Hasta La Ideas

Launched in 2016, the Museum of Ice Cream was founded with the simple mission to “connect people and create moments of joy through ice cream”, according to its co-founder and creative director, Maryellis Bunn.

Since then, it has gained a cult following in the US, welcoming over 1.5 million visitors to its pop-ups in LA, Miami, San Francisco and New York, along with a real-life ice cream range sold at Target.

The museum’s popularity has also earned the company behind it, Figure8, a reputation for experiential design that actually makes people want to get off their screens and engage with the real world.

Now, the self-titled ‘experium’ has opened its first permanent space in New York, featuring a three-storey slide, a hall of giant ice cream scoops, and its biggest sprinkle pool to date.

To coincide with the opening, New York-based agency The Working Assembly was commissioned to create a new visual identity for the museum.

Filled with poppy pinks and retro reds, the tasty new look will likely appeal to anyone who is fond of a bit of nostalgia, as well as providing plenty of Insta-fodder for the museum’s army of sweet-toothed visitors.

Find out more about the Museum of Ice Cream and book tickets here; theworkingassembly.com

The post I scream, you scream, we all scream for the Museum of Ice Cream’s new identity appeared first on Creative Review.

In our latest competition, we’re offering one reader the chance to win a three-night stay for two at Le Pigalle in Paris, France.

Named after the high-spirited neighbourhood in which it’s located, the hotel is designed to be an urban social hub and meeting point.

One winner and their guest will be invited to stay at Le Pigalle in a Pigalle 21 room for three nights on a B&B basis, with a complimentary dinner on one night during their stay.

Located at the centre of Pigalle, the hotel is a few minutes walk from numerous popular tourist spots, including cabarets, late-night bars and adult shops.

Interior design-duo Charlotte De Tonnac and Hugo Sauzay conceived a retro-style aesthetic for the Le Pigalle boutique hotel, across 40 rooms of seven different types.

Speckled linoleum flooring, retro lighting fixtures and buttoned-leather armchairs feature around the hotel.

The winner will stay in a Pigalle 21 room, furnished with a king-size bed, mini-bar and an open-plan bathroom with ceramic or marble basins.

Furniture chosen by de Tonnac and Sauzay add a vintage-style touch to the interior. This includes lip-shaped sofas and leather-upholstered counters, which simultaneously nod to the neighbourhood’s seductive history.

Pigalle 21, 22 and One rooms come with their own selection of vinyl records curated by local DJ Victor Kiswell. The tracks aim to embody Pigalle’s character, and can be played on the turntables that are available in the rooms.

“The turntable takes you on a journey through the city’s musical past, with the leather-upholstered bar acting as a throwback to the golden era of the 1920s,” said the hotel.

Artworks vary from black-and-white photographs, to paintings by local artists, to comic drawings.

This eclectic mix was selected by the interior designers to represent Pigalle’s history as a popular spot for artists, including Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh and André Breton.

Some Pigalle 21 suites offer views to the street and Sacré-Cœur, a Roman Catholic church and basilica on the summit of Montmartre. Other rooms look into the hotel’s enclosed courtyard.

A restaurant, bar and cafe is located on the ground floor. Open until late, unlike most in Paris, the restaurant offers a seasonal menu, depending on the locally sourced ingredients available.

Included in this competition prize, the winner and their guest will enjoy a complimentary dinner on one night of their visit.

Le Pigalle has coined itself as the “neighbourhood hotel and epicentre of creativity”. Located on the narrow street of Rue Frochot, bars and late-night hangouts are easily accessible from the hotel.

Further into Pigalle, guests can visit Le Divan du Monde, a concert hall converted from a 19th-century theatre, and Moulin Rouge, the infamous cabaret.

Bookings at Le Pigalle are available online.

Competition closes 5 February 2020. One winner will be selected at random and notified by email, and his or her name will be published at the top of this page. Terms and conditions apply. Flights are not included.

The post Competition: win a three-night stay at Le Pigalle in Paris appeared first on Dezeen.

Expansive openings punctuate the earth-toned facade of this home designed by architecture practice MORQ, which is on a hillside in southern Italy.

