looking for un petit coin de paradis to call in peace? Find a pentaphone nearby! Design by Robert Stadler. Via Dezeen. Apparently, “It is one of a number of pieces by various artists and designers that will form the inaugural exhibition at the new Karriere Bar in Copenhagen, which opens on November 15.” I have to check this bar this week-end :)
Image from the Dezeen blog
Thanks to Mehdi, some news about hotel innovations: check the Accor Innovation website.
A guided tour of room 307:
“Access to the room is controlled by radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, a solution that Accor developed in cooperation with VingCard Assa Abloy. The door lock opens when it detects a radio frequency microchip in the hotel key card or in a Samsung mobile phone that is scheduled to reach the market in January 2008. The room’s safe also uses this technology. In the next 18 months to three years, all mobile phones worldwide will meet NFC standards and be able to use this technology.”
Check also room 1014.
Suitehotel created nomadsphere, a new community website for architects who want to travel with other nomads:
“ Planning a trip to Berlin? Just connect to www.nomadsphere.com to get in touch with another nomad who shares your interests and just happens to be in Berlin at the same time.”
Personally, I am on so many Social Networking websites that I regularly forget my passwords…
The poetic project of the Bouroullec brothers…
Screenshots from the Bouroullec’s website… © Paul Tahon + R. & E. Bouroullec
“Resting just above the water and moored to the impressionists’ island in Chatou, the Floating House softly sways to the rhythm of the Seine’s swirls. The changing reflections of the light onto the water pervade the wooden walls cut open by two glazed facades in the main rooms. From the inside of the studio, the picturesque landscape that inspired Renoir’s “Déjeuner des canotiers” in 1881 is visible everywhere, blurred by the mirroring surface of the river. A fairy tale atmosphere favoring inspiration and contemplation”
I found the above advertising postcard in a book I borrowed from the library (as all neo-nomad qui se respecte must do, plug into libraries and share resources)… I was reading a 1972 edition of Chambre d’Hôtel by Colette, so I am guessing the advertising for the products of linguaphone (a hundred year-old company) dates from the seventies. Anyway, this image triggered quite a lot of thoughts… First, that learning another language becomes more important with the meeting of other cultures, i.e. there would not be any language courses if there weren’t any travel. Second, I always wondered how Marco Polo communicated with Gengis. As a architect I never had any problem, if I could not speak I could draw… (Now… if you cannot draw, you can always use Point It, the Travellers’ Language Kit) which leads us to the beginnings of writings and cuneiform scripts in Sumer… pictograms were they, illustrating an object/place/activity, different from ideograms, representing ideas. Third, the thought of a universal language… Or four, at least an alphabet like the Morse code and the NATO alphabet, the international radiotelephony alphabet that was developed to ensure the intelligibility of voice signals over radio even to a non-English native speaker… The link between language, technology and travel is here obvious. Which brings us exactly to what started my tirade, the vinyl as a technology that supports teaching/learning… as maybe an ancestor to the CD or CD-Rom or the podcast… Wikipedia offers a history of virtual learning environment, history that dates before the 1940’s. Here is an article on Computer Enhanced Language Learning; and a book chapter on technology to support learning…
Beautiful! A fantastic article by PinMag: Jum Nakao: Paper Fashion Art.
Screenshot From PingMag…
