ImaginativePRO Blog

HOW ADOBE'S CLOUD-CONNECTED "PROJECT MIGHTY" STYLUS PEN AND RULER REINVENTED THE ART OF DRAWING ON THE INTERNET

Designed by Ammunition, the pen is an aluminum stylus that can replace your finger on the iPad screen (Click Image To Enlarge)

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF THE CLOUD-CONNECTED INTERFACE? HOW ABOUT A SIMPLE PEN AND RULER?

This week, Adobe announced that the Creative Suite was becoming the subscription-based Creative Cloud. It didn’t go so well. But amidst the bad news, we may have lost sight of Adobe’s rationale for pushing the cloud beyond profits. And you can see that rationale hiding inside Project Mighty.

The pen has a pressure-sensitive tip, a button to reveal onscreen menus and a glowing tip to convey modal information (designating if you’re drawing with any particular settings), and that’s it (Click Image To Enlarge)

The three standard pen colors are silver, red and black (Click Image To Enlarge)

"We took the triangular shape--this classic shape that’s easier to grip--and twisted it," Ammution’s Robert Brunner says. "So the point at which your fingers hold it, the pen is at its best." (Click Image To Enlarge)

On one hand, it’s just an aluminum stylus that can replace your finger on the iPad screen. On the other, it’s a cloud-connected pen--or humanity’s single-greatest, simplest creative apparatus, married to the entire world of digital tools and information. Today, Project Mighty allows you to draw an image on your iPad screen, then seamlessly continue drawing that same image on your iPhone screen. Tomorrow, such a tool could draw anywhere--screen or table--while constantly syncing with your creative depository in the cloud.

The Adobe digital ruler allows you to draw straight lines and perfect shapes like circles, triangles and squares with ease (Click Image To Enlarge)

Of course, the greater promise is a series of tools that constantly connect and sync to the cloud (Click Image To Enlarge)

Physical objects that login and transfer files from screen to screen, seamlessly (Click Image To Enlarge)

Now you have to admit, that’s at least a little bit intriguing.

HOW IT CAME TOGETHER

Project Mighty, along with an accompanying “short ruler” codenamed Napoleon, were both designed by Ammunition (and engineered by Mindtribe). Ammunition has been working on various concepts with Adobe for the past five years. These are the first two designs to be made public.

Ammunition Founder Robert Brunner tells Co.Design.

“One of the goals of this was just to make a beautiful, sweet object. The pen in particular is one of those simple, beautiful forms. But it actually has a purpose. We took the triangular shape--this classic shape that’s easier to grip--and twisted it. So the point at which your fingers hold it, the pen is at its best.”

When you consider that vision, it almost makes sense that Adobe wants its users using their cloud-integrated products as soon as possible (Click Image To Enlarge)

As of today, the hardware is only in conceptual prototype stage (Click Image To Enlarge)

But Adobe should release this good idea soon, lest someone else beat them to the punch (Click Image To Enlarge)

The pen has a pressure-sensitive tip, a button to reveal onscreen menus and a glowing tip to convey modal information (designating if you’re drawing with any particular settings), and that’s it. The accompanying ruler is similarly sparse. Six shapes appear on the surface (it’s unclear if these will be actual buttons), a plastic back slides easily on a glass touch screen, and a few capacitive points convey its position to software.

Brunner admits.

“When [Adobe’s VP of experience] first said he had this idea for a digital ruler, to be honest, I was like, 'I don’t know,' As we actually started to work on it and play with it, we realized that it was very smart. You can certainly set up software to draw straight lines and snap to angles, but the simple addition of this other physical thing gives you so much more confidence.”

Even still, why did the team pursue a pen and ruler at all? In the digital world, there are no physical bounds dictating a tip of a pen needs to be connected to a long channel of ink. Couldn’t Project Mighty look like an ergonomic swirly straw, or a creative pair of brass knuckles--any dream device that could reimagine the very core idea of what drawing can be, rather than the old default pen and ruler?

Brunner says.

“It’s simply because they’re extremely familiar.  That’s the thing. You can come up with something entirely unique, but the fact is, these two devices, or shapes, are incredibly embedded in our understanding of drawing and creating.”

