Archive for the ‘Design-inspired’ Category
Tech Chic Holiday Wish List: Luxury Edition
December 4, 2009
The smartphones in our U.S. and Europe wish lists might be fashionable, but the following luxury phones are the tech chic ideal: technologically advanced while still emphasizing good style and good living.
Phones designed by esteemed fashion houses and upscale brands may be perceived as gimmicky, but the following devices attempt to perfect both form and function. Added touches include branded software elements - like themes and videos - and luxurious packaging – from sleek boxes to leather sleeves. Those with an eye for detail will find much to enjoy.
These phones aren’t just meant to be used – they’re meant to be worshiped.
Ulysse Nardin Chairman
Retail: $13,000 - $50,000
The venerated Ulysse Nardin has been making watches in Switzerland since the 19th century. With their Chairman smartphone, they approach the technology with the same care and attention to detail as they do with their watches.
The Chairman’s technology alone would be enough to make it the most impressive device on our list – there’s a 3.2-inch touch screen, 8-megapixel camera, 32 GBs of internal memory, high definition video, and built-in YouTube and Facebook. Did we mention it also has a self-winding rotor mechanism? That’s right, like an automatic watch, the Chairman uses a rotor to supply back-up kinetic energy. It’s a sophisticated combination of classic and cutting edge.
Tie it all together with the Android OS, top it off with a fingerprint scanner, and encase it in precious metals and you’ve got enough here to make James Bond giddy. Of course, Bond would probably need to trade in his Aston Martin to afford the Chairman – models start at $13,000 and will cost up to $50,000 with all the bells and whistles. With prices like that, you’ll want to get yourself one sturdy screen-protector. For those interested, the Chairman is presently up for pre-order on the phone’s Web site.
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Print ThisPosted in Branding, Culinary Trends, Design-inspired, Dining DNA, Fashion, Phones, Tech Chic | 3 Comments »
Michelin Anoints Bay Area’s 2010 Culinary Elite
October 19, 2009
The MICHELIN Guide released its much-anticipated list of San Francisco Bay Area & Wine Country stars today, just before tomorrow’s release of the 2010 Red Guide. As was the case for New York, this year’s guide includes several newly starred restaurants.
UBI UBI congratulates all the owners, chefs, and staff members for these honors, and welcomes Aziza, Commis, étoile, La Toque, Luce, Santé, Solbar, and Ubuntu to the list of star recipients. Cheers, to all of you! Read More »
Posted in Awards, Design-inspired, Dining Reviews, Impress, San Francisco Bay Area, Wine | No Comments »
THE TECH CHIC REPORT:
The iWood Phone Hits the Runways
September 30, 2009
Cell phones are all about being slick these days: thin designs, flat surfaces, shiny black plastics and metals. All the emphasis on futuristic influences and synthetic materials results in smartphones and gadgets that are sleek, to be sure, but they can leave you yearning for something a little warmer; something a bit organic, perhaps.
Yearn no more. Japanese mobile operator NTT DOCOMO has noticed the abundance of cold, stoic cell phones and has decided to produce a line of TOUCH WOOD phones made from - you guessed it - wood. Read More »
Posted in Design-inspired, Phones, Tech Chic, Tech Chic Report | 1 Comment »
All The Restaurant’s a Stage
September 23, 2009
The design of a restaurant should tell a story. That’s the conclusion one can draw from observing the overarching trends in dining. The location, the layout, the color schemes, the lighting, the materials and the unifying motifs and themes that comprise a restaurant’s design are ultimately the elements that define the dining experience. From the way food arrives, to the visibility or invisibility of the kitchen, to the distance between tables – the design of a restaurant determines the order of events and the mise-en-scene. It’s no surprise that restaurant designers think of their projects in terms of theater.
The Rockwell Group, who designed the original Nobu restaurant in New York, as well as the more recently opened Nobu 57, may be one of the originators of the restaurant-as-theater approach. The design firm sees the physical space of the restaurant as a frame or stage, and every symbol within that frame is altered by it. The staircase leading down to Nobu 57’s dining room acts as a catwalk for arriving and departing guests – a function that draws on the theater art notion of “entrance,” by which actors enter and exit the fictional world. Guests can thus take on roles; and the aesthetics of the restaurant can serve as emotional inspiration.
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Posted in Architecture, Design-inspired, Dining Culture, Impress, Ingredients, Restaurants | No Comments »
Giving Time and Space to ‘Buying Local’
September 22, 2009
The USDA wants you to buy local –- a concept that may be more revolutionary than you think. The argument in their recent “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” campaign seems straightforward: “Reconnecting consumers and institutions with local producers will stimulate rural economies, improve access to healthy, nutritious food and decrease the amount of resources to transport our food,” says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
What’s less apparent is that this “buy local” approach could be part of a much larger scale shift towards an economy of locality. We mentioned in a previous blog post how the notion of mobility has changed drastically in the last few decades – an erstwhile fascination with the possibilities for individual mobility brought on by the automobile has been overtaken by a desire for more delivery services. While the last decade has been especially defined by a movement towards virtual notions of time and space, due to the around-the-clock access and associated gratification offered by online shopping and downloadable media, the truth is our economy is still very much rooted in physical space. We may not have to move to go shopping, but the goods still have to move across great distances to get to our shops and to us.
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Posted in Design-inspired, Economics, Ingredients, Mobility | No Comments »
Googie Architecture: A Lost Vision of 1950’s Mobility
September 8, 2009
The UC Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s exhibit “Sardi’s to Orange Julius ®” that ends on the 13th of September 2009 chronicles several early 20th century restaurant designs from concept to completion and thereby sheds light on the interweaving forces of dining culture, technology, and architecture. The exhibit, whose name refers to two L.A. restaurants, includes designs from architects J.R. Davidson, Maynard Lyndon, Kem Weber, Edward A. Killingsworth, and Rudolph M. Schindler.
Although contemporary critics regarded commercial design (i.e. designing for the masses) as less prestigious than the design of private homes, architects nevertheless considered restaurant design a means for influencing the broader architectural landscape of the city. The Googie architectural movement that thus arose popularized space-age themes and the bold use of steel, glass, and neon lights to draw the eyes of motorists to the roadside and promote a new form of eating: drive-in dining. The automobile thereby influenced L.A.’s pattern of urban sprawl (into a spread-out city of suburbs), a then-new mobile dining trend, and, in the process, an architecture that expressed a generation’s view of the numerous possibilities that mobility could bring.
Posted in Architecture, Design, Design-inspired, Mobility | No Comments »
Beyond Cookie-Cutter: Artisanal Cookies Draw Inspiration from Architecture
August 31, 2009
It’s typical for food to be linked to a certain region or city, but Elsylee Galetes Artesanals (that’s Fine Artisanal Cookies) takes us a step further by drawing its inspiration from architecture. The Miami-based company, started by 31-year-old Puerto Rican native Elsylee Colon, bases each cookie collection on a specific architectural movement and the cities most associated with it. The Art Deco cookie collection, for example, includes cookies such as the Miami (a colorful sugar cookie), the San Miguel (a sweet and tart lemon cookie) and the Key Largo (infused with the flavors of key lime, roasted pistachios and cranberries). Other collections include Baroque, Neoclassical and Beaux-Arts with each cookie named after a different city from around the world.
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Posted in Culinary Trends, Design-inspired, Miami | No Comments »
