design travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises spa and resorts

 Zurich is a city with no shortage of timekeepers. Zurich is also a city of landscape design, the Helvetica typeface and the Swiss Army Knife. Clocks are everywhere, over train and tram stations and from the facades of office buildings and church steeples. Time may rule this modern capital but also symbolizes the dynamic between the city’s history and modernity.

Zurich is the world’s most livable city, owing to its small size and population of fewer than 400, 000. It’s a place where bankers dance during summer evenings and where wealth attracts contemporary art.

Zurich is very exciting, attracting more young people and more foreigners. You have more galleries per person than any  other city in the world, after New York. Zurich offers spectacular museums, restaurants, boutiques and nature in every doorstep, which is very important. That’s why an Italian wants to compare his muscles, he does it with the German and the French.

On the west side of Zurich (also known as Kries 4), the industry is there and so its art. Everything is there. There are new apartments, lofts and cinemas in old factories. Schiffbau is a lovely theater with a good restaurant called LaSalle. It’s an aesthetic glass box.

Swiss people, in general plan the future too much, so they are not really alive. They know exactly what they will do at 60. and this is not sexy and attractive for me. There you can have the sexiness. They just want to do the best. You will see this in the benches or the design of bins- it’s too much. It’s too material.

No man is an Iceland. Iceland is a mysterious land, nestled between Europe and North America with ties to Scandinavia. The countryside includes dramatic textures like moss, magma, roiling hot springs and glacial crevasses. Much of it tiny population lives in highly rational architecture in the capital, Reyjavik. The national language is literal and lacks preciousness. The highly efficient brand of economy is tempered by faith in fairies, the hidden people who inhabit stones.

 The population of the country is really small, only 300,000 in the whole land and it is always cold. Summers are more playful and people do not take work too seriously (like everywhere in the world). You also may see a sign on an office door reading ” Due to very pleasant weather, we are taking the rest of the day off”. Pleasant weather means more than 68 degrees. I reckon that many creative inhabitants fill their heads during the summer. You know winters are more for sitting down at your table taking those things that you collect in your mind during summer lifestyle.

Reykjavik has many designers, whose work is very craft-based, with materials like ceramics, wool and fish skin. Good examples of this are shops like Kirsuberjatred, Kraum and the work of ceramicist Kogga. You can sight see city shining in the creations of young desgners. For instance Mundi Designs is an exiting new fashion label directed by a young graphic designer.

Reykjavik is a big part of culture, but the countryside is even bigger. Many people have summer houses in the country. They take inspiration from nature and their sagas. They know where to look to create something new from their past.

Go to a local pool and you will find out that important conversations take places – about politics, culture, gossip, design and etc. During the winter go outside and fill the weather in all its strength.

Cologne is a very modern city in Germany, where three sharp objects have a commanding influence on the skyline, from nearly every corner in the city. One of them is the ornate cathedral, which looms over low-rise buildings and fanning arteries. The ancient city of Cologne creates a vanish of brutal modernity, but while scratching Cologne’s surface reveals a vibrant center of art and design.

Cologne used to be, after New  York, the second most important art city in the world, but that was 15 years ago. Nowadays a lot of it has been taken over by London, Los Angeles and Berlin. Cologne is also described by its cathedral more or less. You can’t really not go there, but once you step into for a half an hour you will understand.It’s good to check out one of the Romanesque church, of which there are 12 in Cologne. From a historical point of view they are quite pure and more important from the cathedral.

But the most spectacular buildings at the moment are the Kolumba Diocesan Museum and Renzo Piano Peek & Cloppenburg department store (up in the picture), which is made of 6, 800 single glass slabs, all of different sizes. It’s a shopping area that is women part. Other interesting place for me is a shop called Sign of the Times specializes in’50s and ’60s furniture. The shop offers extremely fascinating items. There’s also a very special shop called o.k. Versand. There you can buy objects from China, India and Bulgaria.

In conclusion I would say that Cologne is very proud city with fantastic history of art and art collectors. But today many people are moving away, so Cologne must be very careful in the near future. Good luck..!

