It's Christmas!

 

 

 

Ok, so you may not be ready to see this yet.  Well I'm getting into Christmas already, so there!

These gorgeous illustrations are by Rob Ryan for Liberty a few years ago.  Aren't they delightful?  I hope that you enjoy the lead up to Christmas!

French Moustache

 

Moustache is a new French furniture company that works with some big designers to produce furniture and products for the domestic market.  I love the styling for their pieces, the juxtaposition of the clean, bright furniture and lighting against the dark historical interiors is cool and unexpected.

From Moustache:

Moustache seeks to break away from pre-set market concepts and create innovative products by combining a variety of approaches and thought processes. To open new domestic horizons designers such as François Azambourg, Big-Game, Matali Crasset, Ana Mir + Emili Padros and Inga Sempé cohabit in Moustache.

Exedra Milan

 

 

 

 

 

The Exedra is new luxury hotel in the heart of the fashion district of Milan.  I don't think I've come across another hotel like it, the design is very original and unique, trust the Italians to be cutting edge!  That pool! I mean what's that about?  It looks like a bubbly underground lair for Barbarella or something.  Anyway I love it.  What do you think about this one?

From the website:

Exedra Milan upraises from a 1920's bank, completely remodelled by architect Italo Rota into a lighthouse in the landscape of contemporary design.
The wondrous entrance with its bright glass windows and sparkling colours and the splendor of the harlequin sculptures, breaks the monochromy of the contiguous buildings.  The collective spaces, embracing hall, reception and restaurant, are conceived as a one open- plan area.

The Hanging Gardens of Boffi

 

 

There is something quite lovely and atmospheric about these hanging gardens at this Boffi installation at Designer’s Days in Paris, the London Design Festival and Milano Design-in-the-City.  I love the contrast between the clean minimal Boffi design and the hanging Spanish moss that is treated like an architectural material on the hanging domes.  This beautiful installation is called Rainforest by French designer Patrick Naneau.  To read more see Dezeen.

The Turner

 

Richard Wright

Lucy Skaer

Enrico David

Roger Hiorns

These are the four artists nominated for the Turner Prize this year.  My money is on Roger Hiorns for the prize (check out my post for Seizure his blue crystal apartment) what a truely original and unforgettable work.  But then again I also love Lucy Skaer abstract installations and Richard Wright's stunning site-specific works too.  I don't like Enrico David's work as surrealism ain't my thing, too creepy and scary but I don't discriminate so I posted some of his work too.  Who do you predict / want to win?

Cool Office for Cool People

 

 

 

 

Who wants to join me to 'work' in this cool office?  I mean with an office this beautiful with all of these gorgeous break-out areas how much work would you really get done?  Well actually I would bounce out of bed each day to go to work, it is a place that I would want to sit at a desk for at least eight hours a day, easily. 

The building shell is a real find, The Philadelphia Navy Yard is the perfect backdrop for the Urban Outfitters brand with stores located in unique buildings that were once car dealerships, factories, churches, or mansions.  The products are edgy and young with the company’s products are displayed amid antiques and vintage relics, an approach that individualizes the objects and steeps them in a past.

From Metropolis Mag pdf CE Stich

The first time Hayne visited the Navy Yard, he realized he had found a mother lode of industrial artifacts. The Navy simply locked the doors and walked away in 1996, leaving behind such treasures as Egyptianstyle cast-iron columns, 2,000-pound overhead cranes, and walls decorated with the graffiti musings and naive paintings of Navy carpenters. Hayne picked it all up for $1–5 per building. His first impulse wasn’t to clean up the buildings but to keep them exactly as they were.

Royal Saxon

 

 

 

 

Another pub by Six Degrees!  Just up the road from the classic Six Degrees pub Public House, Church Street Richmond, this new pub Royal Saxon just opened.  The hoarding came down to reveal just the front shell from the former Vietnamese Restaurant with an entirely new building inside.  I found some photos of the construction here.  Really lovely space which blurs the whole indoor out door thing really well.  We had some pizza and mojito and it was really nice.  Good relaxed atmosphere, has a bit of a local vibe with a nice mix of people not pretentious (yet??), and my favorite waiter works there which I have followed from Babble and Pelican.  Great attentive service.

Will be my new summer haunt...

Love Kate

 

 

I love Kate, I love Paris, I love roses.">

Collingwood

This is my new journey to work each morning and I'm loving it!  Collingwood is a whole other world away from South Yarra.  The contrast between walking past the posh boutiques of Chapel Street and the gritty warehouses of Collingwood is so refreshing. I catch a tram or bus (whichever comes first) and I've found a new coffee place for my morning ritual which means I pass a whole lot of behind the scenes factories and warehouses keeping Melbourne clothed and fed.
I pass a bakery (you can see their 'tea room' the armchair and milk crates) that supplies to shops and restaurants and the thick smell of bread fills the air.  I walk past artist studios, photographers, a primary school, pubs, merchandising display warehouses, wholesalers and even a brothel- what a mix!

Take me to Missoni Hotel

I've always loved Missoni.  It's like the kid in me with a fistful of crayons putting fuchsia next to red next to olive green but Missoni is for grown-ups.  The mixing of colours and pattern is so stylish and still playful, it verges on gaudi but never goes over the line.  The Missoni Hotel in Edinburgh is about surrounding yourself with beauty.  I could give that a go, I think it would be nice!  The website is gorgeous too, cute animation and great images.

The Missoni Hotel Edinburgh is dedicated to real people who laugh and cry, who appreciate 'fashion' and 'style' as part of real life of good coffee, heary eating, love and light, the sea, the city, hard work and adventure, love of home, family and an appreciation of the immense beauty of the natrual world.

Italian has a perfect word for it; the people who are 'simpatico'.

That is so me!  Right, it is my destiny to stay here.