Big love for London

It's hard to believe that I took that photo of my foot a week ago. That was a marker in the sidewalk in the small park behind St. Paul's Cathedral and the inscription actually read "Here stood Paul's cross." I had just walked out of the Cathedral with my friends Bob Borson and Stacey Bewkes. Borson noticed the marker first and a great photo op was born.

Endless thanks to Modenus and the sponsors of Blog Tour 2011 for getting our rag tag band of North American design and architecture bloggers to London for the Design Festival. Here are some London highlights.





London is an amazing city. It's beautiful, clean and huge. As much as it embraces the 21st Century, it's still present to its history. Some of the greatest minds humanity's ever produced called that city home and their fingerprints are everywhere.

The group with whom I shared that great city last week are a special lot. The are Susan Serra, Tamara Matthews-Stephenson, Carmen Natschke, Veronika Miller, Mollie Magill, Jonathan Legate, Elise Jones, Michelle Jennings-Wiebe, Meredith Heron, Mae Hacking, Andie Day, Amy Beth Cupp Dragoo, Leslie Carothers, Michelle Carangi, Bob Borson, Tim Bogan and Stacey Bewkes. All of us knew each other before the trip but most of us had never met. It's a curious state of affairs brought on by the social web and it was a real treat to meet up with a bunch of people with whom I have more than a few things in common. All of our Blog Tour posts are being aggregated on the Blog Tour website and our photos ought to start showing up there this week too.

Blog Tour wasn't a one-time thing. In March of 2012, a group of UK design bloggers are coming to New York for the AD (Architectural Digest Home Design Show). I can't wait to be there to reconnect with my UK friends. Then in April, Blog Tour's taking a mix of North American and UK bloggers to the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan. After that who knows? I'm holding out for Mumbai and Beijing but wherever it ends up, Blog Tour is here to stay and it was an honor to be part of the its maiden voyage.

A Toronto Tweet Up presented by Caroma and Modenus

via

Greenbuild 2011 runs from 4 through 7 October and it's taking place in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. I'll be in Toronto representing Modenus.com and we're working with Caroma to host a Tweet Up at Caroma's booth on Wednesday morning at 10:30. Here's the link to the press release that went out last week.

So come meet me for a cup of coffee on Wednesday morning and while you're at the booth, you can learn all about high-efficiency bath products. You can also register to win an iPad2 and a host of other electronic gadgets.

In the interest of disclosure, my travel costs are being covered by Modenus, a website with which I have more than a passing interest. I'm a regular contributor to that site and I say it's the web's best resource for interior design inspiration and product information.

The Caroma brand was launched in 1941 and has been an innovation leader ever since. Caroma products are distributed worldwide and you can learn more about Caroma on their website. Caroma products are beautiful and in looking over a Caroma bath, you'd never know that their fixtures and fittings are highly water efficient and sustainably produced.

Caroma's booth number is 2111N in the north building and if you're at the show or in Toronto this week, I look forward to meeting you on Wednesday.

No baloney, Bologna is heaven

I'm still reeling over the sights, the sounds and that tastes I experienced in Bologna two weeks ago. Endless thanks go to Ceramic Tiles of Italy, the Italian Trade Commission and Novita Public Relations for making my trip possible. Here are some highlights of Bologna and the immediate area surrounding it in Emilia-Romagna. For a city that never appeared on my radar before, I cannot wait to go back. Everything about it is magical.

Italy is an enchanting place. For all of its problems, nowhere else on earth manages to combine the ancient and the modern so seamlessly and nowhere else on earth knows how to concentrate on what's really important the way Italy does. Who cares what the IMF thinks, there's great gelato around the corner and the crimini mushrooms are in season. No other place I've ever been wallows in family, friendship and hospitality with the passion Italy does.

The world needs places like Italy as a reminder that having constant internet access and 400 TV channels doesn't really mean a whole lot. What matters is your family, your friends and your neighbors. Thanks for the reminder Bologna.