 

THE POWER OF ILLUSION

Adobe frames Project Mighty as a high-tech, borderline magical device that stores your identity and your projects. In reality, the hardware itself is fairly dumb, but its implementation is ingenious.

The pen is just a Bluetooth stick in the simplest of senses. Software spots its unique Bluetooth identifier. That code is associated with you. And you’re associated with the files/settings you’ve stored in the Adobe cloud. In other words, Project Mighty is really just beaming software an alphanumeric string, which logs into your accounts very quickly so you don’t have to. Finding myself fairly proud of piecing this together, I ask Brunner about it.

He says.

“You’re right, it’s an illusion per se.  All the pen is doing is IDing you and the app you’re in, and contextually allowing you to do things. But that’s an important idea! Using objects as a conduit to data is a powerful and interesting possibility. But for some reason, in the world of development, there seems to be a hard line between hardware and software.”

This hard line is exactly what Project Mighty is working to erase. It’s a peek into the most basic and powerful interactions that smart design can drive as we approach the Internet of things. This pen doesn’t need to gyroscopically record your movements, save them onto some flash drive, beam them back to the computer, then beam them to the cloud every moment. It just has to be a stick with a button that’s ready to be identified by software.

In other words, there’s nothing inside the hardware that demands the pen remain proprietary. Project Mighty could become popularized for apps living in the walls of Adobe’s own products. With a little modification (maybe an optional real pen tip?) Project Mighty could become the tactile, connective tissue between you and any surface on which you’d like to draw. This semi-smart pen could become the ubiquitous way we interact creatively with the world around us.

Brunner says.

“Something I noticed: I used to always carry a pen.  I don’t anymore, whereas my iPhone is always in my pocket. Maybe this thing can bring back the idea that the pen is always with you.”

COMMENTARY:    The new Adobe "Project Mighty" cloud-connected stylus pen is a fantastic new device that compliments any tablet, converting it into a platform for creative design and self-expression.  I love the fact that the cloud-connecting software has "intelligent" drawing features built into it so that if you were to draw a circle, it comes out perfect everytime, voila.  The same for straight lines, squares, triangles, whatever.  

In the past stylus drawing systems require a stylus pad and pen.  The tablet itself serves as the stylus pad, and you see the results appear on the display immediately, so your eyes never leave the tablet.   The ability to move objects imported into the platform or drawn using the pen from one device to another (like a smartphone), is a great way to take all your work with you when you are on-the-go, and don't want to be bothered with a tablet.

I wasn't able to determine the price for the Adobe Project Mighty stylus pen, but in my opinion it's definitely worth whatever they charge.

Courtesy of an article dated May 9, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design

FAB OPENS FIRST RETAIL STORE IN HAMBURG, GERMANY, ADDS MADE-TO-ORDER PRODUCTS, AND WEB AND APP REDESIGNS

 

THE E-COMMERCE SITE FOR EVERYDAY DESIGN WARES IS GOING ANALOG WITH A NEW BRICK-AND-MORTAR RETAIL STORE--ONE OF A FEW NEW TRICKS THE COMPANY'S FOUNDERS ARE TESTING AS THEY ATTEMPT TO CONQUER THE WORLD'S DESIGN MARKET.

Fab's brand has become as synonymous with the term "pivot" as the e-commerce company's founders want it to be with "design." In three years, Bradford Shellhammer and Jason Goldberg have taken Fab through two failed gay-centric ventures and a successful flash-sale e-commerce business, expanding to 28 countries and about 600 employees along the way.

Goldberg says Fab's first store will be more like a showroom, where people can come to see products in person and sample materials (Click Image To Enlarge)

Interior view of Fab's new retail showroom store located in Hamburg, Germany (Click Image To Enlarge)

This is the first of multiple Fab retail stores that will open within the year, the second of which will also be in Germany, Goldberg says (Click Image To Enlarge)

So, naturally, the pair decided the time was ripe for another pivot.

