Soho Chocolate Jewelry Shop

Dedicated to the concept of de-speculation, their design for a shop in Soho for chocolate brand Xocolatti (that’s Aztec for chocolate) is a case in point. In collaboration with art director Damian Kaufman of Exit Creative, created a 150-square-foot storefront prototype for a company that’s counting on expansion in the future. A family jewelry business presents chocolate that looks like jewelry.

The 10-foot by 15-foot flagship on Prince Street grew out of a search for a solution to building a monolithic kind of space – out of chocolate boxes. A floor-to-ceiling, custom shelving system that displays 2,500 boxes designed to hold 4, 9, 16, or 24 chocolates. Some are pre-packaged, while others are empty, waiting to be filled by shoppers or owners. By stacking the containers and the boxes, the designers have sought to transform the storage component, turning the space into a display grid of graphics and patterns that change as boxes are removed. It’s a practical solution for a practical problem so they needed to make use of the entire space as a storage device. Chocolates and truffles are arranged on top of protruding boxes, like light boxes with labels, all designed by Kaufman and Exit Creative. True to the De-Spec mission, the project defines the polar opposite of generic.












Domenique Mora has established herself as a leader in the industry through innovative designs and creative solutions. Her notable skills in conceptual designs has earned her a reputation as one of the premier Interior Architectural Designers. Her work has been featured in many residential showcases and industry publications.

POPULAR POSTS

Pitsou Kedem Architects I The Float House

Image
The Float House, gives the illusion of a home floating on water. The stunning modern residence located in Israel was designed by Pitsou Kedem Architects.  The home is a one story private residence in the center of the country.  The architectural concept was to create a structure with a continuous wide space divided by internal courtyards and movable partitions into smaller spaces used for a variety of different functions.  The structure itself is constructed from a series of spaces that are conceivably internal and external. The spaces and internal courtyards are joined together into one structure by two ultra-thin roofs supported at one central point that seems to float in the air. 
Walking through the entrance lobby space, you cross a transparent pool studded with large basalt rocks and trees that seem to float on water.  The entrance is framed with a wall of wooden slats which constitute what could be considered the initial boundary between the outside and the inside.  The entranc…
READ MORE »

Hans Silvester Natural Fashion

Image
This magnificently produced book provides a priceless record of a unique and increasingly fragile way of life, one threatened by conflict, climate change and tourism.
The lower valley of the Omo, at the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan, remains one of the wildest places in Africa. Over the course of numerous voyages to this forgotten land, Hans Silvester became fascinated by the beauty of the Surma and Mursi tribes, who share a taste for body painting and extravagant decorations borrowed from nature.
In this region of East Africa, the rivers that run through the dry savannahs are home to abundant flowers, papyrus and wild fruit trees, and this luxuriance becomes an invitation to creativity and spectacle. Within hand’s reach, a multitude of plants inspire fanciful and ephemeral self-decoration, and the Omo tribes react spontaneously: a leaf, root, seed pod or flower is quickly transformed into an accessory.
People create caps from tufts of grass or they ornament themselves with ba…
READ MORE »

Aldo Rossi Architecture

Image
Aldo Rossi (born 1931), one of the most influential architects during the period 1972-1988, has accomplished the unusual feat of achieving international recognition in three distinct areas: theory, drawing, and architecture. In 1966 Aldo Rossi published the book The Architecture of the City, which subsequently was translated into several languages and enjoyed enormous international success. Spurning the then fashionable debates on style, Aldo Rossi instead criticized the lack of understanding of the city in current architectural practice. Aldo Rossi argued that a city must be studied and valued as something constructed over time; of particular interest are urban artifacts that with-stand the passage of time. Despite the modern movement polemics against monuments, for example. Aldo Rossi held that the city remembers its past and uses that memory through monuments; that is, monuments give structure to the city.






















READ MORE »

Art Smith Jewelry

Image
Cuban-born, Brooklyn-raised Art Smith was one of the major modernist jewelers of the mid-twentieth century.  He attended Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art from 1942 to 1946 where he first pursued architectural studies but eventually abandoned them to concentrate on sculpture and the manipulation of three-dimensional forms. During the early 1940's he learned jewelry making while working part-time as a crafts supervisor at the Children’s Aid Society, and through a night course at New York University. He also worked for and was influenced by Winifred Mason, an African-American jewelry designer with a store in Greenwich Village.

