BORDEAUX: The Art of Living | By Fashion Trendsetter

Last October, Fashion Trendsetter and Trendsetter Interiors Teams had an amazing business trip to Bordeaux. Senay GOKCEN and Mutti PORTO share their travel notes about this beautiful city in southwestern France.

Senay GOKCEN | Editor-in-Chief | Fashion Trendsetter
Mutti PORTO | Editor-at-Large | Fashion Trendsetter

Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River and you can view this beautiful river while landing at the Bordeaux Airport.

Since our team members are working on various areas – from fashion to automotive design, from architecture to the fresh food industry; we travel as much as we can to gain more inspiration from different cultures of cities and countries.

Grand Hommes, Bordeaux.

Last October, taking the advantages of our business trip, we planned a quick city tour and started our route by visiting the chic Grand Hommes, Quinconces District at the center of Bordeaux.

You know you're in France when you see Galeries Lafayette Stores.

There were so many ‘the best of the best’ French fashion brands’ stores, luscious French patisseries, artisan chocolatiers, bistro cafés and charcuteries in and around these locations. But when you’re travelling with pregnant team members you experience the ‘aha’ moment of “Houston we have a problem!” The reality of hanging meats and sausages from the ceilings don’t make any sense of inspiration when someone in your team is having ‘morning sickness’; but shops that sell quality artisan chocolates, melted not only our hearts but kept us going from one meeting to another.

It’s hard to tell which brand’s collection is the nicest this season, because it’s French Fashion, how could them look bad any way? We fell in love with Anne Fontaine’s Fall 2015 Collection at Galeries Lafayette, with its beautiful white blouses paired with black trousers and accessorized with gold metals. These are truly must-haves of the season. Swarovski's sparkling ‘Stardust Collection’ and Hermés’ store displays were our favorite ones with their bold and bright color palettes.

Hermès' ‘Fall 2015 Accessories Collection’.

For the day two, we spent our whole spare time at the Rue Sainte-Catherine, which is the main shopping street in Bordeaux. The weather was fine and we had great time while walking through this 1.2 km long pedestrian street and enjoyed spotting the interesting trends on the window displays.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE at FASHION TRENDSETTER

All images copyright by Senay GOKCEN & Mutti PORTO. All rights reserved.

The BEACH by Snarkitecture

The BEACH is an interactive architectural installation designed by Snarkitecture for the National Building Museum. 

The National Building Museum presents a one-of-a-kind destination for visitors, an interactive architectural installation that brings the quintessential summer experience of going to the beach to downtown Washington, D.C. Spanning across the Museum's Great Hall, the BEACH, created in partnership with Snarkitecture, will cover 10,000 square feet and include an "ocean" of nearly one million recyclable translucent plastic balls.

The BEACH is contained within an enclosure and built out of construction materials such as scaffolding, wooden panels, and perforated mesh, all clad in stark white. Monochromatic beach chairs and umbrellas sprinkle the 50-foot wide "shoreline," and the "ocean" culminates in a mirrored wall that creates a seemingly infinite reflected expanse. Visitors are welcome to "swim" in the ocean, or can spend an afternoon at the "shore's" edge reading a good book, play beach-related activities such as paddleball, grab a refreshing drink at the snack bar, or dangle their feet in the ocean off the pier.

Enjoy our snack concession, operated through a partnership with Union Kitchen, a D.C.-based food incubator.

PROJECT:
Taking cues from the familiar experience of a summer day at the beach, Snarkitecture has abstracted both the natural and cultural elements of the beach to create a reduced, monochromatic environment inside the museum's Great Hall. Standard construction materials like scaffolding, drywall, and mirrors are utilized to create the enclosure that leads to an ocean of 750,000 recyclable plastic balls. 

The Beach welcomes visitors to explore, play and relax in a fully immersive and unique setting.

Photos by Noah Kalina - noahkalina.com

VISIT
401 F Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20001
202.272.2448

HOURS
Monday-Saturday:
10 am-5 pm
Sunday: 11 am-5 pm

The Building Zone closes at 4 pm.

ADMISSION
Free access to the Great Hall,
historic building tours,
Museum Shop, & cafe.

Exhibition admission:
$8 for adults
$5 for youth, students, & seniors
$3 a person for Building Zone only
Free for Museum members

WATCH | Web designer and photographer Andy Feliciotti's Vlog about "The Beach"

About Snarkitecture
Snarkitecture is a collaborative and experimental practice operating in territories between art and architecture. The name is drawn from Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of The Snark, a poem describing an "impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature." 

Snarkitecture investigates the unknown within architecture - the indefinable moments created by manipulating and reinterpreting existing materials, structures and programs to spectacular effect. 

Exploring the boundaries of disciplines, the studio designs permanent, architectural scale projects and functional objects with new and imaginative purposes. Snarkitecture's approach focuses on the viewer's experience and memory, creating moments of wonder and interaction that allow people to engage directly with their surrounding environment. By transforming the familiar into the extraordinary, Snarkitecture makes architecture perform the unexpected. 

Snarkitecture was established by Alex Mustonen and Daniel Arsham.

For more information please visit Snarkitecture - www.snarkitecture.com

Salone del Mobile 2015: MINI and Jaime Hayon Present 'Urban Perspectives'

A Fantastical Installation on the Future of Urban Mobility

For this year's Salone del Mobile, MINI has teamed up with Spanish designer and artist Jaime Hayon to present an installation that conjures up visions of tomorrow's urban mobility in the form of an imaginary world.

The focus of the installation is the MINI Citysurfer concept, a flexible electric kick scooter that provides a smarter and more personalised way of getting around town. For Jaime Hayon it is the starting point of a fantastical journey through a modern metropolis, for which he is designing two variants of the MINI Citysurfer concept. He takes visitors along graphic paths and challenging routes through a surreal space, within which he applies his strikingly creative aesthetics to showcase the future of mobility:



"I wanted to create an incredible and immersive experience that pays tribute to MINI's sophisticated design developments for future mobility," says Jaime Hayon of his vision, which goes far beyond any fictional mobility scenario. He sees his installation as a collaborative design process that espouses the MINI claim to pioneering materials and high quality. For the execution of the overall concept, Hayon is working closely with the MIN Design Team and specialist craftspeople.

'Jaime Hayon Urban Perspectives for MINI' is a further highlight arising from the ongoing creative dialogue that MINI pursues with leading international designers. "For us, collaborating with creative designers from a wide range of disciplines is an important format that allows us to view automotive design from a different perspective," says Anders Warming, Head of MINI Design. "Jaime Hayon is a partner whose sheer inventiveness and unconventional formal language are inspirational."

In Jaime Hayon's illustrated urban jungle, progress is bright and colorful: the designer has dreamed up a road made of Carrara marble supported by luminous blue pillars, while shiny brass lamps point the way to an imaginary destination. Accessories specially developed for the installation, such as a helmet - part high-tech object, part playful mask - and a jacket likewise designed by Hayon, symbolize the fantasy realm in which the Spanish designer dismantles familiar perspectives. They are indispensable accoutrements on this dynamic ride into the future which Hayon imposingly visualizes through his personal play with functionality fantasy and creativity.

The installation 'Jaime Hayon Urban Perspectives for MINI' will be on show from 14 to 19 April 2015 at the Laboratorio Bergognone in Via Bergognone 26 as part of the Salone del Mobile in Milan.

All images copyright and courtesy of BMW Group - bmwgroup.com

Salone del Mobile - salonemilano.it