Kristina Dryza

Summer Sonic Review

13th August 2009 | 5 comments | 1 person likes this

Expanded from two to three days for its 10th anniversary, the biggest international acts in the world just played the Summer Sonic music festival in Japan last weekend. Held simultaneously at sites in Tokyo and Osaka, the festival is seen as one of the highlights of the Japanese summer, and here’s why.
DAY ONE
Sliimy is the first artist signed under celebrity blogger Perez Hilton’s new record label, Perezcious Music. Dressed in...

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Sustainable Cities – ‘Long Live the City’

6th August 2009 | 0 comments | 2 people like this

I and others in the design industry - Tim Power, Ross Lovegrove, Ilse Crawford, Arik Levy, Patricia Urquiola, Satyendra Pakhale and Tom Dixon to name but a few - were recently interviewed for our thoughts on sustainable design. Specifically, what would the sustainable city of the future look like? What is the emerging city skyline of tomorrow?
Each of us was asked the same 10 questions by people involved in the...

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Fuji Rock Festival Review

27th July 2009 | 3 comments | 1 person likes this

It almost doesn’t feel like a music festival. Your feet aren’t stamped to death, no-one’s pushing your back, your safety never really feels threatened, the crush of the crowd is more like a cuddle, and it has to be one of the only music festivals in the world where the food is of restaurant quality.
The annual Fuji Rock Festival came to a close yesterday, with 120,000 music lovers from Japan...

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Rossiyan jam tea

21st July 2009 | 2 comments | 1 person likes this

Recently my mother and I were visiting Matsumoto in the Nagano prefecture in Japan and we popped into an unassuming café on the road leading up to the city’s historic castle.
Both of us being tea aficionados, the ‘Rossiyan jam tea’ on the menu piqued our interest. When the various components of the drink arrived we were unsure how to drink it, let alone knowing what all the different dishes were.
With...

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Graffiti Japan

25th June 2009 | 1 comments | 1 person likes this

Loving graffiti, Tokyo-based photographer Remo Camerota had an idea to be a graffiti artist himself. But as he says, “Instead I decided to do a book on the subject of Japanese graffiti as there wasn’t one.” From there he contacted Japanese artists who invited him to meet with them. He ended up living with some of these artists and being taken to secret sites that appear in his book Graffiti...

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Pictures of the latest interior design project by Masaru Ito

15th June 2009 | 1 comments | 1 person likes this

The & ROLLS retail store in Daikanyama, Tokyo was designed in the image of one word: neo minimalism.

This concept shop for the company that distributes general goods - mainly belts - oozes contemporary simplicity. Age-old materials like plaster, mortar, tin, steel and glass are combined with renovated antique furniture to give the space a new and nostalgic feel.

As designer Masaru Ito says, “While we are in the unprecedented...

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Milan Design Week: Products

27th May 2009 | 0 comments | 2 people like this

Premium today is less about extravagance and more about essentialism. It's about reduction: getting rid of the superfluousness in our lives. It's also about consuming responsibly, and being culturally aware and values conscious. The creative class especially wants to live in a world with fewer things, and more ideas, and as Philippe Starck said, "We have to replace beauty, which is a cultural concept, with goodness, which is a humanist...

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Milan Design Week: Experience Design

27th May 2009 | 0 comments | 1 person likes this

Touch is the first sense developed in the womb, and sight the last. But it's primarily our eyes through which we interpret the world. So where were the sensual interfaces at Milan Design Week? We want to explore design through all our senses, not just at half capacity. Music is a mood shifter and scent a mood enhancer but rarely were these senses fully capitalised in any of the exhibitions....

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Milan Design Week: The Parties

27th May 2009 | 0 comments | 1 person likes this

It's important to allow what is sometimes considered to be 'time wasting' into your life: art, imagination, sleeping, or just being with people. And it's this time wasting where Milan comes to the fore. It's the hanging with friends at parties and random personal encounters that lend Milan Design Week its humaneness. Happiness does only exist when shared, and every night there were hundreds of parties that were testament to...

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Milan Design Week: Food and drink

27th May 2009 | 1 comments | 1 person likes this

It's not so much the design that whets the appetite in Milan, but the food. You do literally eat your way through the week, with a little bit of design thrown in on the side. To eat for pure pleasure is a true joy. Everyday can be a deadening force and food offers sanctuary, gives pleasure and can ease the pain of day-to-day living. Food is physically and emotionally nourishing...

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