Reference Page: December 2007

A Fine Bottle
Bid farewell to jewel-collared Chihuahuas. Babies, informed sources tell us, are the hot accessory of 2008. That might explain why the Adiri Natural Nurser—the super-realistic, polycarbonate-free “Ultimate Baby Bottle”—was on back order at www.adiri.com the last time we checked. To read reviews of other coveted baby goods, such as the $824 Oeuf Crib or BumGenius! cloth diapers ($15.95), visit www.alphamom.com and peruse the “Product Ratings.” Then compare notes with other mummy sophisticates and the occasional dad at www.urbanbaby.com, a message board and ­parenting-advice Web site. For more rigorous kvetching, check out Judith Warner’s Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety (Riverhead, 2005), available at www.perfectmadness.net.

Citizen Mapping
MIT’s Senseable City Laboratory has big plans for the WikiCity project, senseable.mit.edu/wikicity, coming soon to Copenhagen, the Scottish Highlands Islands, and Amsterdam. (It may also make an appearance Stateside in Boston.) But while we’re waiting for WikiCity to spread its user-generated map across the globe, real-time urban data doesn’t have to be limited to looking out of a tall building. Live traffic conditions in Los Angeles, www.trafficinfo.lacity.org, and New York, www.nyctmc.org, are already available online. Our cell phones may not be able to link us to a network of constantly updating location data, but they can connect us to the voices of celebrities giving tours of New York on www.talkingstreet.com. If reading about cutting-edge mapping technology got you thinking like a cartographer, check out Denis Wood’s The Power of Maps (The Guilford Press, 1992), or listen to Wood discuss maps on This American Life via the program’s Web site, www.thisamericanlife.org (search for “mapping”), or by ordering a CD of the episode, which comes in a slipcase spectacularly designed by Chris Ware (go to “In the store”).

Sublime Insanity
Lest you think the Bowery is still “the street of forgotten men,” behold 40 Bond Street, hotelier-developer Ian Schra­ger’s latest paean to the cashed-up 1980s. A one-bedroom apartment in this hotel-style condominium sold for $3.5 million; a triplex, for $10 million. Ricky Martin is “Shaking his Bond Bond,” to quote the New York Post, in 2H, and Mr. Schrager plans to settle into the top three floors. All this has been duly noted in various blogs shamelessly devoted to real estate porn; our favorite is Curbed, www.curbed.com. Enter “40 Bond” in its search engine for a high-strung history of the project. Care to join the voyeurs? Visit www.40bond.com. Best to skip the intro, a string of silly quotes from Schrager (“Now more than ever the status quo is unacceptable”), and make a beeline for the floor plans or, better yet, the amenities. Oh, baby! Thanks to a sym­biotic relationship with the Gramercy Park Hotel, www.gramercyparkhotel.com, residents get guaranteed entrance to the exclusive Rose Bar (not even Paris Hilton is allowed!) and keys to Gramercy Park. As for 40 Bond exclusives: units include Herzog & de Meuron double vanities in glacier-white Corian marble, smoked-Austrian-oak floors, Konstantin Grcic–designed polished-chrome door levers, Miele kitchens, and a raft of expensive, custom-made stuff. It’s enough to make us want to renounce worldly possessions and move into a monastery, but we wouldn’t want to miss Schrager’s next venture, a Miami Beach hotel by architect John Pawson—no stranger to monasteries himself: www.johnpawson.com/architecture/monastery.

Private Islands
Finding inspiration in nature isn’t just about having a picture of an eagle with the word inspiration in big gold letters underneath it—it’s about stealing great ideas from the ulti­mate copyright-free design laboratory: the natural world. Science writer Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (William Morrow, 1997), has founded both the nonprofit Biomimicry Institute, www.biomimicryinstitute.org, and the Biomimicry Guild, www.biomimicryguild.com, a consultancy specializing in design solutions inspired by nature. Here, watch a talk by Benyus on 12 sustainable ideas from nature: www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/18. Biomimicry has limitless potential, and it’s not always the most attractive or well-known animals that inspire the most intelligent, efficient design. When Mercedes was looking for a fish to inspire its new Bionic Car concept, it ignored the elegant swordfish and sharks, and focused instead on the humble boxfish—a fat, silly little creature that looks rather like Flounder from The Little Mermaid: www.treehugger.com/files/2005/06/daimlerchrysler.php. Another awesome (and awesomely named) example of biomimicry is the UltraCane, www.soundforesight.co.uk/new/ultracane.htm, a cane for the blind inspired by the echo­location of bats. It uses ultrasonic signals that bounce off objects and feed information back to the cane.

