24 Hours: The Starck Mix

Seems Wallpaper has a new creative team (good!), their ideas and activities lately are very likeable and engaging. They introduced different guest editors for wallpaper.com: Selectism (17-23 Sept), Coolhunting (24-30 Sept) and Archinect (1-7 October); appointed guest editors for printed editions and do some other interesting stuff as well. This printed edition's guest editors are Karl Lagerfeld and Philippe Starck. Couple of days ago we already shared with you an interview with Philippe Starck, and today we would like to share with you another cooperation by Starck & W.

As Wallpaper puts it: "Not content with pushing the boundaries of publishing, Philippe Starck has given us this unique soundtrack, exclusive to http://www.wallpaper.com/, www.starck.com and www.soundwalk.com, available for one month only.

24 Hours : The Starck Mix is a unique 24 hour soundtrack, selected, arranged, composed and mixed by Soundwalk for Philippe Starck. Whenever you press play, the mix will start from the exact time it is in his current time zone, no matter where in the world he is that day.
The mix can also be listened to through an iPhone application (works better on WiFi) specially created by Clicmobile available from the app store, or you can also stream the soundtrack here.

Enjoy!

New Urban Architects

Nope, is not the name of your latest favorite pop band, i mean architecture office; the New Urban Architects are people who are reshaping our cities faster than any urban plan has ever before:

Our cities today are relics from a time before the Internet. Services and infrastructure, created and operated by the government, are centrally managed, non-participatory and closed. And while this was once the best (and only) way for cities to operate, today it leads to a system that is inefficient, increasingly expensive to maintain, and slow to change.

Jack Dorsey, who came up with the initial idea for Twitter and co-founded the company often talks about his fascination with cities, mass transit, and bike messengers. He says it was this fascination that led to the inspiration for Twitter.

Dennis Crowley, the founder of Dodgeball and Foursquare, shares that fascination. When I first talked to him about Foursquare, he told me that he "tries to build things that make cities easier to use".

What is needed right now is a new type of city: a city that is like the Internet in its openness, participation, distributed nature and rapid, organic evolution - a city that is not centrally operated, but that is created, operated and improved upon by all - a DIY City.

Steven Johnson's co-founder of Outside.in is John Geraci. John is now running an incubator for entrepreneurs that want to reinvent how cities and urban governments work called DIYCity.

These and many others are our new urban architects. People who resembles me to parkour practicants, they make the city easier to navigate with new tools and based on the old expired structure we know as "cities". I must say unfortunately traditional roles of urban planning and architecture are still important to our cities. They are and will continue to be. But there is something new afoot in urban life. And it starts with the mobile phone, a computer in our pocket or purse, that is with us at all times.

Services like Twitter, Foursquare, DIYCity and Outside.in are changing the way we use cities.

And we are just at the very beginning. Think about what happens when we get true augmented reality services on our phones. Think about what happens when we get real social networking services on our phones. Think about what happens when we get new interfaces on our phones that don't require us to be looking down and typing when we we are out and about...

*images by Lluis Gerard, used under a CC license

Philippe Starck on Life and Design

Concluding this weekend of video posts, we cannot avoid sharing with you this short interview with Philippe Starck on life and design, by Wallpaper. It is amuzing, straight to the point and very true. We like it.

DIGITAL WALLPAPER

Another video for this weekend, this time a small visual intervention by the people of Strukt Design Studio:

Hirzberger Events - Digital Wallpaper from Gregor Hofbauer on Vimeo.

We've been lately fascinated by the great low budget visual installations coming from the Austria/Germany area (realities:united included of course), seems Vienna is becoming also an epicenter of the animated/illuminated facades and interiors...

hope you guys enjoy this as much as we do.

check the rest of Strukt works, here

TOKYOYKOT

"Reality is the contrast between what we have inside, and what exists out there."

A beautiful visual trip of Tokyo by Joan Jimenez that we could not avoid sharing it... enjoy.



check also Joan's website social branding

Kitchen delight: Gorenje designed by Karim Rashid

Our apologies for a very straightforward title, but how better to describe a collection of luxury kitchen appliances when two of our favorite names unite to produce this colorful kitchen collection, which makes your kitchen become a favorite living space in your home (if that's not yet the case).