Goldberg and Shellhammer unveiled the big details:  

• "Ikea and Amazon big" ecommerce website. 
• Overhauled suite of web and mobile apps. 
• New lines of "Exclusively Fab" products forged by an in-house design team of about 10 Fab-brand product designers and partners such as the Andy Warhol Foundation. 
• A new "Designed By You" option for shoppers to custom-order products. 
• Fab's first physical retail store in Hamburg, Germany.

 

The pair also announced Fab has acquired Massivkonzept, a German online custom furniture maker. Massivkonzept's custom-order tools will anchor the new Designed By You Fab channel, an outlet where shoppers--just in the EU to start--can order products to their exact specifications. Shellhammer says Designed By You will start off with mostly wood products, such as tables and shelving, as well as some upholstery and modular seating options.

The new Fab showroom in Hamburg, Germany, is a former showroom of German furniture maker Massivkonzept, which the company just acquired (Click Image To Enlarge)

Interior view of Fab's new retail showroom store located in Hamburg, Germany (Click Image To Enlarge)

Two-thirds of Fab's daily sales aren't from flash sales, but instead from search and browsing. So the new web and mobile apps feature beefed-up search functionality (Click Image To Enlarge)

Custom-order products will complement Fab's new push for its in-house designed products, which will initially include mostly textiles and tabletop items, but will soon also include luggage and furniture, Shellhammer says. He adds he expects to see 3,000 in-house designed products go to market by the end of the year.

Fab has created a designated 'Fab Outlet' space for products sold at deeper discounts. Goldberg says a 'small single-digit' percent of products sold on Fab fall in this category (Click Image To Enlarge)

Fab's new web and mobile apps now incl a billboard that constantly rotates out products based on your personal purchase and like history, and a 'trending' ticker that reflects what's popular right now (Click Image To Enlarge)

Fab is pushing exclusive products through high-profile partnerships with collaborators such as Blu Dot and the Andy Warhol Foundation. The company also has an in-house team of about 10 product designers (Click Image To Enlarge)

Sample materials for custom-ordered products, as well as other Fab wares, will also be on display at the company's Hamburg showroom, the first of multiple physical stores that will open this year (including a second store in Germany, Goldberg confirms). He also says Fab will experiment with various store concepts to evoke the same delight and kitsch of its online shopping experience. There's no word of a U.S. store yet, but considering Fab's international sales skyrocketed to 40% of its total in April, it's not too surprising the company has its sights set on maturing its global brand.

Fab also recently announced its first design competition.

All of these bring Fab closer to the founders' ultimate goal: to become "the world's #1 design store." What does that mean? For starters, Goldberg believes "with certainty" that Fab will hit "double" its 2012 sales, which means the company will total roughly $300 million.

Courtesy of an article dated April 30, 2013 appearing in Fast Company 

A LOOK AT FACEBOOK'S PLANNED 435,000 SQUARE FOOT EXPANSION INCLUDES A GREEN ROOFTOP GARDEN PARK FOR EMPLOYEES

Facebook is expanding its headquarters in grand fashion--in this case, to a second campus that connects to the main one in Menlo Park, California (Click Image To Enlarge)

The company is building a giant addition to their headquarters, and a giant park to go along with it. That park just happens to be on the roof.

Architect Frank Gehry is designing the building (Click Image To Enlarge)

On top of it is a giant green roof that spans most of the 433,555 square foot structure (Click Image To Enlarge)

It’s less a green roof than an entire park (Click Image To Enlarge)

Like so many tech companies flush with cash, Facebook is expanding its headquarters in grand fashion--in this case, to a second campus that connects to the main one in Menlo Park, California. Architect Frank Gehry is designing the building (Warning: That PDF takes a long time to load), which Facebook describes as "a large, one room building that somewhat resembles a warehouse." But we’re not so much interested in the interior of this particular building than what’s on top of it: a giant green roof that spans most of the 433,555 square foot structure.

It will include oak trees… (Click Image To Enlarge)

…a walking trail… (Click Image To Enlarge)

… furniture to lounge on… (Click Image To Enlarge)

It’s less a green roof than an entire park. It will include oak trees, a walking trail, furniture to lounge on--and like Google’s planned green roof, it will have kiosks and cafes, according to Greenbiz.

