Hasta La Ideas

Just at the start of this month, and heading internationally between now and March of next year, Starbucks has rolled out single-cup Keurig packs, licensed with the company’s brand to help tap itself into that market worth billions. But have they also just walked into a big design lawsuit along the way? Hyperallergic reports that Los Angeles-based artist Ophelia Chong discovered that the packaging on the coffee giant’s french roast version of its new self-brew packs looks too close for comfort to her own work, which has been viewed thousands of times on Flick and variations of which have been seen in galleries and advertisements. While it’s feasible to believe it’s mere coincidence, given that the image on the Starbucks box is in a form of what we’d describe as a familiar “burning flame”, the coloring and curved shape of the individual fire bits, do make it clearly convincing enough that perhaps Chong has a case here. According to the site, a case is what she seems to want, as they report that she “isn’t going to take this lying down” and that “she’s retained a lawyer.” Here’s a bit about why the artist believes it’s outright theft:

The artist says her book, containing her images and style, have been show to all the ad agencies by her reps, so she doesn’t understand why they simply didn’t hire her rather than rip her off. ”It looks exactly like what I create,” she says.

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Back in early 2009, when the financial tidal wave really started giving everyone a soaking, it seemed like we were reporting on a starchitect losing yet another massive multi-million dollar project, usually involving a skyscraper of some sort. Sure, there are still things happening like Frank Gehry‘s troubles with the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and the perpetually-doomed fate of Norman Foster‘s Las Vegas hotel, but it doesn’t seem to carry the same “the sky is falling!” feeling that these sorts of things used to just two years ago. Whatever the case, we’re not sure whether to feel strangely fondly about this resembling the past, or view it as another loss for architecture (it’s an emotional roller coaster), so we’ll let you decide what to do with the information that Richard Rogers has seen his plans for a skyscraper above New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal disappear. Though on and off again since 2007, the NY Times reports that the project seemed to be moving forward earlier this year, with developer Vornado saying it had put together a deal with a Chinese company that would give the building the $600 million it needed. Over the last couple of months, that plan seems to have now gone astray, with the investors having taken their money to Park Avenue Plaza instead. As the paper reports, this is the second attempt Vornado has tried putting a tower atop the busy bus terminal, the first in 2000 when it tried to “build a headquarters for Cisco Systems,” but was ultimately thwarted “with the collapse of the dot-com boom.” However, this may not mean that a tower will never find itself on top of the depot, as the Port Authority has said that it will continue to review the skyscraper idea.

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It took just two months for the completely unfounded rumors that starchitect Will Alsop was leaving mega-firm RMJM to turn out to be absolutely true. From there, only around ten days before the news had come out that Alsop had founded a new, South London-based firm named All Design with his longtime business partner Scott Lawrie. And now, still just a couple of months out past that, the company has already gone international. Keen Alsop-watchers, Building Design, reports that All Design has just opened two new offices, one in Toronto and another in Chongqing in China, “the country’s fastest growing city.” The site makes note of how much sense this move makes, considering that Alsop himself has estimated that roughly three-quarters of the firm’s work won’t by in the UK, and that the architect has lots of experience in both locales, having designed a major transit station in Toronto and the World Twin Towers Complex in Chongqing.

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There’s been something of a buying spree within the business of type lately, with last month’s announcement that Adobe had purchased Typekit, and now the news from late last week that Monotype, which owns the rights to such typeface designs as Helvetic and ITC Franklin Gothic (among thousands upon thousands of others), is preparing to acquire Bitstream‘s font business. For an all-cash payout of $50 million, the purchase will give Monotype access to Bistream’s “89,000 fonts from nearly 900 foundries,” will make them the new owners of the popular What’s The Font” site, and will also bring over approximately 55 employees from Bitstream’s current roster (Bistream itself will continue as a company, just no longer working with type). Given the bulking up on type companies by both Monotype and Adobe, this recent purchase wasn’t exactly met with universal applause. Type designer Erik Spiekermann, never one to hold back on voicing his opinion, tweeted a number of responses to the sale, including that his company FontShop is now “the only major survivor outside the font monopoly” and asked, “Will Monotype Imaging be renamed Monopoly Imaging after buying Bitstream?”

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Since mid-September when the news broke that renowned architect Santiago Calatrava announced that he was walking away from the massive, $500 million redevelopment project at the Denver International Airport, the Denver Post has been killing it with all the ins and outs of what ultimately led to the break up. Now the paper has filed perhaps the best and most interesting read about the fallout. Combing through hundreds of documents between Calatrava’s firm, the contractor, and the airport, the Post writes about how the “dysfunctional relationship” ultimately dysfunction-ed itself to death, largely with the airport trying to act as the middleman between the two other warring parties. If you’ve ever wondered how projects as large as these fall apart (or how sometimes, occasionally, things actually get built), it’s a terrific read about all the ins and outs of a development this large. And we don’t think it’s a spoiler at all to tell you that these battles aren’t usually held while looking over blueprints or moving scale models around — instead, it’s a bevy of lawsuits and angry contract negotiations. In the end, hardly anyone comes across looking very good, starchitect or otherwise.

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