Bums and couture

I snapped this shot of a crazed bum in front of the Fashion Week tent in Bryant Park on Thursday morning last week and it sums up the high/ low of New York perfectly. The sign behind him drives home the point even further.

So the next time you're in London...

The next time you're in London, be in first or business class and be waiting for a British Airways connection.

These images are taken from the lounges in Heathrow's new Terminal Five. These stunning rooms were designed by London-based Davies & Baron and the effect on the whole is that of a luxury hotel. "Airport" doesn't figure into it in the least.

There are a total of six lounges in the new Terminal Five. The Galleries Arrival Lounge -- which is reserved for the airline's First and Club World passengers and Executive Club members with Gold status - features a special hydrotherapy area with 94 shower rooms that include jet showers, steam showers and luxury massage showers. All of the showers include Hansgrohe's Pharo Lift 2 shower panels. In addition, fittings from the Axor Massaud bathroom collection are used in the luxurious spa of the Galleries Arrival Lounge.

As an added benefit, every fixture in this new lounge area has been fitted with Hansgrohe's EcoSmart technology. EcoSmart is an integrated flow restrictor that limits water consumption to 7 liters a minute.

So as you can well imagine, luxury lounges such as these would take away the bitter taste left by transatlantic air travel. Or any air travel for that matter.

About the last thing I'd ever expect during a layover is a close encounter with a spa shower. Based on the looks of this new lounge area at Heathrow, I'd actually plan a long connection. These lounges are practically a destination unto themselves. Anybody been there and have a traveler's tale to tell? Anybody want to volunteer to check them out?

Johnny Grey speaks

On the heels of my post about Johnny Grey yesterday, Johnny sent me the following:

An invitation to review the Post Culinary Kitchen

When you have designed approximately five hundred kitchens or something like that, and I have been designing kitchens for too long to mention, then what keeps you going? I can answer in one word. Curiosity.  Never being quite content with what you do and always feeling you need to know more is not an anxiety condition but a necessity for mental health and belief in the future. It is also a truth to say that there is always more to find out.

Now that the kitchen has become a multi-purpose, de-constructed space, does anybody know what it really is anymore? Are there any rules and where is it going? These questions pre-occupy me. I have coined the phrase the Post-Culinary kitchen to explore the kitchen current state and start a dialogue with colleagues, householders, anyone who lives in their kitchen and yes, bloggers too.

Wikipedia defines ‘Post-modern’ as an aesthetic, literary, political or social philosophy, an attempt to describe a condition, or a state of being, or something concerned with changes to institutions and conditions. It describes it as a "cultural and intellectual phenomenon", especially since the 1920s' new movements in the arts. It is a good a place to start as any for discussions on the future of the kitchen.

If anyone interested in coming to hear me talk over the next month or so I am hosting an event just outside San Francisco, in Morago. That event takes place on Saturday, February 20th. There's a second event in Birmingham, UK on March 23rd at the KBB show. Please come and join me – both events are free.

For the San Francisco event please contact Jessica Weighley – see below. For KBB Birmingham, buy a ticket to attend the show.

Two Exclusive Johnny Grey Events Please join Johnny for one or both events!

February 20th, 2010
11am to 1:30pm

If anyone interested in coming to hear me talk about over the next month or so I am hosting an event just outside San Francisco, in Morago on Saturday 13t  and in Birmingham UK on March 23rd at the KBB show. Please come and join me – both events are free.

For the San Francisco event please contact Jessica Weighley – see below. For KBB Birmingham buy a ticket to attend the show.

Two Exclusive Johnny Grey Events Please join Johnny for one or both events!

February 20th, 2010: 11am to 1:30pm
Workshop and talk:
The Moraga Barn
925 Country Club Drive, Moraga California

Kitchen Design Workshop: Your opportunity to review an existing or proposed kitchen design with the "world's best kitchen designer," Johnny Grey. Grey and his West Coast design team will be on hand to answer your design questions; bring your plans and ideas and make the most of this exclusive event.
Please RSVP to confirm a specific time; walk-ins will be accommodated as possible.
Lecture: Johnny will be discussing his most recent thoughts on the "post-culinary kitchen". The current generation allies itself with a new way of looking at the sociology of the kitchen. It is transforming itself into a new room; the demise of the living room into a media oriented space means that for many households the kitchen is a defacto family room. When families get together through food and conversation many other benefits ensue!
Light refreshments will be served. Limited seating available;
Please RSVP to: jessica@johnnygrey.com
Johnny Grey Studios
2311 Filmore Street
San Francisco, CA USA 94115
JohnnyGrey.com

The light fixture at the top of the page is by Ingo Maurer, another one of my design heroes. According to Johnny, Maurer's Shattered China light fixtures sum up the idea of a deconstructed kitchen perfectly. Here here! says Paul

Where's Liz Taylor when you need her?

The only thing missing is Liz Taylor and Richard Burton engaged in some heavy petting.

From Design Mobel.

Johnny Grey is on the ground

In 2004, I was working as a designer in a high end studio for the first time in my life. I was well on my way to discovering my voice as a designer and my job then taught me a lot that I still rely on today. I worked very closely with my boss who was the studio's creative director and he had a reference library I coveted. I started collecting design books with a vengeance then and one of my first real acquisitions was Johnny Grey's Kitchen Culture: Reinventing Kitchen Design.

Kitchen Culture had a profound influence on me and it started me on a path I'm still on. I never fully understood the relationship of function to form until Kitchen Culture fell into my lap and I still refer to it regularly. I'd never really considered, or more accurately re-considered, why kitchen designers do what they do. It's easy to rely on industry standards, too easy. The truly great practitioners of my discipline dig deeper, into the realms and meanings that sit underneath those standards. It's inspiring to see someone apprach the lowly kitchen that way and it's endlessly satisfying when I can channel some of that creative energy into my own work.

When I brought my copy of Kitchen Culture to work to show my boss he and I spent about an hour reviewing and discussing it. He and I had been talking a lot about using marble as a structural element at the time and both our hearts skipped a beat when we turned to page 52 and saw this.

I'd never seen a piece of Carrera so beautiful and so structural at the same time. Never. What that is is a single slab of marble, it's about six inches wide, 42 inches tall and six feet deep. It's also been cut and polished  as a radius. I cannot imagine how that was cut, how it was positioned and who had the onerous job of moving it. Six years later and I still look at that image in wonder. And something approaching awe.

I attended kitchen designer/ blogger conclave hosted by Brizo in New York last weekend, and it was peopled by 19 kitchen designers who are also bloggers, one of whom was Johnny Grey. Johnny is something of a rock star in our world and to have sat in a conference with him as a peer was an experience I'll never forget. Ordinarily, he's the guy giving a talk in an auditorium. I'd go see him do his thing at a convention or maybe get a book signed. But interact as a peer? It's not something that's ever appeared on my radar.

Well as I'm very fond of saying, behold the power of the blogosphere. Johnny's a pretty cool guy and after the thrill wore off, it was really great to just talk. He may have revolutionized the industry, but at the end of the day we're engaged in similar work.

Kitchen Culture: Reinventing Kitchen Design remains a singularly influential book in the world of kitchen design, and if you're a design aficionado, you need it in your library. If you'd like to know more about Johnny Grey's work, check out his website and then his blog, Grey Matters. If that weren't enough, he'll be doing a guest blog gig right here. And soon. Now how cool is that?





All images courtesy of Johnny Grey Studios.