The 2000 Olympics (and Priscilla Queen of the Desert) have made the Sydney Opera House a symbol of the 20th century. And it is now time for it to pass on the torch.
We stumbled upon this amazing proposal by the architecture firm Ozel Office for the Izmir Opera House in Turkey. And we must say, it’s mind-blowing. They have defined it as “a catalyst that reinforces the relationship between the old city, the new city, the waterfront, and urban culture. In short, our vision is a synergy of spatial, cultural, as well as practical and contextual aesthetics”. Whatever that means.
This all sounds rather obscure to us, but the little diagram helped us figure out what they actually mean by their architectural gibberish: building around and covering the existing tower and amphitheatre to create a sense of unity and continuity between the different aspects of the landscape. Or something like that. We reckon they have done a pretty good job at it, and who knows, we might get to see it as the symbol of the 2040 Olympics?
We love this new ad campaign on the tube at the moment.
Each poster features some little-known fact about the London underground, some of which are actually quite interesting.
What we really love however is that each fact is set on a background of fabric from a tube seat. Admittedly they are hideous, but we still recognised them and it made us smile…
We try not to do this too often but we’ve just had a campaign break which we really had to blog about.
We’ve been working with our friends at the Motor Neurone Disease Association to produce their 2010 awareness campaign. Motor neurone disease (MND) is incurable, fatal, strikes seemingly at random and is rapidly degenerative, killing half of all sufferers within months. So as causes go, raising awareness (and hopefully funds for research) for this disease is about as good as it gets.
Over the last six months, we’ve been working with one particular MND sufferer, Patrick Joyce, who is an absolute inspiration. Patrick probably has only months to live but is an incurable optimist. He’s determined to paint 100 portraits of incurable optimists before he dies, to raise awareness of the disease. So we’ve built him a website at patricktheoptimist.org and helped him get set up on Facebook and Twitter. On each of these, he talks about his life, his family (including his three kids) and of course his portraits, which are pretty incredible by anyone’s standards – never mind for someone who struggles to use their hands…
And alongside this, we’ve put Patrick on billboards at stations throughout the country and on teaser ads in the Daily Mail.
To find out more or get involved visit his website or watch the short film below which we made at his home in Wells.
By now we’ve all heard about the BP oil spill, and most of us are very cross with BP for allowing it to happen and feeling very sorry for the poor little animals. However, this nifty website at www.ifitwasmyhome.com makes it all just a bit more real. It takes the oil spill, and lets you move it to wherever you live to see the size of the area that would be affected. We put it on top of our office in London.
PANTONE has long been on a quest to take over the world of design. Starting as a simple colour guide, it has since spawned bags, chairs, stationery, an iPhone app and of course the famous mugs. We’ve always been fans, but their latest step on the path to world domination really knocks us out.
The PANTONE hotel is a new luxury boutique hotel in the centre of Brussels – somewhere we’ve never considered going, and now really want to. Each room is designed to its own carefully chosen PANTONE colour set, giving rooms suitable for couples, business trips and families.
Upon arrival, you are given an appropriate room depending on the purpose of your stay, and even your mood.
Also on-site is the PANTONE lounge bar, serving (among other things) cocktails such as Pink Champagne (PANTONE 12-1107), Lemon Drop (PANTONE 12-0736) or Daiquiri Green (PANTONE 12-0435). This might be a silly sales gimmick, but excellent all the same. Add all this to the entire hotel being littered with PANTONE’s other iconic products, and you’ve got any designer’s heaven.
We reckon these things could be every child’s dream… and every parent’s nightmare.
These crayons from Luxirare may look fairly normal, but they are in fact completely edible.
More to the point, they actually look pretty tasty, being made out of fruits, chocolate and nuts, and crucially being held together with marshmallow. And you can of course draw with them, should you be so inclined.
We can see children loving the ability to draw for a bit and then just start eating whenever it gets boring. We can see parents hating the fact that they have to buy a new pack of crayons every five minutes.
Design really does seem to have taken a slightly geeky twist recently, but we love it. This paper model of the original computer trash can is just brilliant.
Now admittedly it is completely pointless, but there’s just something interesting about seeing apparently pixelated real-life products.
And you can even download your own and print it off at A4 to sit on your desk… we’re really quite tempted.
Now admittedly you’ve probably never asked that question. In fact, nor has anybody above the age of five. However, artist Nathan W. Pyle has given us an answer.
So there you go, there are whole forests of these things out there somewhere, with little men to chop them all down…
This has to be just about the geekiest bit of advertising we’ve ever seen.
These ads for Fritz Kola feature a character based on a caffeine molecule… who is concentrating. So firstly you’ve got the caffeine molecule turned into a character – and been scientifically accurate. Then you’ve got the bad pun on the word concentrated. Just terrible.
That said, we secretly think they’re brilliant.
(for video versions of these ads (possibly even better) go to artverrtising)
Any Londoners out there may well have noticed a number of giant elephants cropping up around the capital, in aid of the charity Elephant Family. Now we love most of them, but this in particular caught our eye.
The taxi elephant is Benjamin Shine‘s contribution to the event. In case you hadn’t guessed, it is inspired by the quintessential black cab, complete with taxi sign and headlamps for eyes. The elephant has a solar panel for power, so the eyes and sign light up periodically throughout the day.
The taxi elephant has in fact become one of the event’s most valuable assets, and has been relocated to the Royal Exchange where it can be kept under guard. It will be auctioned at the end of the month and is expected to fetch around £2 million…
(source: ArchDaily)
