Superbrand status awarded to Iconic Fashion store

I love design, it's so subjective and like or hate it everyone has different opinions. I am the first person to appreciate good design by someone else, and I enjoy nothing more than letting them know I think their design is great. On the flip side, there are many things I don't like or don't understand. Having worked with plenty of clients, one thing I am totally aware is that every design journey is a team effort. We walk hand in hand with the client to create the end product. Often if I'm not sure about some thing or totally dislike it, I think - I wonder what the brief was, I wonder if the building threw a curve ball like a random column or maybe the client just had their own staunch ideas about what they wanted the space to look like. I have also found that where you or the client is from/cultural differences can certainly bring up taste differences. This is certainly true for me for the retail store showcased here. Iconic, is a two- year-old brand fashion-lifestyle brand in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which has been awarded the status of Superbrand for 2012 by a council comprising of industry experts and practitioners. Brands are invited to participate in the Superbrands project based on the following criteria: market dominance, longevity, goodwill, customer loyalty and market acceptancy. This store also won ‘Most Admired Departmental Store’ and ‘Most Admired Store Design’ in other ME design competitions. In New Zealand we are definitely not blatant extroverts in terms of design, we shy away from bling and all things 'over the top'. We enjoy simple, beautiful and understated elegance. This is a perfect example of a store that would be too much for our local shores but is perfect for the UAE. Having sat on the fence, not really sayings much about whether I like this store or not... I like aspects of it and totally dislike others. The blue people don't do it for me, neither does the diamond bling hanging from the ceiling but I love the lowered nook areas where there is more intimacy. The bigger wide open spaces I think are more focused on the design and not the product they sell. Overall however I give it a thumbs up. I am also a big believer in that you often need to feel these spaces, enjoy the environment. When I am in the UAE I will definitely visit and let you know if the photos just do it justice - somehow I think not, this store is supposed to be 7000 square meters!!!!!! Happy Reading, Lizzi * Please feel free to use or repeat any parts of this blog

Sori Yanagi - Japanese pioneer of industrial design

Sori Yanagi was an iconic Japanese designer, he created well known furniture pieces like the butterfly stool and the elephant stool.

Sori was born in 1915 in Tokyo, attended art school in the city and worked from 1940 to 1942 in the office of the designer Charlotte Perriand.

In 1952, he founded the Yanagi Industrial Design Institute, which created a prolific number of articles of daily use and furnishings. Sori Yanagi’s organic forms combine western industrial designs with Japan’s native artisanal traditions. This successful synthesis made Sori Yanagi one of the most significant Japanese designers of the post-war era.

Beyond just updating traditional Japanese forms for the modern age, Yanagi manages to transform mere raw materials, like his inspiration the butterfly, into objects of functional poetry.In addition to furniture, he also designed lighting, glass objects, cutlery, children’s toys, metro stations, cars and motorcycles.

Today we celebrate Yanagi, whose stools and kitchen pots brought the simplicity and purity of Japanese design into the everyday. He has just passed away from pneumonia in a Tokyo hospital Christmas Day, 2011. He was 96.

"True beauty is not made; it is born naturally", Sori Yanagi

Farewell,
Lizzi

* First Image is the butterfly stool, Second Image is the elephant stool, 3rd is a soy sauce pourer.
Information obtained from Washington Post and Vitra.com website.

New Apple Store, New York Grand Central

Apple’s stores are iconic and immediately recognisable. Even my 2 year old daughter knows the infamous Apple logo.

I have posted previously the famous glass cube on New York’s Fifth Avenue, this location is also New York - Grand Central Terminal. Even though every store is different it is also similar. Each new location takes another step forward whilst not alienating where it has been.

Designer, Peter Bohlin said that the New York stores were meant to evoke “great marketplaces,” adding that late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was an integral part of the firm’s design plans.

This space is simple and beautiful with maple tables and shiny Apple products.
According to reports of a media walk-through that the company conducted, the store is a vast, airy retail space where the architects focused on showcasing the building’s essential components and flooding it with light. Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt reported that it has two Genius Bars, 42 display tables, three walls of accessories and “minimal signage.”

What I find really interesting is the store’s layout is designed to support Apple’s increasingly decentralized approach to sales, with rooms dedicated to customer set-up services for those who need them. Apparantly shoppers don’t even need to speak with a salesperson to purchase something, you can merely scan a product’s barcode with their iPhone and have the receipt e-mailed to them.

This massive site will have 315 employees and opened December 9th - just in time for Christmas shopping!

Ciao
Lizzi

SPACEWORKS SAYS MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Spaceworks says Merry Christmas!! A couple of days early I know but the festive season is upon us...

The blogs maybe a little sporadic over the Christmas break, but we'll definitely keep in touch.

Merry Christmas!!!

Ciao
Lizzi

Red Bull offices - a slide and everything, pure heaven!!!

The Red Bull offices in London designed by Jump Studio is incredible. The lines between fun and work are definitely blurred...

