Hasta La Ideas

From future-forward innovations to entertainment tinged with nostalgia, our most-viewed articles this year

365 days a year, we publish stories covering a plethora of subject matter. From reportage in faraway destinations, a newly opened art show or restaurant, innovations in tech and design, there’s something on COOL HUNTING for nearly every appetite. As such, perusing our site data to reveal the year’s most-read stories proves to be sometimes reassuring and sometimes surprising. This year’s list includes a pair of articles from our CH-hosted trip to Japan, photo essays from Champagne and Maserati’s HQ, interviews, videos and more. Whether you’re returning to a story you enjoyed, or seeing these for the first time, may they be enjoyed just the same.

Japan’s Luxurious Floating Ryokan, guntû

guntû is a love letter to Onomichi and the sea—a passion project created by three childhood friends to celebrate the beauty, craft and flavors of their hometown. Together the shipbuilder, creative director and mayor created Japan’s first design-forward floating hotel that’s part ryokan and part luxury yacht…

CH Japan: Photos From Our Excursion

From a bullet train in Kyoto, where we snacked on fresh KitKats, to an airport on the small, southern island of Amami Ōshima and ultimately through Tokyo DesignArt Week, members of COOL HUNTING’s editorial team explored Japan for our annual hosted excursion. Each year, we select a destination that embodies our love of craft, hospitality and travel off the beaten path; then we invite select readers to join along and explore as we ourselves do. To outline the steps along the way, as we do below, barely touches upon the depth of each moment—and the relationships forged along the way between each traveler and destination…

Organic Overflow at Milan Design Week 2019

To offset the precision frequently associated with furniture design, many participants in Milan Design Week 2019 used elements from nature to add soft, organic overflow to their presentations. In many instances, we’re simply referring to the calculated use of trees and plants near or atop artificial elements of design. With two specific exhibitions, however, floral components composed the very infrastructure of the creation…

Moment Factory + Cipriani Present “SuperReal” Interactive Visual Art Exhibition

Gala attendees aside, very few enter Cipriani‘s landmark Italian neo-Renaissance hall, 25 Broadway. Opened as the ticketing office for the transatlantic Cunard Steamship Line, back in 1921, the extraordinary venue’s magic remains—underscored by the Cipriani family’s commitment to cuisine and hospitality. For the month of August, however, the doors to the building open to all (who buy tickets), and guests will find more than 65-foot ceilings and Ezra Winter’s murals. International multimedia studio Moment Factory has turned the space into a dazzling, interactive visual art experience called SuperReal…

Photo Essay: Harvest in Champagne, France with Bollinger

Around 5,000 producers call the province of Champagne home. Set east of Paris, but easily accessible by train, the region, which spans 75,000+ acres (see a few hundred above), is most known for its effervescent export, but its natural splendor, and bevy of excellent eateries, fall close behind. From Épernay and Aÿ to Reims and Dizy, smaller towns blend together in a uniform sea of manicured rows of grape-growing vines and delightful plots of old architecture. At night, the chalk-soiled hills above the cobblestone streets are quiet—almost eerily so—and in the daytime the area remains similarly hushed, aside from the clattering of tractors and the calls of people hard at work—each picking around 80 kilos of grapes an hour…

COOL HUNTING VIDEO: Bonton Farms is Reviving a South Dallas Community

One of the most special destinations in Dallas, Bonton Farms is more than an agricultural operation. Located in a once-forgotten and much-neglected neighborhood, Bonton Farms cultivates community—and hope—by offering employment opportunities, career mentorship, nutrition and cooking classes, financial education, and even a rent-to-own housing program. It not only provides nourishment in a “food desert,” but has also become a flourishing center for everyone near and far…

Miami Art Week 2019: Art Basel’s Monumental Meridians Sector

On a second-floor “ballroom” at the sprawling Miami Beach Convention Center, set atop a carpet that’s fetching comments of its own, Art Basel Miami Beach‘s new Meridians sector features some of the most considered, engaging works found within all of 2019’s Miami Art Week. Not only are they, as the division stipulates, large-scale in format—they are larger than life conceptually. As expected, there are momentous sculptural and painted works, but, amidst it all, one also finds video installations of unparalleled depth and beauty that address gender, sexuality, race, immigration and more…

1,000 Living Botanicals Dangle Below a Sliver of Rolling Hill at Maison St-Germain

