliterating the past,” he said. “If you are going to subvert an album by David Bowie there are many to choose from, but this is one of his most revered.”
“We know it is only an album cover with a white square on it, but often in design it can be a long journey to get at something quite simple which works,” he added. “Often the most simple ideas can be the most radical.”
The studio also took a picture of the musician from the late 1970s and turned it upside down to create the cover for new single Where are We Now?, Bowie’s first release in a decade.
A new typeface called Doctrine was also created for the covers, and will be released soon by Barnbrook’s font-producing wing VirusFonts.
Barnbrook previously designed the covers for Bowie’s 2002 album Heathen and 2003’s Reality, and has also been working on the upcoming David Bowie is exhibition at the V&A.
We previously featured a selection of work by Barnbrook shown at the Design Museum in London in 2007.
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album and single covers appeared first on Dezeen.
Lionel Messi’s unprecedented fourth Fifa World Player of the Year award in a row has been marked by an animated film from his sponsor, Adidas, created by Iris Worldwide and director Richard Swarbrick
The film features some of Messi’s incredible tally of 91 goals in 2012.
If you think the film looks somehow familiar it may be because Swarbrick produced a very similar series of films in 2011 for the Sun’s football coverage via agency WCRS, which were in turn based on his earlier personal work. Strange decision to use the same idea for such similar subject matter?
Adidas credits
Agency: Iris Worldwide
Senior Creative: Adam Fish
Production Company: Hotspur & Argyle
Director: Richard Swarbrick
Producer: Danny Fleet
Assistant Producer: Lizzie Wilkinson
Animation Assistants: Hannah Wroe, Amy Philpott
Editor: Simon @ The Assembly Rooms
Post Production: Smoke & Mirrors
CR in Print
The January issue of Creative Review is all about the Money – well, almost. What do you earn? Is everyone else getting more? Do you charge enough for your work? How much would it cost to set up on your own? Is there a better way of getting paid? These and many more questions are addressed in January’s CR.
But if money’s not your thing, there’s plenty more in the issue: interviews with photographer Alexander James, designer Mirko Borsche and Professor Neville Brody. Plus, Rick Poynor on Anarchy magazine, the influence of the atomic age on comic books, Paul Belford’s art direction column, Daniel Benneworth-Gray’s This Designer’s Life column and Gordon Comstock on the collected memos, letters and assorted writings of legendary adman David Ogilvy.
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here
With editorial branding whiz Dirk Barnett now at the creative helm of The New Republic, the magazine is preparing to roll out a bold new look. “We have one shot at stopping people at Hudson News, or the iTunes store, or in their Google Chrome browser, so we wanted a logo that stands tall, and demands a presence, without being too in-your-face,” said Barnett of the fresh, all-caps treatment (starring Antenna, in extra-condensed black) that will replace the magazine’s staid and serif-based signature. “As we designed our first covers with it, we knew we had something vital. And energetic!”
Boosting the 98-year-old publication’s energy is at the core of the top-to-bottom redesign that will debut on January 28 across platforms: print, web, and mobile. In fact, the overhaul began with the digital realm. “By the time I had joined the team, our impressive website design team, Hard Candy Shell, was already halfway through their work on the redesign of The New Republic website, and I quickly found inspiration in the work they were doing,” noted Barnett, who is also determined to balance the old and the new. “My first few trips to The New Republic‘s D.C. offices were spent poring through back issues. There are definitely some new design details in the redesign that owe their inspiration to those old magazines. And the first cover of The New Republic, from 1914, is a work of art.”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
News: architect Rem Koolhaas has today been confirmed as the director of the next Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014 and wants to use the opportunity to readdress the “fundamental elements of architecture”.
“We want to take a fresh look at the fundamental elements of architecture – used by any architect, anywhere, anytime – to see if we can discover something new about architecture,” said Koolhaas, founding partner of Dutch firm OMA.
In a meeting held today, the Board of the Venice Architecture Biennale thanked 2012 director David Chipeprfield for the results of the thirteenth event, before welcoming Koolhaas as the fourteenth architecture director.
Biennale president Paolo Baratta concluded: “The Architecture Exhibitions of the Biennale have gradually grown in importance internationally. Rem Koolhaas, one of the most significant personalities among the architects of our time – who has based all his work on intense research, now renowned celebrity – has accepted to engage himself in yet another research and, why not, rethinking.”
Rumours first circulated about Koolhaas’ appointment in August, after assistant director for the 2012 biennale Kieran Long tweeted “it’s certain to be Rem Koolhaas next time. Done deal say my sources.”
Koolhaas was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2010 biennale, while for 2012 OMA presented an exhibition of buildings designed by European local authority architects in the 1960s and 70s.
We’ve filmed a few movies with Koolhaas, including his introduction to OMA’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow and a series filmed at the OMA/Progress exhibition at the Barbican in London – watch them here or below.
Above: Koolhaas introduces OMA’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow at the ICA in London.
Above: Koolhaas gives a tour of the OMA/Progress exhibition at the Barbican in London.
Above: Koolhaas talks about his preoccupations including the countryside and generic architecture at the OMA/Progress exhibition.
Above: Koolhaas speaks about his Project Japan book at the OMA/Progress exhibition.
See more stories about Rem Koolhaas and OMA »
See more stories about the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale »
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