Gap House

An amazingly designed eco friendly house built in the gap between two town houses in West London. By Pitman Tozer Architects.







Check out the full story here

The Pantone Hotel

Recently opened in Brussels...





From Hypebeast... "Each of the seven floors have been decorated using different color palettes to enhance its guests’ emotions, indeed the rooms are also patterned from one of seven distinct pantone colors".

Light Rail

Designed by Zoran Sunjic from Croatia, this creative LED staircase handrail system guides people through dark spaces both physically and visually. They are awesome.

Black & White clock

It's all about clocks this week. This is very nice by Vadim Kibardin



"Only figures, no case, only the necessary – only accurate time. Each figure has self-contained power supply and independent control, it can be fixed to any surface autonomously. A light sensor will switch the clock to an invert mode: the figures are white in the dark time of day and black at daytime". Awesome.

Furniture socks

This is a cute idea that I can't see catching on - but it might. I like it all the same - socks for furniture legs - called 'Personality Socks' by Chris & Ruby...

Old skills, new styles

Last Tues we shared the evening with Ben Wilson and Benedict Radcliffe. This pair of industrial, product, interior designers and makers of many 'stuffs' were great company as they delivered a talk at UTI down at The Garrison.

We (Luke P) made this poster to advertise their talk within the agency. "Old Skills, New Styles" - because these guys are properly trained makers of stuff, real heavy old school craft skills - but their output is so diverse and at times out there.



Ben was up first. He's bike crazy, massively influenced by all forms of human transportation. Here he is on the left when well young.



This is one of the first bikes he designed and made (he's done over 30 now)



And here is one of those 30 - commissioned by Swarovski, this one is covered in crystals and is worth a cool £30k.



Not just bikes - it's chairs too. Here the Chairfix (one of many designs, this one commissioned and sold by Eley Kishimoto) and below that, a stool for Stussy.





Ben met Benedict at the Art Car Boot Fair - and afterwards they collaborated and made this pedal power wire frame Lamborghini...



And here are both together, Ben on the left, Benedict on the right, riding/driving it around Manchester...



Another of Ben's 'bikes'...



I could go on. Ben's made some serious stuff - check his site for more. One of my personal favourites is a tilting trike that can be pedaled manually by foot or hand and gives people with limited mobility the thrill of a ride. Watch the movie here.

Next up was Benedict. He's got the same influences as Ben - bikes, BMX, skating, vehicles and so on. A trained Architect, he's a bit more hands on than Ben and really likes making it happen. Let's see some of his stuff

He makes bikes...



Motorbikes made out of wire as decor in a restaurant:



Marilyn Monroe on the bonnet of a Beamer - with badge as mole



A huge old spanner - anyone whoever owned a BMW will recognise these



This old Honda 90 was made and adapted for an exhibition in Glasgow...



This gypsy style caravan made for Red Bull as a chill out area:



The Lamborghini gets a new paint job - cool



This cut and shut job of the two back ends of VW Golf's to create an internal space inside where 4 seats face each other



And this bull Beamer



There is so much more on their sites - take a look.

Next up for Ben is an exciting new Bike project that he showed a sneak preview of and we're sworn to secrecy. And Benedict is making a garden installation at the Nike 1948 store out in Shoreditch (Ben, with his brother Oscar, has already done a job on the interior).

So there you have it - 2 1/2 hours of talk in one post - can't really do it justice.

Thanks guys for coming down.

Space: The 3rd Dimension

After a short break, our internal UTI's are back for 09.

Neil Mason, one of our top 3D dudes, has arranged the following, with some poster skills from Dangerous Dave...



3 diverse experts will be chatting their way through 3D spaces past, present and future. Those 3 are:

Gary Shelley - a designer responsible for a wide range of Museum and exhibition design projects in such places as the Museum of London, Tower of London, V & A and the Natural History Museum who currently works for award winning designers Casson Mann.

He's joined by Steve Jensen who is is just finishing Vivienne Westwood's offices and has a range of works spanning 20 years from residential projects to the Big Brother house.

And completing the trio is James Eyre who has worked for the likes of Barber and Osgerby Juggernaut and for the last five years Paul smith, designing windows for the man globally.

Should be good. A write up of what went down will be here a few days after in case you can't make it down.

ZzZZzzzZzzzz

"Sleep under a cardboard box so a young homeless person doesn't have to"



Sheets that look like boxes - with a large percentage of proceeds going to a homeless charity. Sweet idea.



Check it all out here