Portrait by Fredrikson Stallard

Portrait is an installation at Somerset House in London, created by designers Fredrikson Stallard for champagne brand Veuve Clicquot.

The steel structure, which represents the grain of a block of timber, is illuminated from within at night.

The installation was part of the London Design Festival and will be open to the public until the end of this month.

Here’s some more information from Veuve Clicquot:

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Portrait by Fredrikson Stallard for Veuve Clicquot

The first Veuve Clicquot design commission for the London Design Festival

Positioned next to Waterloo Bridge and designed to create a beacon to celebrate the London Design Festival, Portrait – by Fredrikson Stallard – toys with one of the oldest and best known building blocks of design, wood. In daylight steel sections representing the light wood grain laid down by the tree in summer are the dominant feature. At night the spaces in between, representing the dark wood grain laid down in winter, will glow in Veuve Clicquot’s signature yellow, as the steel becomes the negative space.

Location:

Somerset House, Strand
London WC2R 1LA

17 – 30 September, 2008

Free entry
Open to public viewing at all times

via Dezeen

CheBanca! in Milan by Crea International

via Coolhunter, Crea International.

You are What you Click

According to Ian Tancer, the web browsing habits show more than just how people use the internet, they can help you predict what consumers want, predict the economic future and may be even offer insights into human nature
Interesting read via Forbes

Rem Koolhaas and the Prada Transformer

Rem Koolhaas keeps on keeping on with Prada. Following his work on their flagship store in NY back in 2006, his burnt down one in mysterious Marfa, and most recently in designing their new hard labor fashion camp headquaters, this time around he's designing something called the Prada Transformer, which, just as the name implies, is a building which can be reconfigured on the fly to allow for different events, like film screenings, fashion shows, etc. It's being built in Seoul, but, for the time being only has plans to exist for a handful of months before, we assume, it transforms back into a jet pack which Miuccia will use to fly back to Italy. Here's a bit:

The form of the structure is derived from a tetrahedron. Cranes will be used to rotate and flip the plates so that each side, representing a different cultural program, will have its turn as the structure's facade. The plates are four steel-framed shapes: a hexagon, a cross, a rectangle, and a circle.

The Transformer will be realized with the support of LG electronics, hyundai motor company and red resource and it will be located next to the traditional 16th century kyeonghee palace in seoul. Events will be held from the end of March to July 2009.

via Freshness, Design Boom and Unbeige

Japan C launches Design Japan Week in New York: Cool, Cute, Clever and Creative

If you are in NY this weekend, don't miss the Japanese Design Week

Japan C, an eleven week festival celebrating contemporary Japanese culture opened it's doors last night at the historic Felissimo House in New York for the launch of Design Japan Week. Over 70 Japanese firms are showcasing products spanning home and fashion accessories to gadgets, food, beauty and pop-culture for wholesale, market feedback and simply to inspire.

With the theme Cool, Cute, Clever and Creative, there was certainly no shortage of kawaii (cute) products presented in a way that you could be forgiven for thinking you were in an upscale department store. Some of the items are indeed for sale, and there will be an auction in the final week with proceeds going to Bette Midler's New York Restoration Project to plant cherry trees along the Hudson River.

If you can look past the exhibition logotype which oddly employs a red copyright © symbol with no explanation (or relevance), it's a well curated collection of interesting Japanese products, diverse enough to satisfy a broad cross section of design fans.

Japan C
August 16th - November 1st, 2008
Felissimo Design House
10 West 56th Street
New York City

via Core 77

Acne

The new Acne Stor in Stockholm, interesting story


September sees the reopening of ACNE Studio Norrmalmstorg, closed throughout summer for a major refurbishment. A complete revamp of the store sees ACNE’s flagship turned into an intimate space, with a separate area for each part of the collection. Screens that mimic the skies act as dividers, ensuring that the main collection, New Standard, Pop Classics and accessories are each allocated enough room to be displayed in their entirety. A grand denim centre piece acts as the nucleus of the store, thus demonstrating both the roots and the heart of ACNE. Taking into consideration the unusual history of the space, numerous original details of what used to be the former Kreditbanken have been reinstated, with original floors and stucco features back in place.

