Design Hotels Book: 2010 Edition
The best part of traveling is rarely the hotel. Sure, you'll suffer a tatty travelers flop if it means an extra day wandering the streets of Seoul, but in the main, hotel stays, and hotel decor, are often treated like a body search at the airport: an indignity for sure, but one you put up with because, well, you have to. "But I've stayed in a handful of really nice, really well-designed hotels," you cry. "And they really did make all the difference." Fair play. But don't those experiences feel woefully hit-or-miss? Pick up Design Hotels's 2010 guide and start to really travel in style.
Design Hotels is an affiliation of nearly 200 luxury and boutique hotels worldwide that take design very seriously. I've had the good fortune of staying in a few of their member hotels--Hotel Greulich in Zurich (top-notch), the St. Paul in Montreal, and a drink in the lobby of Grims Grenka in Oslo--and they put anything else I've seen to shame. And though I'm sure I'll never stay at all of them, it's certainly fun to look.
The Design Hotels Book Edition 2010 is a catalogue of their members, and one that inspires a real yen to travel, if only to immerse yourself in one more element of global design. Boasting ten interviews with their hoteliers, hospitality designers and design luminaries--Sir Terence Conran figures prominently--the book's real joy is leafing through the 170 hotels inside. Each gets a fine spread and just enough pictures to have you counting and recounting those bonus miles.
Call it escapist fantasy on a February afternoon, but my first several wanders through the pages of the Design Hotels Book for 2010 have been pure pleasure, cut, dolefully, by the fact that I'll be lucky to get to two of them all year long.
Have a look at this slideshow for a glimpse of what's inside the book.
Articles
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Undivided Intentions
The late architect David Boone was always one to take his work home with him—he just kept it in the home’s office. The new residents of his 1972 house embrace a more fluid approach to…
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Graphic Design: Project Projects
Manhattan-based Project Projects may be a graphic design studio, but it works in all dimensions, on the page and off. Founded by Prem Krishnamurthy and Adam Michaels in 2004, the firm designs…
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Inventables: Materials Database
Zach Kaplan is looking out for the little guys. In 2002, he launched Inventables, an extensive library of high-tech materials from manufacturers and innovators like Dupont and 3Form. The initial…
Products
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Animal Blueprints
As previously mentioned, I came across a couple of gift ideas for my gift guide that weren’t exactly gadgets, or gadget related. This is a company I discovered last year and one that I think…
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Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century
An exhaustive history of modern Western urban-planning theory and practice, Cities of Tomorrow tackles everything from major figures and events that shaped 20th-century urban life to fundamental…
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Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing: Patterns and How-To for 24 Fresh and Easy Projects
I very recently got my grandmother's old sewing machine up and running (huzzah!) and have been on the lookout for some neat projects to get me stitching. Lotta Jansdotter is an icon of DIY design…
Dwell Collections
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2010 Books by Dwell Contributors
Though we love to love our many talented contributors in the pages of Dwell, we figured that the fine work they do merits a special shout-out. So should you be shopping for a Dwell-lover, consider…
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South Africa: Design Indaba 2010
The annual Design Indaba Expo, held last weekend in Cape Town, South Africa, focuses solely on domestic talents. Some of these designs are available in American outlets like Anthropologie…
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Scandinavian Designed
Having just returned from a trip to Copenhagen, I have Scandinavian design on the brain. Though the region arguably experienced its golden era in the mid-20th century, with the work of icons like…
Tips
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How to Build a Lighting Concept
I’m a fan of floor lighting plus a couple of small table lamps for the living room. Use ambient lighting and low-wattage warm bulbs to create a relaxed atmosphere.
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Masculine Design: Three Pitfalls
Just like in female design, going overboard can end up disastrous. If you put so many antlers up on the wall it just becomes overkill instead of an interesting and whimsical addition to a…
Videos
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Dwell on Design 2010
We present the sights and scene captured from the show floor of this year's Dwell on Design conference, checking in with a few of our exhibitors and partners, at the West Coast's largest design…
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Dwell on Design 2011
Join us behind the scenes of Dwell on Design where 21,000 attendees gathered at the Los Angeles Convention center to discover the latest innovations in modern design.
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Reclaimed Design from the LA Times at Dwell on Design 2009
The Los Angeles Times' booth at Dwell on Dedsign—dedicated to reclaimed objects—is an esoteric assemblage of art pieces and re-purposed furniture.
Events
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Design USA: Contemporary Innovation
This exhibition features outstanding contemporary achievements in American architecture, landscape design, interior design, product design, communication design, corporate design, interaction…
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Planning India: From Chandigarh to NanoCity
swissnex San Francisco invites a panel of experts to discuss the past and future of urban planning in India, highlighting two examples: Chandigarh, a city mandated by the Nehru government in the…
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BKLYN Designs 2010
The jury has spoken – 45 of the borough’s top designers have been hand-picked by a prestigious panel of experts to exhibit at BKLYN DESIGNS™ 2010. Now in its eighth year, BKLYN…
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Nice article. The Design Hotels yearbook is always an inspiring read, I have almost the entire collection...just this one to go! The Hotel Greulich is no longer a member of Design Hotels, they left to join a new, select band of hotels known as "White Line Hotels".
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