Sauce

Sportswear brand PUMA has opened ‘PUMA City’ in the heart of lower Manhattan for the 2010 World Cup. Built from shipping containers it is a multi purpose and functional site featuring a PUMA store, social club and small pitch for mini tournaments.

The “pop-up” retail shops located in the shipping containers were designed by New York architects LOT-EK and offer football clothing and shoes. The PUMA Social Club is an event space used for events and watching football games projected onto the one story high wall. There is also a football pitch where visitors can try human foosball or participate in mini tournaments.
http://thestore.typepad.com/thestoreblog/2010/07/puma-city-nyc.html

Veuve Clicquot have long been associated with design passions and have managed to maintain brand appeal and momentum by celebrity designer associations such as Tom Dixon, Karim Rashid and Pucci. This pproach seems to have worked well and it is now we are seeing young up and coming creatives exploring opportunities within the brands parameters.

The concept “Dry Blizzard” is a study of style and a new technical approach to an ice bucket for champagne Veuve Cliquot.

Thomas Lemaire’s ‘Dry Blizzard’ champagne bucket utilizes dry ice and a fan to circulate cold air around the bottle; the double-walled glass design ensures hot hands don’t alter the temperature one iota.

“Designed by London-based packaging agency The Core, the Ballantine’s Finest self-illuminating bottle, which can be powered by batteries or mains, is only available to the on-trade.

The bottle design is modelled on a graphic equaliser, the dark blue spray coated bottle appears to react to the tonal quality of audio passing through it, by lighting up intermittently to achieve back-of-bar standout.

see it in action at youtube

The working bottle forms part of an on-trade campaign for Ballantine’s Finest, entitled ‘Listen to Your Beat’. Rolling out across bars and nightclubs in the UK and other markets, the campaign is based on the idea that ‘by listening to your own beat and following your own instincts, you will make choices that leave an impression on others.’

Global marketing director for Ballantine’s, Peter Moore, said “The ‘Listen to Your Beat’ campaign will energise our on-trade accounts by engaging consumers in a creative and eye catching manner.”

Baud used haptics to communicate the essence of this wine. Touch is a very symbolic and sensuous experience, just like wine.

Drains and manhole covers are a sore point with me. Slippy, oily, ugly metal motorcycle catchers that often reach out and insist unsuspecting bikers pay a visit to the concrete below. But smart invention has begun to deliver perhaps a chink of hope…possibly consigning these dangers to history if UK proposals are accepted by Europe.New non-slip manhole covers offer equivalent grip to a good quality road surface, according to the BMF.

Yipee I hear all motorcyclists roar (well perhaps not quite) but then look at them…

Really there is no excuse for unimaginative design even for the most mundane of objects. You only have to look at Honfay Lui who has created a concept for  drainage systems ‘Matrix’ to realise the ordinary can be extra ordinary.

www.yankodesign.com and www.motorcyclenews.com

 Its amazing when you sit and figure out where you have been in the world.

• Create your own travel map or travel blog
• Visit TripAdvisor.com

Launching this week as part of Milan’s furniture festivities, the latest collaboration with leading designers and the second with Karim Rashid and Veuve Clicquot is this reinvention of a chandelier in the form of a glowing pink champagne holder that doubles as a cooling tote. The design, an asymmetrical sensual ellipse, was the result of Rashid’s initial scribble after asked to meld the immaterial and the material like he’d done with his first project for Veuve, the loveseat. Realizing his doodle was “the idea in itself,” the Globalight literally circles the champagne and adds ambient illumination that plays off the pink hue of Ros champagne, for which it was designed.

Bringing lighting experts Zumtobel into the project, the lamp-cum-basket uses technology to light up without heating and in fact keeps bottles at the ideal temperature for up to two hours.

Limited to a run of 500 (only 50 of those will be available for the U.S. market), the Globalight will be available on Eclicquot in May for $4,000.

via coolhunting