DESIGNing
The Pantone Hotel in Brussels, seven floors each designated a different color to match your mood.

The QuaDror is just plain brilliant. It’s everything that innovative, effective design should be, check out the vid here. Hats off to Studio Dror.

The work of Margaret Fletcher is subtle and calming, we’re big fans.
-thanks to Margaret

ARCHITECTing
One of the greatest examples of architectural expressionism is complete with its $20M renovation and on the market to potential hotels. Check out the brand-spanking new images of the TWA Terminal here.
-thanks to Tony

Check out the new 60,000 square foot Museo Soumaya in Mexico City by Fernando Romero. There’s also some dang cool construction pics here.
-thanks to Hugo

The work of Dietrich and Untertrafalier continues to inspire.
-thanks to Todd

Take a quick architectural tour of Norway.
-thanks to Brian T

It’s difficult to tell where bending the rules ends and deception begins. The New York Times does a great job describing the situation of Brooklyn based architect Robert Scarano.
-thanks to Andrew Rice

CONSTRUCTing

The Four Hour Chair was developed by Swedish design student Dag Elfgren. In his own words:
I’m a Swedish student and as my senior year project I’ve designed a chair that anyone can build in less than 4 hours using materials worth $25. The purpose of the project is to show that you can build personal and functional furniture, spending the same amount of time and money as you would do if you were to go to a big furniture chain and buy the same chair as everybody else. The result is called The Four Hour Chair. It’s inexpensive, easy to build and made out of MDF.
More photos and a builders manual is available for free here.
-thanks to Dag

We’re not sure if this work is pure genius or if it’s simply a case of having too much cardboard around without enough to do. We’ll let you be the judge.
-thanks to Jerry

It doesn’t get much more sustainable than Patrick Dougherty’s nest houses.
-thanks to Jerry

EXHIBITing
As part of Palm Springs’ annual celebration of all things midcentury modern, the Palm Springs Art Museum is hosting “Steel and Shade: The Architecture of Donald Wexler”.
-thanks to Dot

PHOTOGRAPHing
We’re really digging these tumblr blogs for their pure visual delights

The image below was taken in New Zealand’s Christchurch just moments after the earthquake on February 22nd.
-thanks to James

DIAGRAMMing
The City Forward site graphically documents all things urban; traffic, crime, employment, water usage, etc. The site takes advantage of publicly available data about metropolitan areas and turns it into visually comprehendible information. Brilliant.
-thanks to Kevin

We love seeing technology being used to share information, techniques and knowledge. Brian O’Reilly over at Via Architecture is posting a three part tutorial on how to create an attractive site plan using hand drawing and Photoshop. We’re on board.
-thanks to Jen K.

BLOGGing
Check out We Are Design Bureau for your dose of cutting edge design.
-thanks to Jessica

SELLing
Steven Holl’s Stretto House is for sale and apparently if you have to ask how much, it’s out of your league.

PROMOTing
We continue to see some very nice examples of self-promotion from recent architecture graduates. The smart ones know that showing inspiring design and a clean, easy to navigate interface, is going to produce results. And they’re right, lend your eyes to Cassie Hibbert’s site for a few minutes.
-thanks to Cassie

BROADCASTing
The Plan is a weekly design talk show on Radio Adelaide – discussing all things architecture, environment and affect. They interview all kinds of cool design-types and they’ve got some good video clips up on their site.
-thanks to Martin

QUOTing
…our favorite quote lately:
If you want to succeed, double your failure rate
-Thomas J. Watson, president of IBM from 1914-1956

 

CLOTHing
We’ve notices that e-tailors are on the rise. The Mr. Porter site especially caught our attention for its design forward appeal.
-thanks to York

FILMing
Ayn Rand’s follow-up to The Fountain Head, Atlas Shrugged, is soon to be released as a film, validating a decade of rumors. Check out the clip below.
-thanks to William

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