The roof will also be flush with flora and fauna. Facebook writes: "We’re planting a ton of trees on the grounds and more on the rooftop garden that spans the entire building." Beyond the oak trees, we can’t say exactly what Facebook is planting, but we do know this: Menlo Park ordinances require 80% of the plantings to be either native or xeriscape, meaning they need little or no water.

… and even kiosks and cafes (Click Image To Enlarge)

Beyond the oak trees, we can’t say exactly what Facebook is planting, but we do know this: Menlo Park ordinances require 80% of the plantings to be either native or xeriscape, meaning they need little or no water (Click Image To Enlarge)

See-through image of the new green office complex (Click Image To Enlarge)

For the sake of everyone working in the warehouse space below, let’s hope that the roof also has fast Wi-Fi and some decent workspaces. After all, ample sun is one of the more attractive features of Silicon Valley life.

COMMENTARY:    If Facebook employees aren't spoiled enough already with the Epic Cafe and free food 24/7, 365, then the green rooftop garden in the Facebook expansion offices will spoil them rotten to a whole new level. 

Courtesy of an article dated April 25, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Exist 

HOW "BALANCE MASTER" MAEDIR EUGSTER BUILDS A SCULPTURE BALANCE MIRACULOUSLY ON A SINGLE FEATHER

"BALANCE MASTER" MAEDIR EUGSTER BUILDS AN INCREDIBLE HAND-HELD PIECE ONE PALM FROND AT A TIME.

I’ve happened across enough contact juggling videos on YouTube to know that souped-up circus routines are a dime a dozen on the Internet. But Balance, a short film directed by Tobias Hutzler, is the first I’ve been able to watch without laughing.

 

Balance stars Maedir Eugster, the 58-year-old "balance master” and co-founder/director of Rigolo Swiss Nouveau Cirque, a performance art troupe based in Switzerland.

Click Images To Enlarge

Eugster, clad only in pantaloons (and maybe some eyeliner for effect?) spends the video building a temporary sculpture, based on a single feather. Using 15 bare palm frond spines, he balances each proceeding object on the tip of the next, until he’s holding a massive kinetic sculpture overhead. Like any good performer, he kicks it up a notch for the finale by balancing the entire form on the tip of an upright frond.

Click Image To Enlarge

Then, thanks to physics, the whole thing collapses without Eugster’s steady hand. It’s like watching a Calder mobile blow apart in the wind.

Click Images To Enlarge

COMMENTARY:   This guy makes this appear very simple to do, but it requires a steady hand, an understanding of physics, geometry and kinetic energy, and a very steady hand, and a whole lot of patience.  The kinetic structure looks like it could come down at any time.  It's very intense.  You can tell by the look in his face. This guy is thinking one step ahead, making sure that the next piece he places on the structure is in perfect symetry and baalance -- nouveau art form at its very best.

Courtesy of an article dated April 23, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design

 

FURNITURE MAKER MAINE COTTAGE FINDS A NICHE WITH ITS 'MADE IN THE U.S.A.' COTTAGE STYLE FURNITURE

Click Image to visit the Maine Cottage homepage

Sometimes all it takes to form a great idea for a small business is someone noticing your talents. That’s how it happened for Lauren Russell, co-founder and creative director of the American-made-furniture company Russell & McKenna, now Maine Cottage. 

Russell's husband, Kevin, a skilled woodworker, was renovating their Maryland  home while Russell was freelancing as a marketing consultant and design artist.  During a meeting in her home office with a client, Russell showed off a bathroom vanity that she had designed and Kevin built.  The client was impressed with their work and immediately asked to hire Kevin to build one for her.

That one vanity led to an $18,000 order of 30 additional pieces for the client’s home. And so, from a few sketches and home power tools in a tiny garage, Maine Cottage was born in 2003.

Russell said.

“We didn't set out to start a business, let alone a furniture company.  It sort of serendipitously found us.”

The money from their first client’s order would set the Russells well on their way to their new business. However, they couldn’t do it alone. Russell called her father, Larry Strassner, former CEO of a nuclear power plant maintenance company, to assist in putting together a business plan.

Russell said.

“He thought that we might be onto something and offered to step out of his retirement, which he had enjoyed for all of two weeks, to help us.” 

