So I stumbled across this bonkers hotel while surfing for coolness. It’s the Yas Hotel in Abu Dhabi, U.A.E. and it is crazy cool. Built half on land, half on water with access to the marina. The shell of the hotel is created to resemble the tossing of a fishing net, and the LED colour display is truly impressive. It encompasses contemporary style rooms, 14 restaurants & lounges, 10 treatment room spa and multiple rooftop pools.

Living space – Planning and arrangement of a 110 sqm apartment in a historic building. The principal part was planning the kitchen: Crucial aim was to combine functionality and living space. The kitchen cabinets were designed especially for the apartment using high-quality surfaces. The spacious square sculpture-like wall unit opposite the cabinets also holds a flat screen television. The large extendable dining table for 10 persons to be seated at and a couch gives the room a living room atmosphere. For the rest of the rooms built-in components and furniture were designed to be combined with existing interior using the colour and material concept which was developed for the apartment.

We’ll call this a quicky as I have nothing more to comment on this other than it is beautifully clean design. I appreciate smart design, especially in smaller spaces.  Plus, I’m blown away by all of the minimalist custom cabinetry and fixtures.

Visit www.oliver-schick.com to view more projects. A shout out to mocoloco for the find.

Behold! Apparati Effimeri’s “TETRAGRAM FOR ENLARGEMENT” is one twisted, mind-bending piece of work. Through the use of projected light (and, the absence of light), we witness something as grand and tangible as a castle, meld, mold, melt, and continually rebuild itself. The presentation features a glitchy audial adventure from Be Invisible Now! – so if you’re a fan of that kinda stuff, you’ll doubly like this short piece.

Source: Create Digital Motion & Apparti Effimeri

I love summers, especially patios during the summer. Hitting up the patio scene is definitely on the top of my list of rad things to do. Yes, that’s right. I said rad. Jealous? I’m always on the hunt, trying to find the next best patio-centric hot spot. Lis, James, Christy and myself ventured to one of the newest spots in the vibrant and bustling Mission district of Calgary, the Vin Room.

This venue is amazing! It is a completely renovated space that used to be a cycle shop (Mission Cycle- the sign still exists) into this chic downtown night spot. Contemporary design mixed with warm tones and sleek furniture make for an inviting space to have a glass of wine and share some tapas. We were lucky enough to sneak a spot on the rooftop patio. Again, very warm tones mixed with contemporary furniture make the patio just as comfortable as the interior of the space, with the benefit of a mighty fine view. I should not forget to mention that the food, wine and staff were amazing too!

I encourage people to stop in for a glass of wine and enjoy the well layed-out space and decor. Or make an evening of it during a hot summer night, atop the well lit patio (heater optional).

Photos credited to the vin room website.

This is an installation that artist Leo Villareal created for the National Gallery of Art. Multiverse, the name of the installation, spans a 200 foot walkway running from the east to west concourse of the buildings. This installation consists of 41,000 programmed LED lights. This installation by Villareal started in September of 2008 and will run up until November of 2009 at the NGA.

However, if you don’t get to catch a glimpse of this in person, maybe you could check out one of his many pieces of work that exist all over the US and the globe for that matter.

Images from the NGA website of the installation in action

Images by Min Batstone

The video below is just some background into the logistics of how Villareal gets these installations to work. I definitely encourage you to check out his personal website too, tons of projects featured there, even a proposed project for an installation to scale the Lotte Super Tower building in Seoul, Korea.

Check out the high res video Pattern Recognition, where Leo talks about his work.

It’s a very tetris week here on the SplashFan, and I thought I’d share this product that would make any shower or back splash 100% less boring… Tetris tiles.  Knowing that you can choose your schematic in layout and colour scheme (they even match Pantone colours), makes this the most designy *slash* beautifully-nerdy concept ever.  Though the manufacturer is located in England, a true fan would probably overlook the feasability and costs involved with importing them to let’s say Calgary… Yes, a true fan would.

