ÉCAL Students Redesign Le Corbusier's No. 50 in Cité Radieuse

Apartment No. 50 is a privately owned apartment in Le Corbusier's Cité Radieuse. Jean-Marc Drut and Patrick Blauwart, the owners of the apartment, open its doors every year and invite different designers to overhaul the interior and create amazing spaces and moments. This is done within some limit of what can be touched and redesigned, as the apartment is historically listed and has all its original fittings. The owners have been inviting designers into their home since this project kicked off in 2008, including the likes of Jasper Morrison, Konstantin Grcic, and Pierre Charpin.

This year is the first year that a team of designers has been invited to No. 50, and after observing life in the apartment over a three-day period, the group of ÉCAL students were invited to create and produce bespoke furnishing over the course of one semester. The result is a bold palette of bright primary colours, enriched with product and furniture designs from a selection of well-known designers.

Drut, one of the owners tells of how this is a year-long process. The designers begin working in September, the instillation is set up in April, and then open to the public throughout July. One month after the close of the show, the pieces are returned to their designers. Every year, however, the owners do purchase and keep a select few items, adding further to the layers of history embodies by the apartment.

Source - wallpaper.com

Images - wallpaper.com

Related Nest of Pearls post - The serene & timeless work of Luis Barragán

So magic carpets do exist!!! by French artist Miguel Chevalier

I love projects that live on the cusp of art and architecture, and this particular instillation is a great example of the use of digital media, mixed with consideration for both local culture and the human experience. Spread across the floor of a former church in Casablanca, Morocco, the instillation named 'Magic Carpets 2014' is an interactive light display which sees the church floor covered with a layer of light.

Created by French artist Miguel Chevalier, the installation is inspired by the world of biology, one in which cells have the ability to morph, multiply, divide and fuse at varying paces. Reflecting this forever fluid and evolving world, the floor of the church gives life to vivid patterns, whereby pieces and forms come together, fall apart, and transform into new shapes, as would changing microorganisms.     

Further layered into this world of biology is the tradition of embroidery, islamic art, and mosaics. The brightly coloured, overlapping pixels depict references to Moroccan craftsmanship, a nod to the importance of carpet making within the local culture.

What I like best, however, is the user experience aspect, whereby the trajectory of the curves is disrupted under the feet of the viewer as they move... making the artwork of light uniquely different from moment to moment as each participants makes their signature stamp within a moment of time.

Source - miguel chevalier & designboom

Images courtesy of Source - miguel chevalier & designboom

The softest of beauties, by Peter Gentenaar

This incredibly inspiring installation work by Dutch paper sculptor Peter Gentenaar dates back to 2009, but I certainly don't love it any less now then I did then. Not having had my blog then, I really wanted to capture this work on my blog, and so here I am, delving into this beautiful exploration of soft colours and textures, immersed into the most unlikely of enigmatic worlds.

The setting is the Abbey of Saint-Riquier in France, where more than one hundred of Peter Gentenaar's pristine paper sculptures were hung and poised ever so carefully, and depicted as sensual, silk-like objects. The installation is very appropriately named 'Mystère de papier' (Paper's mystery).

The fragility of the paper sculptures against the solid, historically firm arches and walls of the Abbey is so well captured in this selection of shots. What sings out, furthermore, is not only the juxtaposition of texture, but also the pastel colour palette of the sculptures against the grey, almost mysteriously ominous, interior of the Abbey. The size of the installations is also oh-so grandiose. The artist did not shy away from giving each piece its rightful presence, and this is further enhanced by the choice to hang the paper sculptures low, where the interaction with the user of the space is that much more confronting.

In describing his paper sculptures, which are reinforced with thin bamboo ribs, Peter Gentenaar likens them to that of paper leafs. And it is this exact lightness that they exude as they hang within the great Abbey of worship. One can almost hear a very soft wind rustling through each of the paper folds...

First spotted on - pinterest via pinner stylingsinja
Source - peter gentenaar via uponafold
Images courtesy of - uponafold

Steampunked coffee experience by Truth Coffee, Cape Town

"The best in the world, or so we've been told". This wonderful quote comes directly from the website of the truly amazing coffee makers at Truth Coffee, in Cape Town, South Africa. More precisely, it actually comes from a quote from one of their customers, who happens to be Tom Midlane, a very well regarded travel writer!

Ok, so I've never been to the Truth Coffee shop, but just by looking at photos of their amazing shop interior, and their love and devotion to the coffee-making process, I trust that it really, probably is, the most amazing coffee on the planet.

I've been on their website several times over the last few days, just checking things out for today's post, and I'm not lying to you when I say that their choice of language, design, and utter coffee love, exudes the most delectable scent of fresh coffee beans. The thing that I respect, above all, is the complete experience that they've captured, far far beyond than just the coffee cup that they serve.

They have dissected what it actually means to have great coffee, where coffee culture comes from, and what it means to the everyday devoted coffee drinker, and have embodied this in every thread that makes the Truth Coffee experience. They have created their own Steampunk coffee machine, for crying out loud!!! I absolutely love this idea!!! The drama begins long before the coffee hits your cup,  it is tantalisingly theatricalised through the slow and nurturing process of watching the coffee being ground and manipulated, all until it's ready to serve. In the words of the one of the men behind this great brand, the culmination is "the catastrophe of the coffee dumping into a bag". See more of this funky experience via their youtube video.

To add to the Steampunk machine, or more correctly named 'Professor Jones's Fabulous Coffee Bean Contraption', is the interior that exudes notions from a lost world of zany inventors. Everything from the vintage telephone and typewriter, to the low, brass lighting and wheels and cogs that gleam in this soft light, take one further and further into the magic world created by Truth Coffee.

Tell me now, is it not amazing that I have the delicious taste of Truth Coffee on the tip of my tongue, albeit never having stepped foot inside the shop?    

Source - truth coffee

Images courtesy of - yatzer

The birth of the unique steampunk coffee machine - youtube video

Article on 'best coffee shop in the world' - msn travel by tom midlane