Ideas for Lisbon

While walking along Rua Augusta on Wednesday I saw a massive operation going on at MUDE, Portugal's Museum of Design and Fashion: a number of people atop cherry-pickers applying thousands of Post-Its to the building's large protruding sign. My first thought was, 'ah, those designers and their Post-Its', thinking of one of the industry's popular brain-storming tools. As it turns out, MUDE is working with Lisbon's city council on something of a very large-scale brainstorming exercise. Being officially opened on Wednesday of next week by the city's mayor, these Post-Its (55,000 in total) are in place for the people of Lisbon to contribute their ideas for the future of the city. Entitled 'Ideias para Lisboa/Ideas for Lisbon', this project aims to inspire active citizenship and more open communication with the city council, who are committing €2.5 million this year to the implementation of citizens' ideas.

Mag Kiosk

(Image of Mag Kiosk via Visao)

The neighbourhood I live in in Lisbon is called Alcântara, which is a little west of the city centre, right underneath the 25 April bridge. It's a nice neighbourhood, and one of the highlights is a place called LX Factory. LX Factory is a complex of restaurants, bars, shops and studios, so-named because they're housed in former factory buildings. I've been finding myself in LX Factory regularly - mainly to attend dance classes (it's like exercise but not mind-numbingly boring), often to grab a coffee and occasionally to pick up a magazine or two in Mag Kiosk.

Ilustrarte 2012 at Museu da Electricidade

(Image by Adelino Oliveira, via Wikimedia Commons)

On the banks of Lisbon's Tagus River, just a few minutes walk from where I live is Museu da Electricidade - the Electricity Museum. Originally a thermoelectric power station, Museu da Electricidade houses a permanent exhibition on electricity along with an ever-changing programme of exhibitions exploring contemporary art, design and architecture. A building whose first phase was completed in 1908, Museu da Electricidade is a beautiful example of industrial architecture, and its permanent exhibition consists primarily of the very equipment used to power Lisbon city and the surrounding region until 1972.

Makers & Brothers

This is old news to a lot of you by now I'm sure, but in the final weeks of 2011 brothers Jonathan and Mark Legge launched Makers & Brothers, an online design and craft retailer. Makers & Brothers puts an emphasis on the useful and beautiful, the processes of making and producing, and the 'sometimes nicely odd'. The site elevates the ordinary and reveals the extraordinary, through a careful curation of beautiful functional objects and quirky gems across a variety of scales and sensibilities. Choosing favourites on Makers & Brothers isn't easy, but I gave it a shot...

Here's the Heads Up #11

(Jim Field's apple from 50/50 Grow)

Ongoing:
50/50 Grow, a digital orchard
The boys over at Studio Aad decided to plant a digital orchard in aid of UNICEF's East Africa appeal. The idea is simple: designers, photographers and illustrators contribute an image of an apple, and you can 'water' one of them by giving a €5 donation. In return you get a high-res version of the image(s) you've chosen (the one I picked, above, is currently my desktop wallpaper).

Dublin Design Retailers

This article was first published in Architecture Ireland #258

Perhaps it’s an unusual time to open up a design shop in Dublin. However, a number of people have taken the plunge and opened their own design stores in the city in the past eighteen months or so, each with a unique vision and individual range of stock. Design retail stalwarts such as Wild Child and more recent retailers like the Irish Design Shop are being joined by a new generation. I caught up with three such new kids on the block to find out their motivations for setting up and starting off on a new adventure.

First up was Vanessa MacInnes, owner of Industry (Smock Alley, Temple Bar), a shop dedicated to vintage and upcycled pieces as well as new design. Vanessa has a real passion for the industrial aesthetic, and during her years working as an interior designer had trouble finding anything of that style in Ireland. Industry now stocks an ever-changing range of vintage and one-off industrial furniture, from postal desks to metal shelving units. Paired with the harder edged furniture is a range of printed cushions, artworks and tabletop objects, illustrating how easy it can be to work something with an industrial feel into an interior.