Today this grand locale is ACNE’s flagship store, yet 35 years ago the very same place was the backdrop of one of Sweden’s most legendary crimes. One morning in late August 1973, Jan Erik Olsson stormed into Kreditbanken on Norrmalmstorg in central Stockholm, held up the bank, shot and wounded a policeman and took four people hostage. Demanding the release of his imprisoned comrade, Sweden’s most notorious criminal Clark Olofsson, as well as three million Swedish Kronor and a fast get-away car, this was the beginning of a war between the two criminals and the police that captivated the Swedish people for the following week. In an unforeseen twist to the tale it soon became clear where the sympathies of the hostages lay. Begging the police to go easy on “Clark and Janne”, actively resisting attempts to be released, and, once freed, refusing to testify against them, the hostages’ behaviour puzzled media, police and psychologists alike. “The Stockholm Syndrome”, inspiration to countless psychological reports, was born.

ACNE is pleased to yet again open its doors to the public, either for a peak at the vault where unlikely sympathies were forged three and a half decades ago, or for a peak at the new season’s offerings. Norrmalmstorg 2 is once again open for business.



The new jeans shelf

Clark Olofsson with the hostage chained in the vault of the bank, now Acne's stockroom.


Police detectives waiting outside the bank for Clark.


The entrance to the vault today

Slideshow of the store

via Acne

Reading list for this weekend

Interbrand's annual survey, topped by Coca Cola.

Considering the economical climat, you might rethink your choice of career
Here are Kevin Roberts' suggestions, Note to self, the storyteller tap into my narrative retailing trend.

Damien Hirst may have shattered the artist/galleries relationship, but the worst is yet to come for a US art scene so famously dependent on private philanthropy for its survival. (Expatica)

Jeff Koons does Versailles, on aime ou pas!




Financial turmoil will be serving some, it seems most of the names and their derivatives have already been registered.


My book of the week is John Kotter's new book, "A Sense of Urgency"

Vuitton Vogue Homme Japan

design 3D de Rizon Parein

design 3D: Rizon Parein

Photography : Daniel Sannwald. Art direction : Gary Card and Daniel Sannwald.
Stylist : Shun Watanabe. Model : Brett Lloyd.

Daft Punk

via FUBIZ

Benjamin Jurgensen

via Benjamin Jurgensen
ben (at) zboo.net

see also > http://dontreadytodieanymore.com

Don't Ready to Die Anymore

mixed

every-ting crash, this is a chaos race, not your typical dark skinned disney villains

mdf, wood, urethane foam, steel, latex paint, egg cartons & eggs

painting

mdf, latex paint

put we to your ear and hear yesteryear’s ocean, mute affairs, mortarboards, merman graduate shit, this is just future love like water dripping down her inner thigh, teardrops as diluted thoughts filtered through the mainstream, twenty thing-a-ma-bobs, treasure troves, spear-fishing, love’s fragile future only safe speaking through cartoon thought bubbles and coral thieves, lured into the deepest oceans of fantasy, flipping fins, marquees wash up on shore, legs required in the seas of change, reprimanded daughters, breathing the same air, just done differently

mdf, latex paint, nylon rope, video projection

life after death, ninety-six, woulda stayed fine had puff daddy been a better father figure

mdf, vinyl, plastic crown, gold leaf, latex & acrylic paint

nine fourteen ninety-six, above the rim on vhs served as reference

mdf, limestone, bandana, acrylic paint

the new white flight flat packs, propelling expectations of hover parents, affectionless, despondent, twenty-two and never free

mdf, latex paint, Fibromyalgia For Dummies (Second Ed.)

shadows only cast if comic book courage amounts to anything more than tattered sheets and exploded ankles

mdf, steel, urethane foam, latex paint

dave stoller is the super pro hypernostalgia, the italians are coming, & remaking away

single channel video, projector, mdf, wood, latex paint, hardware

spit your game, talk your shit, grab your gat, call your click

mdf, wood, latex paint

swinging on this and that hook (up), detached from the straight and narrow

mdf, wood, latex paint

thanks for the dream, never read word up magazine

mdf, wood, latex paint

bricks and mortar (fire) support the too low-low spoke(n) count

mdf, wood, latex paint

sparking magic trees, it was hot (box) ‘till it overheated

mdf, wood, latex paint

mechanize something idiosyncratic

archival pigment print