Life After the Atelier
Occasionally, we here at Reference like to play travel agent. This month’s itinerary: the intercontinental Arup Lighting tour, www.arup.com/lighting, an excuse to visit some excellent cities under the guise of “design research.” First stop: San Francisco’s de Young Museum, www.thinker.org, where Arup’s lighting fixtures complement one of the best art collections in the Bay Area. On to Seoul, South Korea, site of Ben van Berkel’s kaleidoscopic, light-studded Galleria Department Store; view footage of the swirling, shopping-inducing edifice on YouTube by searching its full name. Finally, it’s a quick 23-hour flight to Melbourne, Australia, where you can trot across the slinky Webb Bridge as it emits hoops of light. For professional purposes, of course.

Seven Seminal Spaces
The home of Donald Judd’s Artillery Sheds, Marfa, Texas, www.marfa.org, is surely one of the most artistically interesting small towns in an area of the state known as “the middle of nowhere.” Judd’s work is shown at the Chinati Foundation, which also has a large-scale installation by Dan Flavin, www.chinati.org/visit/collection/danflavin.php, the Leonardo da Vinci of fluorescent lighting. Visitors should not miss Prada Marfa, www.texasescapes.com/TexasArt/Prada-Marfa.htm, a permanent installation that resembles a tiny Prada boutique, complete with real shoes and handbags, on the side of a lonely road outside of town. Berlin artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset created the building out of biodegradable materials and left it completely unattended so that it will slowly fade away into the Texas landscape. No trip to Marfa would be complete without stopping by Ballroom Marfa, www.­ballroommarfa.org, an art space that has shown artists such as Peter Doig and Anstis and Victor Lundy in recent years. Nothing works up an appetite like severely minimalist sculpture, so after your mind has been pleasantly emptied by the harsh geometry of art and the Texas landscape, head to the ironically named Pizza Foundation, www.­pizzafoundation.com, home of the only pizza (and perhaps the only curved lines) in Marfa. If you can’t go this year, do what we do and live vicariously through David Byrne. Read blog entries from his 2006 trip at journal.davidbyrne.com/2006/07/7406.html.

Custom Cuts
You have to love a place where it is not only acceptable but encouraged to demand hockey hair. Get your locks done at one of 14 Rudy’s Barbershops, www.rudysbarbershop.com, the West Coast hipster hair salon that owes as much to New York’s Prive as to grandpa’s $7 clipper-blade trim. Reference is partial to Rudy’s at the Standard, in West Hollywood, www.standardhotel.com, a spacey hotel full of pod chairs, shag carpets, and pouty pretty people slouched around a sparkling outdoor swimming pool. The wait can stretch to two hours, but you can occupy yourself by watching the likes of Tara Reid staggering along the bar. In other words, it’s totally worth it! Less than two miles south on Melrose Avenue, a newer, more modest Rudy’s is plastered with a kitschy gangsta mural by Brooklyn artist Eric Elms, www.ericadorn.com—though we’re not sure what it has to do with tresses or Melrose (which is still noted for its vast selection of vinyl fetish wear). Meanwhile, Rudy’s founders Wade Weigel and Alex Calderwood are enjoying their first foray into hoteliering with Ace Portland and Ace Seattle, www.acehotel.com, boutique lodging for the young and studiously messy-haired. Have a peek at the MySpace page, www.myspace.com/acehotel, where you can post messages or muse on the hotel’s cute—and, we hope, figurative—slogan: “Thanks for sleeping with us.”