It seems like the homesteads of the major houses in Game of Thrones have everything — stables, godswoods, fighting arenas, barracks — but none of them seem to have gotten around to building a decent brewery. Since our stalwart heroes (and dastardly villains) have got to get sick of all that dreamwine and Tears of Lys sometime, Neatorama pointed us towards this clever series of famous beer brands, redesigned as if they had been brewed in Westeros. After all, wouldn’t you rather kick back after a hard day of battle with a tangy can of Targaryen than with a run-of-the-mill Bud? Or maybe sip a Winterfell brew — guaranteed to be ice-cold? Click through to check out the beer labels, and if you’re enchanted, you can head over to the artist’s page here to order stickers (slap them on your actual beers for a GoT party theme!) and t-shirts.
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This week, we read a short article over at NPR about Bookshelf, a blog-turned-book by Alex Johnson about — you guessed it — the bookshelf in all its glory. It’s no secret that we’re suckers for a little book-related design here at Flavorpill, so we took the occasion of the book’s publication as an excuse to round up thirty gorgeous, innovative, and otherwise amazing bookshelves and bookcases for all your book display needs. Some of them are even available to purchase, but even if the one you like best isn’t for sale, we daresay you’ll get some decorating ideas — or at least a yen to pick up your favorite novel. Click through to check out our gallery, and let us know which bookshelf you’re dying to cram all your paperbacks onto in the comments.
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This year marks the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film franchise. To celebrate, the studios behind the longest running series in film history are releasing Bond 50, a special edition Blu-ray package that includes all 22 Bond films to date and over 130 hours of bonus features, and we couldn’t be more excited. In true Flavorpill fashion we’re honoring the world’s most dashing Brit licensed to kill’s cultural milestone by combining two of our very favorite things: super sexy secret agents and architecture. If you’re a fan of Bond then you know the design legacy of the films is as exotic and varied as the celebrated women who call themselves Bond Girls. What you may not know is the deep-seated relationship between design and the Bond character’s creator, Ian Fleming.
Legend has it, as The Guardian reports, that Fleming was an outspoken hater of modernism. So much so that he named one of his most evil villains after Erno Goldfinger, architect of London’s famed Trellick Tower. Apparently the architect was a neighbor of Fleming’s in Hampstead, and “the conservation-minded author was incensed when he demolished two Victorian houses to build his now-classic modern villas on Willow Road. He returned the insult by lending Goldfinger’s name to his fictional gold-loving megalomaniac.” It’s no accident that all of the Bond villains reside in modernist lairs with obvious influences from the likes of Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Chamberlin Powell & Bon, the firm responsible for what’s been deemed London’s ugliest building, the brutalist Barbican Center. Fleming openly admits the correlation and in doing so — we think — can officially lay claim to the greatest cerebral snub in pop culture history.
From John Lautner’s iconic mid-century masterpieces to the world’s first revolving mountaintop restaurant to a stunning observatory residence in the Chilean desert, here’s our roundup of some of the most incredible statement architecture featured in the franchise to date.
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The travel trailer has come a long way since Wally Byam began making them out of masonite in his backyard in Los Angeles during the late 1920s. Inspired by his time spent working as a shepherd and living out of a “two-wheeled cart outfitted with a kerosene cook stove, a sleeping bag, and wash pail,” Wally – a man way ahead of his time – went from self-publishing a DIY magazine with articles on building a modern travel trailer to owning the Airstream Trailer Co.
Wally’s last trailer was his most extraordinary: a trailer sheathed in gold anodized aluminum “outfitted for high adventure in Africa and beyond.” We think he’d be proud to know that passionate nomads continue to push the limits of his iconic design. From Ralph Lauren’s stunningly appointed Adirondack-inspired version in Telluride, Colorado to El Cosmico, Liz Lambert’s modern collection of travel trailers in Marfa, Texas celebrating an “exodus from a world of urgency”, to the Magnolia Pearl, a luxe bohemian mobile shop complete with a freestanding salvaged galvanized bathtub, click through to check out our roundup of the most inspired travel trailer renovations out there today.
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One of the most stunning — albeit weird — examples of design in nature, tourist caves are a fascinating hybrid of kitschy roadside Americana and wondrous natural splendor. These unconventional attractions combine things like stalagtite ballrooms and underground wedding chapels with faux-Tudor architecture, patriotic son-et-lumière shows and awesome retro View-Masters for stereoscopic sightseeing that beat anything James Cameron could ever do.
We first discovered this subgenre of odd tourist destinations in the The Center for Land Use Interpretation’s comprehensive online database. A self-proclaimed “research and education organization interested in understanding the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth’s surface,” or, in layman’s terms, an offbeat cultural CIA tracking the many wacky things we humans put on this earth, CLUI is our newest learned obsession.
