Hasta La Ideas

Five elite homes in unexpected places and an exclusive offer for CH readers

Even the most opulent hotels can’t replace the comforts of home, where decor and amenities truly speak to your interests. While plenty of alternatives exist in the form of apartment swapping and rental sites, few tailor their offerings to the style-minded and are as affordable as the membership-based Luxe Home Swap.

The site allows users to browse thousands of homes from around the world to find a retreat specific to their holiday desires. Fans of mid-century Danish design can choose a contemporary flat in NYC or a historical apartment in Copenhagen, with quality assured by the membership-based model. The concept also means that you don’t have to do a direct swap, but can visit any home that’s available.

Even more tempting, Luxe Home Swap lists several options in locations so far-flung that there’s no hotel for miles even if you wanted one. Below are our some of our favorites, each the perfect place—from houses in nature preserves to cliffside pools—to really get away from it all.

And if all that’s not enough for you, Cool Hunting readers now get a Luxe Home Swap membership for $125—that’s 20% off the annual fee.

Contemporary living a world away in Waikato, New Zealand

Nestled deep in the forests, this beauty has won awards for both sustainability and design. Achieving complete isolation is no chore here.

The house itself is as carefully put together as you could imagine, offering the ultimate wilderness retreat without losing any comforts of home.

Thoughtful design between land and sea in Brittany, France

With 26,000 square feet of open property to explore, a gorgeous indoor pool and a manicured Japanese garden, this architect-designed house is a perfect rural refuge.

The house is also located close to the Bay of Saint-Brieuc nature reserve, which has two rivers flowing through it and is known as “a paradise for bird watchers.”

A modern house on the prairie in Kerry, Ireland

A modern holiday home only minutes from town and local entertainment. Surrounded by rolling hills and overlooking the Beara Peninsula, it’s an ideal place for the family to discover Ireland’s natural beauty and rich history.

The house is also great for the adventurist. It comes equipped with four bicycles, is located near two 18-hole golf courses—one of which is the century-old world class Kenmare Golf Club. For more rustic activities, the house is also near the sea, which offers great trout and salmon fishing.

A home as stunning as its view in Cape Town, South Africa

Four stories of pure luxury and 180° breathtaking views put this home in a class of its own. Swim in one of two pools, relax in the jacuzzi or walk to Clifton Beach—a laid-back riviera with beachside cafes perfect for sipping cocktails while the sun sets.

The house also comes with a manager on call to handle all of your requests, such as transportation to the heart of Cape Town or further out to the beautiful wine country.

A floating flat on the river in Vecht, Netherlands

This quaint houseboat has a contemporary feel. Collect yourself in the serenity of the garden or cruise the canals in the 21-foot motorboat that’s also at your disposal.

The historic village of Loenen aan de Vecht is only a half-mile away, and both Amsterdam and the bohemian town of Utrecht are just 20 minutes away.

.

Help Greenpeace build a new ship with their savvy interactive site

by Isabelle Doal

Signaling a bold new direction in NGO fundraising traditions, Greenpeace recently launched a campaign to symbolically sell off pieces of its newest Rainbow Warrior ship, currently under construction in Germany. The third in a fleet of boats enabling Greenpeace to confront environmental threats from the frontline (the first was infamously bombed by French intelligence services in 1985), the ship will cost €22M to build anew, which the organization is raising through a Monopoly-style sale with buyers names going on a digital artwork that will sail with the ship.

To fully illustrate the point, French ad agency DDB and web developers Les 84 have created a stunning visual concept online for selling the ship piece by piece—from antennas to portholes—transforming the request for generosity into something more akin to luxury e-shopping.

The interactive site allows the visitor to control a camera for an in-depth virtual tour of the entire boat, complimented by sound effects reminiscent of both deep ocean life and thrilling adventures. Scrolling the cursor over the three extended views of the boat reveals views of the interior architecture, and with the help of 3D mapping and a rich soundtrack of creaking masts amid watery sounds, they’ve successfully created the impression of being not just on board but intimately familiar with the ship’s inner workings. As you poke around the different areas, such as cabins, the galley, wheelhouse and more, the digital world gives a sense of what the real-life experience of seafaring for environmental justice might be like.

Everything on board is on sale, and prices span €1 for a fork to €7,000 for a desalinater. An e-boutique features comprehensive lists just like any regular online shop, and every buyer receives a certificate of ownership for their purchase.

The ship’s construction can be followed directly from the shipyard through a webcam, which updates regularly along with the purchasing rate. Only launching 20 days ago, the Rainbow Warrior is already 32% complete and is slated to be on sale and under construction through Fall 2011.

Making the act of shipbuilding into a digital experience draws in people that might not usually donate, appealing to both charitable and consumerist natures of people. Greenpeace will inaugurate the completely environmentally sustainable Rainbow Warrior in October 2011.

Two new interactive works from the Internet’s creative powerhouse

If the big business of art makes you shed a little tear for civilization, the Google Art Project might be for you. Eschewing the practices of increasingly high admission fees (and the dumbed-down blockbuster shows that come with it), the Internet behemoth introduces a platform that transcends both the boundaries of geography and cash flow. While of course this digitized version can’t do what a well-curated show in a beautiful gallery does, the site’s capability to reach a wide audience and as an educational tool (not to mention the potential for inventive hacks) are hallmarks of Google’s approach to the modern online world.

Using their Street View technology, you can browse the museums—17 in all, including the Uffizi, MoMA, Versailles, the Van Gogh Museum and the Tate—as a whole (though some works are blurred due to copyrights). And because it’s all captured in high-res, you can zoom in on individual works and scan the entire canvas to see details such as cracks or paint strokes. Each museum is even offering one of their most valued works as a gigapixel image for a bogglingly detailed close-up views, and the setup even allows you to create and save your own virtual collection of art.

