Hasta La Ideas

(Photo: Martin Parr)

If the steady stream of people in ill-fitting shorts skipping by UnBeige HQ today are any indication, summer is nigh. The prospect of leaving our enchanted hutch of design magazines, books, and archival footage of famous architects on game shows for some time at the beach—or at least the East River—made us all nostalgic for a perpetually warm and sunny place with monster waves, clear blue water, and…a volcano that erupted every 15 minutes. And don’t forget the rain forest, studded with talkative mechanical parrots.

Such was the wacky Walt Disney-meets-Jacques Cousteau world of the Seagaia Ocean Dome, part of a $2 billion resort complex in Miyazaki, Japan. Designed in 1993 by Mitsubishi Heavy Industrial Group, the Ocean Dome offered ersatz surf (waves of up to 10 feet in height created by computer-controlled pumps), sun (the temperature was held steady at 86°F), and sand (600 tons of polished marble chips) 365 days a year. Despite drawing more than 10 million visitors since its opening day, the indoor water park formerly known as the world’s largest (at 322,752 square feet, it was the length of three football fields) reportedly never turned a profit and was closed in October 2007. Luckily, the beachtastic British photographer Martin Parr visited the Ocean Dome in 1996 and captured this photo (click here for a closer look), which will be auctioned tomorrow at Phillips de Pury & Company’s photographs sale in London.

(Phil Jones)

Judging by the response we’ve received to our post of earlier today, there are droves of you out there grieving the long, slow death of Polaroid. And so, keeping in mind that whole “a picture is worth a thousand words” thing, we bring you this fitting Friday Photo farewell created by Phil Jones, a graphic designer and art director based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Click here for a larger version.

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(Photos, left to right: UnBeige, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week)

Fashion week can be mesmerizing, especially for a front-row fixture like Linda Fargo, senior vice president of the fashion office and store presentation at Bergdorf Goodman. Sitting opposite her at Tuesday evening’s Domenico Vacca show, we captured the elegant Ms. Fargo carefully eyeing a sparkly one-shouldered number. Vacca’s debut outing at the tents mixed the Italian designer’s signature ultraluxe tailored menswear and womenswear (including a charming cap-sleeved dress in oxblood wool) with a high-glitz range of draped pieces in a range of silhouettes that would have benefited from some editing. In the end, Vacca’s lush, classic, and well-styled mens’ looks almost made us forget his unfortunate foray into harvest-hued floral appliques.

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(Photo: Susan Sermoneta)

Jury duty doesn’t have to be a nuisance, not if you view it as a creative opportunity! That’s what college English teacher Susan Sermoneta did, snapping this Stephen Shore-ish shot in a Vietnamese restaurant while on lunch break from jury duty in lower Manhattan. It’s just one of the growing number of works in The American Gallery of Juror Art, an online collection of “art done by actual jurors while on actual jury duty.” The virtual museum is part of Deliberations, a legal blog written by trial lawyer and jury consultant Anne Reed. In addition to a handful of photos of intriguing courthouse signage (who knew that the Milwaukee County Courthouse teems with machines that will tell you your weight and horoscope?), the museum is heavy on the doodles, including one culled from the Moleskine of designer Mike Rohde. It includes sketches of a briefcase he spied in the courthouse cafeteria and a gavel, which alas, he never a chance to see up close. Rohde was allowed to leave early, because they had enough jurors for that day.

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