More wonders from London

It feels like it was six months ago already, but three weeks ago I was walking around at 100% Design with my friends Bob Borson and Veronika Miller. 100% Design was one of the featured events of London Design Festival and I was there thanks to the sponsors of Blog Tour 2011. 100% Design takes place at the large but manageable Earl's Court Convention Centre in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London.

I saw all kinds of cool stuff at 100% Design and it was the perfect mix of furniture, fabrics, lighting, surfaces and appliances. However, what stopped me in my tracks was this:

That's a concrete induction cooktop and it's part of a concrete kitchen from Vienna-based Steininger. Here are their photos of their Betonküche, German for concrete kitchen.

Much like the Pryolave integrated induction cooktop I wrote about earlier, this concrete induction cooker throws out all preconceptions when it comes to cooking appliances. Who says appliances need to look the way everyone expects them to and who says they need to be made from the usual materials?

Add to that that this entire kitchen (except for the wooden counter) is covered in 8mm concrete veneers and I was in love. The Betonküche was designed by Martin Steininger whom I met. Thanks to Veronika and her language skills, Martin described his creation with the pride of someone who's made something game changing. My German consists of little more than "Ich spreche ein wenig Deutsch [I speak a little German]" and had Veronika not been there I'd never have been able to tell the man how amazed I was by his creation.

If you want to look at some cutting edge Austrian design, look over Steininger's website.

A Sunday traveler's tale

On Thursday morning, I boarded an American Airlines 737 in San Francisco and I was bound for Dallas and then later, Tampa. The same plane was going to complete the journey after a one-hour layover in Dallas. I didn't have an assigned seat until I got to the gate and I begged the truly helpful gate agent for an aisle seat for the entire length of my journey home.

She found one, seat 7C in the first row after first class. I knew I was in for a long day (3-1/2 hours to Dallas and then another two hours to Tampa) but all I cared about was that I had an aisle seat and ready access to the bathroom.

When I boarded the plane, the first of my two row mates was immediately behind me. She had a heavy carry on and I put it in the overhead for her. She thanked me and we took our seats. A moment later, our third row mate arrived and she took her seat at the window. There we were, seats 7A, 7B and 7C; complete strangers.

It was a clear day when we left San Francisco, the San Joachin Valley and the Sierra Nevada seemed close enough to touch. No where else in the Unites States is more beautiful from the air than Northern California, though Utah gives it a real run for its money. Anyhow, from three seats away, I couldn't help but to crane my neck to look out the window to watch California's golden hills unfold.

I started gasping about the scenery and my row mates noticed my responses and the three of us started to talk. The two women, one an aromatherapist from Melbourne and the other a microbiologist at Stanford, listened as I prattled on about the majesty of California and how much I love the sight of the Sierras.

Before too long, the three of us introduced ourselves and we started talking about where we were from and where we were headed. It turned out that all three of us were bound for St. Pete, almost three thousand miles away.

Though none of planned to do so, we ended up talking the whole way to Dallas. We talked about books and science and art and more than anything we talked about our shared love of travel. We professed our mutual love for Bologna and London and talked about places one of us had been but the other two hadn't. As a result of that conversation, Peru and Ecuador are now on my list.

By the time we landed in Dallas we'd struck up one of those wonderful but rare situational friendships that crop up when you're tired and far from home. We were looking out for each other and helping one another get bags out of overheads and giving pointers about how to navigate various airports.

When we reboarded in Dallas and assumed our seats again, we started talking about the center seat holder's native land of Australia. She pulled out the airline magazine, turned to a map of Australia and told us about her grandmother who started out in Wellington, New Zealand, and ended up marrying a Swiss man and moving to Perth. She told us about her years as a medical volunteer in East Timor and how much she loves Jakarta and the South of France. The microbiologist talked about her Italian heritage and her love for dance. The three of us lamented the US's refusal to adopt the metric system and we talked about getting used to driving on various sides of the road depending on where we are.

It was beyond cool to bond with three strangers like that. We had so much in common despite our varied backgrounds and career paths.

I've been traveling a lot this year and though I'll never pass up the opportunity to talk to a stranger, I've never felt the momentary bond I felt with those women on Thursday.

We shook hands and exchanged cards when we landed in Tampa and part of me wants to keep in touch. Another part of me however, wants to keep Thursday what it was, the most anomalous of anomalies. The Australian called it a rare synchronicity.

I've been all over in the course of my life and without a doubt the 5-1/2 hour conversation I had on Thursday was an absolute stand out.

Experiences like that are a lot of what I'm looking for when I travel. I'm forever looking to find common ground with people whose lives are wildly different than mine. I want to find that common ground but at the same time, I want to savor the differences.

Now that I'm back and reacclimated to my native time zone, I have lots of stuff to write about from Bologna, London, Toronto and San Francisco. Stay tuned, I've seen some pretty amazing stuff int he last few weeks.

What is a Blog Off: a Blog Off post

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "What is a Blog Off?"

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In 1975, the British group Supertramp released the album "Crisis? what Crisis?" and its cover art sums up my sentiments about our modern times perfectly. That to photo in question dates from 1975 (a year I remember too well) tells me that nothing ever changes.

The world is going to hell and it's wasting no time getting there but Blog Offs let me see an alternate reality. Every two weeks, we get to write about the same thing and interpret it as we want to. It's fascinating to read all of the participants' takes on a given topic and it reaffirms my faith in humanity to see the amount of good will spilled out on Twitter on Blog Off days. Total strangers stop what they're doing, read a participating blog post, leave a comment and Tweet about it. Would that everything worked with such genial generosity.

