Center City Philadelphia is in the midst of an urban renaissance.

For the first time since the 1950′s the census will show an increase in the city’s population.

The city’s restaurant scene is exploding with tons of new spots, including our new Iron Chef star Jose Garces’ & Philly pioneer Stephen Starr’s recent openings with more on the way.

However, funding for public spaces is scarce. (See: threat of no holiday lighting in Rittenhouse Square; on a larger scale, major downsizing & possible closures of the entire Pennsylvania park system.)

Because of this, several neighborhoods are leaning on the restaurant boom: Cafe Cret opened on the Ben Franklin Parkway, and Franklin Square enjoyed great success bringing in SquareBurger.

South Street Headhouse District might be next.

A multi-step improvement plan is in the works. Philly Councilman Frank DiCicco secured money for the already-completed first phase. This past week saw the dedication of a new fountain at 2nd & Lombard.

The fountain, which had been in disrepair, now boasts a child-friendly, rubberized basin, colorful LED lighting and more seating. New, programmable water jets feature an ananemometer to measure wind speed and automatically adjust the height of the spray.

On one side of the fountain sit the Headhouse Shambles — home to one of Philly’s biggest & best farmers’ markets. On the other currently sits a mishmosh of parking spaces & asphalt.

Cope Linder Architects, who provided the design for Phase 1, have ready a preliminary design for this area which would reclaim much of the space from cars.

It involves an expanded, landscaped pedestrian walkway from the fountain up to the South Street end of the block, where a pavilion with a café will be built. Such a café might bring not only a steady stream of revenue from concession sales, but also encourage more pedestrian traffic for neighboring establishments.

Barry Essinger of Cope Linder even brought up the possibility of closing off the whole street on weekends or holidays, creating a vibrant. car-free mall like those in Buenos Aires or the new Times Square.

South Street is already morphing into a much nicer, more upscale tourist destination. This redevelopment would be a welcome bridge from South to historic Society Hill, and even all the way to Independence Mall and Old City.

Build it! (and they will come….)

Philadelphia’s Girasole restaurant just added a beautiful, original sign to mark its location, just off Broad Street on Pine.

Instead of neon or plastic, the metal frame of the sign surrounds hand-crafted steel sculpture.

An elegant rendering of the restaurant’s name in bronze- and silver-colored cut metal rests over a blue-burnished background.

At the top, the restaurant’s signature flower (Italian for sunflower = girasole) shines down like the sun.

The overlapping petals — appearing somehow delicate, yet strong — allow glimpses of the real sky to peep through and are different on each side of the sign.

It’s a wonderful example of the work coming out of Chora Leone Art & Design in Atlantic County, NJ.

Jose Chora and Judy Leone have been creating together for over 15 years, and last year opened a gallery in Somers Point, NJ.

I caught up with Judy via telephone and she was kind enough to send over some additional photos of their works.  He works with the metals and she does the mosaics.

Peep some of their other artworks below. Read the rest of this entry »

The room is only there for a year, July 2009-July 2010, and it was put in place by a crane.

Only 12 reservations are available each day, and only for a few moments as the clock ticks over to 10 am Paris time.

You don’t get to pick your menu, nor your accompanying beverages.

But Art Home Paris might well be the most awesome restaurant in the world right now.

Designed by minimalist architect Pascal Grasso, the temporary structure sits atop the Palais de Tokyo museum, with a sweeping view of downtown Paris and the Eiffel Tower.

The dining space is called Nomiya, after a restaurant in Japan, seats 12, and is encased in floor to ceiling glass on three sides.

Chef Gilles Stassart’s open kitchen is protected by a metal skein, perforated in patterns reminiscent of the Aurora Borealis.

Meticulously prepared and plated with an eye for spatial design, the food is reportedly excellent.

Most online reviews are for lunch, instead of dinner, though. Reservations for dinner are simply too hard to score.

Guests can see the whole kitchen, and are invited to ask questions of the chef while he is plating.

Tours of the space are offered daily, as are workshops with the culinary director.

A garden sits on the roof level slightly below the restaurant, providing herbs and vegetables for the kitchen.

Though English words, the name of the restaurant is cleverer than it first appears: in French it is pronounced “arôme” (aroma).

Beautiful & delicious.

[via Shola & dezeen]

I like to be inspired by my clients.

One of the best things about running your own business is the relative luxury of choosing with whom you work.

While sometimes time constraints force compromises in design and code, the best case scenario is when there is opportunity to address details.

Aki and Alex have strong convictions and are extremely particular. Yet they are also avid explorers and open to new ideas.

This comes across in their food. Hopefully also in their new website.

www.ideasinfood.com

Today, May 5, is the official national launch of McDonald’s new Starbucks competitor — the McCafé. The company is pouring their marketing and advertising hearts and dollars into the effort. Word from the company is that it’s the largest campaign it has launched since it began selling breakfast in the 1970′s.

They have at least five completely different websites dedicated to the cafe-styled line of espresso based drinks, which is marketing 101 these days. The design of the sites is nice, but the content? A bit questionable:

mccafecoffee.com – Basic site, showing off what appear to be the cafe’s three offerings: latte, cappuccino and “mocha.”

mccafeicedcoffee.com — Interactive! “Skate” around an ice rink by controling a coffee bean with legs using the arrow keys on your keyboard.

wakeuptowhatsnew.com — More interactive! Make your own digital cappuccino art by pouring digital steamed milk into espresso.

mccafesnowflakes.com — even more interactive! make your own… um… digital coffee-ring snowflake??

mcdonalds.com/mccafe — With the ever so classy slogan “Give it up for the accent mark!” and a video-intensive game-show-movie-esque content

Who is the target audience for these websites, again?

As for the actual cafes, the interiors are full of wood and artwork, soft lighting, benches and spots for lounging. There have actually been McCafe’s in other countries around the world since the 1990′s, but it took the recession to convince Micky D’s that they could lure can’t-afford-it-every-day-anymore-ex-Starbucks drinkers through their stigma-ed arches.

Supposedly there are several in the Philadelphia area already. Can’t speak from experience, though. There doesn’t appear to be one yet in the Rittenhouse Square location, hidden between high-end fashion retailers on Walnut Street, though that restaurant (can you call it that? fast food joint?) does have some unique, non-chain-looking art hanging.

Good design has a lot to do with good typography. And as a corollary, good writing, and therein, good spelling and grammar.

With the ubiquity of spell-checkers these days there are few excuses for misspellings in final published work, be it destined for print or online.

Some things get lost in translation, however. It’s certainly common to find grammer and spelling mistakes in equipment manuals translated to English from Japanese, for example. And it’s somewhat of a cliche amusement to check out Chinese restaurant menus translated to English.

One of my favorite Chinese food restaurants has had the same typos on the front cover of their menu for as long as I’ve been ordering from them, so at least 3 years.  The thing is, they’ve gone through several menu redesigns during that time. The current incarnation has nice graphics and even some photos.  But couldn’t anyone along the way point out the simple changes that would make me stop laughing whenever I see the menu?

Hey, maybe they want me to laugh. Who am I to argue with that. All I know is this: Mondy close. We delivery. Words to live by.

* where I cribbed the title for this post