Antic biotec by eliumstudio and Duende Studio

eliumstudio was invited by Duende Studio to reconsider the “vinaigrier” (french for vinegar maker), an accessory that’s common to country kitchens.

Antic biotec blends the wine bottle and the pipette, common to oenologists and scientists, to offer a new “noble tasting ritual, highlighted by the delicacy of the blown glass and porcelain.”

“Vinegar is one of the very first biotechnology applications developed by man using acetic bacteria to change wine into a completely new product.”

“A preciosity of the often ignored vinegar that Nick Toshes was already pointing out in the opening of his mythical Confessions d’un chasseur d’opium (Confessions of an Opium Hunter): ‘Those people who know that the true soul of wine is vinegar, hold the key to the only worthy knowledge concerning wine. The wonderful taste becomes apparent by drinking shots of these mature and rare vinegars labelled da bere: the real thing is a far cry from the industrial crap masked with pretentious epithets.’”

Antic Biotec Vinegar Maker, by Duende Studio, and eliumstudio
via: MoCo Loco

Celio Apartment by Carola Vannini Architecture

The client’s primary requirement was to open the space toward the outside landscape, and create a design characterized by light and airy rooms. Several windows were reopened, and the interior distribution was changed in order to create multiple perspectives. Says architect Carola Vannini, the “Main space of the day area is the kitchen volume, which is in direct relation with both, the entrance and the living room. It is designed as an isolated volume, separated from ceiling and floor, through continue led lights. Two sliding white glass doors allow to open and close the kitchen, depending on the user’s needs.” The kitchen has a sculptural valence, which partially hides its real function. “Nevertheless, practical needs are not underestimated thanks to the creation of big cabinets and a white corian kitchen island (ideal for quick meals and as a work top).” The living room has a minimal flair, and its furniture – designed by the architect – creates a balance with the interior architecture. The lighting system was carefully studied to emphasize perspectives and space depth.

A direct relation with the exterior space is underlined by the wooden floor that extends from the interior space onto the balcony. The black doors and window frames, create a painting-like effect by framing the surrounding natural landscape. The private area has three bedrooms, three bathrooms and an office space. The corridor that leads to them was designed to open up the space through the use of niches and lights. “A long built-in cupboard, which perfectly merges with the architecture, gives up on classical doors and replaces them with backlit printed plexiglass panels.” The master bedroom is naturally lit by two big windows and has a banked relax area, coated with grey resin. “This material creates a continuity with the grey wooden floor.” A jacuzzi is located into the banked platform. Two symmetrical walls lead into the walk-in closets area and then into the master bathroom. “The master bathroom has the same bedroom’s colors and geometries. The white bathroom fittings and cabinets, stand out against the grey walls and four green wooden cabinets are the only colored elements.”

Celio Apartment, by Carola Vannini Architecture, via: mocoloco

Natura Jars by Héctor Serrano for La Mediterranea

Natura jars are inspired by the world of vases. A collection of jars that not only store but also decorate. Its translucent colors let you see their content, screening them and creating a balanced range of tones. A continuation and extension of the natural collection. This is why we use the cork in the same way, similar formal language and same color code that resembles ancient glass, giving it a vintage flavour. The collection is made of 100% recycled glass and is composed of three jars, in three colours green, amber and red.

Natura Jars, by Héctor Serrano, for La Mediterranea

2450 white / clear Chair by Junpei Tamaki

Japanese designer Junpei Tamaki, has completed a chair composed of exactly 2450 polycarbonate pieces, one clear and one in white.

2450 white / clear Chair, by Junpei Tamaki

Studio SC by Studio MK27

Brazilian practice Studio MK27 (Marcio Kogan, Suzana Glogowski) has completed ‘Studio SC‘, a free-standing food photography studio in São Paulo, Brazil. Longitudinally set back to accommodate a generous outdoor garden, the design utilizes a simple and linear layout that features an elevated concrete catwalk overhead.

Fronted with large sliding metal doors, the facade can be set in a variety of configurations that will facilitate different levels of connection between the garden and the interior. The central studio space is defined by its open nature, neutral enough for maximum flexibility. A longitudinal working area defined by a single-stretch desk along the back wall maintains the linear design while also creating a space that facilitates interaction and communication.

Slicing across the double-height studio space is a suspended concrete walkway which connects two pavilion-like structures on either ends of the layout. hosting specific programs necessary for the food photography studio, the wooden boxes continue the customizable language of the facade by enabling total privacy/transparency through collapsible shutters. Accommodated programs include a reception area, rooms for image treatment, and a technical kitchen for preparing food for shoots. A roof top deck complete with a large secondary kitchen provides an airy space for a variety of events.

Studio SC, São Paulo, Brazil, by Studio MK27, Photography by: Nelson Kon, via: designboom

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Normann Copenhagen Cognac & Liqueur Glasses

The Cognac Glass and the smaller Liqueur Glass is a beautiful combination of function and pure pleasure. A simple and practical pivot allows the glass to swirl thus releasing the aromas of the spirits. The concern to quality of cognac resulted in the shape of the glass, which increases the pleasure of deep colour and movement of the liquid.