Starting a business with family members would be daunting to some, but Russell told BusinessNewsDaily she has had a wholly positive experience working with the people closest to her. In fact, she attributes part of her company’s success to the fact that it involves a parent/child team.

She said.

“Our skill sets are complementary without overlapping.  We have the added benefit of always assessing situations from different generational standpoints. Synergy and chemistry are critical to any successful partnership, and for us it is made easier because of our genetic bond.  Neither of us can imagine that we would have come so far so fast working beside anyone else.”

In the seven years since Russell, her husband and her father started Russell & Mackenna (Now Maine Cottage), a lot has changed.  In its first year, the company relocated from the Russells’ garage to a small warehouse where Kevin hand-made furniture kits for subcontractors to assemble.  The "Made in the USA" operation quickly outgrew the warehouse and moved to a larger facility with manufacturing equipment.

In its fifth year, Maine Cottage established a partnership with another family-run furniture company to subcontract all of its pieces.  The Maine Cottage flagship store opened in the Russells' hometown of Severna Park, Md., along Chesapeake Bay north of Annapolis.

Currently, the company's sales are approaching $5 million.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the fact that all its products are hand-crafted in the U.S..  While the company has difficulty competing in price and scalability with companies that manufacture their products overseas, Russell says, there's pride and satisfaction in creating a domestic product, and that  through strict material cost management, fixed labor costs, and selling to a high-end market, Maine Cottage is making a sizable profit.

One key advantage Maine Cottage has by manufacturing in the United States is the ability to work closely with its customers. Made-to-order items sold directly to consumers make up 60 percent of the company’s sales (the other 40 percent is split equally between wholesale and trade). 

The customizable features on its made-to-order products allows the company to charge more, which has significantly affected its bottom line. 

For now, Maine Cottage isn’t looking to move to mass-market retailing. The company is content selling to a niche market of customers who own a primary or secondary home in coastal resort areas. Time and time again, the company has found repeat business.

“Twenty percent of our  customers are returning,” Russell said. “Once a customer realizes that we can make a desk smaller to fit into the nook under their steps, they are hooked.”

COMMENTARY:   It is so refreshing to find a furniture manufacturer that produces its products in the U.S.   Although they have a price disadvantage in competing with furniture makers producing overseas, they offer quality craftsmanship, built-to-order furniture, unique 'cottage style' furniture designs and great customer service.   I really love their folksy, functional, comfortable and colorful furniture.    

Courtesy of an article dated October 5, 2010 appearing in Business News Daily

HE HOBBIT HOUSE THAT IS RIGHT OUT OF A J.R.R. TOLKIEN 'LORD OF THE RINGS' FANTASY NOVEL, AND ITS FOR RENT IN MONTANA

Steve Michaels, proprietor of the Hobbit House, asks a reporter when he calls about his pet project.

“DO you have hairy feet?  Bilbo Baggins gets off on hairy feet. Hobbits have hairy feet. They also have hairy bellies. They eat about six times a day.”

If you are a J. R. R. Tolkien fan, this information is old news. But if its a new world your reaction is closer to,

“Hobbit? Short, some kind of elf, annoying. Bilbo? Bilious? Rocky Balboa?” 

And thanks to Mr. Michaels, you can spend the night in it. No need to bring slippers: a big hairy pair await you. Also a wizard’s hat, belonging to someone named Gandalf. How to get there? It’s a long, long journey, because wherever you live, it is not close.

Glorious August, the time for road trips. While it may seem that roadside America has been taken over by motel chains, one as sterile and uninspired as the next, this is not true: there are lots of rich and varied places to stay out there.

The Hobbit House, in northwest Montana, about a three-hour drive from Spokane, Wash., is a guesthouse. Number of units: one. But it is a large unit. The Web site, which the reporter studies before arriving, shows a 1,000-square-foot structure built into a hill, on a 20-acre site dotted with structures that range from small to perfect for squashing with your foot: a four-foot stump-shaped troll house, a few round-door hobbit houses with chimney pipes and several shoe-box-size fairy houses. 

