I am clumsy. I also like straight-up martinis. Problem is, the more martinis I have, the clumsier I get. So I order them in a rocks glass because I don’t want the busboy to have to scurry over there with the long-handled dustpan to sweep up my shards since the shape of a martini glass seems designed for me to mishandle and break.
As one of my product design professors always used to say, “You shouldn’t have to adjust to your booze vessel; your booze vessel should adjust to you.” (Although he may have used the word “product design” instead of “booze vessel.”)
NYC-based design firm AMT Studio, run by French-American-Dutch Eindhoven grad Alissia Melka-Teichroew, has the answer to my problems. Their InsideOut glassware collection comes in smooth, grab-friendly shapes, while the inside retains the classic shapes of champagne-, martini-, liqueur- and shot-glasses.
As for that last one, I’ve never had a problem handling a shot-glass, I typically have a problem handling the tequila my friend enjoys ordering inside of them. One request, Melka-Teichroew: Please swap out the shot-glass for a snifter!
Anyways, as an added bonus, the double walls provide a measure of insulation, keeping your drink cool just a bit longer.
At Hand-Eye Supply we are aware that the experience of working creatively with a romantic partner can be a different experience than with a strictly platonic collaborator complete with both caveats and advantages. In February we’d like to celebrate those creative couples who make it work, working together.
Our Valentine’s Day series featuring collaborators in both love and labor. Our first feature is dedicated to historic coupled creatives, and we’ll be releasing following posts about some of our favorite duos in Portland, OR over the next few days! Check them out at Hand-Eye Supply.
This track by Human Machine is a tribute to the late, great trumpet player Donald Byrd, who passed away last week. Byrds in Heaven is a gentle electronica track, which features a mournful sample of Byrd’s playing.
The track was sent to us by Love Our Records, a UK-based online record label that releases a free download each week. Check them out here.
Despite its Japanese core and status as one of the oldest denim labels, Edwin has been a relatively slow burner in the raw denim, heritage area of the market. Even while sporting one of the most visually arresting selvedge lines—the rainbow selvedge—the brand as a whole has felt like…
From Swiss artist Ursus Wehrli comes “The Art of Clean Up: Life Made Neat and Tidy,” a collection of everyday objects that have been obsessively organized into systematic still lifes. Wehrli shows off his penchant for comedy and color composition in the series, which is a follow-up to his…
Artist Chris O’Shea has collaborated with digital production company Nexus Interactive Arts to create Woodland Wiggle – an interactive game for children displayed on an enormous telly in a new indoor play area at The Royal London Hospital’s dedicated Children’s Hospital…
Officially called The Ann Riches Healing Space, the new indoor play area has been designed by architects Cottrell & Vermeulen and graphic designer Morag Myerscough and takes the form of an oversized living room filled with Alice In Wonderland-scale objects for children to explore and interact with.
“The architects [Cottrell & Vermeulen] had won a RIBA competition to design the space and had the concept of the large living room,” explains Myerscough of the project. “I was then brought in by Vital Arts [who commissioned the project] to introduce another layer of narrative in the space,” she continues.
“The living room was to appear as a familiar calm space but super sized and I introduced the playful disorder with giant characters, stories, puzzle seating, wooden tops and a wallpaper patterned with a menagerie of animals.”
“Once we we struck on the idea of the animals who better to ask than my Mum, Betty Fraser Myerscough, a textile artist, who went to work creating various animals and we took [toy-size versions, shown below] to the hospital to see how the patients would react and they loved them,” Myerscough continues.
“The main characters in the space are Eddie the Tiger and Twoo the Wise Owl. We did not stop there – Luke Morgan has written a story about all the friends who live in Cozy Wood and can hear it narrated under the story telling chair in the space.”
It is Betty Fraser Myerscough’s animal character creations which have been brought to life in the interactive game devised by O’Shea that plays out on the huge TV in the space. Myerscough’s characters were illustrated and animated by Felix Massie and can be interacted with onscreen by moving around in front of the screen.
Entitled Wiggle Wood, the installation allows children to enter into a storybook-style illustrated world, enabling them to paint, play music (with sound design and music by Brains & Hunch), and trigger sun, rain, snow and rainbows with animated animal characters across a number of woodland scenes.
“Working in close consultation with clinical teams at the hospital, and following a series of workshops with physiotherapists and occupational therapists, I was able to determine a range of movements that would give children the best health benefits which strongly influenced the format and design of the games created,” explains artist Chirs O’Shea of the project.
“The installation had to work with a wide range of abilities, from wheelchair users, visually impaired, to bed bound children, so simple movement filtering allows for triggering of music and paint with just a wave of the hands,” he continues. Here’s a look at the installation being put to good use:
Woodland Wiggle credits:
Artist Chris O’Shea Producer Beccy McCray Executive producer Luke Ritchie Development producer Claire Spencer Cook Production assistant Carmen de Wit Illustrator and animator Felix Massie Composer and sound designer Brains and Hunch Documentation editor Dave Slade Production Company Nexus Interactive Arts
Other features in the space include huge colourful spinning tops (they don’t spin, for obvious safety reasons) designed by Morag Myerscough, an interactive patterned projection underneath a huge lampshade, and two enormous animal characters designed by Myerscough senior – here’s Twoo awaiting departure from the factory it was made in:
Architects Cottrell & Vermeulen have also designed a garden area in the hospital but photos aren’t available at the time of posting this story – we’ll add images as soon as we have them.
