Photography: Ditte Isager on Noma & Chef René Redzepi

Photographer Ditte Isager has captured the essence of Chef René Redzepi, head chef of Copenhagen restaurant, Noma

Book Early, Reservations: Noma, Photography by Ditte Isager
View the interview on Charlie Rose

René Redzepi has been widely credited with re-inventing Nordic cuisine. His Copenhagen restaurant, Noma, was recognized as the third best in the world by the San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurant awards in 2009 and received the unique ‘Chef’s Choice’ award at the same ceremony. Redzepi operates at the cutting edge of gourmet cuisine, combining an unrelenting creativity and a remarkable level of craftsmanship with an inimitable and innate knowledge of the produce of his Nordic terroir.

Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine, Published by Phaidon, Hardback, 290 x 250 mm, 11 3/8 x 9 7/8 in, 320 pp, 200 colour illustrations ISBN: 9780714859033

Buy the Book: Amazon

Sound Sculptures and Installations by Zimoun

The sound sculptures and installations of Zimoun are graceful, mechanized works of playful poetry, their structural simplicity opens like an industrial bloom to reveal a complex and intricate series of relationships, an ongoing interplay between the artificial and the organic.

25 woodworms, wood, microphone, sound system
5 ventilators, 35 styrofoam balls, 5 helping hands, air
23 prepared dc-motors, grid
30′000 plastic bags, 16 ventilators
97 polysiloxane hoses 3.0mm, compressed air

Zimoun, Sound Sculptures and Installations

Exhibition: New Work by Hiroyuki Hamada

Hiroyuki Hamada’s works are monumental in impact, but built with delicacy. They are filled with an unknown spirit. There is no direct reference, but one can read the mysteries of the ancients or the mapping of a digital age in their rich surfaces. The forms hold space, rather than make it. Tension pervades, as each mark and tone tell a story of perfection, balance and upset. Hamada spends up to three years creating the sculptures, as he applies plaster over burlap and wooden forms. He then shapes and stains them with wax, resin, and paint.

New Work, by Hiroyuki Hamada, August 28 - October 10, Art Sites, Riverhead, New York, USA

Exhibition: Re-loved Panton Chair by Chris Bosse of LAVA

Australian Architect Chris Bosse has built a sliced up homage to the 1967 Panton Chair as part of this year’s Sydney Design Festival. The designer has “…chosen to represent this shape as slices, similar to an MRI scan in order to make visible its complex three-dimensional geometry. The chair is metaphorically and physically carved out of a sliced box”, says Bosse. “The project retro-digitises the chair design, although it was the chair that preceded the digital design revolution.”

Re-loved, Panton Chair, by Chris Bosse, LAVA, 31 July – 30 September 2010,
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia, during the Sydney Design Festival

Bush Form Sculpture by Harry Bertoia

The recent Important Design auction at Wright included this highly detailed and labor-intensive Bush series sculpture illustrating a mastery of welded metal sculpture by Harry Bertoia. Initially growing out of an exploration of natural forms using wire or brass-coated iron, the Bush forms became more refined throughout the 1960s. Executed in copper and bronze which garners a rich green patina over time, the Bush sculptures culminate in purified shapes that are defined by the undulating surfaces of metal points. Bertoia’s best works from this series display a scale and density of material that distinguish them in his oeuvre.

Untitled (monumental Bush form), by Harry Bertoia c. 1962, welded copper and bronze, Estimate: $300,000–500,000 (unsold), auction at Wright

Exhibition: Tokujin Yoshioka for Sensing Nature

Winter turns to spring, summer turns to autumn. We sense the shifts not just by the changes in the temperature and the scenery, but in the smells carried on the breeze and the quality of the sunlight. Over two thirds of Japan’s population lives in its cities, which make up just a small fraction of its landmass. And yet we are still able to read nature with our bodies.

Japan’s temperate climate and its mountainous topography gave birth to a unique natural environment, which in turn fostered an ancient cosmology and spirituality which have greatly influenced our culture and arts. In “Sensing Nature: Yoshioka Tokujin, Shinoda Taro, Kuribayashi Takashi” we think about how the innate human ability to perceive nature (to sense nature) and the Japanese view of nature exist in our urbanized and modernized world. We also ask how those views are reflected in contemporary art and design practices.

Sensing Nature: Tokujin Yoshioka, Takashi Kuribayashi, Taro Shinoda, Mori Art Museum, Roppongi Hills, Tokyo, Japan, July 24 - November 7

The 9 Hours Capsule Hotel, Kyoto, Japan

The 9 Hours is the brand new capsule hotel unveiled by Tokyo-based Cubic Corp. Designed in a collaboration with designer Fumie Shibata of Design Studio S, it looks nothing like its predecessors and represents a revolution in the capsule concept.

The Nine Hours Capsule Hotel, Kyoto, Japan, by Fumie Shibata

PixCell-Elk#2 by Kohei Nawa

“By covering surface of an object with transparent glass beads, the existence of the object itself is replaced by “a husk of light”, and the new vision “the cell of an image” (PixCell) is shown. Most of the motifs, like stuffed animals are found through the internet. I search some auction sites and choose from the images which appear on a monitor as pixel. However, the stuffed animals which actually have been purchased and sent have real flesh feel and smell, and have a discrepancy with images on the monitor. I then transpose them to PixCell in turn.” - Kohei Nawa

PixCell-Elk#2, PixCell-Deer#23, by Kohei Nawa, More:Sandwich

Film: Efdemin: There Will Be Singing (Chicago)

AD pointed us to the new video by Berlin based experimental musician Efdemin. The video includes fleeting images of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s, 860-880 Lake Shore Drive in Chicago

Efdemin: There Will Be Singing, from the album Chicago on Dial Records, video by Jutojo

Travel: Stay Apartment Hotel Copenhagen

A few years ago, the A House was the hub of Copenhagen’s creative elite. Now the building has been transformed into Stay, which offers a couple of hundred apartments that come with space, freedom and a view. Booking an apartment gives you access to the biggest rooftop terrace in Scandinavia as well as a meticulous design, which can be seen in everything from the front of the house to the hat stand. Accordingly, Copenhagen is no longer lagging behind when it comes to housing guests, who want more than a place to spend the night.

Stay, Copenhagen, Denmark