Black Collar Café

Adam Kalkin’s Quik House format has been adapted by Illy Cafe as a temporary installation, the Illy Cafe Push Button House, in NYC’s Time Warner Center for the month of December.  Formed from recycled shipping containers, modified to serve a higher purpose (hence “upcycling”), the one-off installation transforms at a push of a button to a fully-functioning, brilliantly designed cafe space in under 90 seconds.

Welcome to the FLOWmarket, a conceptual store created by Mads Hagstroem. The FLOWmarket was created to showcase “scarcity goods, imbalances in the 3 FLOW dimensions (individual, collective and environmental flows) transformed in to physical products.” Sound weird? It is, but it’s also thought-provoking and the exhibit as a whole is rather fetching. The site is quite interesting, but try to catch the exhibit at one of it’s installations worldwide.

I read a lot of magazines, probably too many. To the point that it’s a separate line on my Schedule C. I really enjoy British mags, there’s something about British writing that is far superior to their American counterparts. Maybe it’s the slightly wider world view, not being the world’s 500 pound gorilla. I happened across a new one recently while walking through Dulles, Monocle. Official tagline is “Briefings on global affairs, business, design and culture,” all brought to you by Wallpaper founder Tyler Brulé. Pick it up (if you can find it) and take a read.

Something that caught my attention today…

excerpted from Arena Magazine, penned by Andrew Mueller

“It would be a worthwhile, and overdue, maneuver for people to disdain most things they’re encouraged to regard as fun, and experiment instead with such disregarded virtues as probity, courtesy and application. It might actually make them happy.

For the wretched reality of the hedonist, invariably, is the they’re attention-seekings dickheads who want everyone to believe they’re having an enviably fantastic time, in order to compensate for the loneliness and boredom eating them alive from the inside.

The solution is not the imposition of a regime of Cromwellian abstemiousness - however appealing that may seem as one trudges through the wreckage of a Friday night in any high street. It is, rather, a collective discovery of the fact that having things, be they flat-screen televisions or prolific sex lives, does not engender a fraction of the satisfaction of doing things, or making things. Anything great human beings have done has been an act of creation, not consumption.

Though few corporations would profit from encouraging people to write things, build things, learn things, think of things, accomplish things - or failing all that, to sit around quietly with friends and discuss stuff- the challenge of confronting the ennui we sublimate in idiotic distractions is worth rising to. Living for today only increases the likelihood of tomorrow being just as bloody awful.”

I like Denmark. I like Scandinavia in general. (full disclosure: I’ve never spent a winter there, that might temper my affection) I’ll probably end up writing a lot about scandinavian design. I was in CPH this summer and stopped in on Hotel Fox for a few days. They gave 60 young artists complete creative control over each of the 60 rooms. Wild results…and a restaurant that pairs menus with…wait for it…cocktails. What’s not to like? A great hotel in a great city. Another solid find from Tablet Hotels, I’m rarely dissapointed. Make travel fun again.

Working long hours can be tedious, at least now you can do it in style…with maybe a goldfish to keep you company. Welcome to MILK.

Black Collar Worker (BCW) | n. blak col•lar werk•er | - an offspring of the white collar realm and a member of the not-starving-artist class. Always clad in requisite black shirt, black trousers, and iPod, the Black Collar Worker is educated in the arts and the art of the deal. Profession: advertising, architecture, design, marketing, photography, PR, the BCW prefers the 9pm-5am over the 9am-5pm.