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Hilltop Village: Mini Neighborhood Tops a Green-Walled Store

27 Jun

[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

hilltop village 1

Fittingly enough for a city that’s all about sprawl, this hilltop village concept for Los Angeles combines residential and retail functions in a way that preserves the conventional house-and-yard format rather than stacking it all in a skyscraper. MAD Architects cover a retail building in vertical greenery to transform it into a hilly setting for a miniature neighborhood on its roof.

hilltop village 3

8600 Wilshire essentially distills the visual identity of Beverly Hills into a single development, clustering white living volumes with their own outdoor spaces atop high-end shops with exterior walls covered in succulents and vines. The complex includes three townhouses, five villas, two studios and eight condominiums, though from street level, you can only see the uppermost structures.

hilltop village 4

Made of white glass, the living volumes appear opaque from the street, but bear transparent facades facing an interior courtyard set on the roof of the single-story retail space. The green wall mimics both the city’s iconic hills and the tall privacy hedges seen around upscale houses, and replicating the established hierarchy found around the city: expense real estate above versus less-valuable property below. “In high-density cities, Modernist and Post-Modernist housing typically prioritizes functions and formats over human relationships to the environment,” say the architects. “For 8600 Wilshire, MAD considers the possibility of a new model for West Coast vernacular amid the sprawling density of Los Angeles. MAD purposes a harmonious architectural space of human experience by placing residents in the spiritual landscape of nature.”

[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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Unboxing: Angled Metal-Clad Canopy Hints at Surprises in Store

05 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

unboxing storefront design

There is nothing like a good mystery to draw people in, but adapting that maxim in an architectural context flies in the face of convention, making this barely-open-box building all the more effective in how it employs the element of surprise.

unboxing exterior facade night

unboxing front facade

While closing people off to what is for sale may seem antithetical to showcasing wares. At the same time, that is precisely the paradox Herzog & De Meuron’s latest storefront for a fashionable chain of Japanese boutiques uses to its advantage.

unboxing facade interior

This new shop for Miu Miu, intended to be its flagship operation, works on both fronts, playing on our desire to unbox from outside while creating an intimate interior space within.

unboxing main entry

While the outside is polished and minimalist, like the case of some fresh new smartphone, the inside is set up as much like a living room as a store, encouraging people to browse, linger, sit and lounge among the various items for sale. Mannequins are set up as participants and exemplars, themselves sitting on the seats or floors, or leaning against racks in the store.

unboxing sitting spaces

“The typological model that best suited these considerations and specifications was a box placed directly at the level of the street, its cover slightly open to mark the entrance and allow pedestrians to look inside,” explain the architects. “Only then do they realize that the building is a shop. Here, under the oversized canopy, the two-storey interior is visible at a single glance, as if the volume had been sliced open with a big knife, turning the inside out.”

unboxing store interior chairs

unboxing living room

“The rounded, soft edges of the copper surfaces inside meet with the razor-sharp steel corners on the outside of the metal box, while the cave-like niches clad in brocade face the central space of the shop like loges in a theater. The shop on two tall storeys not only presents enticing goods on tables and in display cases; it is also like a spacious and comfortable home with inviting sofas and armchairs.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

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Shop in a Swimming Pool: Neglected Space Turned into a Store

13 Dec

[ By Steph in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

swimming pool store aoyama 1

Until recently, this indoor swimming pool on the vacant ground floor of a 1970s apartment building in Tokyo was just an empty space, dry and disused for years. Now it’s a pop-up shop by Nobuo Araki known as ‘The Pool Aoyama‘ hawking clothing, accessories and swim-themed promotional items. The designers left the pool almost entirely intact, installing a glass floor that mimics the look of water.

swimming pool aoyama 5

swimming pool store aoyama 8

The shell of the abandoned pool and its steel ladder have become key elements of the final design, with the pool walls defining the space of the shop. Wooden stairs on either side of the pool meet to create a sort of bridge across the glass. White shelving units are mounted along the edges to display goods, and U-shaped stainless steel clothing racks hanging from the ceiling echo the look of pool hand rails.

swimming pool store aoyama 2

swimming pool store aoyama 3

The designers were drawn to the soft light, charm and quirkiness of the space, and the shallow depth of the pool lends itself well for adaptation into a showroom. A newly installed glass ceiling floods the room with natural light, and the bathrooms were turned into fitting rooms.

swimming pool aoyama 4

swimming pool store aoyama 6

swimming pool store aoyama 10

Entering the shop feels a bit like gaining access to a secret underground space that few are savvy to, as the door is simply marked with an inconspicuous sign reading ‘The Pool.’

