Alessi Opens New Flagship Store in Milan

This month, Italian design brand Alessi opened a new flagship store in Milan on 14-16 Via Manzoni, designed by Spanish designer Marti Guixé. The location is in addition to the existing showroom, which has been the key address for the company for over a quarter of a century. The store is Guixé's third project in collaboration with the Italian brand, having previously designed the Alessi Shop and Museum in Paris in 2008, and the 2011 exhibition Italian Dream Factories (subscribers, click here for our report on it) at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan.

LDF 2011: The Auction Room

A unique exhibition held at The Gopher Hole as part of the London Design Festival will showcase an auction room that is actually up for auction. The Auction Room by Mariana Pestana & Designersblock is an exhibition in which the architecture dictates the curatorial direction, meaning once the type of room they'd like to create is decided, the subject matter follows. In this case, fifteen designers were asked to create the components of a working auction hall - chairs, a hammer, tiles, light switches, tables, lamps, a rug, and cups & saucers. Some of the designers participating in the exhibition include Alex Hellum, Studio 801, Katrin Baumgarten, Harry Trimble, and Yehrin Tong.

The exhibition is open to the public from September 19th through 25th, during which time visitors can pick their favorite pieces and place a bid. Unlike traditional auctions, monetary offers are not accepted forcing interested buyers to get creative with their offerings. Read all of our LDF 2011 previews so far here.

Minimalist Posters of Children's Stories by Christian Jackson

Christian Jackson has created a series of fifteen posters depicting timeless children's stories using minimalist imagery. Contrary to the bright colors and playful aesthetic typically associated with children's fairytales, Jackson's posters bring out the underlying darkness present in these stories. 

HBL Retail: Kitchen Theatre

Russell Hobbs press preview, autumn/winter 2011/12

Cooking demonstrations have been widely seen by WGSN-homebuildlife's retail team at the press events this year; reflecting the growing trend for kitchen theatrics within the home. 

MyBlockNYC: New York City's First Interactive Map

MyBlockNYC.com is New York City’s first interactive video map. Users can upload footage taken from their cell phones and cameras that correspond to particular blocks throughout the city. The website currently boasts 1,040 videos that represent 775 blocks.

HBL Exhibitions: Talk To Me at Museum of Modern Art, New York

Augmented (hyper) Reality: Augmented City 3D by Keiichi Matsuda at Talk To Me

'Talk to Me: Design and the communication between people and objects' opened this week at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, featuring a wide range of objects from around the world by designers, students and scientists, highlighting how different innovations in design have transformed the way we live.

HBL Book of the Week: Making Britain Modern by Kenneth Grange

Published to coincide with the Design Museum's exhibition of the same name (see our previous post), Kenneth Grange: Making Britain Modern (Black Dog Publishing, 2011) provides a thorough retrospective of Grange's 60-year (so far) career in design: from his beginnings as an architectural assistant to his work for brands including Anglepoise, Kodak, Morphy Richards and Parker among many others. Through 160 photographs and a number of in-depth texts, we are shown just how much he changed the way we use objects, to this day.

HBL loves: the book's calibre. Contributors include the director of the Design Museum Deyan Sudjic, its curator Gemma Curtin, design historian Penny Sparke, architecture journalist Jonathan Glancey, and the London Evening Standard's Barbara Chandler in conversation with Grange - who is a wonderfully honest and straight-forward interviewee.

The Big Swim by Tine Bech

The Big Swim (2011) by Tine Bech at Camberwell Leisure Centre; photo by Nicolai Amter

Last weekend, London celebrated one year until the 2012 Olympic Games with special events and exhibitions featuring art, dance, film, and sports events. One such event was the Big Swim, an interactive light installation held at two local swimming pools. At this open to the public event, 220 guests swam in clouds of colour as filtered lights covered the water.

Interiors by Joanna Lamb

Interiors, Joanna Lamb

Australian painter Joanna Lamb has launched a series of stylised paintings – of scenes taken from pages of real estate brochures – rendered in blocks of colour along with her distinctive flattening aesthetic.

Sven Völker and Nils Völker for MADE

CAPTURED: THE EXPERIENCE FILM from MADE Blog on Vimeo.

Graphic designer Sven Völker and machine artist Nils Völker teamed up to create this mesmerising installation for Berlin-based design bureau MADE, entitled 'Captured: a homage to light & air'.

WGSN-homebuildlife loves the powerful combination of movement, material and colour. For more, watch an interview with the designers here.

Hemp Chair by Werner Aisslinger

In collaboration with chemical company BASF, German designer Werner Aisslinger has created the Hemp Chair. Inspired by a technique used by the automotive industry, the manufacturing of the chair uses water-based compression moulding to form an eco-friendly, lightweight, yet strong material.

HBL Blog of the Week: Oh Joy!

Oh Joy!

Oh Joy! is one of the most established design blogs out there, founded by graphic designer Joy Deangdeelert Cho back in 2005 and now read by upwards of 18,000 people each day. WGSN-homebuildlife highlighted it as one of our top ten North American blogs last year, and it continues to inspire us on a regular basis.

HBL loves: Oh Joy! is great for tabletop inspiration, and for following the continuing connection between fashion and design. We also love Joy's obsession with food, which results in regular mouthwatering posts on the best snacks she's made, eaten, or seen lately.