Inside Brooklyn‘s Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse, a 1,200-square-foot vegetal installation floats 40 feet in the air. From afar, it appears that a sliver of rolling hill has been plucked from a mystical, green landscape. Up close, however, one learns that its underside is a dangling root system composed of more than 1,000 flowers. This is the centerpiece for the third annual Maison St-Germain, a homage to the world-renown elderflower liqueur so frequently used in cocktails…

FLUTTER Pop-Up Museum, LA

Akin to the Museum of Ice Cream, there’s been a surge of installations and quasi-museums infiltrating cities—many of which seem to be built purely for social media. In what might be a happy surprise to some, FLUTTER, a new Los Angeles show, is centered around working artists as it provides a space for them to have fun. Instead of selecting a theme, FLUTTER looks to share art that’s built around play, experimentation and joy…

COOL HUNTING Video: Dandelion Chocolate’s New Factory

Dandelion Chocolate was founded 10 years ago by Cameron Ring and Todd Masonis ago as a venture out of their garage. Back then, they would sell their goods at the now-defunct underground food markets of San Francisco. “We had to start by buying machines and we bought a few bags of beans and just started roasting them up,” says Masonis about their humble origins. “We sort of got lucky that our first couple of batches were really good.” This month the brand opened a new factory, but promises that increasing production will not compromise quality—in fact, they plan on improving it…

Ivy Ross and the Google Design Studio’s “Comma” at Tokyo DESIGNART

Intending to represent “a pause, a thought, a haiku… these in between
moments in life,” the exhibition proves to be a peaceful respite from the noise of city life in Tokyo. It’s separated into two parts: a straightforward, gallery-like presentation of backdrops by INAMATT alongside objects by Google and others, and a studio space where hardware sits next to its inspiration. The latter hosts hands-on lessons, and affords guests the opportunity to play with a Pixel 4 or a Nest Mini, or to gaze at the rough drafts of these final products. The former, while gentle, lends visitors a better understanding of the intention of all collaborating parties: to soften the design of tech products to better fit our lives…

Photo Essay: A Night at Maserati’s Modena Factory

This week Maserati shuttered their 80-year-old factory in Modena, ending production of the iconic GranTurismo family of cars. It’s not a permanent closure; the space will be refurbished and retooled to prepare for their newest—yet to be named or shown—super-sports car. But before closing the modest production line where 12 cars are hand built each day, the brand decided to throw a dinner party. On the production line. For 100 guests. Catered by arguably the best chef in the world, Massimo Botura…

“The Art of Being Good” Exhibition at the Tallinn Art Hall

Rising along the central Freedom Square of Tallinn, Estonia, the Tallinn Art Hall consistently hosts thought-provoking exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. One of three institutions comprising the historic Tallinn Art Hall Foundation, the gallery’s mission includes advancing the dialogue around art internationally. And with The Art of Being Good, a recent group show that featured 15 artists from around the globe, they dug into this dialogue as it corresponds to the traumas facing every human on the planet. Thematically positioned around the question of “What would responsible art look like?” the show’s works aimed to offer alternatives to potentially harmful practices in the art world. Rather than let artists espouse ideas on other societal members and crises, they set the lens inward…

Behind the Scenes of Netflix’s “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance” with Insight Editions

In 1982, The Jim Henson Company—hot off the first Muppet movie, but a few years before their masterpiece Labyrinth—set a new puppet-populated fantasy-fiction standard with The Dark Crystal. Featuring newly imagined characters—in original creature categories called Gelflings and Skeksis—and an immersive world known as Thra, it pioneered immersive animatronics and set design. This year, more than three decades later, Netflix viewers returned to Thra with the prequel series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. It wholeheartedly honors the filmmaking style of the original film—only each hero and villain feels more artfully alive. It’s a dark adventure that many age groups will appreciate, in a world that services more than those seeking nostalgia…

Design-Driven, 3D-Printed Lighting Options From Gantri

Frequently, cost inhibits the purchase of future-forward design items for the home. Breaking through this barrier, online lighting marketplace Gantri gives consumers access to the work of numerous award-winning designers at undeniably reasonable prices. This pertains to the fact that their exclusive roster of 30+ products are 3D-printed upon purchase. But Gantri isn’t just a marketplace; it’s a platform for emerging designs, an R&D facility for advancements in 3D-printing, and a development center for sustainable materials…

Hero image by Josh Rubin