(Image courtesy of Industry)

Musing About MUDE

(Image via Pribeiro on Flickr)

I recently spent a mega sunny week in Lisbon, and while people here in Dublin celebrated the city's position on the shortlist to be next World Design Capital, I visited MUDE - Museu do Design e da Moda - Lisbon's beautiful design museum. Located on Rua Augusta, one of the main shopping streets close to the riverside, MUDE has taken its home in a former bank building after years of dereliction and dilapidation. Rather than cover over that part of the building's history however, the museum maintains both its stylish staircases and its grotty walls and ceilings, laying the building's whole story bare. Within the space the ground floor is home to a permanent exhibition of the museum's permanent collection of design and fashion. It serves the purpose not only of showing some of the vast amount of artefacts amassed by Portuguese collector Francisco Capelo but also to provide an introduction to the major developments in design and fashion over the last 100 years.

Here's the Heads Up #8

(of de Blacam and Meagher, image by Enda Doran)

There are a couple different design and architecture exhibitions on around Dublin at the moment, so if you can tear yourself away from the sunshine for a few hours I recommend you check some of them out.

Open now until 22 March:
The Look of the Irish, Designist, 58 South Great George's Street, Dublin 2
Designist is one of the newest additions to Dublin's retail spaces, committed to simple and affordable design. At the moment they're putting the emphasis on Irish work ('tis the season, I suppose) until Tuesday, so get in while you can!

Pop-Up Shop

Recently kicked off and running until mid-July, the RHA is now home not only to galleries, art books and coffee, but also to a series of pop-up design shops. Currently residing there is the Irish Design Shop's pop-up shop, and among other products, they're debuting work by Irish furniture designer Adrian Coen and prints by Yellowhammer. Adrian's "Hedgehooks" are a series of bespoke coat hooks made from various native Irish hardwoods sourced in Co. Galway, with a variety of finishes (or unfinishes) applied to them. Yellowhammer (or Alan Nagle, as he's known to his parents) has done a series of brightly coloured, crisp digital prints of Irish birds. They're fab, just look.

The shops will continue to pop-up every couple of weeks until mid-July. Take a look at the RHA website to see who's in the line-up.

Labour and Wait

Shoreditch in London seems to be the home of all things trendy, so how could I not visit?! There were a couple of highlights, including brunch at The Breakfast Club (technically in Hoxton, but it's as close as makes no difference) and browsing through Labour and Wait, purveyors of old-school homewares you'd imagine the servants in Upstairs Downstairs using on a daily basis. Two items I'd particularly like to own are the enamel coffee pot and milk pan, below (images via the Labour and Wait online shop). Be sure to check it out if you're in the area.

Young Designers Kit

(Image via Breakmould. on Flickr)

When on a recent trip to London, I visited the Design Museum, and (as is par for the course) I spent almost equal time in the shop as I did viewing the exhibitions. I'm a big fan of the Design Museum shop. It has a great range of books, and the shop's own range of merchandise, though a little pricey, is pretty slick. I was particularly charmed by the Young Designers Kit, equipping budding creatives with crayons, notebooks, rulers and more. Further feeding my stationary fetish, I came out with a pencil and pairer (pictured below). Delish.

(Images via Design Museum Shop)

Page\Park Part Two

(Image of Thomson's exterior via CCA)

Another Page\Park-refurbished cultural space is CCA - the Centre for Contemporary Arts on Sauchiehall Street. Page\Park reworked a building by another notable name in Glasgow's architectural history - Alexander 'Greek' Thomson - to accomodate gallery, screening and performance spaces, as well as a cafe and bar and a pretty art and design bookshop and reading space at front-of-house. Well worth a visit, though one might not be enough...

Page\Park Part One

I just spent a long weekend in Glasgow, so for 5 glorious days I focused on Glaswegian buildings (and inside them, and around them) instead of Dublin ones. One such building was the Lighthouse, Glasgow's Centre for Architecture, Design and the City, was part of the itinerary. Housed in a Charles Rennie Mackintosh building, cleverly refurbished and extended by Glasgow firm Page\Park, the Centre houses a permanent Mackintosh exhibition, two viewing towers, a Vitra showroom, exhibition space, a cafe (pictured below) and a shop, which I somehow missed (?!). Unfortunately they were between builds while I was there, and so there wasn't a lot to see beyond the Mackintosh room, but I guess it's good to brush up on the man while in his home town...