In 1946, Smith opened his first store, also in Greenwich Village. Inspired by surrealism, biomorphism, and primitivism, Smith’s jewelry included large scale, asymmetrical forms made from hand-hammered elements of silver, copper, or brass, sometimes combined with quartz or other colorful stones.  His jewelry explored organic shapes and both p…
READ MORE »

Black Noir

Image
Since the beginning of time, black has a lot to divulge, it expressed mourning, poverty, denial, revolt and it exalted the avant-garde and haute-couture.   Both rive gauche and rive droite, from lacerated and leather, to the perfection of the little black dress, from brutal bondage clothing to the monks’ modern hoods, from the black jacket to black coffee, black made a lot of ink flow.  
Black is able to express love and romanticism as well as hate and racism, in equal proportion and with the same ardor.   Black is seen in lace of a domination mask, veil of seduction and burka of discretion.  Yet, behind dark veils hides a myriad of attitudes, divergent tastes and disparate characters. 
In a chaotic century, which still cannot find its way, it seems that there is only one way out. One direction to take.  We have to merge opposites and erase contrasts to embrace and exploit the ideas of cross-breeds from various disciplines to finally bridge the gap between the two brains. To abolish …
READ MORE »

Photographer Ellen Von Unwerth

Image
Ellen Von Unwerth began her career in the fashion industry as a model herself before deciding to get on the other side of the lens. She gained credibility as a photographer in the '90s when her work for GUESS jeans became popular, shooting famous models like Claudia Schiffer, Eva Herzigova, and the late Anna Nicole Smith. von Unwerth has continued building her reputation throughout the past two decades, doing work both for top publications and independently, while also creating album art and doing private shoots for many celebrities. Her name is now one of the largest in the fashion industry and synonymous with the photographic beauty of women. The following 100 are our favorite from her vast collection.






















READ MORE »

Ṗhotographer Helmut Newton

Image
Helmut Newton, a feckless, un-scholarly boy grew up to transform fashion photography.  Probably the most imitated and controversial fashion photographer of his time, Newton earned the nickname King of Kink as well as a fortune. “If a photographer says he is not a voyeur, he is an idiot,”  Newton once said.  His erotic and dream like images were like a peep through a key hole, spied moments of a heightened reality.
As a person, Newton was unsurprisingly complex. A bohemian and yet very pragmatic, he insisted that he was not an intellectual and did not stand for much. His sardonic humor, delight in mischief, and nonchalant sense of irony are obvious in his work. He considered America weird, exotic, and outrageous.  Though a slave to his own imagination, Newton claimed that his photographs were entirely based in reality.  He  was inspired by Film Noir, Expressionist Cinema, S & M and Surrealism. His many obsessions were rooted in his childhood, in the decadent, avant-garde capital t…
READ MORE »

Beverly Hills Mansion

Image
Whipple Russell architect designed modern mansion. This beautiful residence at 1201 Laurel Way in Beverly Hills is presently on the market (but not listed on the MLS), for a mere $36,000,000. The modern mansion has spectacular views, stunning exterior design, terraced landscaping, glass-walled garage and an incredible wrap-around swimming pool. While it's not an actual moat, the swimming pool of this incredible spec house actually does extend around more than half the exterior.























READ MORE »

Sculptor Henry Moore

Image
Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English sculptor and artist. He is best known for his abstract bronze sculptures which are located in various prominent public places. Moore is the most influential and famous sculptures of his generation.
"I really make the little idea from clay and i hold it in my hand. I can turn it, look at it from underneath, see it from one view, hold it against the sky, imagine it any size I like, and really be in control, almost like God creating something." - Henry Moore












READ MORE »

Photographer William Klein

Image
The social documentary tendencies of William Klein’s oeuvre find their roots in his home town of New York City. Though he began as a painter working in Paris and Milan, Klein was enticed back to the U.S. by photography and immediately began working for Vogue. Klein's first assignment was to create a photo-journal of New York, a project that began his raw city portraits (succeeded ones of by Rome, Tokyo, and Moscow) where he aimed to personally intervene in the images, unlike the "invisible camera" of his predecessor Henri Cartier-Bresson.  Although working for Vogue was primarily to fund projects such as photo books and his  cult-films like 'Who Are You Polly Maggoo', Klein became a renowned and revolutionary photographer both in fashion and elsewhere. He is best known for his garish and controversial images, grainy, high-contrast, and always wide-angle lens.














READ MORE »

SEARCH THIS BLOG