27 August 2011

Multiple Dimensions

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Here comes our complementary copies of Hinge magazine, all the way from Hong Kong, covering our projects Water Moon, Habitat Antique, Phamish, and S House.

I liked the short description Hinge poised to introduce our practise;
...Growing in recognition, the duo (Olivia Shih and Yoshihito Kashiwagi) is poised to break into the relative 'medium-time' [someday bigtime...] ... Their work is clean and quietly imaginative, avoiding histrionics and not afraid of proposing practical, cost-efficient solutions to a client's brief.  Nothing wrong with simplicity....
Although I would not necessarily say that we intentionally avoid histrionics; the simplicity in our works is more so a reflection of our perspective on space and architecture.  

Maybe it is more appropriate to say that we avoid creating spaces that could be "consumed"? 
We aim for a beauty in the simplicity, which could be embedded in the materiality, the logic, the construction, and/ or the philosophy.
The physical space is the outcome of series of decisions we repeatedly examined throughout the design process, in order to reassure that we have not deviated from what we set out to do for each project.

There are times that we were distracted and lost... but then I always remembered that when we set up Facet Studio, we told ourselves that we will be creating meaningful design; when there is meaning behind our design, there is beauty in what we do.

parcel from Hong Kong!

Water Moon to the left, Habitat Antique to the right

Phamish to the left, S House to the right

Friday afternoon tea thanks to Soo Jin, who will be heading back to UK to complete her study shortly

16 August 2011

Celebration for..?

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Seems like we have started another Facet Studio ritual here since JJ has joined us.
Yesterday we had another afternoon tea session with his weekend creation - a lovely pumpkin and coconut tart!
Soon we may need to start a new section in our blog for his baking recipe...
Anyhow, in search of a reason to celebrate, SooJin nominated the Korean Independence Day, August 15th... 
So here we go! Celebrating the Korean Independence Day!

beautiful pumpkin and coconut tart 
...together with SooJin's cookies...
yum!

Here is a little extract on Korean Independence Day:
The official Independence Day of South Korea is celebrated on 15th August, though the actual day of independence was on August 13th 1948. The official date which is 15th August, 1945 was not the day the South Koreans attained final autonomy from Japan. It was only on 13th August, 1948, that South Korea was fully liberated from any sort of outside administration. For political reasons, first President of the country I Seung-man, chose 15th August, instead of 13th as the official Independence Day of South Korea. 
It is interesting how the boundaries between countries are becoming less and less defined.  I take it as a positive movement forward.
And how do we incorporate the different cultural backgrounds, and influences, to form a new thinking process hence a new design approach, is something we contemplate a lot here given the multicultural nature of our office.

Anyhow, lets enjoy teatime!


To read more on Korean Independence Day, here are some links:
123 Independence Day
Wikipedia
A Global World
Arirang

11 August 2011

Beginning of another Skype habit

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Working towards another deadline for Qingdao 15th Street... look at these serious faces....


Following our successful Concept Presentation (see HERE), we are submitting material for a Concept Development meeting, which will take place over Skype tomorrow with clients in China.
This is to address some ideas sprung from the previous presentation, and to develop / strengthen the design concept further.

Thanks to the internet technology...
That we are able to manage project in Japan from Australia (see M House HERE), and attend meeting in China without flying over every 3 weeks!

8 August 2011

Happy Day at Facet Studio

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Today we have received ANOTHER parcel from Korea...!

  

me and SooJin trying to pull the snug-fitted content from its envelope..

It is the Korean magazine - BOB!

Sneakerology + Streetology.... woohoo~

Sneakerology and Streetology have been featured in the Korean Magazine, BOB, under the "New & Spot" section.. check out p.114-115!
 
Beautiful coincidence is that our new staff JJ, with a commendable hobby of weekend cake-baking, has brought in one of his creations.. just in time for celebration!

fresh lemon zest and cheese cake.....

pretty

yummy!  Thank you JJ (left)!

5 August 2011

Korean love

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We have received a parcel from Korea the other day.....

??

 O..!

WOW!

WOWOW..!

So this is how "Facet Studio" looks like in Korean!

The parcel was from Korean publication, Maru.
In the latest issue vol.113 we had an 8-page feature on Sneakerology + Streetology.... yaiii!!
This is the first feature on Sneakerology and Streetology in print, very excited!

2 August 2011

IDEA 2011 Awards - Shortlist announced!

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We have just received an email from nice people at (Inside) Interior Design Excellence Awards 2011, notifying us of our shortlisting in the Retail category, and the Emerging Designer category.

How exciting!

The shortlisting can be viewed HERE and HERE.

 

 

 

Sneakerology web-based publicity round up

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Here is the round up of publicity received by Sneakerology in the cyber world, on top of the previous entries I have already made...


Again, I have only taken the few influential online trendspotting/ design magazines/ blogs, which were then fed to numerous other online magazines/ blogs.... which means there are most likely articles in the cyberspace that I am unaware of...
Click on the individual magazine names in photo captions to access the original article.

Thanks everyone for all your support!!!

Fast Company 

Architizer


LS:N Global 

Both Sneakerology and Stretology are on Architonic

Streetology web-based publicity round up

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Instead of doing one-by-one blog entries I thought it is better to do a round up of publicity received by Streetology in the cyber world, on top of the previous entries I have already made... I will do another entry to round up for Sneakerology too.

These are a few influential online trendspotting/ design magazines/ blogs, which were then fed to numerous other online magazines/ blogs.
Click on the individual magazine names in photo captions to access the original article.

We felt very privileged and will continue the good work!

Dezeen 

 Swedish design blog www.inredningsnyheter.se

Interior News

Both Streetology and Sneakerology in Architonic

1 August 2011

Dreamy light

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Lin House is a straight forward project - house renovation for a friend's family of 5 to relocate to Sydney from overseas.

It is straight forward until we took the wall boards out, only to reveal the poor state of the original building fabric...I tend to believe that buildings are made to last, and it makes me start wondering about the reasoning behind building solutions which are in for temporary fixes.
Anyhow, as the result we had to pull out all the wetareas in the house, on top of the other bits and pieces we had to patch up... and I am glad we did what we had to do.

Here are some photos of before and after (whilst still completing..) the main bathroom renovation... one more week and the clients are moving in to the house!

Current state (ignore the newspaper wrapping on the bathtub...)

 

 

Before

Before