Wallpaper* City Guides add New Destinations

Wallpaper* City Guides have added 10 new destinations: Delhi, Hamburg, Kuala Lumpur, Kyoto, Marseille, Montreal, Moscow, Reykjavik, Seoul, and Venice. The guides present a tightly edited, discreetly packaged list of the best a location has to offer the design conscious traveller.

Whether you are staying for 48 hours or five days, visiting for business or a vacation, the editors have done the hard work for you, from finding the best restaurants, bars and hotels (including which rooms to request) to the most extraordinary stores and sites, and the most enticing architecture and design. Wallpaper* City Guides enable you to come away from your trip, however brief, with a real taste of the city’s landscape and the satisfaction you’ve seen all that you should.

Wallpaper* City Guide, Published by Phaidon. Buy them here: Amazon

Alila Villas Uluwatu and Hotel in Bali

While Designing Alila Villas Uluwatu, the architects wanted to create more than the usual stereotypical ideas of Bali, creating a design that worked with the dry Balinese Savannah vegetation and gently sloping site, not against it. The 14.4 hectare development offers three-bedroom contemporary Balinese villas for sale, as well as a hotel for those on holiday in Bali.

Alila Villas Uluwatu, Bali, Indonesia, by WOHA
via: Contemporist

Field of Light at Eden Project by Bruce Munro

Bruce Munro’s iconic Field of Light sculpture is now installed at the Eden Project in Cornwall. The piece can now be seen on the sloping grass roof of the visitors centre, called the Link building, between the famous Rainforest and Mediterranean Biomes, and will remain there until Spring 2009. The sculpture first came to widespread public attention when a scaled-down version was exhibited in the Pirelli Garden at the V&A in 2004.
Bruce Munro and five assistants worked over three days to install Field of Light at the Eden Project. It is made of 6,000 acrylic stems, through which fibre optic cables run, each crowned with a clear glass sphere.

Field of Light, by Bruce Munro, through Spring 2009, at the Eden Project, Cornwall, UK
via: dezeen

Travel: Night at the Overlook Hotel in Kubrick’s The Shining

In 1980, Stanley Kubrick came to the Timberline Lodge to film one of the all-time great horror classics, The Shining. In the film, Jack Torrance (Nicholson) gets a job as the custodian of the Overlook Hotel, in the mountains of Colorado. The place is closed down during winter, Torrance and his family will be the only occupants of the hotel for a long while. When the snow storms block the Torrance family in the hotel, Jack’s son Danny, who has some clairvoyance and telepathy powers, discovers that the hotel is haunted and that the spirits are slowly driving Jack crazy. When Jack meets the ghost of Mr. Grady, the former custodian of the hotel who murdered his wife and his two daughters, things begin to get really nasty.
The hotel in the film is actually called the Timberline Lodge and is located near Mt. Hood in Oregon, USA. For one night only, the hotel is hosting a 1920s era ball, in honour of the scene in the movie.

A Celebration of The Shining at the Timberline Lodge, Mt. Hood, Oregon, USA, October 31, 2008, at Come Play With Us

Spaces and Storytelling in Kubrick’s The Shining

A Night at the Guggenheim Revolving Hotel Room

Spend the night at the Guggenheim. Guests can reserve an overnight stay in a Revolving Hotel Room, a work of art created by artist Carsten Höller. Revolving Hotel Room is an art installation comprising three outfitted, superimposed turning glass discs mounted onto a fourth disc that all turn harmoniously at a very slow speed. At night guests can roam the museum alone all night, during the day the hotel room will be on view as part of the Guggenheim’s theanyspacewhatever exhibition.

Exhibition: theanyspacewhatever, October 24, 2008–January 7, 2009, Guggenheim, New York, USA
more: New York Post

Icon: Royal Suite 606 designed by Arne Jacobsen

In the centre of Copenhagen, on the sixth floor of the Royal Hotel, a single room preserves a microcosm of the definitive masterwork of Danish architect and furniture designer Arne Jacobsen. Room 606 is the last surviving interior of the SAS House: an unparalleled example of modern architecture and design, completed in 1960. With the grey, blue-green colours, the wengé wood and a selection of the most representative furniture designed for the hotel, this room takes its visitors to another time and place.

Hotel guests with an interest in design are welcome to visit Room 606, when it is available. Arne Jacobsen designed the famous Egg and Swan chairs for the Royal as well as the lesser known and rare Drop chair. The room features other details like built-in makeup mirrors, radio and intercom system.

Room 606, starting at 1,295.00 DKK per night, by Arne Jacobsen, at Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, Copenhagen, Denmark

Room 606, A survey of the work of architect and furniture designer Arne Jacobsen.
Buy the book: Amazon

Ultimate Hides, Architecture as Holiday Destination

Jacqueline Wagar has hand-selected a collection of holiday properties that encompass contemporary architectural design, Ultimate Hides aims to promote great architecture and design through first-hand experience. By spending time within a property, visitors are able to observe & appreciate the use of materials, colour and space, as well as gain insight into the design process.

Design Destinations: Accommodation by Design, at Ultimate Hides

New Princi Bakery in Milan

Claudio Silvestrin Architects have completed the new Princi bakery in Via Speronari (Duomo), in the heart of Milan. Silvestrin has chosen a sand-coloured porphyry stone that matches the colour of the bread-flour. Slabs of smooth porphyry cover the floor, while rough porphyry is used to texture the wall that faces the stretched 19m-long bronze counter. The mighty impact of this earth-wall is softened by the gentle features of a waterfall.

Princi bakery, Duomo, Milan, Italy, by Claudio Silvestrin
We like the other bakery too.

Travel: Spain, Hotel Puerta América

While the facade is the work of the French architect Jean Nouvel, each of the Hotel Puerta América’s 12 floors - from the elevator lobbies down to the blankets and bathrobes - has been conceived by powerhouse architects and design studios, among them Arata Isozaki, Norman Foster, Marc Newson, Ron Arad, Richard Gluckman, Javier Mariscal, Victorio & Lucchino and Zaha Hadid. With public spaces like the Black Tears restaurant designed by Christian Liaigre and the underground garage by Teresa Sapey, the Puerta América can bill itself as “12 floors with 19 stars.”

Hotel Puerta América, Madrid, Spain, $250 to between $1,500 and $3,900 for the suites, designed by Starchitects.

Books: Airworld. Design and Architecture for Air Travel

For nearly a century now the airline industry has been an important player in the field of architecture and design. For many architects and designers it is an honour to design something for this branch of industry, from stewardess’s (and stewards) uniforms to signposting, from a terminal to services and cutlery. Airworld gives a good picture of the history of air travel, with a focus on the developments that design and architecture have undergone.

This is the first time that this theme has been illuminated so widely from the perspective of architecture and design. The exhibition Airworld. Design and Architecture for Air Travel is organized by the Vitra Design Museum. The Stedelijk has added posters from its own collection and objects that are typical for Dutch design.

Airworld. Design and Architecture for Air Travel, Exhibition at Stedelijk Museum
Buy it here: Amazon