Thanks to the cooperation of the museums (Google approached each and let them decide their scope of participation), the resource also comes packed with videos from museum experts, extensive information on artists and easily-navigable floor plans. For the elderly, anyone else who can’t make the trip to see the world’s masterpieces, OCD planners, or art history students, the Project makes for an invaluably in-depth reference tool. To see how it works in full, have a look at the video tutorial.

The news of Google Art Project comes on the heels of the buzz yesterday about another artful online experiment from Google designer Alexander Chen, who turned New York’s subway map into a strummable set of strings. MTA.ME uses HTML5 to make the real-time subway schedule into an interactive musical instrument, stripping the map to a beautifully-spare set of colored lines with a background that fades from white to black as the 24-hour loop falls from day to night.

Our interview with the chief curator of an online travel leader’s new collection

Advertorial content:

Launched in 2009, Jetsetter, like its sister Gilt, applies the winning sample-sale concept to travel. Expanding on its success, their new Jetsetter 24/7 allows members to book trips at any time with the assurance that its team personally vets each hotel, tour and cruise, has an easy-to-use site and provides top-notch customer service. To learn a little more about the people behind Jetsetter’s commitment to creating a premium travel experience that make it work, we checked in with International Director of Partner Development Roberta Seiler. To celebrate the launch of the new feature, Jetsetter is giving away seven vacations, including a two-night Miami getaway for two with airfare and luxury accommodations at South Beach’s Raleigh Hotel. Visit Jetsetter 24/7 before 1 February 2011 to enter to win one.

Above portrait of Roberta Seiler shot by Gregory Stefano at the Peninsula Hotel, a Jetsetter Verified property.

What elements do you look for in a hotel? What are some of your favorite destinations?

I really value friendliness, courtesy and a fantastic concierge. No matter how expensive a hotel is, if you walk in and immediately feel at home then they have done a good job. Free wi-fi that works is nice too. My favorite destinations are Rio de Janeiro, Sevilla and Charleston, SC.

How does this appeal specifically to the Jetsetter clientele?

Our members love to travel and like to experience the real thing. Whether it’s a beach vacation or an authentic adventure, this generation wants to feel immersed in the culture when they travel, with all the comforts of course.

What inspired the creation of Jetsetter24/7?

Our private sales are the big attraction, but when sales ended our members would write into our support team asking about verified hotels in certain destinations. It’s a lot of work for the team to verify each hotel and produce each sale so now this beautiful editorial can live on in Jetsetter 24/7 and members can purchase rooms at prevailing market rate all year round. Given how much our members enjoy traveling, they will certainly be happy with our year round availability to the best places.

What professional or personal experiences do you draw on to effectively curate the list of destination hotels?

I have had the privilege of traveling extensively with my friends and family. Having grown up between Brazil, Switzerland and New York traveling wasn’t seasonal, it was a constent part of my life. I also worked at Leading Hotels of the World and Peninsula Hotels early in my career and learned so much about the thoughtfulness and quality that goes into a top hotel. We also listen to our members, grading our partners through questionnaires we send to members after they stay at one of our partner hotels. If the reviews aren’t spectacular, then we will not feature that property again.

What was the initial selection process like?

We have a team of fantastic curators that reach out to properties based on personal experience, recommendations from someone they trust or extraordinary reputation. We then verify the hotels using one of our travel correspondents.

How important is “Jetsetter Verified”? What exactly do Jetsetter correspondents do?

The fact that we verify our hotels is so important to living up to our member’s expectations. We want you to know exactly what you are going to get with each hotel featured. We will not feature a hotel that has not been verified. Our network of travel correspondents are the best travel writers in the world. They are each selected for their expertise and they bring this insight directly to members in an unbiased, editorial voice.

What’s the next step for curated travel?

Our new Expert Travel services is a great way to get a really personalized expert advice. We are also bringing in many more extraordinay experiences that provide adventure and access to the best of the best. It’s funny, this generation we cater to wants us to narrow it down for them and make travel choices easy and accessible. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

One of the most esteemed purveyors of classic eyewear gets an online store

To score a sunglasses fitting with the exclusive Vintage Frames Company, it wouldn’t hurt to be a hip-hop mogul or Russian princess. But now the largest distributor of its kind is offering hundreds of choice styles each month—from legendary labels like Alpina, Carrera and Silhouette—to the masses through its just-launched webshop. “The point [is] to offer a selection of frames to the public who have been dying to purchase them for the past years,” says owner Corey Shapiro.

Based in Montreal, Shapiro and his team of fashion historians search the world for deadstock designer eyewear. His warehouse has more than 150,000 mint-condition frames, spanning the 1950s to the 1980s. “Old eyewear manufacturers took time and love to produce eyewear,” explains Shapiro. “Any of the handcrafted details put into eyewear cannot be added to today’s eyewear, as those factories have long been closed.”

Nostalgia and manufacturing techniques aside, Vintage Frames has become a leader in shaping optical trends, as their reputation as a highly sought source of long-lost classic and original models has grown. “We also run a rather large division aiding today’s new eyewear designers through a historical look of eyewear, renting them all kinds of frames as production samples,” adds Shapiro.

Such tight relationships with brands makes for a pretty amazing commemorative reissue as the label celebrates its fifth anniversary this month and online grand opening with a collaboration. “We have made a very special Cazal 951, which is the first frame I ever owned in my collection,” he says. “The status of a man in a certain crowd could be judged by how deep he went into accessorizing his 951. Diamonds, snakeskin, leather, gold—all that!”

Visit the Vintage Frames Company’s webshop for this month’s selection before it’s gone.