Designed by MORQ to be a house that “looks”, Villa RA has a series of rectangular apertures that peer out over Calabria – a region of southern Italy distinguished by its sun-baked beaches, dramatic coastline and quaint villages.

Its owners, who originally hail from the region, wanted the hilltop property to serve as a summer escape.

“They imagined this retreat as a place of respite and reconnection; a place from which to enjoy the virtues of their land in a way that is harmonious with not only the landscape, but also the tradition of living in such a place,” said the practice.

Perched 300 metres above sea level, the house comprises of three rectilinear volumes that run parallel to each other. The first volume is an open-top entryway, through which sprouts a couple of tall palm trees.

The following volume accommodates a large living area, kitchen and guest quarters, while the final one contains a veranda and the master bedroom suite. Almost every space has been completed with huge openings that frame views of the nearby Gulf of Squillace.

“Like traditional Italian villas, the design is based on an axial organization as its primary ordering system,” explained the practice.

“This helps to define the project not only from an architectural sense but also in its programmatic arrangement.”

Earthy coloured opus signinum plaster – a material made of tiles broken that was often used in ancient Roman buildings – has been used across the walls and external facade, ensuring that the house doesn’t appear as an “unrelated autonomous element” in the surrounding terrain.

Crushed stones in the same hue have then been scattered around the home to help it further “bleed” into the landscape. Large granite boulders and tropical plants also provide extra camouflage.

“The limited palette of materials reveals the simple geometry of the building and creates a visual and tactile continuity between landscape and architecture,” added the practice.

MORQ was established in 2001 by Matteo Monteduro, Emiliano Roia and Andrea Quagliola, and works between offices in Australia and Italy.

Last year the practice used rammed concrete to construct a home in Perth that, much unlike Villa RA, features no windows. Named Cloister House, it comprises a sequence of contemplative rooms and a lush indoor courtyard.

Photography is by Givlio Aristide unless stated otherwise.

The post Villa RA features huge openings that frame views of the Italian coast appeared first on Dezeen.

Nowadays, lighting fixtures and lamp designs are getting more creative by the day. One such example is Calen Knauf’s Overcast Light. Almost mushroom-like in appearance, the Overcast Light takes inspiration from the visual image of a cloud obscuring the bright sun. Featuring a cylindrical aluminum base, the shade of the lamp is also quite unique. Created from transparent paper pulp, the handmade shade allows the light to subtly filter through it, mimicking the effect of the rays of the sun shining through a cloud.

However, its most interesting feature would be the leather tab that functions as the switch! Instead of your typical on and off switch or a dimmer, you need to pull and slide the leather tab up and down, alongside the surface of the base. This enables the light source to move to and fro from the shade, controlling the intensity of the light.

The blended paper pulp encourages an ethereal lighting experience, and reminds you of a cloudy day, with the sun shyly peeking through. The metallic sheen of aluminum and the rustling texture of paper create an intriguing contrast, making for an appealing accessory that could brighten up any living space!

Designer: Calen Knauf

Click Here to Buy Now!

The VISION AVTR is a peek twenty years ahead into what a car may look and feel like

Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius announced a long-term partnership with Lightstorm Entertainment, creators of the mega hit Avatar and its upcoming four announced future sequels and presented the first manifestation of their collaboration—the VISION AVTR concept car—a view 20 years in the future at what a car might look like and how we’ll interact with it during a keynote presentation at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. If you’re scratching your head wondering why they partnered and what it means for the brand, you’re not alone—you won’t see this concept car driving around Pandora or likely in a McDonald’s Happy Meal when the first Avatar sequel comes out in two years.

What we’ve learned covering Mercedes-Benz for many years is that they think differently than many other auto manufacturers, and after spending the day taking a deep dive into this atypical partnership and the debut of the VISION AVTR concept car it helped us understand that while it may not be obvious it’s one expression of their commitment to creating a luxury mobility brand that continues to evolve and remain relevant in customers’s lives, especially one that has an increasingly EQ-powered electric future.

