TILT – PANIC ROOM from BIG ADDICT on Vimeo.

A few weeks ago, a little known hotel room in Marseille, France took the Internet by storm with an installation called ‘Panic Room’ by street artist Tilt. With half of its space blanketed in layers of graffiti and the other half left untouched in alarmingly sterile white, ‘Panic Room’ dazzled with its spatially disorienting décor, condensing two antithetical places into one. Curbed Philadelphia recently posted a video of the artistic process, showing Tilt and his crew during their slow and partial takeover of the at one time spotless installation site.

The artists immediately look out of place walking into the stark white setting while dressed in paint-crusted jeans and fitted caps. But as shown in the video, they quickly make themselves at home. They whip out spray canisters and methodically tag the riotous half of the room, creating incredible ‘halved’ pieces of furniture and carefully framed images in the process. The process is both freeform and calculated, beautifully weaving together the utmost precision with patented street art improvisation. The true satisfaction comes when the painter’s tape peels off, the bed sheet falls into place, the graffitied cactus is set on the table, and the perfect division between chaos and order is revealed.

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Last Wednesday, New York’s art and architecture circles came together at the Cristin Tierney Gallery to celebrate the work of artist Yorgo Alexopoulos, whose hypnotic visuals graced the gallery walls through the latest space-enhancing LCD flat screens engineered by Planar. While sipping on wine and sampling various finger foods, party-goers cycled through abstract, Kubrick-esque journeys through time and watched colorful collages sashay across the sprawling display of Planar’s Mosaic screens. If you couldn’t make it, take a look at some party pics and start seeding ideas for your very own Mosaic room! More photos after the jump.

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There is a certain magic to the carnival, from its pop-up cotton-candy-and-corndog manifestation on high school baseball fields and city parklets to the full-blown amusement park, whirring with color and noise and packed with wide-eyed thrill seekers. Even from a distance, one can sense the joy of plunging momentarily into a sort of Technicolor escapism, of swapping real bills for tokens and raffle tickets, forgoing real meals for the sugar high of funnel cakes and ice cream, and trading any sense of the quotidian for a series of fleeting joyrides.

The carousel is perhaps a perfect summation of this unabashedly simulated fantasy, inviting riders to enter an extraordinary other world, but one that is knowingly contained in a finite circle. It is also the perfect centerpiece for a legendary bar in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans. The metal enthusiasts at Bastille Metal Works have recently partnered with the historic Hotel Monteleone to install a rotating pewter bar top to enhance the striking carousel crown that defines this celebrated Nola destination. Those lucky enough to snag a seat can sip on cocktails while basking under the lights of the hundreds of exposed bulbs lining the extravagant architectural centerpiece. Better yet, they can enjoy a gentle, carefree spinning sensation without putting away too many drinks.

[All images courtesy Bastille Metal Works]

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Everybody loves a good mash-up, and here’s one that would look good in your home: Swedish design studio Claesson Koivisto Rune has adopted Moroccan cement tile production techniques to create a series of cement tiles stamped with the signature organic geometries of Scandinavian design. Their new line for Marrakech Design is a thoroughly cross-cultural blend: the trio of designers traveled to Morocco to observe the methods of the local tile-making industry and then took their newfound appreciation for concrete to reproduce patently Scandinavian patterns, as well as patterns inspired by Japanese prints and Arabic geometries. More after the jump.

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Yesterday, Material ConneXion launched its Print/3D show to great fanfare. With wine glasses in hand, visitors marveled at lamp fixtures, bike chains, and furniture, all printed in whole with the patented intricacies of their cutting edge process of production. It wasn’t difficult, however, to pry away from the lively Makerbot to peruse Material ConneXion’s immense library of materials, its claim to fame for fifteen years now.

As we grazed our fingers against panel after panel of textured material samples, we were reminded of the often-overlooked significance of material in architecture and design, and just how much can hinge upon the substance that fills a designer’s forms or frames his or her spaces. This is perhaps why we were intrigued by J+J/Invision’s new line of carpets, a collection aptly called Paradigm Shift.

As leaders in the commercial carpet industry, J+J/Invision have leveraged their clout in the interiors market to produce a collection that interweaves their refined aesthetic with a pioneering call for more sustainable manufacturing practices. For their new collection, J+J/Invision designers have repurposed their stores of excess yarn to create a brand new line defined by shifting colors and modular patterns. ‘Evolve’ and ‘Emerge’ intertwine background neutrals with vibrant colors to create a subtle yet dynamic sense of movement. Thus, despite their modular appearance, the two styles manage to recall the handicraft aesthetic of traditional knitted fabrics and vintage quilts. Furthermore, no two tiles of carpet are the same. Paradigm Shift is thus, as its name suggests, a commendable shift towards rethinking environmentally responsible design. To learn more, take a look at J+J/Invision’s brand page.