After very successful cooperation with Ora Ïto couple of years ago (we blogged about this here) , our favorite kitchen appliances provider Gorenje has presented a Brand New Star design collection at this year’s IFA, Berlin, signed by the king of color himself, Karim Rashid.

As Gorenje puts it, Gorenje collection designed by Karim Rashid is a minimal fusion of functionality, technology, interactivity, and purity. The full length handle is both the visual and the interaction focal point of the collection.The vertical LED light stripe allows several colour versions, providing the option to adjust the appearance of the appliance to one’s current mood, or indeed one’s lifestyle.

"I have wanted to design appliances for ages. It was a great exercise in rethinking the banal. Too often we are relegated to tired archetypes. Design is about shaping contemporaneity. Design is critical to our environments, to our daily experiences, our products, our everything,” comments Karim Rashid who has designed products ranging from vacuum cleaners to furniture, children’s toys to luggage, to television, to perfume bottles, to lighting. He also designs spaces – hotels, clubs etc. and – from now on – Gorenje household appliances which, incidentally, he is using himself.

“Over the past years Gorenje has proven to be a company that has a strong interest in contemporary design. I have been following and appreciating their successful collections. When they contacted me to design the new Gorenje collection it took very little discussion to get the project started. I knew the company also because I do a lot of work in Eastern Europe and have an apartment in Belgrade with Gorenje appliances.” Check out how he re-designed traditional Majik restaurant in Belgrade.

Majik restaurant in Belgrade by Karim

Switch Restaurant by Karim

World Lounge by Karim

With additional new collections Gorenje Simplicity and Gorenje Retro (about this one some other time), effectively combining smart technology, excellent design & style, care for the environment, high quality and great value, Gorenje really does inspire. We are shure that Gorenje designed by Karim Rashid will be a success, and we are looking forward to what their future step will be.

ON_A Station

And seems we continue with our 'Barcelona' feeling these days, well who into design wouldn't love Barcelona? This time we are bringing you a project we knew about long ago, but didn't had the chance to saw it finished until now:

The remodeling of the (Barcelona) metro station of Drassanes by ON_A studio (Eduardo Gutiérrez Munné + Jordi Fernández Río)



Originally built in 1968 the project for the remodeling had two big constraints: the restrictions of the space and the conditions of all the existing components. ON_A Arquitectura accepted the challenge and made the best of it by covering the old station with new surfaces. Since the size of the station cannot be changed, the project can only refer to the finish of the interior skin.


*before and after image

The large quantity of existing installations makes the project to have a very high complexity, where the new skin has to be adjustable and generous to the new components of the station.


In order to resolve these issues ON_A chose as an image-concept the interior vision of an existing train wagon, supposing that in itself it already contains all the elements passengers need. ON_A took this as an inspiration to create a new skin for the station.



“We referred with regard to the material to white GRC (Glass Reinforced Concrete) which provides us with the same qualities as concrete with steel, but having a weight which is a fifth of it making an installation within a given space a lot easier. At the same time we also dispose of a continuous white floor composed by resins which allows us to prevent likelycracks provoked by the vibrations of the train.” say ON_A about the project.



for more about ON_A click here

Body of Work, Catalina Bartolome

We love the work of Catalina Bartolome, the work of this Argentinian born photographer always plays in between a bizarre beauty concept, making "simple complex images" that makes us re-consider the notion of beauty.

Her "head-less" portraits also, challenge the typical notion as also our mental image of what a portrait should be. Her images are strangely alluring for their surreal scenes.

Catalina is a worldly woman who when asked about her work replies: "My work is about the body. My body is about my work".

She continues "My work comes out of my head, intuitive mental images which emerge from my context and then are absorbed into a space of rationality turning bodies into unprejudiced scenery."

Here @ LA76 we just found her work beautiful and inspiring and wanted to share it with you guys.