Drawda is on the Up

Naturally, it's not until I move away from Drogheda that I realise there's a brand new cool cafe there. I went to visit my parents last weekend and stumbled upon Trader's Coffee House on Laurence Street and I'm quite a fan already. All I sampled while sitting in its tasty interior was the coffee (also tasty), but they seemed to have a range of great looking sandwiches and even better looking cakes, all baked and prepared in-house. The coffee is roasted in Galway, so it's a little more local than usual, and I'd be sure to drink it a lot if I were still a local myself...

In other news, I saw Mickey Joe Harte having a mooch around Scotch Hall Shopping Centre after my coffee. Result!

National Leprechaun Museum

You may not believe me when I tell you this, but I recently visited the National Leprechaun Museum, and it is Awesome. Really, actually, honestly Awesome. It's a museum of mythology, which is great because that's something most people leave behind after primary school, and visiting the museum got me really enthused about all of that again. But the best thing about the museum is that it's beautifully designed by museum director Tom O'Rahilly. A number of clever tricks are employed to play with scale, such as the tunnel you pass through at the beginning of your tour and the giant-sized living room (featuring a giant-sized Anglepoise lamp!), but cleverer still are not-in-the-least-bit-naff ways you're brought through the magical world of the museum: everything's made to the highest spec from the best materials, and everything is slick as hell: from the rain room to the rainbow and everything besides. Swallow your cynicism and go visit!

Number 31

If you thought all that Irish architect Sam Stephenson was good for was replacing Georgian buildings and Viking excavations with brutalist blocks (ESB Building on Hatch Street and Dublin Civic Offices, Wood Quay if you feel like brushing up) then I suggest you visit Number 31. Now a luxurious guesthouse serving "probably the best breakfast in Dublin" - their words, and Georgina Campbells too, for that matter - Number 31 Leeson Close, just off Leeson Street is a stunning mews that Stephenson converted and made his family home in 1958. Structurally and stylistically, everything in the mews is as Stephenson designed it, from the mirrored bar to the iconic conversation pit (above). For someone long-associated with architectural brutalism, Stephenson used his materials, the wood panelling in particular, to great effect, lending a warmth and homeliness to the sleek interior. Infinitely cooler than anything you'd expect from 1950s Ireland, possibly cooler than a lot of present-day conversions, this place is super sweet and well worth a visit.

No Fixed Abode

I visited the Interior Design & Art Fair in the RDS last weekend, and head and shoulders above the rest of the stands was that of nofixedabode.ie. Peter and Sarah McCann run the online (and occasionally pop-up) design shop, stocking work by a number of different designers from here and abroad, including Peter himself. Some of my favourites on display at the RDS were these cushions by Scottish designer Donna Wilson:

Images via No Fixed Abode

Portobello

Portobello has to be one of the nicest parts of Dublin city, and I would very much like to live there. I had a wander around there the other day, soaking up the prettiness and the sunshine (shortlived as the latter was...) and, among other things, found the following:



Dolls is a clothes shop on the corner of Ovoca Road and Emorville Avenue. There was a great pair of brogues (I thought I took a photo on my new phone, but apparently not. Still coming to grips the phone and and coming to terms with the loss of the photo of the great brogues...) and they were playing Lykke Li when I went in. Dreamy. Also, through the door on the right of the shop is a cafe with seating just outside. I must check out the coffee another day, and will keep you posted on that.

While I'm Away

Right, I'm off. Copenhagen beckons and as you might have noticed I'm never one to ignore it. While I'm away, I suggest you check out 3fe (Third Floor Espresso), and get one of these:

Featured

This weekend's activities included working on a small feature for House & Home magazine, which meant visiting lots of design stores and online shops. What a drag. Pick up a copy of the mag in March sometime for a design masterclass of ... em ... local proportions.