Design Centre Chelsea Harbour and some amazing lighting

I spent last Sunday at London's Design Centre Chelsea Harbour along with my fellow participants in Modenus' Blog Tour 2011. The Design Centre Chelsea Harbour is a trade-only super mall of home products, furniture, carpets, fabrics, lighting a whole lot more.

The building itself is pretty spectacular, here's a shot I took through one of the building's atriums as the clouds rolled over London on Sunday afternoon.

London's the only city where I've ever been that gives New York a real run for its money when it comes to sophistication and the amount of stuff available. In a lot of ways London exceeds what's possible in New York but don't tell any of my New York friends I said that.

We started off the day with Samuel Heath, a purveyor of amazing bath fixtures and accessories. They're worth three or four posts of their own and I'll get back to them over the next few weeks. If you want a preview though, click on that link but be prepared to salivate.

After a series of meeting in and around the Design Centre, we were free to explore on our own. What I saw in total is fuel for more posts than I can count but something that really stood out was a series of deconstructed chandeliers from Vos Kristall.

I love a deconstructed chandelier. It epitomizes the impulse to take an iconic object and reduce it to its parts and then put something back together that invokes the original but is entirely new on its own.

Here are some of my admittedly bad photos of Vos Kristall's work.

Each component that would make up the chandelier (candle, bobeche, candle cup, prisms and pendalogue) is suspended by a single filament and lit from an LED in the ceiling directly above. The effect is both massive and ethereal at the same time.

For more lighting inspiration, check out the rest of the lighting in Vos Kristall's web gallery.

Top tile picks from Cersaie

Cersaie in Bologna is without a doubt, the largest trade show I've ever attended. As someone who's seen more than his share of trade shows, I think I know what I'm talking about. I spent three solid days combing though the halls of Cersaie and I think I saw everything.

With that said, on the tile side, I saw two new products that really stood out. Both were from Italian manufacturers and bother were (surprise!) variations on the mosaic theme.

The first of the products that's tied for the winner in my eyes is Beside from Refin's Mosaici d'Autore series. Beside is a play on the term B-side and I'll explain that in a minute.

When I first saw Refin's booth I saw walls, the bar and then benches covered in a really interesting texture.

Refin's booth at Cersaie 2011

Upon closer inspection I figured out what it was. Before I divulge that though, look how cool this stuff looks on a wall.

Figure it out yet? Beside is the B-side of a ceramic tile that's been glazed and mismatched on purpose. All ceramic tile has a grid pattern on its reverse side to make installation easier and in Beside, designer Masilimiano Adami chose to use the b-side to make the statement.

Up close, Beside looks like it would never work. But once installed, Beside adds a texture to a wall or a floor like nothing I've ever seen. Beside is available in a whole host of sizes in addition to the 5cm by 5cm mosaic I'm showing here and it's available in 11 colors. It will hit the market in Europe in a matter of weeks and in North America, we ought to see it in the first part of 2012. If you're interested in this tile, ask for it at your Refin retailer.

Tied for first with Refin's Beside was Mosaico+ with their new series, Pulsar.

There was a real move in Italy to have mosaic tiles leap off the wall and add texture in addition to color. I'd been warned before getting to the Mosaico+ booth to expect a a mosaic that appeared to be woven and man, was my intel right.

Detail from Mosaico+'s booth at Cersaie, 2011

I've written about Mosaico+ before (here, here and here) from other shows where I've seen them but in Pulsar they've broken new ground. Pulsar mosaics are made from sintered glass and came about as a collaboration between Crono Giugiarno Designs and Mosaico+. Nobody's doing anything like this and when used on a wall, the individual tessera fit so closely there's no need for grout. These pieces are 6mm thick and come in 10 colors. It's great, distinctive stuff.

I'm hard pressed to pick a favorite between Pulsar and Beside, hence the tie. What do you think?

Pulsar's available in Europe now and will be washing up on these shores in early 2012. Again, those links: Refin and Mosaico+.