Cool Hunting

Lux 11
Lux 11, a new hotel that opened in Berlin's hip Mitte district in July, wins points for a location central to many of the city's best boutiques and restaurants and, with the addition of an Italian-Asian fusion restaurant (slated to open mid-November), Tietgen und Kahlcke's Aveda spa, Ulf Haines' (buyer of the the famed Quartier 206) store, and café, does its own part in...

The Ten Year Hotel
Shipping container mania continues, this time in the form of students Lee Ferguson and Jonathan Whittaker's concept hotel that incorporates the temporality of cityscapes into its design. The 26-room building suspends the containers as self-contained pods within a steel beam grid, enabling both adaptability to changing surroundings and a sunken bar/concert area on the ground floor. via Hotel Chatter...

Hip. Sexy. Chic: Montreal's Hotel Godin
Set at a crossroads between downtown and the hip Plateau neighborhood, in an edifice that straddles old-world charm and modern exuberance, the six-month-young Hotel Godin is the newest boutique hotel to cater to the trendy jet-set crowd in Montreal....

Copenhagen: Hotel Fox
Individually themed rooms is nothing new in the hotel world. Hotel Fox will take that idea to a new level when it opens this April in Copenhagen. The hotel has been transformed by 21 street artists, graphic designers and illustrators from Europe, North and South America, and Australia. Each of the 61 rooms has a unique installation; the works have been commissioned by Die...

BTL Luggage
BTL (pronounced "beetle") is a new luggage line designed by China Young. Named after the Jewel Beetle, the collection aims to adopt the bug's intricate beauty and remarkable fortitude in the form of striking, resilient suitcases. Young hopes to appeal to a chic brand traveler "whose identity cannot be captured by a colored ribbon on a black suitcase." An expert in accessory design, Young...

Color Changing Pavement
Simple, effective and possibly life-saving idea, France's Eurovia is developing a thermosensitive road varnish that changes color to indicate freezing and dangerous conditions. Like a Hypercolor t-shirt, the road could turn pink (or any other indicative color) when surface temperature is below freezing and returning to neutral once it warms back up. Not only a boon to motorists, but it helps out the environment...