This Disney Store Headquarters is located in San Francisco and was a convention of the historic Royal Laundry Building for The Children’s Place. The plan was the creation of an open and collaborative work environment for 230 employees. So that Clive Wilkinson in collaboration with workplace strategists DEGW, created an organization scheme which was consisted with colourful modular systems that become both architecture and furniture.

The existing brick walled structure inspired the creation of brick-like elements for the interior, which allude to the playful building block habits for children. A 20-person ‘Block Conference Room’ is formed on two sides by foam block walls. When the foam models are disassembled they become the seating system for 200-person company meetings.

The modular honeycomb structure conceived as a flexible means of managing Disney sample product display, forms a second conference room. the firm’s Honeycomb system was subsequently licensed to the Belgium company, Quinze & Milan, for a commercial market offering.

“Inamo” is one of the newest restaurants in London’s West End, which opens in September 2008. It is a pioneering Oriental – Asian fusion restaurant and bar where the control of the dining experience is placed firmly in your hands. “Inamo” is a totally new concept in restaurants. It uses an interactive ordering service which is slick and fun – but really it’s all about the tasty tasty food.

The Inamo restaurant is on the ground floor and provides 60 covers, while the basement bar is big enough to hold about 70 people. Inamo’s food is also available in the bar, where there will also be an extensive cocktail list. Its big idea is that your table is an interactive screen, where by pointing and clicking you can find your menu, see pictures of each item, and order.
Each table has its own projector, housed in an individually designed cocoon, and the menus are projected onto a touch pad at your table, enabling the order to be sent straight to the kitchen. Projectors are used for menus so that customers can order their own food and drinks, adjust their light settings and themes at their individual tables, find out where to go for another drink in the local area or even book a taxi home. You can play battleships with your co-diner, should conversation flag.
But there are waiters on hand to answer any questions about the menus. Waiters become people who flit out of the shadows to place dishes on the table, flitting away again without eye contact.
Open time: daily noon-midnight
Address: 134-136 Wardour Street, London W1
Tel: 020 7287 7265
Visit Official site: click here
For more photos: click here

When I mentioned a sleeping pipes like part of accommodation might not sound luxury but it is. DasPark Hotel turns concrete pipes into quite comfortable space for your next overnight stay. Almost like a camping a bit more elegant of course, the DasPark Hotel is a series of inconventional hotel room pipes located on a beautiful flora-filled backdrop just steps from the Danube River, Austria.

Design by Andreas Strauss, art college graduate designer. His approach is from a more practical angle. Strauss create a minimal hospitality unit series that made economic sense. He hit on the idea of taking sections of large concrete drainage pipes and fitting them out as individual sleeping space for passing travellers.

Each pipe is outfitted with a bed, lighting, and other furniture, with bathroom and restaurant facilities shared in a public space. And what’s more, DasParkHotel obtains sanitation and other hotel facilities from existing public infrastructure, allowing them to operate on a “pay as you wish” system in which guests pay only what they can afford or wish to contribute. Now that’s some great communal living.

This is a superb, undreamed, very discriminating house. The house is created by Felipe Assadi and Francisca Pulido. The idea and design of this amazing house were the construction of a guests house and house of games.

In the house there’re two bedrooms, each one with bathroom, one kitchen/bar and a visits bathroom, plus a living area, a pool table and a games table.

The house is situated in Calera de Tango, commune of Chile and have a maximum area of 100 square metres.

One interesting feature of ‘20×20′ is that the house is raised over piles at 80sm height over the natural land.The house is round of a glass volume, through which is possible to follow the trees, while the house was not in use. For the remaining walls the choice was a black colour that is easily absorbed within its context. So nature and time were left in charge of limiting the space contained by the crystal box.

This house have a square ground plan. A the centre of the house was placed the games room and to the west, protected by a one-metre thick blind wall the outdoors dining room, in a yard that crosses the full volume from South to North, direction of the predominant winds that air the house in summer.

The kitchen, bar and visits bathroom were arranged in a core that forms a wall-furniture that additionally splits the dormitories from the living room.

