Cool Hunting

Carmody Groarke: Osnaburgh Street Pavilion
Carmody Groarke, a young British firm, just won an Architecture Foundation competition to design a new pavilion in Regent's Place, London. The firm is a finalist in BD's Young Architect Practice of the Year, and designed the pavilion to be made of a series of vertical rods that reflect light during the day and emit light at night. The design is further enhanced by...

Interview with Amanda Levete
Size + Matter, it could be said, was one of the most viewed events of the London Design Festival last month. Two installations by two of the U.K.'s leading architects—both women—were placed outside the cultural hub that is the Southbank Centre that thousands of people walk by everyday. Urban Nebula by Zaha Hadid used pre-cast concrete to create a darkly dramatic public seating sculpture....

The Architect's Bird Feeder
Designed by architect Doug Patt (he's also one half of bi-coastal firm Rootphi), the Architect's Birdfeeder is made of eight interlocking polycarbonate (think bulletproof glass) pieces. Like Rootphi's Flat Pack housing, the structural elements ship flat and require no tools or fasteners for assembly. The upshot is product that's fun to put together, easy to refill and clean and eco-friendly. It also looks like a...

Clay Ketter: Gulf Coast Slabs
A show of new work by the American artist Clay Ketter opened in London this week at Bartha Contemporary. Ketter, who has lived in Sweden for over 20 years, is renowned for creating art works through the investigation of construction techniques. His work on the surface has a beautifully minimalist aesthetic, but the real interest lies beneath the layers in a "truth to materials"...

China Design Now
A look at the creative energy in modern China, China Design Now chronicles the recent cultural rebirth brought on by a combination of global influences and the rediscovery of China's pre-Socialist traditions. Opening 15 March 2008 at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the exhibit explores three cities beginning with Shenzhen, where graphic designers have been experimenting with new concepts since the 1990s....

Thomas Heatherwick East Beach Cafe
We cannot claim to be experts on beach cafe architecture, but one look at Thomas Heatherwick's East Beach Cafe and one can't help but think that this is a woefully under-explored area of building design. Surely it's rife with exciting and innovative possibilities, but then that's the British designer's great talent, creating unexpected forms in unexpected places which, on sight, make you reevaluate all...