Starting with Howe Caverns, New York’s second-most-visited natural attraction, complete with a guided boat tour on an underground lake, and ending with a cave in New Mexico that’s famous for its bat amphitheater, we invite you to take a minute out of your day and join us on a virtual trip across our great nation to check out some of the most original natural design inspiration we’ve ever seen. Then (because we’re dying to know more), tell us about any real-world cave experiences you’ve had in the comments below!
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In 1972, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and The New York Times’ very first architecture critic, Ada Louise Huxtable observed that “nothing was more up-to-date when it was built, or is more obsolete today, than the railroad station.” A comment on the emerging age of the jetliner and a swanky commercial air travel industry that made the behemoth train stations of the time appear as cumbersome relics of an outdated industrial era, we don’t think the judgment holds up today — at all. Like so many things that we wrote off in favor of what was seemingly more modern and efficient (ahem, vinyl records and Polaroid film), the train station is back and better than ever. So, we’re taking the time to look back at some of the greatest stations still standing.
From New York’s grande dame of a terminal to a station complete with its own indoor rainforest to the home of the world’s most luxurious train, the Orient Express, here’s our roundup of the most beautiful train stations in the world. Let us know in the comments what we’ve missed!
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When Frank Lloyd Wright said that “a great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart,” surely he was alluding to the fact that travel and exploration are important aspects of any designer’s process. Seriously, what better way to feed your soul and get the creative juices flowing than a fabulous get-away in an inspiring and culturally significant hotel?
A testament to the splendor of heart-driven design, we’ve married two of our favorite things – extraordinary hotels and stunning architecture – to bring you our guide to the most architecturally significant hotels in the world. From Frank Gehry’s iridescent design set against a medieval backdrop in Spain’s Rioja wine region to a recently renovated mid-century icon by John Lautner to Renzo Piano’s whimsical update of an old Fiat factory in Italy, click through to check out these visionary and inspiring designs. Let us know in the comments which one you’ll be booking for your next creative crusade!
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Culture industry was a term coined by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkeimer, two brainy theorists with awesome surnames who waxed poetic about the failure of the Age of Enlightenment. Heady stuff, but their century-old theory about mass-produced culture and the media machine that makes it is relevant now more than ever.
Over the last decade individuality has — ironically — been standardized thanks to the likes of indie superstore, Urban Outfitters, H&M and (sorry Jenna Lyons) J. Crew. The fashion equivalent of the soap opera, retail giants are by definition formulaic, adhering to pre-existing templates that above all else, promote scalability and profitability.
With the modern mass culture factory growing at a mind-blowing rate, we thought we’d take a minute to look back at its antithesis: the avant-garde. Should consumerism ever go the way of the dodo, here’s a fun reminder of what our closets might look like if artistic originality not sales figures ruled the day. From the Godfather of vanguard fashion, Issey Miyake, to Björk’s partner in fashion crime, Hussein Chalayan, to the intentionally anonymous genius behind Maison Martin Margiela, click through to see how we think these eccentric and original designs measure up in terms of everyday wearability. Let us know in the comments which look you’d consider rocking any old day of the week.
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When it comes to interior design, no one is more creative than children. Sure, a fancy designer might knock down a wall or come up with an aesthetically pleasing color scheme, but kids can transform your standard suburban bedroom into anything — a moon colony, a pirate ship, an arctic fishing village. Björn Ewers and Germany’s STUDIO314 have captured that youthful ingenuity in Child’s Caves, a series of photographs that evoke those comforting and imaginative spaces. Click through to see a selection of shots from the collection, which we spotted at Peta Pixel, and visit STUDIO314′s website for the rest.
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To know our nation’s sandwich landscape is to understand what it means to be American. As rich and diverse as the streets south of Houston, the menus at New York’s best sandwich shops read like a provocative abstract on America’s cultural ethnography: the French dip, the Cubano, the Philly cheesesteak, the spicy Rizzak, the Reuben, the Runza, the Hillel, the Fluffernutter and the food scene’s best Italian import since Mario Batali, the Muffaletta.
James Beard, the godfather of gourmet American food, said “too few people understand a really good sandwich.” We think that’s changing. With everyone from our favorite sexy celebrity chef superstar to designers and artists the world over giving sliced bread and the good stuff between it due attention, we think the era of the sandwich is upon us. From intricate porcelain patterned bread to condiment design to deconstructed sandwiches made entirely out of vegetables, here’s our look at sandwich game-changers. Let us know in the comments what do you do to up your sandwich’s ante.
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