[ By Steph in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

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Had a Great Time Photowalking Last Week at the Microsoft Store #MSStoreWalkSF

25 Oct

Microsoft

I had a great time out photowalking last Thursday night with a great SF crew around downtown SF. The walk was hosted by the always awesome Microsoft store in San Francisco (go check them out in the Westfield Centre in SF).

Thank you to everyone who came out for the walk. It was great to see old friends and also make some new ones.

We started out the walk in the center itself and got some nice photos of the great dome. From there we made our way up Powell Street, shooting some of the local color around Union Square and eventually made our way to the very top of Nob Hill. Originally we planned for the walk to take a turn down California Street and head towards downtown, but we were sort of distracted by the always imposing and always grand Fairmont Hotel atop Nob Hill.

I've Got a Room at the Top of the World

We explored the lobby of the Fairmont and an elevator of us also somehow found our way to the top of the hotel with some of the most amazing views of San Francisco that exist.

After our fun at the Fairmont we headed back down California and cut through Chinatown to shoot this distinctive SF neighborhood.

Finally we finished up our way back up Market Street back to the Microsoft store where our ever so gracious host treated us to a spread of food and drinks to finish up an eventful walk.

During the walk folks uploaded their photos from their mobile phones directly to a OneDrive account and we got to watch them in full high res glory on the Microsoft store’s 110 inch LCD display while we refueled on artichoke hearts and chicken skewers.

I was super impressed with so many of the great shots that people got on the walk. If you want to see some of what was shot check out these photos on Flickr here.

I shot with two cameras on the walk. I shot with my trusty Canon 5D Mark III and on mobile I shot with one of the Nokia Lumia 1020 mobile phones.

There Has to Be an Invisible Sun

All of the photos that are in this blog post were shot with the Lumia 1020. The camera on this phone is the best camera on any phone at present. The phone has a 41 megapixel(!) camera that actually shoots in RAW! It’s got a Zeiss lens and I was super impressed with what it was able to do. I liked that the camera could be used in 100% manual mode. Having more granular control over what I was trying to do with it was really helpful. You can pick this phone up for $ 49 with a contract here.

*Disclosure: this walk and post were sponsored by Microsoft and I received compensation for working with them on it.

Jesus Christ Loves Barry Blanchard

His New View

Buy Me Some Red Shoes Baby

Scream

Escape

Crown

Sky Light

Neon Dancers

The Angels of Market Street

More Time for Architechts

Betty

Baby

Sharp Lines

Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

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Western Digital’s My Book Thunderbolt Duo, An Awesome Way to More Securely Store Your Photos

06 Oct

Western Digital's My Book Thunderbolt Duo, An Awesome Way to More Securely Store Your Photos

For the past month or so I’ve been testing out one of the 8TB Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duos and I have to say I dig it. Before trying this out, my entire storage setup was built around Drobos. I’ve got 2 Drobo 5Ds with 15TB each in them and a Drobo Mini.

I was interested to see what the performance would be like with Western Digital’s large storage solution and I have to say I’m a fan.

What I like about it:

1. It’s quiet. So quiet. My Drobos are not bad, but the Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo is even quieter. You don’t even know it’s on or there, except for the tiny little pinhole light that is on in the front, and of course you see it on your Mac. For some reason one of my Drobo 5Ds feels like it almost goes to sleep sometimes. When I try to access it in the finder I have to wait a few seconds and I hear it powering up a bit. This doesn’t happen with the My Book Thunderbolt Duo.

2. Thunderbolt is sooooo fast. Whoever invented Thunderbolt should get a Nobel prize for speed. I can’t believe how quickly I can copy hundreds of gigabytes of photos around.

3. The Duo is a bit cheaper than the Drobo for those who may be on more of a budget and need less storage. To get 4TB of replicated storage on a Drobo 5D I’d have to buy about 6TB worth of drives. This would cost me about $ 800. You can buy an 8TB My Book Thunderbolt Duo for about $ 650 or so. You can mirror the drives so that you get two copies of everything or about 4TB of replicated storage. Because the Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo doesn’t rely on a proprietary format for replication, if one drive fails, you would always have a perfect backup copy on the other. I haven’t had a problem with Drobo’s proprietary format before, but it’s something that some folks have criticized in the past.

4. Primary data is automatically backed up. I can’t use a backup strategy that requires my manual contribution. With both the Drobos and the My Book Thunderbolt Duo your primary versions of photos are more secure.

5. The Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo is smaller than the Drobo 5D and much lighter.

Setting up the My Book Thunderbolt Duo was easy. It’s just plug and play. Similar to my Drobos.

I know a lot of people will probably comment on this post about how they are doing things even cheaper by building their own solution with their own replicated in home RAID servers, etc. That’s just great, but I’m not a very technical guy when it comes to computer hardware and I’d wayyyyy rather pay a little bit more and have a Thunderbolt solution that is just plug and play, without me having to do any work, or do any coding, or manually buying and installing drives into a server body and all that. Different strokes for different folks though and each person should do whatever works best for them.