A ping pong table as a meeting table - not sure if I'd get much work done? I reckon I'd get awesome at ping pong! On top of ping pong.. there is a slide in the middle of the office.... Going to work has never been so fun...

This fitout is interactive, sleek, high energy and oozes all things extreme. Enjoy these pictures, come on New Zeakand, we could do with a fitout like this. (And can you imagine that this fitout is now some years old)!

Ciao
Lizzi

*Please feel free to use any content from this blog

Urban Furniture - we all use it

Urban Furniture, we all use it, but do we pay any attention to it? How comfortable it is or how it compliments the landscape? How about whether it's functional or just plain useless?

Some pieces of Urban furniture have multiple functions, they are both useful and artistic. The first image is from Hong Kong and is a design proposal for a city bench. This concept pushes the boundaries of street furniture as a holistic design problem. Instead of simply being a bench, this concept suggests multiple varying solutions, beauty and function.

The second image is great, this is from the US. A simple designed bollard acts both as a seat and as street lighting. This bollard provides robust, glare-free, wide light distribution and is perfect for parks, schools and public spaces.

The last image, the Wave bench allows people to us this however they wish. You can chose to use this as a bench or a seat, you can sit facing one way or chose to face the other. Total flexibility. The Wave bench is aluminium with independent acrylic coloured arms.

The last image is from a competition in Brussels where the entry was to show consideration of new functions, integration into the proposed sites and the emphasis on the choice of materials that reflect the surroundings. This piece perfectly highlights my point about a functional item being compassionate to its surroundings.

If you see any cool pieces of street furniture, email me!

Ciao,
Lizzi

*Please feel free to use any of the information presented in this blog

Green buildings... Are they a nonsense?

We now reside in a green building. It's been quite the experience, from the dis-coloured water in the toilet bowl that I struggled with - I kept trying to flush but no, that it the colour it's supposed to be. To the automatic windows that are intelligent, they open and close independently based on what temperature you set the space at. The worm farm in the basement that has some tweaked out worms because the cafe is putting in too many coffee grinds. Whilst this takes some getting used to, I get it, it all makes sense.

All these plans are put in place so the tenant can live in a green fashion, in parallel with the building EXCEPT when it's too hot or too cold. There is no air conditioning.... So in the height of winter when we are freezing, we need to bring in heaters and plug them in. It's no secret that there are plenty of heaters on the market that use excessive amounts of power. I know having studied to be green star qualified that their are green rated initiatives for airconditioning/ heating and cooling, so why didn't they do this? Surely the power consumption would be less offsetting the energy used to run this hvac system.

It's one thing to design a green building but do we actually obtain the predicted performance and benefits from 'green design'?

Someone said to me 'it must be nice to be in a healthy building', they are right it is. I'm not sure how much we are doing towards saving the environment but it does feel good to be part of the green building movement. Come winter time I think I'll just have to buy everyone knitted jumpers and lap blankets.

Ciao
Lizzi

3D wallpaper, so good you just want to touch it!

I love different products and this is another very cool product - 3D wallpaper.

The top 3 images are thermoformed with various shapes. This would be great in an office or home environment.

The bottom 2 images are sourced locally from www.paperroom.co.nz, the first one is actual jigsaw pieces on a white background. These would look great on feature wall panels or around oversized lampshades.

Very cool and very tactile - I would love to see this up somewhere. It looks like I might need to use it myself...

Cheers
Lizzi

I love feedback!

I guess all feedback is positive in some way.... Either the feedback is blatantly positive; the client says they love it or that it works well. Then I guess there is feedback which isn't obviously positive, but being the eternal optimist I like to turn negatives around into positives. Typically i ask myself questions, what could we have done better? How would I have done that differently? Even negative feedback can make you change systems or policies for the better, which allows the next customer to receive an even better service.

Today was one of those feedback days....

When we start any project we are given objectives and a brief. In this instance, with our travel client, one of the fitout objectives was to create a retail environment which assists in the selling of travel. We have recently completed one of these travel sites - a customer walked in and said 'this space inspires me to buy travel'. Eureka!!!!! The store is not even officially open and the customer gets it, the client gets it and the brief objective is achieved! As you can imagine, feedback like this is simply the best....

Today was a good day,
Ciao,
Lizzi

(Pics attached are of the House of Travel Remuera site)

Design & Lights - integral to any space

Four years ago I couldn't tell you where I started with a design idea, or what what the key components were. Now I can easily tell you that lights are a favourite part of any new design. Lighting is one of the most overlooked and in my opinion is an integral element of good interior design. There is no point in creating good design if it can not be appreciated due to insufficient or inconsistent light.

In a retail environment lighting is essential to create mood, ambience and feature. We make sure key areas are illuminated more than others to say 'look at me'. Lighting is very influential in getting sales.

In an office environment there is heavy usage of fluorescent light. In the working areas we need to ensure this light is even and constant, no flickering or shadows - this can cause eye strain and headaches. In other areas to create interest we would use accent lighting for signage or artwork.

