East Eats West

Mad Men optician in Zurich

Should you be a fan of the American TV hit show “Mad Man” you should make a trip to Felder Optik in Zurich. The newly relaunched shop was run by the Felder family for over 100 years. The previous shop owner recently decided to hand over his business to two dynamic young opticians. The two of them embarked on a challenging re-design project. They kept the old wooden furniture, removed all the smoke stains, laid a new carpet and added some tasteful ambient lighting. The result is a very pleasing combination of retro and new. The couple also updated the product range with many hand-made and exclusive glasses from Robert Marc from France, Entourage of 7 from Los Angeles and other hard to find brands like Dita and KBL Eyewear.

www.felderoptik.ch

 

If you don’t want IKEA in your children’s room

I have seen many children’s room, ranging from richly decorated to overstuffed, from cramped to such fitted with every imaginable contraption. However, most children rooms are more about the parents than the kids, especially when they are small (babies actually don’t care at all where they sleep so long as they get their sleep!). With cheap IKEA furniture and even cheaper plastic toys made in China, a children room can be easily and quickly converted into a pillage of last year’s hit movie toys and cheap electronic contraptions. With generous grandparents, relatives and friends meaning well any children room can become quickly cluttered. So what to do? Go to Zug (Switzerland) where a charming Irish woman, Caroline, maintains a wonderful interior and furniture shop catering to babies, children and teenagers by the name of Rooom 4 Kids. She has a wide range of solid Swiss, French and European furnitures, tasteful toys and hand-made art that would ‘grow’ with the kids. Certainly a place to go for children’s stuff especially if you are looking for a one off item/gifts for your children.

Website: http://www.rooom4kids.ch/

Hand-painted shoes in Paris

 

Ever since I met Mr. Hiroki, the shoe painter, in Japan I was intrigued about the idea of customized men’s shoes. Recently in Paris I happened on Mr. Di Mascio who does the exact same thing. He buys classic goodyear welted men’s shoes from Portugal and hand-paints them to the customer’s specification. He used to work with several Italian shoe makers, Kiton among them. Beautiful!

http://www.laurentdimascio.com/

Russian shoeshine in Dublin

 Owning hand-made good-year welted shoes comes with an obligation: cleaning. I wrote about shoeshine before (http://easteatswest.typepad.com/east_eats_west/2010/04/shoe-care-made-easy.html). It is every quality shoe owner’s duty and maybe joy to clean his or her shoes. However, sometimes a little help is highly appreciated. So whenever I travel and get the chance to get a shoeshine I go for it. Dublin airport nowadays offers shoeshine and I gave it a try. My shoeshiner’s name was Sascha and he hails from Leningrad (not St.Petersburg). By trade he was a carpenter but somehow ended up polishing shoes. The shoeshine cost €7 and he used by far too much shoe crème and definitely was on the lazy side when it came to polishing. So far, the best shoe shine I ever got was in New York for a mere $3 (http://easteatswest.typepad.com/east_eats_west/2011/07/shoe-shine-for-3.html).

Leather shoes made in France

Italy and England might be more famous for hand-crafted leather shoes, France however also has a few notable players. Heschung is one of them. Since 1934 they produce classic men and women’s shoes with a modern twist.

http://www.heschung.com/

Box-houses everywhere in Switzerland

I sometimes share an office with architects who make virtual rendering of architectural projects mostly in Switzerland. Whenever I pass their desks I see the same type of homes again and again: boxes with big windows. Everyone who builds houses nowadays seems to go for box-shaped houses with floor-to-ceiling windows. It is deemed to be the most efficient house structure as it maximizes space and presumably light. However, whenever I pass such boxes I see curtains drawn and shades shuts. Isn’t that surprising? Why would you want big windows if you block the view?

My theory is that people buy into the idea of maximizing space and light. And architects like designing such simple structure. The problem is that those boxes are designed from the outside, not with the view of someone living on the inside. With increasing density of urban space this obviously leads to conflicts of privacy versus light.

