Reference Page: May 2005

Delayed Gratification
Construction of MARTa Herford is on schedule for its May 7 opening. Originally the project was conceived by the city’s economics minister as a “competence center for the regional furniture industry,” but somehow the sexiness of this idea failed to make an impression. For more on what resulted instead, check out www.marta-herford.de. Before it opens, MARTa is offering guided architectural tours of the exhibition and administrative spaces as well as the grounds. The cost is a mere euro—plus you get to wear a yellow hard hat. To learn more, call (49) 52-21-99-44-3015 or e-mail bildung@marta-herford.de.

Green Incentive
Survey projects by Ken Wilson—who won the 2005 Designer of the Year award for interior design from Contract magazine—at www.envisionsite.com. MTS, the Institute for Market Transformation to Sustainability, offers sustainable-design training modules on its site, mts.sustainableproducts.com, including one on Green Commercial Interiors that features Wilson’s expertise. Go to the U.S. Green Buildings Council site, www.usgbc.org, for free downloads of LEED Commercial Interiors guidelines.

A Modest Proposal
On the official Web site of the city of Warsaw, www.e-warsaw.pl, you can roll over “City Hall” on the menu and click on “Mayor of Warsaw Lech Kaczynski” to view Hizzoner wearing an extraordinary garland and to find a link to an interview with the man on the changing city. Under “Investments in Warsaw,” click on “Documents” to get access to the Capital City of Warsaw Development Plan. Note: a very small “next page” link at the bottom of each screen helps you navigate. Polish speakers can look up stories by Dariusz Bartoszewicz on the site of Gazeta Wyborcza, wyborcza.gazeta.pl.

Twinkle, Twinkle
To watch a demo of Katamari Damacy or to learn more about this alternate universe from a crudely rendered dog named Dr. Katamari, go to www.katamaridamacy.jp (click on “ENG” near the bottom of the screen). If you wish to make your home or office more psychedelic, the site offers downloads of screensavers, postcards, bookmarks, and spectacular “papercraft” toys (PDFs that you print out and fold like origami). Namco also has an American site, www.namco.com, but it’s all business by comparison. For a great book on the game-design theory, check out Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (MIT Press, 2003) by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman.

Up in the Old Hotel
Check out Allyson Mitchell’s and Bruno Billio’s artwork on their Web sites— www.allysonmitchell.ca and www.brunobillio.com, respectively. Call the Gladstone Hotel at 416-531-4635 or drop them a line at 1214 Queen Street West, Toronto, to reserve a room. Rates were not finalized by press time, but the Gladstone promises that accommodations will be “comfortable and very affordable.” If you ever go anywhere near Toronto, you’ll definitely want to consult the online calendar of events on www.gladstonehotel.com. Packed through the end of the year with readings, art openings, films, concerts, and design events, it lays bare Christina Zeidler’s sinister scheme to precipitate a Parkdale neighborhood renaissance. As if this weren’t enough, close inspection also reveals that they totally love to party at the Gladstone—e.g., three nights of karaoke per week and the “Hump Day Bump” on Wednesdays.

The Cruise Ship Diaries
The cruise ship Infinity unleashes from its well-stocked pantries a barrage of gastronomic indulgences upon its passengers. According to the company, the ship carries 9,235 eggs, 2,100 pounds of lobster, 350 bottles of whiskey, 450 pounds of jelly, 2,450 tea bags, and 24,236 pounds of beef (at least 45 steers’ worth) for every 14-day voyage. Prices for a six-night cruise start around $700 and end in the realm of perfect insanity. Notable personalities for Celebrity Cruises in 2005 include Ernest Borgnine, CBS news correspondent Ike Pappas, astronaut Walt Cunningham, and actor Larry Hagman, best known for playing J.R. on Dallas. Check out the artwork of Tomasz Rut—(featured in auctions aboard the Infinity)—at www.rutfineart.com. You’ve really got to see it to believe it. For the brilliant account of another well-traveled sophisticate who boarded a Celebrity cruise ship and sailed straight into the great American cultural divide, check out the title essay of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace (Little Brown, 1997). You can also read Tom Vanderbilt’s article “Permanent Vacation,” on the likelihood that gigantic cruise ships will become the gated communities of tomorrow in the February 2002 issue of Metropolis.

Pier Over Troubled Waters
The Bianimale Foundation is technically a nonprofit “committed to using all forms of artistic expression to increase public awareness of and support for the protection and conservation of animals and their natural habitats.” But the Web site for Gregory Colbert’s Ashes and Snow exhibition, www.ashesandsnow.org, which starts off with a series of his photos of an Indian woman dancing with an elephant, appears to be the only official source for online information about said foundation. There are also a few obscure thumbnails of the Nomadic Museum on the site. The Web site for Shigeru Ban Architects, www.shigerubanarchitects.com, doesn’t display any images of the project as yet, but you can get a good survey of his other paper-tube projects dating from 1989. LOT-EK, the architects formerly known as LOT/EK (www.lot-ek.com; see also Metropolis, August/September 2000, p. 65), are the original shipping-container innovators, though their work has been eclipsed in recent years by an onslaught of container-built-housing imitators. See www.container.50megs.com for a comprehensive list.

Light Sculpting
The splash page for Petra Blaisse’s firm Inside Outside promises a new Web site to come at www.insideoutside.nl. In case you missed the March 14 issue of the New Yorker (“Intelligent Design: Can Rem Koolhaas kill the skyscraper?”), it retreads some familiar ground regarding the designer’s collaboration with OMA on the Seattle Public Library (Metropolis, October 2004, p. 97) and her long-term role as “second companion” to Rem Koolhaas (Metropolis, April 2001, p. 84).

Healthy Obsession
Valcucine introduced its Artematica Vitrum Kitchen in April. You might want to swing by the company’s new showroom at 66 Crosby Street in Soho, especially during the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, www.icff.com, May 14-17, when Valcucine will unveil its new Arieus cabinetry as well as “the first carbon-fiber kitchen in the world.” Need further incentive? Expect an open house with food and wine each evening during the fair. If nothing else, visit the Web site www.valcucine.it. Look out for the rather easy-to-miss English-language icon near the bottom of the screen.

United State of Design
The new Guthrie Theater on the River, www.guthrietheater.org, and the expansion of the Walker Art Center’s sculpture garden, www.walkerart.org, onto the site of the Ralph Rapson’s original Guthrie Theater have inspired a local preservation effort, www.savetheguthrie.org. Find out more about University of Minnesota Design Institute’s Design Camp, Twin typeface, Big Urban Game, and this spring’s highly anticipated Else/Where: Mapping (University of Minnesota Press, 2005) at design.umn.edu. A catalog for Charlie Lazor’s new FlatPak House can be downloaded at www.flatpakhouse.com. And on May 4, a whole crew from Minneapolis will make an appearance at the Chambers Hotel in New York to discuss the city’s many design-related projects: culture.minneapolis.org.

Power House
Bulthaup b3 is not only a floating kitchen; it also comes in floor-standing and foot-standing models. The kitchen system has won the Good Design award from the Chicago Athenaeum and the Elle Deco International Design Award. Check out the Web site, www.bulthaup.com, which is almost as slick as the kitchens. You will find Bulthaup in booth number 704 at ICFF. Call 800-808-2923 to find a nearby showroom.

Triple Ingenuity
Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis—whose work includes the 1998 renovation of the Van Alen Institute, Lozoo restaurant (Metropolis, October 2003, p. 44), and an ingenious office space solution for young architects (Metropolis, May 2004, p. 74)—features images of Tides, Xing, Fluff, and a handful of other projects under “LTL News” on www.ltlwork.net.