The Concerto Table

Crafted in the silhouette of a baby grand, this is a beautiful table to dine with your loved ones. And there's a iPod dock to offer further audio ambience! There are also storage compartments, even a drawer for your silver.

Alternatively, it could also be your work table. Lovegrove & Repucci was formed by Nicholas Lovegrove and Demian Repucci in 2003.

Bag Borrow or Steal!

Bag Borrow or Steal is actually a site to borrow the latest genuine designer bags and jewellery, and is based on a membership fee. Items could also be rented for a fee. Based in the USA, this is a godsend service for ladies, especially when one has a very busy social schedule. And its a wonderful idea for weddings too, for both the guests and the bride.

And guess who's in this pic? Their Chief Bag Officer (yeah, that's a real designation!).

2008 Colour of the Year by Pantone

The PANTONE 18-3943 Blue Iris was selected by the Pantone Colour Institute as colour of the year for homeware, cosmetics and fashion.

The blue elements inspires calm, especially attractive in this complex world that we live in, while the purple elements add a touch of magic & mystery. Grays hues, red-browns, deeper plums, grapes and yellow-greens offer great pairing opportunities.

Shigeo Fukuda - Shadow Sculptures

The image of the piano in the mirror appears when the viewer stands at a certain vantage point. It is a reflection of the sculpture of piano parts on the right.




Discover more videos of Shigeo Fukuda's sculptures here.

Park Planters

Designed by Science & Sons, here the pots become an urban scene, the plants, the park.

Art of Illusion in the Street

Created by artist Kurt Wenner, he's creations in the streets look so real! In this image (copyright Kurt Wenner) the lady appears to be on the sofa when in fact she's just lying on the ground.

Stair

Stair - created by Gabriella Gustafson and Mattias Ståhlbom of TAF, (an architecture & design studio based in Sweden) for a private residence in 2006. Tree House is an art installation by them in 2002.

Paper Artist: Peter Callesen

Fairy-tale themes, scenes from he's favourite stories, this designer from Denmark explores childhood nostalgia through he's projects.

Magical Designs

The Magic Collection by the design group FRONT involved a collaboration with professional magicians to bring you a little stardust in your home.

Also, discover one of their intriguing projects in Japan where furnishings are sketched out into reality (see the video).

Paradigm-shifts

Dutch design house Demakersvan caught my attention with their Cinderella project. Go to their site to explore the design in 3D. The Bloomstone project evokes a paradigm-shift in flooring design, where the seams are used to create a visual design.

Stretch Namecard Concept

A namecard designed by Publicis for personal trainer Poul Nielsen, where the texts only become legible when the card's being stretch. A warm-up to the workout to come?

Metallic Lace Leaf

Maria Jauhiainen explores the strength and delicacy of metal and delivers in with aplomb in the lace-like LEHTI trays. MAGNIFICENT.

Nature's touch on our walls & ceilings...

The vision of David Wiseman materializes as welcome breath of fresh air, and makes the spaces such as your ceiling and walls come alive!

Studio Leung

London-based Michael Leung had shown some interesting developments into alternative designs of thumb-drives and hard-disks very early in 2005. Think hardwood/beechwood, leather, even stone.

GAMplusFRATESI

Their winning design LUISA brought this design duo into the limelight as emerging talents in 2006.

The LUISA projects saw soft floral motifs sandwiched between clear acrylic, which shields our sense of touch from the soft materials.

As for the NINFEA FloorSitting, believe the description on their site sums it up best:

<“A sweet little white butterfly began to fly round and round her and at last alighted on the waterlily, for it had fallen in love with Thumbelina, who was so happy now, and it was so delightful sailing along on her waterlily.

The sun shone on the water like gleaming gold. She took of her sash and tied one end round the butterfly, the other to the waterlily, which was travelling much faster now, and so was she, for she was sitting on it."

"Thumbelina” H.C. Andersen

Inspired from this fairytale of Hans Christian Andersen, we have created these seats that “float” on the floor. Different patterns like the butterfly and the flower are becoming a surreal and fairy-like landscape of waterlilies.

An interesting meeting between wood and felt. The construction is inspired from plywood; layers of felt and wood screwed together. The felt has a decorative function as well offers comfort and structural properties. The U-constructions of the felt gives a great flexibility and softness to these floor level sitting.">

The Lace Chair was an exploration of the high-tech glasfiber material, contrasting with the rich traditions of the best laces (perhaps Leavers?), in a most evocative marriage.

Tord Boontje - One of our all-time favourites!

We are fans of this designer, and have gotten a few of he's work. He's inspirations come from Nature, which he interprets beautifully.

*image copyright from designboom

Tree Beds

By now one may have guess organic & Nature are themes that appeal to me. This is a piece by Shawn Lovell Metalworks. Quote from site: "Shawn uses traditional forging techniques as well as modern welding fabrication to create her one of a kind pieces."

Maarten Baas Smoke Series

From the Baas & den Herder studio, the Smoke series saw furniture pieces been burnt and preserved with clear epoxy.

JAIME HAYON

This Spanish artist-designer first caught my attention with he's bathroom collection AQHayon for Artquitect in 2005. All images copyright of Hayon Studio.

The mirrors are beautiful, and love the blend of live plants. The organic flow is most alluring, reminiscent of architect Antoni Gaudi. He's touch on the classic chairs in the BD Showtime Collection offers further glimpse of he's genius. Quite a personality too, as can be seen in this potrait of Jaime Hayon, by photographer Nienke Klunder.

There's something in the Air...

MACBOOK AIR

Another fantastic piece of design, function, and cool-chic from the Apple team! I must say, there aren't many commercial products launched that give you that 'WOW' factor like Steve Jobs and he's team. The following are the videos of him introducing the MacBook Air at MacWorld 2008.

Good Service or NO Service?

D is thinking of having a blog that writes all about service. Perhaps lately we've had too many bad experiences while shopping, eating, buying. Though there are good service around, but they are pretty rare. In this blog, he will give you true accounts of bad experiences and give praises to those good services he receives/sees (i'm not sure if he'll provide all details including name of the place). He is still thinking of a name for the blog. Will share it with you guys once it is up. Good luck to those in the customer service sector. If you're providing lousy service, don't let him run into you!! You'll definitely regret it.

Our 1st Walk

yeah!! we've started...!! see....according to our new year's resolution, we're heading for a healthy lifestyle this year. so to kickstart, we took a morning walk to the Singapore Botanic Gardens yesterday. it was a refreshing morning. woke up at 630am and never felt better. it's been quite a while since we saw the rising sun..and it was nice to finally see it. the walk took about 45mins. along the way we saw great apartments, joggers, beautiful trees and were breathing fresh air. ahhh...nice ...

botanic gardens looks better now. cleaner, greener and really peaceful in the morning. so many people doing exercise (various types), walking with dogs and bringing kids for walks. ummm... there were also a group of people doing exercise with huge rubberband-like thing - some resistant exercise i think. looks fun though.

the stroll, the nature, the morning dews, makes us wanna do this more often. we'll embrace the year feeling more fulfilled!