Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Hyatt is hardly a boutique brand, but the international hotel chain is taking an increasingly bespoke approach to its properties. After a handful of successful, locally minded collaborations, New York-based architecture and interior design firm Stonehill & Taylor recently completed work on the chain’s Minneapolis location that boasts a “made in America” ethos throughout the whole site.

The large scale renovation encompassed all major public areas, including the lobby, bar, and addition of a new marketplace, as well as 533 guest rooms on a somewhat tight timeframe of 12 months, as opposed to the standard 18. Stonehill & Taylor was asked to spend as much of the budget as possible in the US. “It’s a commendable directive, and one that was almost absolutely required by the accelerated schedule,” principal Mike Suomi tells Co.Design. “There wasn’t time to have things made by the cheapest bidder–who may not be in our country–because it might not have made it on deadline.”

Research into the city’s history revealed three main, milling-centric industries–timber, grain and flour, and wool–that revolved around a waterfall at the junction of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. “These became the source of a lot of our design ideas. Then we looked for manufacturers who were still working in these fields,” Suomi says. Everything from blankets to pottery, raw logs to corridor art, came from this deep dive into the area’s heritage. Stroud, a purchasing agency, did extensive legwork to gather quotes from vendors who would handle some of the bigger orders, such as large quantities of casegoods or seating. “They ended up identifying a lot of manufacturers we’d never heard before.”

The approach represents a potential sea change in strategy when it comes to domestic building. “Up until very recently, projects that were moving forward were set on spending as little money as possible–by taking a long time, they could aggressively bid and rebid to get costs down,” Suomi explains. “When the time saved is of less value than the actual dollars, people scour the earth to find things with no regard to the carbon footprint.” And as for the Minneapolis Hyatt, the shift away from outsourcing has been a success–there’s already plans to renovate an adjacent complex for Hyatt in the same spirit.

Architects may come and architects may go, but ol’ Frank Lloyd Wright will never stop influencing the next generation. French firm Influx Studio entered their Spiral Garden Museum in a conceptual competition to design the new Taipei City Museum of Art, and its silhouette is a bit familiar. “Of course, as shown in the diagrams, we’ve taken the idea of the Guggenheim but revisited it in this new context,” architect Mario Caceres tells Co.Design. Here, however, the views extend out and over sprawling greens and adjacent urban skyline.

Following the curving pathways of the surrounding park, the ramp that circles the structure climbs at a low 4 percent grade–the maximum allowed for wheelchair accessibility–and there’s also a bike lane that goes from the ground all the way up. On the inside, the swirling, sprawling levels offer a bit of fun for the whole family, including three floors of children’s museum, and two each of the contemporary museum of art, and art gallery mall and plaza (all dictated by the competition guidelines). “The shape allows a great openness and flexibility,” Caceres says.

Atop it all is a sky terrace which, though stunning, makes the building look precariously top-heavy, a potential liability in earthquake-prone Taiwan. The submission didn’t place, but FLW’s legacy lives on (and on… and reaching even further back, a classics-loving reader at designboom referenced the visual similarity to Botticelli’s depiction of Dante’s Inferno!).

(H/T designboom)

Jordan Kushins

Jordan Kushins is a freelance writer based in beautiful San Francisco. She is an avid crafter, bicycle rider, and former associate editor at Dwell. Check … Continued

Origin stories are de rigueur these days when it comes to design; it’s almost not enough to simply see a finished piece without also knowing the details of how it came to be. This year at Design Miami, W Hotels incorporated this narrative theme into its third annual Designer of the Future award, given to three up-and-comers who embody the brand’s design-as-experience spirit. The recipients–Markus Kayser, Philippe Malouin, and Tom Foulsham–were tasked with creating pieces around the concept “From Spark to Finish,” with the goal to illuminate part of their methods in the final works.

“We wanted to turn the lens in on the process itself,” Mike Tiedy, W’s Senior Vice President of Global Brand Design and Innovation, tells Co.Design. Considering the polished results, it’s impressive that the designers had only about a month’s notice to create the custom works, having received word of the nod during Milan’s Design Week in April then presenting these projects in Basel this month. The open-ended brief was intended to elicit disparate results. “We’re looking for people who aren’t following a typical path,” Tiedy says. “We appreciate their experimental nature.”

Both Kayser and Malouin played upon the “spark” aspect with lighting projects: LIGHTzeit is an installation that elegantly explores the connection between nature and technology, with fixtures that revolve to mimic the path of the sun (more about it here); Daylight transforms the vernacular of plantation-style shutters into a series of geometric Tanagram shapes, displayed alongside drawings, prototypes, and pictures that further illuminate the progression of the idea from conception to completion. The generation of energy acted as Foulsham’s muse, and his Go-Round is a bit more esoteric–a balancing device, sturdy enough to hold the weight of two adults, that is also agile enough to be triggered into rotation with nothing more than a powerful exhale.

Now that they’ve debuted, the works will make their way to W properties worldwide, popping up in conjunction with design week activities, lectures, and events. And you can expect to see more collaborations between the brand and the designers themselves. “More and more we’re trying to bring them in as we have hotels being built. We want to use their talents to come up with new ideas,” Tiedy says. “That’s our ultimate goal–to involve them in actually crafting the identity for these hotels.”

While the US waits (and waits) for trains to gain steam as efficient, viable modes of transport, plans are in place for a massive new rail network connecting Beijing and Hong Kong, where the West Kowloon Terminus (WKT) will welcome travelers–or send them on their way–in light, bright, ultra-modern style. Amtrak it ain’t.

Aedas designed the 430,000-square-meter station, which looks far more like an intergalactic depot and shuttle hub than terrestrial travel headquarters. WKT will support both regional commuter transit as well as high-speed long-hauls, and in a unique shift, immigration and customs domains for both arrivals and departures will be situated on-site, stacked one floor above the other. Below, all of the converging 15 tracks will be subterranean, making WKT the largest below-ground station in the world when completed in 2015. After emerging from a journey, however, the expansive, largely glass-clad indoor spaces convey an immediate sense that you’ve reached a true destination: sweeping sky-high, 45-meter-tall ceilings are topped off with a green roof that frames an amphitheater-shaped pedestrian area and observation deck, along 400,000-square-feet of as-yet-to-be-sold commercial space. The only thing it needs now is a Sbarro, amirite?

The Rotterdam duo of Ward van Gemert and Adriaan van der Ploeg have been designing products as Nightshop since 2010, and their latest piece allows for a bit of personal interpretation. The plastic P.O.V. (point-of-view) vase changes color based upon where you’re standing in relation to the object.

Six different styles are currently offered, ranging from The First One’s bright, playful stripes to The Red One’s deep exploration of that particular shade, but they both agree that the Rainbow–aka The Bright One–is their favorite. “Apart from the fact that this one stands out the most, it’s also the closest to our original idea,” van der Ploeg explains to Co.Design.

Though it looks to use some kind of lenticular technology to achieve the effect, van der Ploeg is remaining mum on the subject of what makes the hues transform. “In Holland there’s a famous saying–het geheim van de smit–which loosely translates to, ‘That’s the secret of the blacksmith.’ In other words: It’s our secret.”

The series will be on display in the up-and-coming, super-hip Ventura Lambrate district during Milan’s design week, happening now.

(H/t MoCo Loco)