SLAB Magazine

Is there a name for the kind of beauty which arrises when the dumbest possible problem is answered by the dumbest possible solution? Elegant answers to complex problems have been given far too much attention: there is just as much humanity in this radiator/door conundrum as there is in any orthodox example of perfection in [...]

Canada: super-cooled in summer
Canada makes me feel very European. Obviously I haven’t, for example, understand air-conditioning. I haven’t understood its need to run 24 hours a day regardless of the weather outside. Nor have I understood why the benefits of a reliable 18.5°C room temperature so outweigh the annoyance of the rattle and hum of [...]

This Jacob’s coffee vending machine sources its water very locally.

Seen at Berlin’s Tegel airport

25 Mailroom Designers.jpg – [Source: http://hdfiles.com/]
The ease with which Google (an internet search engine) enables us to access photographic material, and the cryptic fuzziness of search results, plunges us into a serendipitous space lacking any kind of context. The search results page, with its bland grid of suggestions, brings us unapologetically close to answers to [...]

Chatting to my sister on the phone this evening, we got on to the subject of retail interiors since she’s just landed a job as an interior designer for a leading British supermarket chain. I told her about the last day of my trip to England a month ago, were I paid homage to that [...]

Amnesty International Guantanamo cell replica on tour in Australia
As reported on Boing Boing yesterday, Amnesty International have constructed a replica of the Guantanamo Cell where the Australian, David Hicks, has been held for five years. In reality the slit window is internal, and faces onto a hallway.
Links:
– Quicktime VR of the cell
– Amnesty International
– [...]

Toasted
There’s a scene in the satirical comedy Thank You for Smoking where the vertical blinds of an office window have been specially prepared by the art department so as to resemble a row of cigarettes. It’s a subtle visual trick, a hidden ‘easter-egg’ revealed by the director Jason Reitman in the DVD audio commentary.
My colleage [...]

Visit this place before it’s too late
Whilst in London recently I paid what will probably be my last visit to New Piccadilly Café in Soho. New Piccadilly is an old-style Italian-run London caff unchanged since sometime in the 1950s. It’s one of a dying breed, and is due to close some time soon because of [...]