A current exhibition titled “Learning from Tokyo” tackles this conundrum. It shows clever, ingenious and homely examples of houses in the super-dense Tokyo area. And how architects cleverly make use of space, public areas and privacy. It is all about interesting angles and views, but planned from inside out; boxes are made by architects but people have to live in it. Anyone considering building a house should visit the exhibition!

Learn more here: http://www.learningfromtokyo.ch/

Pharmaceutical lighting

Sometimes you happen on something that feels very familiar, very soothing, like it has been around for a very long time. I had exactly this feeling when I first saw the limited edition Apotheca lamps by the Zurich based interior designers Mia Kepenek and Nicholas Frei. They salvaged sixty antique brown pharmaceutical glass containers from a pharmacy renovation and transformed the thick brown glass bottles into an amazing ambient light, only adding a carbon filament light bulb that is custom-made in Switzerland. Each light is therefore absolutely unique and radiates a very soothing warm orange light. Should you be interested in purchasing one, better hurry up, as the Italian furniture giant Poliform bought almost all the remaining lamps, using them at their Milano furniture fair!

Hurry up and contact Mai Kepenek at mia@kreismitte.ch

The coffee roasting revolution

Picture: Coffee on the go in Lake Taupo, New Zealand.

 Sometimes, when visiting clients, I am temporarily using a small table in an open-plan office. There is a little obligation connected to it: I have to clean the coffee machine. The machine is in heavy-duty use as there are hard-working architects and photographers sharing the office with me. This task inspired me to experiment with different coffee roasts. There is a little coffee revolution going on in Switzerland as more and more micro coffee roasters are popping up. There are even roasters in and around Zurich, Switzerland’s biggest city. Currently my favorite coffee brand is Kaffeepur, near Stauffacher, with its seriously dedicated and enthusiastic owner (https://www.kaffeepur.ch/).  He sells everything from Single Origins to Grand Crus and carefully blended coffee for not so sophisticated machines as ours (Assemblage No. 5).

Learn how to prepare the a perfect espresso here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGHvBG1sY1Y

 

The lasting value of design furniture

Picture: The Italian Flexform Groundpiece couch. 

 Six years ago, when I was about to move into a newly renovated apartment, I was contemplating what furniture to get: cheap or go for designer ones ? A wise man with exquisite taste gave me a simple advice: buy quality designer furnitures, as you will have it for many years, never mind the high costs. Very recently I had to think about his advice again when I stood in my new, bigger and brighter apartment, glancing around. The movers just brought in my Flexform couch and bed, my B&B and Eames chairs, my Thut cupboard and my Poliform cupboards. In the bright daylight of my new apartment the furniture looked as good as when I bought them. My wise friend was spot on: investing in quality furniture does pay off as you will have it for a lifetime! And should you ever decide to part, you can easily sell them online (Like the website operated by the Swiss furniture store Interio: http://de.interio.ch/index.php?csid=cf2c3012826bcbef7715998505fb1a3b). 

 

Irish wool and handwoven Tweed

Ireland might not be the first name that pops up when men's tailoring comes to mind. On the other hand, I am sure sheep would be a common association with Ireland. On a recent visit I came across a small shop in Dublin that sells traditional Tweed products. The shop, by the name of Kevin & Howlin, exists since 1936. They buy best quality handwoven Donegal Tweed from Magee, a weaver that was established in Ireland in 1866. The Tweed, a thick, coarse and warm wool fabric, is then sown into traditional and hunter's jackets, vests, pants, hats and shawls. Tweed is a rather heavy and coarse fabric and therefore perfect for harsh winters. I ended up buying two light and dark green salt&pepper, named after its dotted pattern, jackets and a dark brown flannel pant. I am all set for winter now!

Website: http://www.kevinandhowlin.com/ and www.mageeclothing.com