Baby: Untitled

ok kids.... you can officially can me uncle now. Another tier has just been added to my family tree and I am being promoted to the rank of 三 叔 with the birth of my baby nephew at 11am today. I'm feeling older already. My mother and a first time grandmother couldn't stop smiling today. The baby has yet to be named but I am protecting the baby against being named using any chinese characters which are too hard to write. I'm not going to let him have a bad memory of learning to write.

Dover Street Market Paper

The CDG Dover Street Market website was just launched on 21st July which provides information and updates (through DSM paper) about the store.

If you don't know what Dover Street Market, it is this mega 6 stories emporium in London that carries all the CDG lines and a whole load of other products and designers that are handpicked by Rei Kawakubo herself. The designers are chosen for their design integrity and artistic vision, much like how a museum is curated. However, the idea of a curated shop is not totally new. The best example of such a shop is Colette in Paris (which happens to have many collaborations with CDG) which sells a selection of clothing, magazines, toys and gadgets chosen by the owner.

What makes the Dover Street Market better is that the various designers are given a "stall" in the "market" and allowed to design their own individual stalls. And many of the products are produced exclusively for the store. The stalls will change from time to time and this keeps the experience fresh everytime someone visits the store.

Unfortunately, for people without deep pockets, I would like to paraphrase Darryl, that it is best (and can only be) appreciated as a museum.

Dover Street Market


cashier

surface-to-air stall


Elternhaus stall

I went to Malmö today

I just visited Malmö today. No, I didn't make a marathon trip to and back from Sweden, although I wish I could physically be there. I paid a vist using Google Earth, which provides fairly detailed aerial photos of many parts of the world. I could even find the "Bombsite" which I did my project on at Lund University. It feels great to be able to see familiar places again, it's the next best thing to actually being there.

Google Earth

skyscraping

I've been scraping the sky for the past week, shuffling between this makeshift workstation and the discussion/model-making table, to work on a skyscraper. Although I'm just working on one of the possibilities, I'm really excited to be part of the whole project. The scale and complexity are nothing like what I've done before. And in this first week of work, I've realized that even after 3 years of studying architecture, I still know nothing about architecture. It's really a different thing to be designing for yourself in school and designing for your boss who is in turn designing for someone else who is paying. There is additional pressure to produce work, since it is going to affect the outcome of the deal and possibly significant income loss. Well, I'm not the boss and most the worrrying doesn't really fall on me (although more than enough for an ignorant student). I'm also glad that I have been given time to play around, something that we sometimes have no time for even in school.

Akira Isogawa at the Arts House

Works of Japanese-Australian designer Akira Isogawa are on exhibtion at the Arts House. Inspired by origami and chubby dolls, he creates wonderful pieces of garments that are truly seasonless, a pure exploration of form and possibilities of the fabric. The exhibition shows not only the end products, but also the process paper cuttings and foldings,showing how the design process starts from, say, some origami folded from newspaper to the final intricately constructed dresses, which I found to be very interesting

paper patterns: dress in progress


a scrunged drape made form the pattern above


the final products

hanging around ar+d

This is the place where you can find me for the rest of July till school opens. Just started at ar+d (thrid floor, lights still on) yesterday, doing some form exploration for a project. I guess you can consider that designing, at least it was more designing than what I did at CPG last year. The office has a pretty good vibe, monochrome colour scheme, Eames chairs, B&O player blasting loungy music, and a good collection of books. The boss trys to create a non-heirarchical culture that encourages sharing and discourse, though he is rightfully demanding and takes no shit for work. I have a feeling that I will have an interesting and enriching month ahead. Just spoke to a renderer today, he was going to charge the office $1500 for one rendered view. SHOCKED!

Didn't expect to find work with one month of vacation left. Thank you Tang Na for recommending me for the job.

CDG +65 found

ok, I officially have no life. I went down to town today to look for the new CDG guerrila-store. It's located at Haji Lane, parrallel to Arab Street. The location itself was not surprising but I was astonished by the authentic charm and intimacy that the area exudes, something which I thought was extinct in Singapore after years of disney-fying and blatant facade-conservation by the tourism board and URA . The shophouses were really old buildings, not the colourful freshly painted ones you get at Chinatown. And within these shophouses were businesses that are totally non-touristy, like muslim eateries, travellers' hostels, new-age-ish cafes, even a shop selling Swedish weights and scales.

Alright,secret's out, bye!

CDG +65 guerrilla store 2

The CDG guerrilla store reappears in Singapore on 15th July! I was told by the people who manage the store that it will be around the Arab Street area. I hope the new store will be nicer than the previous one which looked somewhat bland and lacked charm, perhaps a subtle critique of what Singapore is.

double wall glass

Was flying pass Tangs' basement yesterday on my way to cathcing a bus to Tanjong Rhu, something caught my eye. It was a Bodum product(if you are not familiar, Bodum make great glassware) packed in a black box. I realized that it might be the double-walled glass which I had regretted not buying when I was in Copenhagen, and had searched in vain for since I came back to Singapore. And why did the black packaging tip me off, you might ask. Well, Bodum usually packs their products in white boxes and for some reason, they decided that this range of glassware should have a packaging with a black coloured base.

Designed by Masato Yamamoto in collaboration with Bodum Design Group,the glass features a double wall construction (not a good word to use since the glass is hand blown in one piece) which reduces heat transfer creating an air space between the contents and the surroundings, much like the common thermosflask that we have.This means your coffee remains hot for a longer time or you can take a longer time to enjoy your ice-cold cola. It also reduces the need for a handle, as heat does not travel fast through the heat resistant borosilicate glass (which is also known as Pyrex and commonly used to make test tubes)to the external surface. This allows the hand to hold the glass without feeling the heat of the hot liquid within. It seems such a simple and obvious idea that I wonder why it took so long for someone to make it.

What I didn't like about the glass was that you have to buy it in pairs (damn those businessmen!). But I bought it anyway, Didn't want to miss the chance and regret a second time. Gave my mum the other one for her to drink tea.

childs straightens libeskind

version1

The crystalline blocks lead the eye up, ascending towards the slender off centered spire reaching up to the height of 1776ft, suggesting the form of the Statue of Liberty. This vision is no more. After the fanfare of the design competition, the project degenerated into jumble of politicking ending with a stubby symmetrical glass tower. The only resemblance to the original design is the height of the building but reduced to only shallow symblolism. The latest tower design, unveiled on Wednesday,was totally reconceived after the NYPD and NYFD brought up concerns with safety. A bland hypodermic needle that stands out from the equally bland cityscape only through sheer size. The totally new design took only 7 weeks to create, revealed in time for the 107th IOC session in Singapore where the city for the 2012 Olympics will be decided, and of which NY is a candidate.The safety concerns have also prompted the architect to construct the base in solid concrete, cladded in titanium. The users will have to enter the tower through one of two entrances into this big bunker

version2

This is a textbook case of how the realities in the profession are. We are taught in school that the architect is the all powerful entity who ochestrates everything. Not only do we have to deal with practical issues like structures and functions, there is also a need to play politics with a bunch of people who have their own specific agenda but have only the slightest thing to do with the project itself. It has been rumoured that David Childs orchestrated the whole redesign-for-bomb-safety issue to rid the project of the influence of Libeskind. Whether it is true or not, it is a demonstration of that Childs and Silverstein have the project firmly in their hands.While this is an extreme case of external factors affecting a project, we are warned of how the real world works.

version3