We sat down with Bettina Fetzer (Vice President Marketing Mercedes-Benz Passenger Cars at Daimler AG) and Kathy Franklin (President, Franchise Development at James Cameron and Jon Landau’s Lightstorm Entertainment, where she oversees global brand strategy and management for the Avatar franchise) to better understand the partnership. Most relationships between entertainment and product companies involve the obvious, like product placement and co-marketing deals which are often usually shorter term, tied to the show or film’s debut and put together closer to its launch. This partnership is more strategic and existential, a meeting of some of the world’s most imaginative storytellers and the creative team who bring them to life and some of the world’s most talented automotive designers, engineers and marketers. If the debut of the VISION AVTR concept is the start of their collaboration we could all be looking at a new type of partnership between entertainment and product makers, one that is more emotional, intellectual and with a potentially profound impact on both future product and experience.

Fetzler explains that the teams met several years ago and always felt a simpatico connection and a deep curiosity in each other’s work. With the Avatar sequel more than four years away at that point having any tactical marketing conversation was premature. Ongoing discussions between the two entities, culminating in a deep conversation between Källenius and Camron started them down the path of a less obvious partnership, with the first public result a concept car that was designed holistically—with ideas about materials, technology, interior and exterior converging instead of going through a more traditional linear approach that starts with the car’s exterior. It was also a collaborative process with significant contributions from the Avatar team.

Click to view slideshow.

That input isn’t about fluffy cosmetic touches, rather they consider things like navigation, visual display, environmental design and lifestyle choices that take shifting consumer desires and the health of the planet in mind—all of which are important to Camron and to Mercedes-Benz. Fetzer  says “it wasn’t an obvious match because it would always be easy to just put a car into a movie, but we thought it would be a shame to let it go waste and we said let’s just be a bit broader about what we’re doing and bring the teams together and put the fantasy world that we see in Avatar on the road to something more tangible.”

Franklin adds “the initial introduction was made in the context that Mercedes-Benz was getting into the electric vehicle space and that they were looking at all of the many ways they could amplify that and would we like to have a conversation with them. And we said, absolutely—that’s  the kind of thing that the Avatar sequels want to be in support of. So we started the conversation and it was amazing because that question came up immediately—”is there an opportunity to put a vehicle in the sequels?”— and we said let’s take a step back. What if it wasn’t about putting a vehicle in the sequels? What if it was about values alignment. What if it was about communicating ideas? What would that look like? What if we thought about this in a way that was not a traditional co-promotion, but try to really look at it from a different perspective. And it was in that context that we started this conversation not about a vehicle that would go in the films, but a concept vehicle that could really explain these ideas and try to illustrate where the value overlap is between Mercedes-Benz and what they’re trying to achieve and what the Avatar sequels are trying to achieve.” With two years before the debut of the first sequel that gives both companies a lot of time to explore these ideas and create content and conversation with and between their two very large audience and customer bases.

The result is a concept car with lighting inspired by bioluminescence, orb shaped wheels that allow the car to move sideways as well as forward and backward, a fresh look at displaying visuals and information, car controls that are projected into the palm of your hand and scale-like flaps on the rear of the car that indicate to those outside the vehicle what the car is doing or about to do. It features environmentally friendly materials like vegan DINAMICA leather and karuun, a wood-like material created from fast growing rattan (which are low impact liana, not trees). The car is powered by a compostable(!) graphene-based battery free of rare earth elements and metals, changing the way we think about batteries and their impact in both manufacturing and waste.

The VISION AVTR surprises in other ways as well, as many projections of the future show us moving around in lovely mobile living rooms. There’s no mistaking the two front and two rear seats in this car as a living room despite their relaxed stance. We asked Alexander Mankowsky, Daimler’s futurist, why this was the case.

“Very few people think of safety when designing concept cars,” he says. If you are in a living room with books and lamps and pillows “it’s really not possible because there can be accidents in a car, there can be emergency braking. The living room concept has to be further developed.” The concepts in the VISION AVTR create a feeling that’s more realistic, he says, yet still deliver a compelling view at the future.

Fetzer says “I think we have always been a brand that has generated great respect. We’re very trustworthy, we’re highly engineered, but I think we have some space to go to become a bit more of an emotionally engaged brand and to become more of a loved brand, as we want to go down that road. Picking up a theme that’s not necessarily car and engineering driven but emotionally driven is something that we feel fits perfectly well for how we want to proceed with the brand.”

It’s a brave move, though she may just be right.