There is also a 4TB and 6TB version of the My Book Thunderbolt Duo. You can learn more about them including all of the technical specs on Western Digital’s site here.

Mmmmm... 8TB of @westerndigital storage. Looking forward to trying this puppy out!

A HUGE disclaimer on any device like the Drobo or My Book Thunderbolt Duo. These solutions may protect you against hard drive failure, but they will not protect you against fire, theft, etc. For that reason you may also want to incorporate both offsite and/or cloud storage to whatever your backup strategy may be. I see replicated hard drives really only as a first line of defense. In my own case I also purchased a large fireproof gun safe and when I’m out of the house or on a trip or something I usually lock my drives up in there. I also have off site backup storage for my images and I’m actually working on a plan this year to begin moving my offsite storage into a bank security deposit vault.

The book next to the My Book Thunderbolt Duo by the way to compare size is the excellent expanded edition version of Robert Frank’s The Americans which was reissued a few years back and is *highly* recommended. One of the best photography books ever published. It’s one I go back to and revisit over and over again.

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The Peeling Project: Thinking Outside The Big Box Store

10 Aug

[ By Steve in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

BEST Products The Peeling Project 1a
What happened when an edgy architecture firm met an open-minded chain of big box retail stores? The very appealing Peeling Project, that’s what.

BEST Products The Peeling Project 1

We’ll leave it for others to document the startling and unlikely history of The Peeling Project in detail; our task at hand here is to display, in chronological order, the unique and individual extreme makeovers given to nine Best Products catalog showroom stores between 1971 and 1984. We’ll also show, if possible, the fate of these bold experiments in retail architecture following Best Products’ demise in 1998. We’ll begin where it all began: the Best Products store at 5400 Midlothian Turnpike in Richmond, VA.

BEST Products The Peeling Project 1c

BEST Products The Peeling Project 1d

Designed (as were all of the Project’s, er, projects) by architecture firm SITE Inc. (“Sculpture In The Environment”), the initial installation featuring a front facade that appears to be peeling away from the building ended up giving its name to the entire series of nine works. Built with safety in mind, the surrealistically embellished front facade was constructed with care and at obvious expense. Even so, that didn’t prevent new owners the Daily Pawn Shop from reverting the building to its original boring boxy look shortly after acquiring it.

Indeterminate Façade

BEST Products Indeterminate Facade 2a

BEST Products Indeterminate Facade 2b

Built in 1974-75, Indeterminate Façade was the second of SITE’s collaborations with Best Products and over time has emerged as the most famous. Located at 10765 Kingspoint Road in Houston, TX, the store started out as a standard large building but SITE artists then extended the outside walls unevenly to evoke a “distressed” appearance – the highlight of which was a waterfall of brick and masonry spilling onto the front awning.

BEST Products Indeterminate Facade 2c

BEST Products Indeterminate Facade 2d

Perhaps due to its notoriety, Indeterminate Façade remained unchanged through at least one change of ownership after Best Products declared bankruptcy for the final time. Sometime in 2003, however, the artistic extensions suddenly and mysteriously vanished. Some say the building’s owner heard rumors the City of Houston was about to declare the structure to be of historical significance and feared losing the freedom to alter the building at will in the future.

The Notch Project

BEST Products Notch Project 1a

BEST Products Notch Project 1b

BEST Products Notch Project 1c

When a Best Products store at 1901 Arden Way in Sacramento, CA known as The Notch Project opened in 1977, balloons poured out of the gaping “notch” that appeared when the building’s 14ft high, 45-ton front corner wedge slid aside to reveal the main entrance. Each morning thereafter, the corner piece would slide aside and each day at closing time it would slide back into position – sans balloons, mind you.

BEST Products Notch Project 1d

After Best Products sold off its bricks & mortar assets, the former Notch Project building was bought by Best Buy – an infamously non-innovative corporation who’s directors dictated all its stores must conform to the corporate look. We’re sure you’ll agree that when it came to imaginative branding, Best Products bested Best Buy by far.

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The Peeling Project Thinking Outside The Big Box Store

[ By Steve in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

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Just Add Monsters: Chris McMahon’s Modified Thrift Store Art

27 Jul

[ By Steve in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

Chris McMahaon Empty Swing monster thrift store painting
Artist Chris McMahon looks at cheap thrift store landscape paintings and sees something missing. Then he paints in the hidden monsters for all to enjoy.

