Since it’s the beginning of a new year, this is a great time to acknowledge some of the most interesting happenings or products from 2011. As a twist, I’ll be presenting both the ‘World View’ and my personal alternative perspective!
1. Exemplary Interiors
Tori-Tori, one of the best Japanese restaurants in Mexico City, was winner of Interior Design magazine’s 2011 Best of Year Award for fine dining. The vibrant color and organic shape of the façade caught my eye. The project was built from the ground up and each dining space sports its own collection of custom furniture to enhance the diner’s experience.
Dubbed as the House of the Flight of Birds, the two wings of this home with their undulating rooflines bear remarkable resemblance to a pair of stylized birds. I love how architect Bernardo Rodrigues integrated the form of the house with its interior details so both elements reinforce his vision of the space.
2. Green Light For Green Lighting
Since I write so much about lighting, it’ll be hard to close out the year without picking an eco friendly light fixture.
The award winning Plumen 001 light bulb has its merits – and at $35, is probably the cheapest designer lighting product on the market.
The lamp exudes a raw, industrial aesthetic, but I find the lamp a bit too ‘in my face’. However it’s supposed to provide almost 60W of light from an 11W bulb and lasts about eight years, so it’s a great choice if you want an energy efficient light bulb that makes a statement!
I personally prefer a more refined look. Aqua Creations unveiled a beautiful series of LED light fixtures, each of which are hand crafted from a single sheet of paper. The origami lamp casts a soft, delicate glow and will provide quality ambient lighting in any space.
3. The Travel Bug
As Rick Steves aptly puts it ”There are travelers and there are tourists. There is travel and there is hedonism.”
Billed as Editor’s Choice for Alternative Reality by travel writer Gary A. Warner, Las Vegas makes an easy weekend getaway. Considering all the action on and off the Strip, it certainly belongs to Rick’s latter category!
I spent 3 weeks last winter in SE Asia, part of which was on a cruise. It was a whirlwind tour of China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore.
The good thing was that I was able to visit my family in Hong Kong, albeit for just a day – the roundtrip plane ticket would have set me back about $1300 in what I jokingly call ‘Marsupial Class’!
On the other hand, I found out that unlike cruising in other parts of the world, a lot of the ports in SE Asia are an hour or more from the cities of interest. Most of the big ships have to be docked at deep water container ports which are nowhere near centers of civilization. The ports for Beijing, Shanghai, Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and Bangkok are a couple hours away depending on traffic, and even Hong Kong and Nha Trang (Central Vietnam) require extended transfers to reach their town centers.
Despite the logistics issues, we steadfastly avoided the ship’s group excursions and experienced each country’s people, food, culture and religion through its local markets and street food stalls.
4. Food for Thought
While I’m not a fan of sugary fried dough, apparently fancy donuts are making a comeback!
Check out these ‘designer doughnuts’ – Gourdoughs in Austin has glazed versions topped with grilled bananas & cream cheese icing with brown sugar. Frittelli’s of Beverly Hills offers gianduja and orange cranberry, while Federal’s in Philadelphia features fried concoctions of pina colada and vanilla lavender.
Gourmet cupcakes seem to have made their run, while more and more mararons are debuting in upscale bakeries these days: even the renowned Parisian patisserie Ladurée opened its first stateside store in New York City last year.
In fact I saw not one but two shops selling these delectable treats at the Marina Bay Sands Resort in Singapore last year, one of which was owned by Jean-Philippe Darcis, the first Belgian chocolatier to win the accolade “Ambassador of Belgian Chocolate”. I soooo miss the yummy-licious macarons from L’Atelier Jean-Luc Pelé in Cannes!
5. It’s not Lady Gaga…
Of course the fashion event of the year for the world was Kate Middleton’s wedding dresses at the Royal Wedding to Prince William. I was busy with work so never followed the celebrations very closely, but it gave me flashbacks of Princess Diana’s storybook wedding to Prince Charles so many years ago…
For me, the fashion event of the year was being part of the Designer Challenge fashion show.
Put on by my professional organization, the CA Peninsula Chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers, teams of interior designers are given randomly drawn interior design materials (upholstery and window fabrics, trimmings, tiles and wallpapers) 90 minutes before the start of the fashion show. The challenge is to design and fabricate a ‘couture’ garment without using a sewing machine within a short 1.5 hours.
I met up with my team, Haute Rags, the afternoon of the show. Luck of the draw landed us an unusual snake motif fabric, which became the inspiration of our design. Once the outfit was sketched out, we worked fast and furious to turn our vision into reality in our remaining hour.
Absolutely clueless about the art of tailoring, I was kept busy and out of trouble assembling the garment while others created dress patterns on the fly. Work was feverish but a total blast and I have to say guns (hot glue and staple), not diamonds, were my best friends that night!