Both the indoor and outdoor play areas were ommissioned by Vital Arts, the arts organisation for Barts Health NHS Trust. Funded entirely by charitable donations from underwriters OdysseyRe, construction group Skanska, and Barts and The London Charity.
CR in Print The February issue of CR magazine features a major interview with graphic designer Ken Garland. Plus, we delve into the Heineken advertising archive, profile digital art and generative design studio Field, talk to APFEL and Linder about their collaboration on a major exhibition in Paris for the punk artist, and debate the merits of stock images versus commissioned photography. Plus, a major new book on women in graphic design, the University of California logo row and what it means for design, Paul Belford on a classic Chivas Regal ad and Jeremy Leslie on the latest trends in app design for magazines and more. Buy your copy here.
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, or 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.
Herzog & de Meuron has added three new halls to the Messe Basel exhibition centre in the north of the Swiss city where the architects are based (+ slideshow).
The Messe Basel, which hosts Art Basel each June, is undergoing a development programme to relocate exhibition areas around the neighbouring Messeplatz public square, so Herzog & de Meuron was asked to replace two of the existing halls with a new extension.
The architects have stacked three ten-metre-high halls on top of one another, creating a 2500-person events space on the ground floor and two additional exhibition rooms above.
Externally, these halls appear slightly displaced from each other. Textured aluminium clads the exterior, creating the impression of a woven facade.
Each hall features a wide-spanning construction to reduce the number of columns, while zig-zagging elevators provide a link between each of the levels.
A ground-floor lobby connects the extension with the existing exhibition halls and a series of shops, bars and restaurants. Glazing surrounds the facade to attract as many visitors inside as possible.
Part of the extension bridges across the Messeplatz and creates a sheltered area that has been dubbed the “City Lounge”. A large circular skylight punctures the roof above the space, framing the main entrance into the building.
The New Hall will be officially opened on the 23 April and the old building will be redeveloped and converted into apartments and offices.
Herzog & de Meuron, led by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, also recently completed the Parrish Art Museum, an art gallery on Long Island, New York. See more architecture by Herzog & de Meuron, including interviews we filmed with both architects at the opening of the 2012 Serpentine Gallery pavilion.
Photography is c/o MCH Group AG.
Here’s a project description from Herzog & de Meuron:
Messe Basel – New Hall Completed
The New Hall of Messe Basel is complete. Its realization is a key development in the Messe Basel’s aim to concentrate its exhibition halls around the Messeplatz (Exhibition Square). The surrounding Kleinbasel district will also benefit from the continuing upgrade of the Messeplatz and, at the same time, regaining former exhibition areas to convert into apartments and offices that will contribute to Basel’s urban development. Replacing two out-of-date halls, the new three-storey extension offers modern, flexible and versatile exhibition spaces with wide uninterrupted spans and tall 10m heights.
To provide the required indoor connection to all halls, the extension bridges over the Messeplatz and creates a new covered public space called the City Lounge. This key architectural and urban planning element defines the south end of the Messeplatz and is illuminated from above by a generous circular opening. Open at all times, the City Lounge not only defines the entrance to the fair spaces, but will be a focal point of public life in Kleinbasel.
The New Hall features three levels. The ground floor entrance level seamlessly links the City Lounge to the existing halls, the new event space for 2’500 spectators, and a number of shops, bars and restaurants. The dynamic sweep of the street level facade reacts to the flows of people and corresponds to the space required at the tram stop and entrances to the exhibition centre and Event Hall. Here, large expanses of glass create the spatial transparency both necessary and appropriate in order to achieve the openness envisioned for the exhibition hall complex and the enlivening of public urban life.
The two upper exhibition levels are offset from each other as separate volumes allowing them to respond and shift to specific urban conditions. From each point of view, the new hall offers a different perception and thus avoids the repetitive monotony typical of exhibition halls. This constant architectural variation is reinforced by applying a homogeneous material (aluminum) over all exterior surfaces.
The facade of articulated twisting bands strategically modulates and reduces the scale of the halls large volumes to its surroundings. This is not simply a decorative element but a practical means to regulate the fall of natural light on adjacent properties and to provide views in to the new hall’s social spaces and out towards specific views of the city of Basel.
All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!
First things first, this week’s unitasker selection is obviously a multi-tasker. (It holds your toilet paper AND your iPad!) And, if there were some sort of strict rules to how we select unitaskers, it likely wouldn’t qualify. But, since our only criteria for picking unitaskers is: “Does it make us laugh?” It, technically, qualifies … because we cannot stop laughing at the CTA Digital Pedestal Stand for iPad with Roll Holder:
It appears we have devolved so greatly as a society that we cannot use the toilet without also using a mobile device. Ew, ew, ew! Just ew! But, also, hahahaha!
Thank you, reader Adele, for sharing this with us and giving us all a good laugh.
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.
The single-axle Honda type E concept uses similar physical principles as a segway for maximum maneuverability in the urban jungle. The ultrasmall vehicle focuses on minimum space consumption, maximum driver visibility, easy access, high efficiency, and, most importantly, driving dynamics that make it capable of turning 360 on the spot. It’s got a far-out aesthetic, but it’s really not all that unrealistic from what we’ll probably see not-so-distant future.
Pros: – no drive chain (lower weight, low fictional resistance) – no steering ear (lower weight) – turns on a dime – high efficiency start/stop-drive with regenerative braking – standing phase without loss of energy (traffic) – minimum use of parking space – zero emissions
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