As a founder of this thing I see new bloggers build communities around themselves with Blog Offs and these things give people like me who've been at it for a while the chance to encourage newcomers. I always learn something and I never stop marveling at the amazing people my fellow bloggers are.

So even though everything seems to be falling apart, there's this. The Blog Off and the community of bloggers and Twitter-ers who keep it alive every two weeks. It makes me think that all is not lost after all.

And as one of the people who keeps this thing alive, we're looking for you to help us refine what we're doing. How can we better serve the Blog Off community? What topics should we tackle and just how commercial are you willing to let us get? We have a designer-ly skew though not all of us who participate have have an involvement in the shelter industry. How can we grow our pool of participants without alienating the folks we have on board already? This topic is the perfect opportunity to let it all out, for good and bad. How can we make this thing better and more useful?

As today wears on, and as I fly to San Francisco, a table of all the participating bloggers will appear here. Please do me a favor and click on the links to see what people from all over think about the Blog Off.

Lee Broom at the London Design Festival

Two weeks ago while I was in London for the London Design Festival as part of Blog Tour 2011, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Lee Broom. All of us on the Blog Tour were treated to a personal tour of his workshop. He'd converted his Shoreditch work space into a salon for the Festival, all to showcase his new collection, the aptly named Salon.

Here's Lee being profiled in a Polish design magazine.

Lee's a brilliant young designer with an eye that won't quit. The glamorous drama of the collection was highlighted perfectly by the lighting and walls draped in black. That the man who designed everything was describing his pieces to us was almost too much to take in. Here's how Salon looked at his studio.

From Lee's website:

As part of the London Design Festival, Broom is drawing on his interior skills and has transformed his Shoreditch-based studio/showroom into an exclusive, contemporary, design salon. Recreating the space in a dramatic, surreal and intimate setting.

It's a spectacular collection but what impressed me almost as much as the pieces themselves is Lee's commitment to producing his furniture in the UK. Talk about keeping it local! Someone so committed to his home country deserves every accolade he gets.

Downstairs from the Salon collection were more of Lee's collections and what stopped me dead in my tracks was a collection from the 20098 Festival called Heritage Boy.

Again, from Lee's website:

The Heritage Boy collection was shown at The Future Gallery (formally The Photographers Gallery), 5 Great Newport Street, London WC2, during London Design Week, 2009. Heritage Boy draws on traditional British manufacturing techniques to create a modern-day furniture collection which is divided into three distinct ranges: Carpetry, Parquetry and Tiles. Broom has applied the same philosophy, classic shapes and daring applications to each distinctly unique range. All the pieces are made in the UK and involving these industries in his design process is something that Broom feels particularly passionate about.

What I'm still reeling over is that he used carpet as a finish on furniture, actual carpet.

The tile lamps and coffee table; and the parquet tables are fantastic too. But that carpet sideboard is one of the most unique and beautiful pieces of furniture I've ever seen.

That he's a genuinely kind and generous man makes his creations all the more appealing. Earlier this week, the editor of Elle Decor asked me to respond to a feature on their website called Design Insiders' Weekly Finds. Without missing a beat I started gushing about Lee's Heritage Boy collection. This link will take you to my response on Elle Decor.

So keep your eye on this guy. Clearly, he's going places and it's great to see a good man succeed. Here's the link to Lee's website. Look over all his collections and projects, it's inspiring, innovative work.

Game changing innovation from London

I saw more amazing things at the London Design Festival than I ever imagined I would. Being part of the first ever Blog Tour was a gift that keeps on giving, that's for sure. The London Design Festival is a nine-day, city-wide celebration of design and art with more than 280 scheduled events. One of the larger events this year was 100% Design.

Of the many venues we visited, 100% Design was by far my favorite. While I can get excited about furniture and textiles, after a while they all start to bleed into one another. I guess I'm a kitchen and bath guy at heart after all. 100% Design had the perfect mix of sofas and counters, draperies and flooring. I saw a lot of cool stuff and one thing in particular really blew me away.

The following images are from Pyrolave UK and they are photos of a kitchen designed by my friend Johnny Grey.

Notice anything unusual? That counter has an induction cooktop integrated into it. Pyrolave made from glazed, volcanic stone and it's the only material that can allow the electromagnetic energy of an induction coil pass through it without any loss of efficiency. There's no need for a typical glass cooking surface and being able to pop in an induction coil just about anywhere is an incredibly freeing thing from a design perspective. It's also a great opportunity to use induction outside of the kitchen. Imagine an induction-enabled sideboard or dining table. The mind reels.

Pyrolave UK had a booth at 100% Design and I was playing around with one of these induction-enabled cooktops while I was there. It was nothing short of amazing.

It's genius really and it makes perfect sense. Induction technology begs for innovation and I love that Pryolave has stepped up to the plate and delivered such a great idea. Induction-enabled Pyrolave counters aren't crossing the Atlantic any time soon unfortunately, but when they do get here I'll be the one applauding loudest.

100% Design was the 7th trade event I'd attended outside of the US in the last ten months. I'm getting on a plane for another one in Toronto in a few hours and my seeing innovations such as Pyrolave's induction counters have proved what I've long suspected. The US no longer leads the world in innovation. There. I said it. Much of the innovations I've seen this year will never make it to our market here and if they do, they'll be a dumbed down version of the original.

I hate to be one of those Americans who travels abroad and makes endless comparisons to life here as opposed to there. But the innovation thing is as obvious as it is troubling. How and when did that happen? What would it take to turn that around? These are some of the things I think about during long plane rides.

Anyhow, how about this induction idea? If you're a designer, how could you see this figuring into a design? If you're a homeowner, would you ever spring for a put-it-anywhere induction cooker?