Vitra, the furniture company, have turned to a variety of major architects to design the buildings making up their manufacturing site near Basel, close to the German/Swiss/French border. As well as Frank Gehry, Alvaro Siza, Nicholas Grimshaw, Tadao Ando and Zaha Hadid are all represented, in a cross between an industrial plant and a model village. In the late 1980s, a palpable shift in Gehry’s aesthetic occurred with his first European commission: the design of two buildings for the manufacturing center of the Vitra furniture company. Gehry was asked to create a unified plan for a factory building that would sit adjacent to Nicholas Grimshaw’s 1981 factory, as well as a small museum to house company CEO Rolf Fehlbaum’s collection of approximately two hundred Modern and contemporary chairs.

The museum’s collection, focusing on furniture and interior design, is centered around the bequest of U.S. designers Charles and Ray Eames, as well as numerous works of designers such as George Nelson, Alvar Alto, Verner Panton, Dieter Rams, Jean Prove and Michael Thonet. It is one of the world’s largest collections of modern furniture design, including pieces representative of all major periods and styles from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards. The design museum houses temporary exhibitions on themes of furniture design, and Gehry’s building makes a suitable host for them – in keeping with the theme, but – once inside – supporting, not competing with, the exhibitions.

Today, the Vitra Design Museum is internationally active as a cultural institution that has made a major contribution to the research and popular dissemination of design. The Museum presents a broad spectrum of topics on design and culture, with a special emphasis on furniture and interior design. Its activities encompass the production of exhibitions, workshops, publications, and museum products, and the maintenance of an extensive collection, an archive, and a research library. The travelling exhibitions of the Vitra Design Museum are shown at renowned partner institutions around the world.

Milan is Italy’s cultural, industrial and financial center, it is also one of the main fashion centers in the world and the second biggest city in Italy. But probably what has made this city famous is its design and architecture. Business hub and crucible of chic, Milan is Italy’s most populous and prosperous city, serving as the capital of commerce, finance, fashion, and media. It’s a city with many important museums and wonderful monuments.

The mountains, majestic, seem to be to its doors: Milan is in those moments a mountain city. But if the look to the skilful side of the public square is turned, watching from the door the Gallery is picked Vittorio Emanuele. The wall on which it is opened, has the colour of dirty wall. The plague that mine the city and its inhabitants is now the modern step of race, that it impregnates the injurious gas air and impurities in the heavy foggy summery days and those winter ones. The atmosphere collaborates with changing of the organisation of the society to a continuous evolution.

The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele is in reality a covered street. The gallery has a Latin cross plant, and connects the Piazza Duomo with Piazza della Scala. A big triumph Arch welcomes us in the Piazza Duomo to the gallery, let’s get inside…
One of the largest Gothic cathedrals in the world – the Duomo – dominates Milan’s central square, the Piazza del Duomo. More than 500 years in the making (work began in 1386), it is an intricate and awe-inspiring building and a tribute to the five centuries of artists, artisans, architects, builders and engineers who created it. Climb up to the roof for a stunning view over Milan.This important Neo-Classical monument in Milan was originally built to celebrate Napoleon’s victories and was to be called the Arch of Victories. Construction started in 1807 and the building work was interrupted with the designs changed to commemorate the peace of 1815 instead. Work was eventually resumed in 1826 and the monument was subsequently renamed the Arch of Peace. In 1838 the arch was inaugurated at the coronation of Ferdinand I as ruler of the Lombardy / Veneto region. The arch is situated in north-west Milan and is covered Crevola marble. On the top is a huge bronze named the “Chariot of Peace”, which consists of a chariot and four horses. There are also wonderful views of the Castello and Corso Sempione.
The City Museum: to visit its rooms is to journey through centuries of art and history, from the Bronze Age up to the Renaissance.Santa Giulia is one of the most impressive High Medieval complexes in Northern Italy. The monastery was founded in 753 A.D., by order of the Lombard King Desiderio, on the remains of a Roman-era residence. It sustained numerous alterations in the centuries that followed, which enlarged and enriched the original structure. Tradition holds that in the church of Santa Giulia, Ermengarda, daughter of King Desiderio, was tragically repudiated by her husband, Charlemagne.

The Theatre La Scala, constructed from Giuseppe Piermarini in the 1776-78 is the more famous of Italy and between, musically speaking, the more greater in the world. It appears to the escape of the Gallery, on the side western North of the public square, faced from the monument to Leonardo from Vinci. The entire building was destroyed from the strafing and reconstructed in the 1945-46. The facade was restored in the 1983.