Hasta La Ideas

L’artiste peintre Jeremy Mann a fait des peintures à l’huile de la ville pour sa série « Cityscapes ». Les peintures se concentrent essentiellement sur la ville de nuit, avec un effet de ville floue et parfois abstraite, chimérique. Une sélection de sa série est à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.

Reclaimed timber boards and sections of mesh fencing feature in this dimly-lit bar in Sydney by Australian studio Luchetti Krelle (+ slideshow).

Donny’s Bar, located in the northern beachside suburb of Manly, was designed by Sydney studio Luchetti Krelle to resemble a New York loft.

The bar serves a selection of Asian-inspired dishes, so the design team wanted to also incorporate Asian influences into the space to conjure up images of “a back alley in Chinatown”.

“The brief was to create a warm and friendly New York style loft bar which would serve Asian style tapas and dumplings – on a tight budget,” the designers explained. “Avoiding overt Asian theming, we instead opted for a pared-back approach to the design.”

A range of recycled materials were used to transform the stark space into a dark and atmospheric bar with exposed brick walls and concrete flooring throughout.

A polished copper counter forms a centrepiece in the downstairs bar area. Recycled timber boards and paving stones line the base of the counter, with lighting glowing through the spaces in between.

“The rustic quality of the timber contrasts with a shiny copper rectified top and perfectly mitred timber lining boards weaving diagonally across the lower ceiling and walls,” the designers added.

High tables and bar stools are set against the side walls, while worn leather armchairs, low tables and cushioned footstools are arranged next to a spiralling metal staircase.

Dozens of lights encased in small wire cages are suspended from the mesh-covered ceiling of the double-height space, creating a feature above the entrance.

On the mezzanine floor above, exposed brick and wood panels feature on some walls, while another features red Asian-style prints. Fluorescent lighting tubes illuminate the space and are covered by more sections of mesh wire.

Tables and chairs indicate a space for dining and are accompanied with seating booths tucked away in the corners.

Old toilet cisterns were incorporated into the bathroom, while light bulbs are fixed to a network of exposed pipes above the sinks.

Photography is by Michael Wee.

Here’s a project description from Luchetti Krelle:

Donny’s & Co Manly

Conjuring up images of a back alley in Chinatown, Donny’s Bar is an unexpected and refreshing change to the coastal suburb of Manly and the bar scene there. The design resolution captures a careful balancing of the rustic versus the refined – where urban meets with an Asian Australian flavour.

The existing space was a stark white plasterboard box with a commercial look and feel. The brief was to create a warm and friendly New York style loft bar which would serve Asian style tapas and dumplings – on a tight budget. Avoiding overt Asian theming, we instead opted for a paired back approach to the design.

Our client is from rural NSW and we certainly played on his roots with the barn like scale and proportions of the space. The mezzanine is set back from the entry, allowing the volume of the space to be fully appreciated upon entry.

The bar front utilises railway sleepers casually bundled together with those adjustable ratchet straps used to tie down a load on a truck. The rustic quality of the timber contrasts with a shiny copper rectified top and perfectly mitred timber lining boards weaving diagonally across the lower ceiling and walls.

Canvas lorry tarps are casually tied off to walls and chain-link fencing stretches across the upper ceiling, screening the acoustic treatment from the eye. Recycled materials play a big role in the palette – from the brickwork painstakingly clad to the walls to the re-birthed old toilet cisterns.

When budgets are tight we need to work harder to innovate within our means and this project is an excellent example of such. More and more these days, we designers are being held to account for superfluous spending and budget overruns. We worked hard to nut out this concept and edit it back to its bare bones. We have been creative and clever in the use of every day materials like the chain-link fencing to become features and by using recycled timber and brick for the majority of the palette.

This design is sustainable – both in our design approach and its potential for longevity as a thriving small bar in Manly.

The post Luchetti Krelle completes atmospheric Sydney
bar based on a New York loft appeared first on Dezeen.

There’s no denying that the past 12 months have seen Volvo shake its former stereotype as a reflection of Sweden itself (safe, reliable, unremarkable perhaps) and replace it with a whole new appearance; one that now reflects…

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Wally Olins, co-founder of Wolff Olins and chairman of Saffron Brand Consultants, has died aged 83. CR editor Patrick Burgoyne pays tribute

The Financial Times once described Wally Olins as “the world’s leading practitioner of branding and identity” and it’s hard to disagree with that assessment. Certainly Wally didn’t as, in typical style, he placed it in a prominent position on his website.

Under the What I’m Like heading, he described himself thus: “I try to be direct and clear. I simply tell my clients the truth as I see it, without too much gloss or varnish because that’s what I’m there for. Of course it’s nice to be nice. But it’s also nice to be straight. I can’t stand people who don’t return phone calls and are generally sloppy, but apart from that I’m told I’m reasonable to work with. And I like having a bit of a laugh.”