Chris McMahon Empty Swing monster thrift store painting original

Artist Chris McMahon first began buying thrift store landscape paintings for economic reasons: often costing a mere dollar apiece, the paintings were far cheaper than new, unused canvases and McMahon saved plenty by covering the dime-a-dozen scenes with gesso and starting anew. That all changed one day when McMahon bought a landscape scene that caught his attention – not for what it showed but for what appeared to be missing. Check out the original “The Empty Swing” painting above and you’ll probably agree, though McMahon’s “completion” of the scene might not sit well with overly imaginative squeamish types.

The Mountain Monster

Chris McMahon Mountain Monster painting

“I’ve always liked giant monsters,” admits McMahon at his website, Involuntary Collaborations, “from rubber-suit Godzilla to Cloverfield.” We think The Mountain Monster, above, is a worthy addition to the pantheon. Stalking ominously through a backlit landscape of stunted conifers and fetid mist, the crazed creature appears to fit the scene perfectly. One wonder if the original artist would agree should they be presented with McMahon’s respectful augmentation.

The Swamp Monster

Swamp Monster thrift shop painting Chris McMahon

Somehow the swamp monster in the eponymously titled painting above, McMahon’s third such dip in the Involuntary Collaboration pool, doesn’t seem all that monstrous given he (or she) is giving the viewer a friendly wave. Even so, the scene is disconcerting to say the least. “This is the first one that I added my signature below the original artist’s,” states McMahon. “I feel better if the original artist has signed his or her landscape – that way it doesn’t look (as much) like I’m taking credit for another person’s work.”

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Just Add Monsters Chris Mcmahons Modified Thrift Store Art

[ By Steve in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

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Unverpacked: Zero-Waste Grocery Store Packages No Products

11 Jun

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

original unverpackt zero waste

The first of its kind in the country, this German supermarket strips away wasteful packaging and sells its goods in bulk to customers who bring or borrow recycled and reusable containers.

Set to open Berlin this summer, Original Unverpackt is to be the first of a series of stores using a sustainable model similar to co-ops but at a larger scale and aimed at mass market consumers.

no packaging all bulk

Nothing here comes in a disposable box, bag, jar – nothing is shrink-wrapped or tetra-packed. Bulk and gravity bins dot the isles and hang from the walls. Even beverage stations use refillable bottles.

sustainble german grocery store

Keeping the experience minimal and easy, creators Sara Wolf and Milena Glimbovski are offering just one variety of each product type, reducing choice fatigue and focusing on quality and simplicity.

gravity drop container design

Having crowdfunded over 100,000 Euros to start things out, the supermarket is tackling a 16-million-ton waste problem (just in Germany) but ultimately aims to make a global impact as well, changing the way consumers think about shopping and sustainability.

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

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Calumet Oak Brook, Illinois store reopens this Sunday

10 May

Screen_Shot_2014-05-09_at_10.51.50_AM.png

A little more than a week after C&A Marketing Inc. announced its Calumet Photographic acquisition, the company is reopening its first Calumet store this Sunday in Oak Brook, Illinois. One of the newer stores in the chain and, according to C&A, one of the most successful, the company promises the Oak Brook location will have the inventory that professionals expect. Learn more

News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Open-Source Street Store Offers Free Clothes for Homeless

05 Mar

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Guerilla Ads & Marketing. ]

pop up store hangars

Donated boxes of right-sized clothing can be a boon for those who cannot afford another choice, but this clever approach empowers people in need to choose their own apparel.

pop up sidewalk homeless

pop up shoppers

The Street Store assistants set out flat-pack cardboard hangars, signs and stands along sidewalks and fences, encouraging people to drop off clothing. Volunteers also help passerby in need package what what they find, and those with something to give find a place to put their donations.

pop up helper volunteer

Though the project was started in Cape Town, South Africa, as a collaboration between M&C Saatchi Abel and the Haven Night Shelter Welfare Organisation, it is offered as open-source to applicants from around the world who wish to use the files and create their own regional variant.

pop up shop volunteer

The open-air approach makes everything more accessible for both donating and recipient parties; it also renders indoor spaces and infrastructure redundant, enabling pop-ups to happen in various public spaces.

pop up cardboard elements

pop up street store

As for the first day’s effort in the project’s original city: “Over 1,000 homeless people visited our store that day. Each put together an outfit that they wanted. An outfit, that for many, was the first they had ever been able to choose for themselves.”

360Photography

Posts Tagged ‘Store’

Hilltop Village: Mini Neighborhood Tops a Green-Walled Store

Unboxing: Angled Metal-Clad Canopy Hints at Surprises in Store

Shop in a Swimming Pool: Neglected Space Turned into a Store

Had a Great Time Photowalking Last Week at the Microsoft Store #MSStoreWalkSF

Western Digital’s My Book Thunderbolt Duo, An Awesome Way to More Securely Store Your Photos