“I wanted to craft a cognac glass. The perfect gift to the man, who has everything. The inspiration springs from my own perception of when you drink cognac; that is when you have time and in calm surroundings. I wanted the glass to give the user a feeling of a gentleman’s study and at the same time, the sense of calmness you get when you fondle a stone. The stem kept irritating me. I took the consequence and cut it off. That’s how my Cognac Glass was born.”
- Rikke Hagen

Normann Copenhagen Cognac & Liqueur Glasses, Set of Two, by Rikke Hagen

Exhibition: Modernism in Miniature: Points of View

The architectural model gained new prominence after a period of decline when it became a popular tool for design education and practice in the early twentieth century. This revival is usually associated with the turn towards objectivity and the search for expressive means to communicate ideas in three dimensions–but how was the model transformed in the age of its mechanical reproducibility?

Modernism in Miniature: Points of View explores the encounter between photography and model-making between 1920-1960. It focuses on model photography as a distinctive genre and suggests that the so-called ‘model boom’ was inextricably bound up with the explosion of modern mass media.

The objects on display illustrate a variety of visual practices ranging from straight records of study models to hyper-realist photomontage. Channelled by the illustrated press, miniatures reached out to a wide public and, in some cases, acquired enduring cult status. By revisiting a widespread yet oft-neglected imagery, the exhibition provokes questions about the relationship between media in architectural culture and the specific impact of photography on the perception of the miniature.

Modernism in Miniature: Points of View, September 22 – January 8, at Octagonal Gallery, The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Montréal, Québec

L’Opéra Restaurant by Odile Decq

French architect Odile Decq has completed the ‘(Phantom) L’Opéra Restaurant’, which recently opened in the Palais Garnier located in Paris, France. Recessed within the historical building, visitors pass the facade’s original pillars to enter the undulating interior. The mezzanine space is carefully integrated to resist touching the existing structure’s walls, columns and roof. The contemporary addition compliments the classical details of the vaulted stone ceiling without altering history.

Accommodating and seating 90 guests at one time, the large floor plate is suspended with concealed steel plates. A glass wall encompasses the interior isolating the space from the existing shell. the billowing white structure touches down to the lower level producing integrated organic supports. The striking red chairs, benches, and floors produce a theatrical character reminiscent of the phantom of the opera which was once performed within the auditorium.

L’Opéra Restaurant, Garnier Opera, Paris, France, by Odile Decq, Odile Decq Benoit Cornette Architectes Urbanistes, Photography by © designboom, © roland halbe, via: designboom

Fishermen Lamps by Mattias Ståhlbom TAF Studio for Zero

Inspired by the traditional glass fishing floats used by the fishermen around the world since mid-19th century, the Swedish designer and architect Mattias Ståhlbom of Stockholm’s TAF studio has created this series of pendant lights for Zero. Each rope is hand-knitted by a small company on the Swedish west coast whose specialty was making ropes and netting for the fishing industry.

Zero Fishermen Lamps, by Mattias Ståhlbom, TAF

Boxing Life Apartment by UdA – Architetti Associati

A Calvinist essentiality that recalls diaphanous, diffuse, pervasive lights in sharp contrast black and white, and rigorous geometry where very little space is left indeterminate or uncertain. A seemingly scarce indulgence reminiscent of a more evident sensuality, immediate in the relationship between the body the occupation of the space, which finds expression by means of the geometric articulation of a sequence of containers; containing and contained.

Inspired by the oriental sensibility for the “box” as a container full of instruments for the unfolding of human life and by the drawer holding the domestic objects which are the primary nucleus at the centre of the oriental domestic space, all the spaces are obtained from a sequence and superimposition of cupboards, containers and joinery that not only organise the functional aspects of life, but also contain it, forming bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchen and other living spaces in a sequence that is at once labyrinthine, yet clear and reassuring in its inexorable mechanism.

Even so, the container, modeled and modified by the highly worked material surface, recalls and alludes to the physical dimension of the human body and to a sensuality completely devoted to containing life; humour, affection. Tragic, sweet, sublime Virgin of Nuremberg, the porcupine’s quills removed in an innocuous representation of the domestic fort/castle in which we come back to believing ourselves the masters of our own lives, in a perennial oscillation between intimate introversion and public exposure to the light, to relationships, to chance encounters, here represented by the expansive, fully-glazed living room and entrance.

Following the game of the Chinese boxes placed one inside the other, one can imagine a suburb that contains a building that contains an apartment; rooms, furniture and objects – or in a metaphorical sense a story that contains another. Certainly a change of scale from the large to the small in which that which changes is the dimension and not the value or importance of the various boxes. Stories that proceed at times following the line of reason, at times in opposition – rational, orthogonal volumes that are at odds with furniture with inclined planes, fittings curved and asymmetrical.

Metallic laser-cut surfaces set against hand-lacquered woods, graphic colours (black and white) against red and ochre in a continuous succession of light and shade, of finished versus crude, of low versus high, and of the playful versus the serious to give body to a story that contains, from passage to passage, from chapter to chapter, rigour and incoherence, calculation and improvisation, method and paradox.

French mathematician Henri Poincaré once said “creativity is to unite existing elements with new connections that they may be useful” “creativity is the union of disorder and order”.

Boxing Life Apartment, Turin, Italy, by UdA – Architetti Associati, via: mocoloco