Direct, intelligent and with a wickedly mischievous sense of humour, I’d say that sums Wally up to a T. He was one of those people with whom spending time was an absolute joy. He always had an opinion and would always let you know it. But he would do so with huge charm.

Wally began his working life in advertising. In the early 60s, he ran Ogilvy & Mather in what was then Bombay, living there for five years. It was the start of a life-long attachment to India, a country he loved and where he worked and taught extensively. In fact, the first I heard of his passing was from Rajesh Kejriwal, the founder of the design conference Design Yatra, who was his great friend and business partner.

In 1965, Wally co-founded Wolff Olins with Michael Wolff. The two of them would change not just the design industry but industry itself. Wolff Olins was perhaps the first design consultancy in Britain, in the sense that we now understand that term. It introduced the idea to UK corporate life that this thing called ‘brand’ was vitally important and that it influenced everything that organisations did and said about themselves.

Wolff and Olins’ relationship was likened to a marriage and like many marriages it would eventually break down with Wolff leaving the consultancy in 1983. In 2001, Wally also left and set up Saffron with a former Wolff Olins colleague, Jacob Benbunan. There, he continued to work with many of the world’s largest companies on branding and identity.

He also began to explore an interest in place branding, a field in which he was a pioneer and which he expounded on in his many books. Indeed, he became a prolific author on branding: his latest book, Brand New: The Shape of Brands to Come, launched last week.

Not everyone agreed with Wally on the positive contribution of brands to our world – Eye magazine, for example, ran a famously withering review of On Brand by academic Terry Eagleton. On our part, the March issue of CR featured a review of the new book by Nick Asbury which took issue with several of his key arguments. But Wally relished an argument and he was more than happy to engage with his critics. And he was not afraid to criticise the design industry either, referring to the larger design consultancies as “machines devised to produce mediocre rubbish” and calling some of their actions “despicable” in an interview in 2009 (see Design Yatra videos below)

I suspect that, for most of our readers, it is as co-founder of Wolff Olins that Wally will mostly be remembered, and rightly so. Anyone who currently earns a living advising or designing for brands owes Wally a debt of gratitude for his pioneering work in establishing the credibility and value of brand identity design.

From a personal point of view, I will always treasure the conversations I enjoyed with this brilliant and charming man. And I can thank both Wally and Michael for one of the highlights of my time at CR. In 2009, the pair were reunited for the first time since their split on stage at Design Yatra in Mumbai. I was fortunate enough to be asked to compere. Here’s what happened.

Olins in CR

Wally Olins, the Grand Old Man of Brand, by Nick Asbury, from CR April 2014

Wally Olins debates the branding ‘turf war’ between ad agencies and design consultancies with CHI+Partners’ Dan Beckett from our December 2011 issue

Statement from Saffron

“With immense sadness we announce the passing of our Chairman Wally Olins, who died on the 14th April after a short illness.

Anyone who ever met Wally will remember him well and those of us who knew him well will remember him forever. A man who lived four lifetimes in one, he was insatiably curious, infectiously charming and occasionally infuriatingly impatient!

A genuine pioneer, Wally was one of the leading individuals that helped carve out the business of branding – he would always say he did it ‘with colleagues’ but those of us that were lucky enough to have been his colleagues know that this is only partly true.

Oddly for a man who was so defined by his prolific talent, he will perhaps be remembered most for his incredible generosity and optimism. Whether advising a young student looking for advice on getting ahead in branding or advising presidents on ways to enhance their nation’s brand, Wally was always willing to give more than he expected to receive.

Incredibly, at 83 Wally was still able to manage to go out on a high with the release of his latest book ‘Brand New, published by Thames & Hudson’ only last week. Full of his characteristic wit, insight and humanity it’s arguably his best yet.

We miss him tremendously. And will continue to be inspired by him every day.”

We’d like to encourage CR readers to use the comment space below to share their memories of Wally Olins

Tanos is a spin-off of engineering outfit TTS Tooltechnic Systems, and their sole purpose is to build out TTS’s Systainer storage system. (Festool users will recognize the Systainers, as they come bundled with Festool products; no surprise as TTS is the parent company for both brands.)

The design approach of the Systainer system is simple in concept and complicated in execution. They’ve created a full line of ABS cases to hold every single thing an end user could ever need, from large pieces of kit down to the tiniest part, and they’ve built in such modularity that every single case of every size will all physically connect with or nest within one another. This allows users to mix and match to build their own storage monoliths.

Here’s the basic idea in video:

The case interiors can be further subdivided with a variety of accessories and placed on optional wheeled bases.

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