Don't forget to visit her website clicking here

The Argentinian touch of Barcelona

If you have visited, lived, or loved the city of Barcelona in the last 30 years, you surely know Mario Eskenazi... or at least by sight ;)

Mario Eskenazi is a designer who has designed a generous amount of the graphic identity of the city, images that you see everyday when you walk around Barcelona.
*Forum and CCIB Buildings Signalization, archs. Herzog & deMeuron, Josep Lluis Mateo/MAP, 2004

Eskenazi born in Buenos Aires (Argentina) is an Architect by formation, he was part of the design team for the TV station Canal 10 TV (Argentina). In 1971 moves to Spain, where he has been teacher at the School of Architecture of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (1973-1974) and from 1975 until 1999 gave design classes at the EINA.
*Visual, Blur Editions, Corporate Image, 2005-2006

Mario likes to say that he will never retire and that he prefers to work with friends than big corporate clients. But to be honest his fidelity to some brands falls into the anthological; is the case of his works for Paidos editorial, Tragaluz Group the Sabadell Bank or Evax with whom he has been collaborating for couple of decades.
*Visual Identity of "El Japones" restaurant for Grupo Tragaluz, 2001

Eskenazi arrived to Barcelona by casualty, more than 30 years ago when he finished his architecture studies in Cordoba (Argentina), started to work in the University TV station, then the military governments arrived and he had to choose: move to Buenos Aires or to Europe. While he admired the european art and creativity he also hated "porteños" (people from Buenos Aires), so he has "no other chance" than move to London (city that he declares himself a big fan).
*Visual Identity of "Cuinas de Santa Caterina" restaurant for Grupo Tragaluz, 2006

But before arriving to London he stopped in Madrid, and the money he carried with him didn't lasted long there, then he took a job in the Architecture studio of Juan Manuel Ruiz de la Prada (Canary Islands), where they were looking for a "south american architect"; after 2 years he wanted to get back in track on his way to London, visiting previously Paris and Milano but he never felt comfortable in any of this cities, ad then in a visit to Barcelona, he got a job at the studio of America Sanchez.
*Collections Design for Paidos Editorial, 2000 - 2006

After some time he started working in marketing agencies but was the work he did for Banca Catalana that allowed him to get other clients and setup his own studio in 1979. He says the secret of this "marriages" is to always try to work with people he gets along previously, and not the other way around: "...This is the only way to have the freedom and trust that we like from the clients..."
*Packaging for EVAX, 2004 - 2006

Despite he never had the intention of living in Barcelona, he has been there for more than 3 decades now. As he says "an obvious proof of love". As he mentions, the city allows him a quality of life he could hardly get somewhere else, "...like going to the beach at least a bit every day!..." Thats because of the Mediterranean lifestyle that also influence the profession in Barcelona, and allows to create those personal bonds with the clientele and at the same time earn a decent living.
*Visual Identity, OMM Hotel for Grupo Tragaluz, 2003 - 2006

Among his various prizes, we can mention: LAUS (ADG FAD, Barcelona), Awards of Excellence (CA Magazine, San Francisco), Merits Award (A.D.C., New York), Merits Awards (D&AD, Londres), The Spanish National Design Prize 2000 (Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología and the Fundación BCD).
*Visual Identity, Serveis de Manteniment y Neteja, Government of Barcelona City 2000

Works: He had designed for editorial Paidos (1979-2007), Corporate Identities for the Group of Bank Sabadell (1997-2008), Tragaluz Group(1999-2008), and the Identity of the Maintenance and Public Cleaning Services of Barcelona "BCNeta!" (2000, Ajuntament de Barcelona), In colaboration with Diego Feijoo designed the Identity for the Cultural Center Blanquerna (2005, Generalitat de Catalunya), also the Identity of GISA(2005, Generalitat de Catalunya), the Identity of DDI (2005, State Society for the development of Design and Inovation, Ministerio de Industria y Comercio), Coprorate Identity for SEACEX (2006, State Society for the External Cultural Action, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores) ; and in a collaboration with Summa, the Identity for the chain of restaurants Pans & Company (1991), The Identity of the Port Vell (1993), and Identity and design of the mobile squad of the Mossos d’Esquadra / Catalan Police (1992, Generalitat de Catalunya) And the program for the Identity of the Cultural Department of the Catalunya Goverment (1992).

Mario is member of the AGI (International Graphic Aliance) since 1997.
*Parking in Guadalajara Mexico, 2004

for more visit Mario Eskenazi website