What do you Know & Can do: Blog Action Day 2010

Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action. This year’s topic is about WATER. Why water?Because almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s one in eight of us who are subject to preventable disease and even death because of something that many of us take for granted.For this special post I would like to thank Maha Ghazale for helping me compile this information for the event, her much appreciated contribution was especially made towards the effect of lack of water on lives with related videos and names of charities we can support. Thank you Maha for your efforts!

People use lots of water for drinking, cooking and washing, but even more for producing things such as food, paper, cotton clothes, etc. The water footprint is an indicator of water use that looks at both direct and indirect water use of a consumer or producer. The water footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business.

Did you know?

. The average person uses about 100 gallons of water each day
• It takes: 25 gallons of water to make one ear of corn
• 1300 gallons of water for one hamburger
• 2607 gallons of water for one pound of beef
• 815 gallons of water for one pound of chicken
• 65 gallons of water for a gallon of milk
• 100 gallons of water for a watermelon
• 120 gallons of water for one egg

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Donna Karan to Launch Tableware Collection

“New York City inspires and fuels everything I do. Donna Karan New York and DKNY embrace the energy of the city. One is luxe sophistication, the other is fast, hip and spirited. Both are modern and reflect how we live day into night. To me, they’re like caviar and pizza,a limousine and a taxi, the skyline and the street.”

Scheduled to preview in New York tonight, Donna Karan’s tabletop collection with Lenox includes serving pieces, stemware, flatware and more, in a variety of textures and materials that includes sculpted metal, hand-carved wood, bone china, mouth-blown china and more. Her stemware line was inspired by the New York City skyline at night, and she has incorporated elements of fashion into the range with names like Platinum Voile and Wave and Pleats. The cornerstone of the collection is a group of seven pieces that can be mixed and matched to achieve a singular look that fits your home aesthetic. Karan told WWD: “Tableware has grown beyond the traditional tabletop. It’s all about objects of desire that have to connect with you in an emotional way. It has to connect with a certain sophistication that you bring into your home.” The pieces will retail for between $25 and $3000 at specialty and department stores  around the U.S. What I am actually looking forward to is the setup she has stored using all the elements within the collection. Will update you once photos are available.

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Van Cleef & Arpels Perlée Collection 2010

The Parisian jeweler reveals a lighter and more playful side with the new Perlée, which takes the golden pearls border of the Alhambra collection and turns it into a signature style.

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Le Jardin D’eden for Christofle

 

Christofle has been collaborating for long with many famous designers, such as Martin Szekely, Andrée Putman, Ora-Ito, who are called to design collections of hosiery, inspired by their sensitivity.
This is the time of Marcel Wanders, who marked forks, knives and spoons with leaves, flowers and curls. If you want to keep the essential kitchen staples a cut above the rest, be sure to keep them sharp with Japanese knives and steels.

The Dutch designer Marcel Wanders designs a collection of  silverware engraved by nature, a baroque style, with variations on the theme of the seven deadly sins…

 

Prices

Spoon : 66 €
Fork   : 66 €
Knife  : 75 €

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Awaken your Outdoor Spaces: Vondom

So the summer season is over, but outdoor season for many countries has just begun or about to. In Kuwait we are still in the 32-42 degrees Celsius range, but hopefully soon it will cool down. In the light of that I will put up a few posts focusing on outdoor furniture to help give you an idea of the current trends.

For those who like hip & designer outdoor furniture, one brand to look out for is Vondom.

Vondom has the most complete range of outdoor furniture worldwide produced by the rotational molding process, offering widest variety of colors and patterns ever created. The technique can produce high quality products with a multitude of features, and as a result become unique pieces.

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From a Designer’s Journal…

Ok, if you are a designer living in the Arab world you will probably guess what this is about. As designers, our job is one of the most underestimated in terms of value, any value be it monetary or appreciation.The notion  is that if it is not concrete, i.e. not something sold at a shop, then it has no physical value. I am not generalizing of course or that will be offensive to those clients my fellow designers and I have had great relationships with over the years and who actually appreciate the fact that a design job is best designed by a designer and not the carpenter who did a nice door for a  cousin, no offense intended I love carpenters and work with them all the time!  I will be posting such short incidents that either happened with me or other designers to lighten things up yet at the same time throw in a message that involves our job. I would love for anyone of you reading this and who would like to share a story or a certain point to email me and share with us, it would really be nice and add a personal aspect to the great creations designers come up with.

A very dear friend and talented interior architect was discussing this with me and sent me this:

What is an Interior Architect?

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