Toyo Ito's Vivocity

If you think Singapore couldn't support anymore shopping centres, get ready for an even bigger one. Well, I'm not mentioning it because it is big, but it will be Toyo Ito's first work in Singapore.

A departure from the louvred air-con box architecture of Singapore, the organic curves makes for an extraordinary shopping experience. Wall flows into ceiling into floor, indoor space melds with the numerous elevated landscaped areas. The generous space is lit with a copious amount of natural light. A less confined version of Singaporeans' favorite pastime.

Ito mentioned in El Croquis that the idea came from surfing which was inspired by the waterfront location of the building. However, I would like to point out that the waves we get around the sheltered mainland is extremely weak and will foil even the most ernest attempt at surfing. Ignoring this minor technicality, I must say that this is one of the most adventurous form that is set to be built here (esplanade? how tame.)

The building will also serve as the gateway to the existing ferry terminal, it will also contain the new light rail station that connects to Sentosa island off the shore.

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing it completed and also to how it will rejuvenate the tired waterfront. I hope it doesn't get watered down into another second rate designer building, like the many we already have.

More on Vivocity the shopping centre, click here
More on Vivocity the architecture, read El Croquis 123

Sale's on!

Sale season is here again. Throngs of people wait in line in get into a store to pay 30% less for products that are marked up more than 1000%.

It's raining Mary Poppins

More hours on photoshop and autocad. Inspired by Magritte's Golconde but the raining men are replaced by Mary Poppins. I'm actually having fun drawing non-architecture stuff on autocad, great software for drawing vectors, although it still lacks the flexibility of professional graphics software.

Reminiscing Berlin

Hours spent on photoshop, my only companion these days.

Jewel Box at Mount Faber

It has just been announced that the cablecar station at Mount Faber will be refurbished and be renamed the Jewel Box (why?!!). I really can't remember the last time I've been there, probably more than 15 years ago, and I can't really recall what the building currently looks like. But it's about time they redo the whole place. The last and possibly only major news about the Singapore cable car was in 1983 when an oil rig mounted on a ship snagged the cable and causing 2 cable cars to plunge into the sea. Although the new building is not likely to make me want to take a ride on the cable car in the forseeable future, I'm somewhat glad that it means that the cable car service is not going the way of the Sentosa ferry (death by euthanasia).

I'm actually not too fond of the overall design but this rendering looks quite promising. Imagine entering or leaving the station through a tunnel with rays of light piercing through, the walls shimmering like a piece of jewellery. A befitting space to the new name of the station. However, renderings always lie and things do not always work out as intended. I hope they can make this happen.

This is Toyo Ito's Tod's store in Tokyo. Coincidence? maybe not.

More about the cable car station here.
A little about the innovative Tod's building here.

Marloes ten Bhömer

I was browsing through Interior Design magazine at Borders today. It wasn't a magazine that I usually read but due to the incredible amount of free time in my hand, I have exhausted the repertoire of magazines that I normally read. I picked up the magazine because it was doing a fashion boutiques special and while I flipped through the magazine, I was pleasantly surprise to find more than interior design in it. I came across an article about a Dutch (i think) designer, called Marloes ten Bhömer, who specializes in shoe design.

On first sight, the objects that she designs do know give a clue to what their function is. One only perceives a piece of moulded plastic, or strips of leather or carbon fibre suspended in space. The function is only revealed when a foot slips into the object and the purpose of the different parts become obvious.

Her intention is to challenge design conventions and break obvious archetypal forms, incorporating uncoventional techniques and materials. Assumptions of how the different parts of a shoe are ignored and purposely broken. A flat vertical piece of carbon fibre on the side of the foot acts as the heel, plastic materials that folds to obscure the outline of the feet, a blobish watering can-like form that is a heelless boot.

The designs are still in a theoretical form. While I applaud her daring approach to creating the shoes , I'm not sure if some of the designs are suitable for normal wearing without causing irreversible damage to your spine (although plenty of women are already torturing themselves with high heels, she's just pushing the boundary further). In the sources about her which I found, I barely hear her mentioning anything about ergonomics. The agressive lines of some of the designs are certainly not friendly to the feet. The shoes look as practical as Hussein Chalayan's table skirt.

Shoes for the future, maybe, but we won't be seeing these shoes in stores yet but some of her ideas have trickled into real products during her internship at Tod's and she had also provided input in designs for Alexander McQueen.

More pictures at Marloes ten Bhömer's website
Article in Interior Design magazine

Ferran Adria

I just watched a programme on Discovery Channel about Spanish chef Ferran Adria. And wow! It nearly made my eyes pop out. It has opened up a whole new dimension to my perception of the possibilities of food.

The show started with a visit to the chef's laboratory in Barcelona, where he exoeriments with he also has an industrial designer who ( I guess) designs the tablewares he uses to serve his unconventional food. He then demonstrated an experiment in which he tries to recreate the texture of foie gras using peach by searing and caramelizing it with chopped up Smint (no spelling error, it's the mint candy that we get in stores). It wasn't the fact that he has a lab or that he has his own industrial designer but the results of the experiments that blew my mind away.

At his restauarant, El Bulli, meals are served in over 20 small courses and some no more than a single slurp. Each course is a work of fantastic ingenuity and surprising combinations of ingredients, and no less creative than any other courses served in the same meal. Frozen powdered foie gras that reconstitutes in a dish of warm consomme. Cherries covered in ham fat. Pea ravioli without the ravioli skin and served as a dollop of pea essence on a wide shallow spoon, flavour engulfed only by the flavour itself. Grilled fish covered in cotton candy looking like something that you've dug out from under your bed. Mandarin froth that is as light as air. Gelatinous pasta squirted out in front of the diner in a single strand and meant to be consumed in a single long slurp. Faux caviar made from dripping apple essence from an array of syringes into a bowl of cold water forming bubbles of apple essence covered in a thin skin, which is then served in a caviar tin. A pastry so light that it disappears once it enters your mouth.

Here are some pictures i found on the net. The names are not the actual names of the dishes, just my own attempt to describe them.

pea ravioli


Gelatinous pasta made in a single strand


mandarin froth


Faux caviar made from fruit essence

The chef's approach to flavour is not to creat a fusion of taste but to have the the different ingredients retain its own flavour while working together to create an ochestra of sensations. He also speaks of the assigned value of food and preaches a notion of seeing an ingredient purely on its flavour without the bias of price and rarity. Foie gras should be seen to have the same value as a pear. He also talks about a creating new concepts of cooking and being the first person to do something, like being the first person to make a Spanish omelette, to come up with the idea of a Spanish omelette.

I was truly astounded by the ingenuity and innovation that he has displayed and his passion to continue pushing the boundaries of cooking. My new goal in life will be to visit his restaurant El Bulli in Catalonia and maybe attempt to push some boundaries too in what I do.
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I just found a photo album of someone who had a meal at El Bulli.
chez pim