Hasta La Ideas

Le erbe aromatiche greche sono famose per essere molto rinomate in ambito culinario ma la loro commercializzazione resta purtroppo ancora localizzata. Daphnis and Chloe è un progetto di Evangelia Koutsovoulou che sta cercando di realizzare grazie al supporto di kickstarter per aiutare ad esportare in tutto il mondo questi prodotti greci.
Per ora le erbe in commercio sono quattro: origano, salvia, timo e alloro. Le trovate qui.

La versione estiva della Nike Pre Montreal entra a far parte della collezione summer.

Work by YZ at Les Bains. Photo: Jérôme Coton

50 of the world’s finest street artists have been given the run of a derelict nightclub in the heart of Paris

Les Bains-Douches, a stone’s throw from the Pompidou Centre, was built in 1885 as a municipal bathhouse. More recently, as Les Bains, it became one of the coolest nightclubs in Paris, in its time a favourite haunt of Mick Jagger, Kate Moss, Johnny Depp and Andy Warhol. But some over-enthusiastic DIY work by the nightclub’s director led to the building being declared a safety hazard and in 2010, it was ordered to be closed.

By Julien Malland Seth. Photo: Jérôme Coton

The following year, owner Jean-Pierre Marois formed La Société des Bains to try to preserve the building, eventually securing its future as a new venue which will open in 2014. But what to do with the derelict building in the meantime?

“In keeping with the artistic soul of the place, we have transformed this dead time into a fleeting, creative buzz,” Marois declared on Les Bains’ website. “Les Bains will host an Artists’ Residency, and the whole building will be offered as a giant canvas for a plethora of urban artists commissioned by Magda Danysz.”

Sambre work in progress. Photo Jérôme Coton

From January this year, 50 renowned street artists have had the run of the building, turning it into a 3,000 square meter gallery, albeit one that is inaccessible to the public. Marois and gallery owner Magda Danysz invited artists including Futura, Space Invader and Sambre to use material drawn from the building – electricity, ripped-up floorboards, rubble and spray paint – to capture its former energy. Smashed disco balls are a recurring motif.

YZ. Photo Jérôme Coton

On April 29, renovation work will begin. None of the artworks will be preserved. “There’s a certain absurdity that I like,” says Marois of the project. “Not many people will see it, it’s all going to disappear.”

Not without trace, however. Two full-time photographers are documenting work in progress for the website; Danysz is publishing a catalogue of the event.

Scratchpaper. Photo: Jérôme Coton

Lek&Sowat. Photo: Jérôme Coton

L’atlas. Photo: Jérôme Coton

JF-Julian. Photo: Jérôme Coton

1984. Photo Jérôme Coton

LEK. Photo: Jérôme Coton

It may be the end of a legend, but Les Bains is going out in style.

Images courtesy Galerie Magda Danysz

The April print issue of CR presents the work of three young animators and animation teams to watch. Plus, we go in search of illustrator John Hanna, test out the claims of a new app to have uncovered the secrets of viral ad success and see how visual communications can both help keep us safe and help us recover in hospital

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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.

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in this movie filmed in Milan earlier this month, leading designers and manufacturers discuss the phenomenon of copying and how they are responding. “It’s become an increasingly big problem for us,” says Tom Dixon. “People can steal ideas and produce them almost faster than we can now.”

“An original design product will have a cost higher than its copy,” says designer Marcel Wanders (above). “It’s very simple. Stealing most of the time is more cheap than buying.”

Unscrupulous manufacturers visit Milan to photograph new prototypes and then rush out copies before the original products reach the market, according to Casper Vissers (below), CEO of furniture and lighting brand Moooi.

“It’s very sour if you have presented a product in April and it’s in the shops in September, but a bloody copier has it already in August,” says Vissers, speaking at Moooi’s spectacular Unexpected Welcome show in Milan (below). “This is what happens at the moment.”

Vissers adds that legal action against copiers in Asia is expensive and, even if it’s successful in the short term, it does little to stem the tide: “You need huge amounts of money [to launch a law suit in the Far East] and if you win – if – a new limited company in China will start production [of copies]”.

Copiers are increasingly shameless about their intentions, says Tom Dixon, speaking at his presentation at MOST in Milan. “People feel very confident copying things. Some people come around with spy glasses photographing things but other people are more overt and come in with iPads or film crews.”

Dixon says the problem is getting worse, with markets around the world and even the UK market increasingly flooded with copies. “Everywhere we go in Australia or Singapore or India we’ll see many, many copies, and that’s also hitting more and more the UK as well.”

Gregg Buchbinder (above), CEO of furniture company Emeco, says the solution is for designers to push manufacturers to make more sophisticated products that are harder to copy. The furniture collection Emeco developed with designer Konstantin Grcic for the Parrish Art Museum on Long Island (below), for example, “was a very difficult project to do. Although the chair looks simple, there’s nothing skipped.”

“The more difficult it is, the more difficult it is for people to knock it off,” Buchbinder adds.

Emeco aggressively pursues copyists through the courts and earlier this year won a case against fellow US manufacturer Restoration Hardware, which had copied the iconic Navy chair.

But outside Europe and the US, copyright law is less robust and harder to enforce. “It’s very, very difficult to protect yourself legally,” says Dixon.

