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Blog Archives
Biscuiteers
Love love love this company
Visit their amazing store at
Biscuiteers Boutique and Icing Cafe
194 Kensington Park Road, London, W11 2ES
Visit their fabulous website
Material Lab – London
WELCOME TO MATERIAL LAB – YOUR PERSONAL MATERIALS STUDIO, DESIGNED WITH YOU IN MIND.
A vibrant & exciting place for the architecture & design community, where you’re free to explore hundreds of different materials for your projects. A place where you can find out about the latest trends & innovations, get expert advice & be inspired.
MATERIAL LAB WAS CREATED BY AWARD-WINNING JOHNSON TILES, THE UK’S LARGEST MANUFACTURER AND IMPORTER OF CERAMIC WALL & FLOOR TILES.
The Stoke-on-Trent based company created Material Lab purely to answer the needs of the architectural and design community, asking what sort of ‘experience’ they wanted in a design resource studio. The solution was Material Lab, which opened its doors in January 2006.
Thanks to Johnson Tiles, Material Lab has become an established design resource studio in London where people can explore and be inspired by a huge range of materials, such as ceramics, glass, wallpaper, wood, carpet tiles, eco-resins and fabrics.
Click here to visit there website
Oi Polloi – Manchester Mens clothing store
Oi Polloi is a menswear fashion store in Manchester which opened way back in 2002.
Recently moving into a new much bigger space which has given them the chance to expand their range and let their creative juices flow on the interior design of the store.
I love their store design, graphic design, their quirky advertising and the website.
Take a look and if you like what you see have a look at their website or visit their store.
Click here to visit their website
Visit them at
63 Thomas Street
Manchester
M4 1LQ
Harris and Hoole – Independent Coffee Chain?
Getting out of a cab last week in Uxbridge the first thing to greet Lynda and I was a sign saying “great coffee served here” quite a statement.
Looking up we saw a new coffee house called Harris and Hoole, the name sounded very poetic [the names originates from a diary exert by Samuel Pepys], the glass fronted exterior was covered in doodles telling me lots of info about the company and their ambitions.
It dosnt take more than a few doodles and a sniff of an independent to draw us in; and we weren’t disappointed the interior decor looked really great. The design is following the very popular trend of recycling, renewing and reinventing.
There were all the ingredients of an independent store a community notice board, great music playing, people playing board games, live events advertised, hand written signage, quirky toilets and very friendly, knowledgable staff.
But there was something a little bit too ordered about the place, it looked and felt like an independent but in a “Disney” sense, i couldn’t quite put my finger then my business partner googled the company and found out that they were independent but financially backed by Tesco a big sigh followed this news.
But after looking at their website reading about the owners the Tolleys and reading quite a few press articles a few of which were giving them a hard time for supposedly deceiving their customers by not mentioning Tesco [it does clearly and proudly mention that they are backed by Tesco on their website] I thought does it really matter that they are backed by one of the biggest companies in the UK? Arnt a lot of companies looking for investors? And the banks are forthcoming with their money these days; and didn’t Tesco start out as an independent.
After drinking one of the best lattes i have had in a while i came to the conclusion that it dosnt matter, the most important thing is that its a great new business giving the public a choice, the town a lovely looking shop and lots of people job opportunities.
But don’t let my rantings sway you, pop along to one of their branches, look at their website and and decide for your self.
PS, it did feel a bit ordered but hopefully will get a little bit rough around the edges once the hoards stark flocking to it, which I’m sure they will.
Click here to read an interview with Nick Tolley, Chief executive of Harris and Hoole.
Click here to visit the Harris and Hoole website.
Anthropologie – Pallets make great fixtures
Its amazing what you can do with a few old wooden pallets.
STARBUCKS BY KENGO KUMA & ASSOCIATES
NOT YOUR AVERAGE STARBUCKS BY KENGO KUMA & ASSOCIATES
If you’ve been in one Starbucks, you’ve been in them all…. or so I used to think, before I saw this one designed by Kengo Kuma & Associates. Gone are the generic interiors that you find in most of the empire’s coffee shops and instead you’ll find a very cool, and peaceful aesthetic at this location that sits close to the Dazaifu Tenmangu shrine in the Fukuoka Prefecture of Japan.
The shrine is one of the most visited in Japan with over 2 million visitors a year and since the Starbucks is on the path to the shrine, it was important to fit in with the other traditional buildings on the route.
There is a homey feel overall, and with the repetitive use of thin wood sticks, about 2,000 in all, it creates a cohesive, cave-like space that people are drawn to.
The natural wood is woven diagonally and starts on the walls and carries over onto the ceilings and it continues out the facade of the shop.
Words and Photos by
Caroline Williamson is Associate Editor of Design Milk. She has a BFA in photography from SCAD and writes about her life, inspirations and creative pursuits on her element75 blog.
Read more at Design Milk: http://design-milk.com/not-your-average-starbucks-by-kengo-kuma-and-associates/#ixzz2HHxPwJAA
The Cool Hunter – Restaurant Farma Kreaton – Komotini, Greece
Restaurant Farma Kreaton (Meat Farm in Greek)is the recently opened addition to the well publicized Fabrica Kreaton restaurantlocated in the center of the city of Komotini, (Adrianoupoleos 4) in northeastern Greece.
The architecture and interior design of both spaces are by Minas Kosmidis (Μηνάς Κοσμίδης) with offices in Thessaloniki and Komotini.
In the case of Farma Kreaton, graphic designer Yiannis Tokalatsidis created the minimalist, hand-drawn graphics and cut-outs of cows, chickens and the scenery of the countryside that set the whimsical barn-yard chic tone to the entire space.
The 270 square-meter (almost 3,000 square- feet), 150 seat new restaurant is in essence an additional open-concept eating area to the existing Fabrica Kreaton that, in turn, is themed around a Greek butcher shop. Both are housed in a renovated 1950s farm house with a large yard.
In Farma Kreaton, in addition to the graphic components, we were attracted to the lovely, white-painted wood floors and the overall feel of a temporary barn-raising supper.
The simple plank tables, the mismatched, unpretentious chairs, the humble potted plants and herbs on the tables, all exude a feel of a space dedicated — just for the moment — to sumptuous eating and enjoyment of good company.
The hay bales, pick forks, watering cans and cut-out animals remind the diners of the work done and to-be done on the farm, the dinner beings just a moment of celebration — perhaps of a good hay harvest or a successful calving.
In short, Minas Kosmidis and his team have managed to create a believable semblance of a working farm without going overboard and ending up with a contrived, pretentious “concept” instead.
The food at Farma Kreaton is typical Greek meat-based plates, and the diners are predominantly locals. Tuija Seipell.
The Cool Hunter – Restaurant Farma Kreaton – Komotini, Greece.
Infused Veneer: Digital Prints from B&N « FRCH | Creative Fuel
As designers we add graphics to architecture to bring life, excitement and impact to our retail and hospitality spaces.Infused Veneers, a new line of panels from B&N, gives designers a library of 100′s of images to work with.
Digital images are printed onto various species of wood veneer, including maple, cherry and walnut. The panels are available in 48”x96” and can be used with any of the B&N merchandise display systems including the Puck system.
I really appreciate the seemingly randomness, or rustic quality of these images. We’ve seen more and more of these large format murals from other product lines, including Maharam’s Digital Print collection.
Click the link below to visit their website
Infused Veneer: Digital Prints from B&N « FRCH | Creative Fuel.