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“I always imagined I would be an architect when I was younger because I was nerdy enough to enjoy the math and science portion of school while also being really interested in art,” says Chris Brigham of Knife & Saw. But when college came around, one decision led to another, and after graduating with a fine arts degree, Brigham found himself staring into the screen as a graphic designer for “one of the many doomed dot-coms of the time.”

After hopping from one start-up to the next (one of them being Google), Brigham couldn’t suppress his architectural streak any longer. No, he did not return to the throes of design school. Instead, he turned his garage into a wood shop. “With that,” says Brigham, “Knife & Saw was born.” Brigham’s intuitive reverse engineering and affinity for minimalist design led him to build the Bike Shelf. Weighing in at 15 pounds, built out of solid black walnut or white ash, and starting at $299, the Bike Shelf is the slimmest and by far the most affordable of the bike-rack-bookshelf hybrids we’ve surveyed. With a Bike Shelf affixed to your wall, you can keep your bike indoors by slipping it into the level slot and plop your helmet, keys, or your collection of rare books right on top. Order yours here.

[All images courtesy Knife & Saw]

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Pizza, the lovable flat bread with toppings, has been having a bit of a moment. Outside of its native country, the food item has spawned numerous kinds of ‘authentic,’ each with its loyal followers. Its reliance on distinct, rigorously honed techniques and its diverse appeal to everyone from sodium-loving children to fine dining aficionados, have made pizza something of a cult food item. The receptiveness of its form and flavor allows for chefs and restauranteurs to simultaneously uphold and reinvent gastronomical tradition. It is no surprise then that pizza restaurants have become sites for architectural as well as culinary innovation. Centered around a massive oven—a piece of machinery that can sometimes drum up the same kind of talk as a sports car—the pizza restaurant has inherent architectural concerns and features that have now become the inspiration for creative design.

As we learned from Fast Co. Design, British chef and television icon Jamie Oliver has a colorful legacy back at home, including a chain of pizza joints called Union Jacks. The newest Union Jacks to join the wood-fired British pizza scene is located in none other than the Central St. Giles building designed by Renzo Piano. But starchitect aside, Oliver’s latest pie-slinging enterprise boasts a lively interior designed by local studio Blacksheep that sprinkles in kitschy elements of post-war nostalgia with bold graphics and cheeky decorative accents. Take a look at Union Jacks and a few other pizza restaurants deserving of some architectural spotlight, after the jump.

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Frank Lloyd Wright famously emphasized the importance of a centrally placed fireplace in the home. Radiating warmth, the hearth was the architectural and spiritual focus of the home, grounding it and becoming a salient feature of Wright’s architectural practice and philosophy. In his time, Wright was an innovative pioneer of early natural heating and air circulation solutions, but much has changed since the American architect revolutionized the industry with his patented Prairie Style.

The fireplace, for one, has undergone a renaissance. Largely dormant after the advent of efficient and concealed gas and electric heating, the primitive, flickering flame has once again found renewed context in the modern home. Take a look at some of these sleek, modern fireplaces from Ortal that are once again restoring the hearth to its original place as the heart of the home. More after the jump.

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The latest from the Korean design front: designer Jongho Park’s ‘Costume Collection,’ a series of works that play with material and shape to reinvigorate familiar forms of furniture. In the series, Park uses laser-cutting techniques to manipulate iron to look like wood and wood to look like fabric. Chairs, lights and stools appear like children draped in bed sheets on Halloween, with their feet sticking out endearingly from below. More after the jump.

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Downton Abbey. Needless to say, this British television import has had many of us across the pond glued to the screen, honing our British accents, and producing memes on Tumblr with frightening voracity. While season 2 is breaking down some of our favorite upstairs-downstairs social barriers, we can’t help but still wish we were estate-owners ourselves in those glory days, prancing about the opulent halls of Downton while sprinkling benevolent gestures here and there so that we may consider ourselves righteous people.

The State Dining Room at Highclere Castle, Hampshire, England. Image via Linda Miller.

Well, home décor enthusiast and writer Linda Merrill can help some of us get there by deciphering the interior composition of some of our favorite rooms in that big ol’ abbey. First stop, the dining room, a site decorated not only with Maggie Smith’s acerbic quips but also by an enormous 17^th century Anthony Van Dyck painting, gorgeous wood wainscoting, a mahogany table and assorted silver candelabras and serving pieces. Not only does Miller pick out the small details of the State Dining Room at Highclere Castle, where Downton’s dining scenes are filmed, but she has also compiled a Pinterest board of objects the Crawley family is accustomed to dining with nightly. All we need now is that fleet of cooks, maids, valets and footmen (not Thomas though).

Filming in process for a dining scene in Downton Abbey. Image via Linda Miller.

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