Dixon’s company is directly responding to the problem of copying by developing a range of new products designed to make life more difficult for counterfeiters.

“What you’ll see [at our Milan presentation] is a number of coping strategies,” Dixon explains. “We’ve been trying as much as possible to invest in tooling and slightly more advanced technology. We’re working on adaptive models where we make specific things for clients. A new bespoke division where we make things for people, so we adapt our products to suit a client’s needs. So there’s ways of dealing with it. We’ve just got to be faster and smarter.”

See all our stories about copying in design ».

Milan is the second stop on our Dezeen and MINI World Tour. See all our reports from our first destination, Cape Town. This movie features a MINI Cooper S Paceman.

The music featured is a track called Divisive by We Are Band, a UK-based electronic act who played at the MINI Paceman Garage in Milan on Friday. You can listen to the full track on Dezeen Music Project.

The post “Milan is a breeding ground for people
who copy our products” appeared first on Dezeen.

News: London firm Grimshaw has submitted plans for a 90-storey skyscraper in a suburb of Sydney, Australia.

The Aspire Tower, designed for a competition held by Parramatta City Council, will have spires reaching to 336 metres and a roof height of 306 metres – higher than the Q1 tower in Queensland, which is currently the tallest building in the southern hemisphere.

However, it’s likely Grimshaw’s tower will only hold that title for a few years or months, if at all, after plans were approved last month for a 388-metre-tall tower in the Australian city of Melbourne, due to complete by 2018.

The Aspire Tower is designed to twist upwards from its street-level alignment, maximising sunny northern views for its residents and twisting inwards to the north to disperse the force of the wind.

As well as the 700 apartments arranged around 14 six-storey atriums, the tower will include a hotel, bars, restaurants and shops plus a viewing deck over the top two floors.

Grimshaw partner Andrew Cortese said the firm wanted to set a new standard in sustainable urban development. “We hope that the tower will be recognised as a landmark through its balanced achievement of programmatic and environmental innovations, its rationality and buildability, and its uniquely sculptural form,” he commented.

Last year Nicholas Grimshaw’s firm was awarded the Carbuncle Cup – a prize for architectural ugliness – for its steel and glass cocoon containing the historic Cutty Sark tea clipper in London. Other projects by the firm we’ve featured include Bijlmer Station in Amsterdam and a museum of steel in Mexico – see all architecture by Grimshaw.

At the beginning of the year we rounded up the ten tallest skyscrapers due to complete in 2013, including the 383-metre Eton Place Dalian in north-east China and The Domain by Foster + Partners in Abu Dhabi – see all skyscrapers.

Here’s more information from the architects:

Grimshaw has submitted a Development Application on behalf of Parramatta City Council for a landmark mixed-use tower. The Aspire Tower emerged from a design excellence competition held by the Council and is set to establish a new benchmark for innovative, passive-environmental design in Australian high-rise developments. Designed to act as a catalyst project for Parramatta Square, the tower provides high density, urban residential living which is not only affordable but also sustainable.

As one of the tallest structures in Australia, the engineering of Aspire Tower consciously orientates itself to the wind and to sunlight. The highly adaptable facades accommodate all of the various planning arrangements of apartment type into a modular system. The tower’s striking sculptural form twists upwards from its Church Street alignment to maximise the capture of the sun, the breeze and northern views for its residents.

The accommodation within the tower is situated in two east and west facing wings which are connected to a perforated central core. These wings open up to the south to catch the prevailing air movements, while twisting inwards to the north to disperse the downward force of the wind. By resolving wind and ventilation, the tower creates a comfortable and accessible habitat at all levels, in both its private and public domains. The design has consciously set out to ensure that all apartments have an equity of view, ventilation and light.

Sitting 90 storeys above ground, the tower’s spires reach 336m, while the 306m roof height of the habitable terraces creates a distinctive silhouette for the city’s emerging skyline. The mixed-use nature of the tower also creates a new precinct with 700 residential apartments. These ‘vertical neighbourhoods’ are configured around 14 six storey communal atria with soft and hard landscaping. The precinct also includes 150 hotel rooms, bars, restaurants and retail as well as a spectacular public function including a restaurant space, experience centre and viewing deck over the top two floors.

The tower will also create a new public and civic realm for Parramatta. This new public realm, created from the re-development of Church Street and a new square on axis to St John’s Cathedral, forms the western precinct of Parramatta Square. A vibrant public domain will emerge from the activities on the square with the perimeter uses of retail, building lobbies and transport connections.

Speaking about the achievements and ambitions of the project, Grimshaw Partner, Andrew Cortese, said: “Grimshaw’s approach is derived from the practice’s research on the habitat of tall buildings and on the design of the public and environmental infrastructure of cities. Aspire Tower on Parramatta Square is a rare opportunity to invest in and construct a viable and vital piece of city-making.

“The project has the ability to transform its place and set a new achievable standard in affordable and sustainable urban development. We hope that the tower will be recognised as a landmark through its balanced achievement of programmatic and environmental innovations, its rationality and buildability, and its uniquely sculptural form.”

The post Grimshaw submits plans for
Australian skyscraper appeared first on Dezeen.