Portrait: Raymond Loewy, a French-born American industrial designer

25 October 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Design & Products, Portrait Reading Time:  8 minutes

1953 Studebaker Commander Starliner © Tysto

1953 Studebaker Commander Starliner © Tysto

Raymond Loewy was a French-born American industrial designer who achieved fame for the magnitude of his design efforts across a variety of industries. He was recognized for this by Time magazine and featured on its cover on October 31, 1949.   read more…

Portrait: Creative director, fashion designer, artist, photographer, and caricaturist Karl Lagerfeld

23 October 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Design & Products, Hamburg, Paris / Île-de-France, Portrait Reading Time:  17 minutes

© Georges Biard/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Georges Biard/cc-by-sa-3.0

Karl Otto Lagerfeld was a German creative director, fashion designer, artist, photographer, and caricaturist who lived in Paris. He was known as the creative director of the French fashion house Chanel, a position held from 1983 until his death, and was also creative director of the Italian fur and leather goods fashion house Fendi, and of his own eponymous fashion label. He collaborated on a variety of fashion and art-related projects. Lagerfeld was recognized for his signature white hair, black sunglasses, fingerless gloves, and high, starched, detachable collars.   read more…

Mickey’s Diner in Saint Paul

9 October 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture, Design & Products Reading Time:  5 minutes

© Tenzin Dongag/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Tenzin Dongag/cc-by-sa-3.0

Mickey’s Diner is a classic diner in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota. It has been in continuous operation at the same location since 1939. Designed to resemble a railroad dining car, the prefabricated building was constructed in 1937 by the Jerry O’Mahony Diner Company of Elizabeth, New Jersey, then shipped to Saint Paul by rail. Its unusual architecture made it a local landmark. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 for having local significance in the themes of architecture and commerce. It was nominated for being “a beloved, longstanding and unique social institution,” an unaltered example of railroad car-style diners, and one of the few surviving examples of its type in the American Midwest.   read more…

The megayacht Black Pearl

1 October 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Design & Products, Tall ships, Superyachts, Yacht of the Month Reading Time:  11 minutes

© Berthold Neutze

© Berthold Neutze

Black Pearl is a sailing yacht launched in 2016, which is 106.7 meters (350.1 ft) in length. It has three DynaRig masts supporting a sail area of 2,900 square meters (31,215 sq ft). The yacht was known during its build process originally as Oceanco Y712 and thereafter as “Project Solar”. The hull is steel, the superstructure aluminum, and the masts carbon fiber.   read more…

Smart City

22 April 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Architecture, Design & Products, Energy, Building Automation, Green Buildings, Green Technologies, Intelligent Buildings, Living, Working, Building, Sustainability, Environment Reading Time:  26 minutes

© flickr.com - Wilgengebroed/cc-by-2.0

© flickr.com – Wilgengebroed/cc-by-2.0

A smart city is an urban area that uses different types of electronic data collection sensors to supply information which is used to manage assets and resources efficiently. This includes data collected from citizens, devices, and assets that is processed and analyzed to monitor and manage traffic and transportation systems, power plants, water supply networks, waste management, law enforcement, information systems, schools, libraries, hospitals, and other community services. The smart city concept integrates information and communication technology (ICT), and various physical devices connected to the network (the Internet of things or IoT) to optimize the efficiency of city operations and services and connect to citizens. Smart city technology allows city officials to interact directly with both community and city infrastructure and to monitor what is happening in the city and how the city is evolving.   read more…

Arts and Crafts Movement

18 January 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture, Design & Products, London Reading Time:  26 minutes

Philip Webb's Red House in Upton, Bexleyheath, Greater London © Ethan Doyle White/cc-by-sa-3.0

Philip Webb’s Red House in Upton, Bexleyheath, Greater London © Ethan Doyle White/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Arts and Crafts movement was an international movement in the decorative and fine arts that began in Britain and flourished in Europe and North America between about 1880 and 1920, emerging in Japan (the Mingei movement) in the 1920s. It stood for traditional craftsmanship using simple forms, and often used medieval, romantic, or folk styles of decoration. It advocated economic and social reform and was essentially anti-industrial. It had a strong influence on the arts in Europe until it was displaced by Modernism in the 1930s, and its influence continued among craft makers, designers, and town planners long afterwards. The term was first used by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson at a meeting of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1887, although the principles and style on which it was based had been developing in England for at least twenty years. It was inspired by the ideas of architect Augustus Pugin, writer John Ruskin, and designer William Morris. The movement developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles, and spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and North America. It was largely a reaction against the perceived impoverished state of the decorative arts at the time and the conditions in which they were produced.   read more…

European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture

3 August 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Architecture, Design & Products, EU blog post series, European Union Reading Time:  6 minutes

© europa.eu

© europa.eu

The European Union Prize for Contemporary ArchitectureMies van der Rohe Award is a Prize given biennially by the European Union and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona, “to acknowledge and reward quality architectural production in Europe”.   read more…

Design Museum London

7 July 2017 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture, Design & Products, London, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  7 minutes

© designmuseum.org

© designmuseum.org

The Design Museum is a museum founded in 1989, originally located by the River Thames near Tower Bridge in London, and later relocated to Kensington. The museum covers product, industrial, graphic, fashion and architectural design. The museum operates as a registered charity, and all funds generated by ticket sales aid the museum in curating new exhibitions. Entrance is expected to be free to the museum’s permanent collection display, “Designer Maker User”. In June 2011 Sir Terence Conran donated £17.5 million to enable the Museum to move in 2016 from the warehouse to a larger site which formerly housed the Commonwealth Institute in west London. This landmark from the 1960s, a Grade II* listed building that had stood vacant for over a decade, was developed by a design team led by John Pawson who made the building fit for a 21st century museum, whilst at the same time retaining its spatial qualities.   read more…

Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia

13 January 2017 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture, Design & Products Reading Time:  9 minutes

© kingdom.com.sa

© kingdom.com.sa

Jeddah Tower, previously known as Kingdom Tower and Mile-High Tower, is a skyscraper under construction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, at a preliminary cost of SR4.6 billion (US$1.23 billion). If completed as planned, the Jeddah Tower will reach unprecedented heights becoming the tallest building in the world, as well as the first structure to reach the one-kilometer-high mark. Initially planned to be 1.6 km (1 mile) high, the geology of the area proved unsuitable for a tower of that height. The design, created by American architect Adrian Smith, who also designed Burj Khalifa in Dubai, incorporates many unique structural and aesthetic features. The large, outdoor sky terrace will overlook the Red Sea from over 610 metres (2,000 ft) height and have an area of over 697 square metres (7,500 sq ft). The creator and leader of the project is Saudi Arabian Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the wealthiest man in the Middle East, grandson of Ibn Saud, and nephew of the Kings of Saudi Arabia after him. Al-Waleed is the chairman of Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) which is a partner in Jeddah Economic Company (JEC), which was formed in 2009 for the development of Jeddah Tower and City.   read more…

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