September 2008
20 posts
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3 Bento Boxes
With a failing economy and national obesity epidemic, now is the time to go cheaper and healthier by packing your own lunch for work or school. Here are three Japanese inspired bento boxes that upgrade dreary lunch affairs from the brown paper sack.
UP Box (pictured above)
The UP Box (the letters stand for Urban Picnic) is a market take away box that offers healthy, low-carb meals made, where...
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Jorge Pardo x LACMA
After a three year absence, the Latin American collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has reopened with a flourish with a reinstalation by Cuban born artist Jorge Pardo. Pardo, known for bluring the distinction between architecture, design and sculpture, revives the exhibition hall with a Brancussi like approach to artifiact displays: forms stacked on forms with material...
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Van Berkel & Bos - UNStudio
Rarely do the paths of architecture and astro physics intersect, then came along architect Ben Van Berkel. He and UNStudio co-founder Caroline Bos (also Van Berkel’s wife) are taking a unique, progressive approach to their structures through a profound interest in spacetime continuum. The approach is logical; afterall, buildings are a definition of space in which we occupy with time. The...
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Milk
Hong Kong based Milk operates more like a newsletter than a magazine. Milk’s international editorial team relays the newest and most exiting concepts and ideas on to the Hong Kongese youth in condenced, flyer like pages. With strong emphasis on graphics, there is actually very little to read while flipping through an issue of Milk. However, picking up on the latest local trend takes no...
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Retro Nike Chinese Tracksuit
Where having the latest and greatest is an affirmation of social status, vintage doesn’t even exist in the Chinese fashion vocabulary. The youth of Chinese middle class often refuse to buy a house that someone else has previously lived in, much less slip into a second-hand sweater, which is why Nike’s rivival of the 1984 Chinese Olympic tracksuit is creating a buzz on the streets of...
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Thievery Corporation - Radio Retaliation
Washington D.C.’s downtempo kings are back with the politically-charged Radio Retaliation, on which the duo of Rob Garza and Eric Hilton find new ways to incorporate sounds from Jamaica, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. This time around, Thievery Corporation utilize special guest appearances from Nigeria’s afro-beat heir, Femi Kuti, Brazilian star vocalist and...
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Sachiko Kodama
Japanese sculptor Sachiko Kodama creates ominous, kinetic works with a material typically used in mechanical and electronic engineering applications: ferrofluid. Ferrofluids are comprised of nano ferromagnetic particles that are suspended in a carrier fluid (typically water). In the presence of a strong magnetic field, the ferromagnetic particles become polarized, creating spikes in the...
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3 Highlights from La Noche en Blanco
Madrid celebrated its third edition of La Noche en Blanco earlier this week. Under the full moon, this all night festival commemorates the haunting and surreal as artists and visitors explore manifestations of illusion and dreams through artistic interventions celebrating the “hidden” Madrid. Here are three highlights from the mind bending experience.
The Deambulants
The...
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Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
In the future, this will be the Bible of design. William McDonough’s book, written with his colleague, the German chemist Michael Braungart, is a manifesto calling for the transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design for the next great industrial revolution. Through...
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3 Designers from Tokyo Fashion Week
While most of the industry had its eyes transfixed on Bryant Park this past week, let us not forget of the other fashion week that took place on the opposite side of the globe. Layers and knit wear were definitely this year’s trend in Tokyo, where classic style is often forgone for kawaii and quirk. Here are three designers who presented relatively reserved, wearable collections rather than...
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The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan
The first comprehensive collection of Bhutanese sacred art showing in the United States, The Dragon’s Gift made its first stop at the Honolulu Academy of Arts this Februrary and is set to open at the Ruben Museum of Art in NYC on September 19.
Unlike your typical ‘acheological loot’ exhibitions, this collection is comprised of 87 works from a relatively mysterious country...
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What are you, Kala Alexander?
Kala Alexander is a line in the sand. Those who have searched “North Shore beatdown” on youtube know what happens when you cross that line. As his knuckles deftly indicate, he is a member of the Wolf Pak, a quasi gang of North Shore big wave surfers that claim territory to Hawaii’s winter coastlines. Even his no frills black Da Hui jams are a statement against the touristy,...
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Zoo York Roach Artist Series
Chicago has its cows, San Francisco has its hearts, and Zork York has its…roaches? Far from their cuddly ‘biomass as canvas’ companions of the midwest and westcoast, this highly anticipated series of skate decks from Zoo York draws inspiration from New York’s most persistent resident, the cockroach. Each pro model board features works from some of NYC’s most...
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Hiroshi Sugimoto
One of Japan’s most important contemporary artists, Hiroshi Sugimoto is known for his ongoing, multiple series of hauntingly beautiful black-and-white photographs, which explore the themes of time, memory, dreams, and natural histories. Working with a large-format camera, his glowing images range from the starkly minimal to the richly detailed, and are often suffused with expanses of light and...
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Metronomy - Nights Out
What is Nights Out? “It’s a soundtrack to a bad weekend,” claims front man Joseph Mount. Bad? He might have meant BIG.
What starts out as an outright weird mishmash of do-it-yourself Tetris tones and casio synths, the second album from the british electro band Metronomy shapes up into a geyser of party anthems. Within the first two songs it’s ripped through Middle Eastern...
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colette, Paris
Since its opening in March 1997, colette has been willing to be the place where fashion meets design, music meets publishing, beauty meets hi-tech and a place to discover art with its gallery or to relax at the water-bar. It’s a living space, in perpetual movement.
The Paris botique specializes in random knick-knack collaborations with the likes of Hello-Kitty, Asics, Ed Banger, and most...
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Half-Life of a Dream
Half-Life of a Dream, showing at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, features reactionary works from contemporary Chinese artists working in the wake of Tiananmen Square and dashed uptopian dreams of the Cultural Revolution. Approximately 50 paintings, sculptures, and installations spanning 1988 to 2008 convey a sense of the shadows, masks, and monsters that have haunted the China’s...
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3 Tweed Jackets
It’s back to school season which means fall foliage and new beginnings. Whether you’re a freshman moving into the dorms or a seasoned ivy leaguer, nothing states your arrival to higher education more emphatically than a tweed jacket. Here are three jackets that will surely make a fine first impression on your classmates and professors as you huff across campus this fall semester (elbow...
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Lucas Isawa
São Paulo based sculptor Lucas Isawa combines the Japanese traditions of koinobori and paper lanterns to create delicate forms that are a breathtaking spectable.
Isawa begins by stripping each bamboo branch and then meticulously ties them together, forming the ‘skeleton’ for his dangling fish sculptures. He then fills gaps with silk paper and suspends each piece from the ceiling...
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What are you, Beau Sia?
Beau Sia is a being from the future here to assure you that everything is going to be okay. He speaks english good. He is in his room chasing Bruce Lee. He is gathering up all the baby kittens in the anticipation of the second coming of Alf. And he is holding a box to his head.
Raised in Oklahoma City, Beau Sia moved to New York in 1995 and has said that moving to the Big Apple is what made him...