There are often spaces inside offices, retail and hospitality that require wow, they might be a breakout area, lunchroom/cafe, reception, - we love these spaces and this is where we get to have some fun.
Pendant lights add a whole different dimension to a space. If a space is very angular you can put in rounded shapes to soften; if the space is very tall you can add oversized pendants to fill the space so it feels integrated; if the space lacks colour, go wild with fabrics.

I have attached some pictures of locations where lighting has been used to accentuate or create ambience.

1. Michael Kors store - The space is long and linear, spot lighting has been used to create pools of light onto the walls and assisting with the general light levels. The shoes are in recesses with an even bright light to make these items stand out. This bright light would be too strong if it came from the ceiling, locally inside these bays is perfect. This bright light makes the colours in the shoes pop. The pendant lamps in the centre are rounded adding softness to the linear space and it delineates the seating area. Bright light washes out the colour in your face, you will notice in front of the mirror the lighting is lower - this ensures we look good when trying on the shoes.

2. This is a reception area in a large residential UK building. How to totally change a space! Without the lighting it would be just a timber slatted wall, it now has drama and the lighting accentuates the space. I'm sitting on the fence as to whether I like it or not but without the lights I probably wouldn;t have noticed it at all.

3. This last image is a warehouse! Yes a boring old warehouse.... Well not totally boring, the architecture is pretty cool but it is totally accentuated by the lighting. This is the perfect example of how lighting can bring something to life. I love it!



Ciao
Lizzi

Laminex - what a present!

The supplier Christmas presents have started, I love this time of year.

Today we received an amazing gift from Laminex - a print by the artist FLOX!!!

Laminex are suppliers of Formica, Melteca, Corian, Caesarstone and more. Their website www.thelaminexgroup.co.nz - great products that we specify regularly.

I love Flox, some of you will recall our award winning fit-out Learning Curve. For this fit-out we used Flox to create interest across the space. She is really a truely amazing artist, her website www.flox.co.nz

I never take supplier presents for granted, I love the gesture and love returning the gesture to our clients.

1. The first image is the Flox image Laminex sent us
2. The second & third image is of Learning Curve where we used Flox

All the best!
Lizzi

Wierd wierd wierd!!!

There are buildings here in NZ where I think 'what was the architect thinking?'. From now on I'm going to hold that thought because I came across these crazy & wierd buildings around the world. Some are so wierd they are actually funny and some are so out there they are cool. The ones that are houses....I'm not sure how liveable they are - I'd love to know!


1. The Crooked House (Sopot, Poland). Someone actually lives here!!
2. The Basket Building (Ohio, United States). This building I understand, it's fairly out there, but it is a commercial building for a company that makes baskets.
3. Kansas City Public Library (Missouri, United States). I love this building, I think it is fabulous.
4. Habitat 67 (Montreal, Canada)This is housing - it looks more like a jigsaw puzzle...
5. Cubic Houses (Rotterdam, Netherlands) - Hmmm totally unliveable in my opinion.

There are so many more out there than this - over time I will bring you some of the other crazy buildings. I'm definitely going to put some of them on my architecture bucket list!

Ciao,
Lizzi

Google Offices - WOW!!!

I'm definitely not a text language person but this is truely OMG!!!

These images are of Googles additional floor - they have expanded into additional space, Victoria London.

This space embodies fun, it is relaxing, comfotable, inviting and creative. Not too mention totally slick and beautiful. This would be a designer's dream client! We love it when clients see true value in providing their staff with breakout spaces and environments where true creativity can occur. Any type of business can benefit from these spaces in my opinion. Some need more than others....

Open plan space allow brainstorming ideas and collisions of genius to occur.

The theme is very Star Ship Enterprise, with the geometric shapes and contrasting colours that we are all familiar with. These offices use creative lighting, many different styled breakout areas and conferencing nooks. Walls are lined with white boards to record ideas off the cuff. They also have an enviable coffee lab, four free restaurants, including sushi and tapas bars, and a gym. If they provided beds no one would need to leave. All creative sense are catered to along with life's must haves. Bliss!

Heaps of photos today, I could not pick and choose!

Ciao,
Lizzi

Our office design ideas progress...

Well yesterday I was 100% on wall graphics, today I'm not....

In a moment of downtime today we mused further over the whiteness of our office and what our brief would be to Kyra (our wall graphics contact). We have 2 main walls that need something. We didn't bother discussing what the graphics would be, just that both walls maybe too much and maybe we need some thing else, a texture, or colour.

Next idea, courtesy of Christy was fabric panels. Especially these panels we have seen on the Woven Image website - love it! The top pic is the fabric I am referring to, the colour bleeds out - cool!

So this of course got me thinking about fabric panels in general. They really are a great addition to space, they can act as a visual softening tool, they can assist with acoustics and they also can be a relatively cheap solution to spice up any environment.

Next week we are exploring using this fabric panelling in the office, I will keep you posted on where we get to.....

Ciao, Lizzi