minakani

usually, wallpaper doesn't really do it for me - i'm not one for retro styles or flowery patterns. but i'll admit some of the designs by paris based studio minakani aren't too shabby. in fact, this cloudy print would look pretty damn rad in our apartment.

photos by minakani

milan design week 2012 // technicolor

i had one more load of pictures that i just couldn't resist sharing with you. as you might have deduced from the success of scholten & baijings, color is a major hit in design land right now. part of the reason why milan made me so happy, is the abundance of fluo and well orchestrated color schemes everywhere. i think i might be headed to monochrome rehab.
 
1 color everywhere at the universita degli studi / 2 apparently i do something strange with my lips while concentrating to take pictures of my feet. i'm officially weird. / 3 lovely chairs at the universita degli studi / 4 i'm in love with the filofluo textile design line at society / 5 cool vespa next to merci's pop-up shop / 6 + 7 at france design / 8 in the subway / 9 colorful bikes parked all over milan / 10 i fell hard for concept kitchen's urban design and use of pastel colors. designed by kilian schindler for naber designlab / 11 i'm forever devoted to donna wilson (or as long as she keeps producing these amazingly colorful textile designs for scp

wise words for the weekend

this typography print tells the italian truth.

print by anek

milan design week 2012 // it's just words

i hope i haven't been boring you with my endless milan design week posts. today i just wanted to share my typographic view of the city. everywhere i go, i'm always attracted to words and letters. and of course in milan, there was an abundance of good looking ones.

1 ray-ban sign at the piaza del duomo / 2 sculpture and its sign at erastudio apartment gallery / 3 erastudio's own sign made with letterpress letters / 4 merci by kidimo / 5 at the temporary museum for new design / 6 on the streets / 7 pretty self explanatory / 8 i loved tom dixon's installation at the museo nazionale della scienza / 9 sodastream's sodabar (they had awesome ginger ale) / 10 xyz design at ventura lambrate / 11 at hotel sanpi

note // our hotel room was kindly sponsored by hotels.com. if you're a frequent traveler - or foreign city dweller as i like to call it - you might want to check out their welcome rewards program. it allows you to save up nights to earn a free night's stay.

milan design week 2012 // good food

of all the foodie places we had bookmarked for our milan trip, we were most looking forward to erba brusca, and our visit did not disappoint. the surroundings were as lovely as we had imagined, with a cosy back yard herb garden, a heated patio and the right mix of nonchalant and deliberate vintage touches to its interior design. then we met chef alice delcourt, who we can honestly say is the prettiest and coolest chef we've met to date - and boy, can she cook. 

we ordered appetizers, an entree and desert, but during dinner alice sent out samples to give us a taste of the rest of the menu. i can honestly say i loved everything i tasted that night. from the grilled octopus to the vegetable tarte tatin - everything tasted fresh and simply amazing. we've already decided to make erba brusca our one must-do for every visit we'll ever make to milan, even though the restaurant is way out of the city center. believe us: it's so worth the trouble.

 

exploring department store excelsior proved to be fun in more than one way. i finally found those cool neon letters for my home office, and we stumbled upon eat's, a glorious bistro and food market, as the lovely sign states. you'll know by now that i'm a bit of a foodie-shop-a-holic, so this was very dangerous territory for me. but instead of spending our cash on truffle salt or designer tea, we opted to have lunch right then and there - at a bar table in the middle of the store. a plate of prosciutto crudo and a glass of red - it doesn't take more than that to turn me into a (tired looking) happy camper.

 

my favorite place in the via tortona has to be god save the food. we didn't actually eat much here - a couple of nice and buttery croissants to go with our coffees - but i adore the look of this place. forsaking cosy for hipster design, it is perfect for simply sitting there and watching beautiful people roam in and out of the place. definitely a good place to stop for a quick cup of coffee or healthy lunch (you can see chefs prepare tasty looking salads and sandwiches in the open kitchen) and it's cheap to boot!

shockolat is the one place in milan i didn't pick out because of its design or cool factor. it's got a lame name, a terrible font and awful interior design - but the promise of tasting the best and possibly weirdest chocolate ice cream of my life more than made up for all of its shortcomings. so hike out to shockolat and stand in the annoyingly long line outside we did. but it was so. so. good. i chose a combination of pepper and tangerine chocolate and for a while there, i really did think i had died and gone to chocolate heaven.

milan design week 2012 // scholten&baijings

as i got on the plane back to belgium this week, i read this article in the financial times' how to spend it magazine. it pretty much summed up everything i had been feeling and thinking about scholten&baijings. known best for their colorful work for hay, their star has been on the rise and their signature style is popping up everywhere. i love their approach and aesthetic, so i made sure to see all they had to show in milan. their collab with mini was the most conceptual work i've seen from them, and it was downright inspiring to see how their moodboards translated into the actual installation.

erastudio apartment gallery was perhaps my favorite location of milan design week. the flaking paint on the walls, the wooden floors, the large windows - it all provided a wonderful background to scholten&baijings' color wood tables, color bins, color stool and legendary textiles. words cannot describe how badly i need that blanket in my life.

and finally, the piece de resistance - scholten&baijings' color porcelain for 1616 arita japan. i nearly had a stroke at the spazio rossana orlandi where the tableware was displayed. partly because the venue was far too crowded for my taste, and partly because i couldn't quite wrap my head around the genius of these patterns and colors. 

i want to live in a world colored by scholten&baijings, that much is certain.

milan design week 2012 // wallpaper + merci

the world of design is one of collaborations, it seems. personally, i love when genius minds clash and end up with something that is the best of both worlds. unsurprisingly then, my favorite places in milan last weekend celebrated this kind of collaboration. one of them was the wallpaper handmade exposition at the brioni palazzo. the past two years, i've devoured the magazine's stories behind the objects they commission for this occasion, but this year i was thrilled to be able to see them all up close.

1 the palazzo brioni at via gesu / 2 the rad customised logo (check out the making of wallpaper's letterpressed, blind-embossed and die-stamped invitations here) / 3 a collection of objects, each one more lustworthy than the next - including the leather clad 'spel' games table designed by belgian michael verheyden and the gorgeous 'sellier' felt chair by denis montel, eric benqué and hermès / 4 i'm not a fan of the monogram, but with this 'v' tent sam hecht and kim colin created something with louis vuitton that i wouldn't mind having / 5 drawings of the 'v' tent / 6 'ideology is over' candle by ciré trudon and stefan brüggemann / 7 karl lagerfeld and steidl's 'paper passion' perfume / 8 the painted wall by gijs frieling, job wouters and schmincke, with bags of joe & seph's pop-up popcorn in the front

i also knew a visit to the merci pop-up shop with paola navone absolutely had to find its way into our itinerary, and so it did. i adore this paris concept store even more than i ever loved colette, and its milan presence didn't disappoint. graphic design enthusiasts like myself went bonkers for navone's black and white prints and it took every ounce of discipline i had not to kidnap one of those polkadotted chairs.

1 i wonder whether someone drove the infamous red merci mini all the way from paris to milan? / 2 the books channeling merci's library café were mere decorations around here / 3 i love the middle print best / 4 had to sneak in a photo of aesop - y'all know me well enough to know why / 5 the. chairs.