This modular home has been around the blogosphere more than a few times but still stands out as an incredibly creative concept and worth a post.  This exhibitionist form was created by architects Pieter Peelings and Silvia Mertens, of Sculp(IT). They created a livable space from 4 shipping containers stacked and cleverly placed between two buildings, in the bustling streets of Belgium. There is only 2.4 meters of width and 12 meters of depth to the space, and they’ve cleverly arranged their life by floor. The bottom floor is their work space, the second floor is a dining area, the third is a live / play area and the forth is the bedroom and spa… the craziest part is their jet tub on the roof. The privacy factor would be an issue for me. But, I think the idea is genius for architects trying to break design boundaries, and essentially create a working, breathing, sustainable advertisement for themselves. The LED frosting on the cake is the use of coloured lights to accent each floor at night, which I’m guessing is an homage to the red-light district area in which the dwelling…well…dwells.

People continually mock me for wanting to build / live in a modular home, primarily a shipping container home.  What these people fail to realize is how affordable, environmental savvy and incredibly awesome it could be.  I will do my best this month to search out the coolest, most interesting uses of shipping container / modular habitats to blog about.

This idea can also prove useful for temporary housing or to aide in disaster relief such as the Illy push button home (though this is pretty fancy, the concept is there).

Located in London, England, lies this visually stunning and modern restaurant and lounge. With cleverly hidden lighting and sparingly decored with intimate all-white furniture, it acts as a canvas for projecting light and colour. Thus creating an atmosphere that is focused on ambiance and mood. If you are in the area of, or, on route to London, put this on your hit-list of places to see.

www.vanillalondon.co.uk/

I was planning on posting this one yesterday but certain natural forces kept me away from said Internet. An architect friend found this bizarre mock-up of the KL IT Hub in Malaysia. Take 2 parts Gundam robots, 2 parts moon, a blood-red sky, and a spaceship thrown in for good measure. Coming to a Kuala Lumpur near you, in the year 20X6.

Quite the atomic encounter, this restaurant’s aim is to please. It’s first location opened just a few blocks north of it’s newest location and set quite a trend in fast food dining in Calgary. The restaurant has many different flavoured drinks, some consisting of the bubble tea variety. As well, they offer really tasty /  relatively healthy subs too, flavours like tandoori chicken.

The newest location is in the heart of one of Calgary’s most up and coming areas. So they really focused on making their space a relaxed and vibrant to enhance the dining experience. The space has sleek chairs mixed with leather couch’s and ottoman’s, giant windows, and unique design features. Truly an atomic ‘ally correct space.

www.atomicexperience.com

Comfy furniture!

Bubbly chandeliers.

Great place to people watch! (1st Calgary)

This is a stellar example of smart design. The Gummo studio is located in Amsterdam and have done something surprising with their office space which is both cutting edge and eco-friendly. They have taken discount furniture from bargain stores and left-over furniture from their old office space and covered it all with a grey environmentally friendly paint called Polyurea Hotspray. They then placed it all together to create a modern and functional office space there is even a sculpture of Jesus covered in this very paint lurking in their office, blasphemous? or blasphabulous?

source:  www.mimoa.eu

What happens when you combine 1 building, 40,000 LEDs, a couple of electronica tunes, and 4 programmers/composers? An entire building can come to life, and dance to the rhythm while accenting the melodies. Front and foreground, standing in the limelight is the Ars Electronica museum in Linz, Austria. The project was developed using a mix of Ableton Live, Max/MSP, PureData, and OSC. Thankfully, the members involved had the foresight to record the performance, and the museum can replay the audio w/ the visuals at any time. (audio starts around 20 seconds)

Source: Create Digital Motion

Dover Street Market

Located in London England, Dover Street Market is a very progressive kind of market. It mixes industrial design, lounges, restaurants, and shopping all under one roof. Each area is as unique as the next and brings together different designers and products to create a sense of organized chaos. Because the market offers such a wide range of products it has positioned itself on the forefront of eclectic style and trendiness… I want to go to there.

The 60’s were sure a grüvin’ time. Nope, I wasn’t alive in the 60’s, nor the 70’s, but I sure do miss them in a I-need-a-time-machine kind of way.

The sad thing is, I don’t think the monorails employed in ‘67 are still around anymore. In fact, there isn’t too much remaining from those days. Even the sphere’s lost it’s charm, now converted into a bio museum. At least we have great archival footage to live and remember it by.

Word, check it out! This subway station is one of many design triumphs found around Munich. Even subway stations aren’t overlooked in regards to design opportunities. Also it’s interesting how much lighting can change a space and in turn one’s mood. Enjoy!

This is just one of the many architectural gems found on www.mimoa.eu.