The Hobbit House

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Studying the pictures, the reporter has the sinking feeling that she will be spending the night at a miniature golf course. After arriving at the Hobbit House, this fear is quickly put to rest: there are no putting greens.

Mr. Michaels, who turns 63 this month and can be found at his own house across the road, is white-haired and as jolly as Santa, but with a much darker back story and some ambivalence about children. He makes his living as a broker of telephone answering businesses, running a company called TAS Marketing with his 59-year-old wife, Christine, who tends to practical matters like contracts.

But Mr. Michaels has also been many other things: a hypnotist; the author of a self-published self-help book called “How to Die With a Smile on Your Face”; something called a futurist, which seems to involve getting out of the city and arming yourself; and a llama rancher. He keeps four alpacas as pets; pilots what he calls his flying machine, a Buckeye Dream Machine-powered parachute; and gets about his 100-acre property in a Kubota RTV that resembles a hybrid golf cart and dump truck.

A HOBBIT, according to the literature, likes to be comfortable at home, and the guesthouse, shaped on the inside like an inverted bowl, is first class. Mr. Michaels charges $245 a night, and paid about $410,000 to build and furnish it.

There are granite counters in the kitchen, elaborate lighting and a Harmony audiovisual system. A gold ring, which figures prominently in hobbit lore, hangs from a rafter. The rustic wooden furniture is custom-made, and the headboards are embedded with the Hobbit House logo, a hobbit door with a red light — and on the headboards, it’s a real red light.

But what is a visit to the Hobbit House without a tour of the shire? Into the RTV we go, accompanied by Mr. Michaels’s dog, Libby, a collie-shepherd mix. Here is a tiny sod-roof house belonging to Frodo, a Baggins relation; there, in the trunk of a tree, is a mother-son fairy abode (complete with two doors). Not everything is hobbitically accurate: there is a two-foot-tall hairy-back frog, because Mr. Michaels figured that if hobbits were hairy, their frogs should be, too.

Mr. Michaels says, steering the cart toward the sod-covered roof of the life-size guesthouse. 

“And look. You can drive over the house, because it’s built into the ground. Right now, we’re 30 feet over your bedroom.”

Wahoo! Try that at the Best Western. The view of Mr. Michaels’s house across the road, beside the pond, is lovely, and there is an abundance of wildlife here, he says: they have seen coyote, elk, mountain lions, even a grizzly.

Does the wildlife ever damage those little structures?

Mr. Michaels says. 

“This spring we hauled almost a truckload of elk turd from the top of the Hobbit House.  On top of the house it’s nice and warm, and the grass comes in early, and they like to hang out there.”

Back at the guesthouse, we talk about the financial side of things. The Hobbit House was completed last fall, but the guest book shows only about 14 entries. How are they making a go of it?

Mr. Michaels says.  

“We’re not.  TAS Marketing is the way I make my money. This started out as a simple guesthouse, then my contractor’s son said, ‘Oh, it looks like a hobbit house.’ Then my imagination went wild. We read the book and watched the movies, and then we had to have a hobbit house, we had to have a troll house, we had to have the mushrooms. It’s all custom. I’ve got real rich taste.”

He later says.

“I have an addictive personality.”

What is the saga of this hobbit fan with the healing pyramid hanging from his neck, and from what exotic land did he emerge? Burlington, Vt., it turns out.

Mr. Michaels was the middle child of seven children, and his parents were strict and demanding. Also, they were poor. He got his brother’s hand-me-down socks, and in school, when the children took off their shoes to play a marching game, his too-long socks preceded him, flop, flop, flop.

At the urging of his father, a tool and die maker at General Electric, he attended Vermont Technical College after graduating from high school.

An instructor said one day.

“When you finish this, you will be able to fix a radio.”

Mr. Michaels thought.  

“I don’t want to fix the radio.  I want to be on the radio.”

So he went out to Eugene, Ore., and worked as a radio disc jockey while going to Lane Community College, living, he says, like a maniac: crashing cars, stealing food from grocery stores, racking up so many D.U.I.’s that a judge finally gave him the choice of going to jail or leaving the state. (He left the state.)

Eventually he went into sales, married and spent much time in metaphysical searching, exploring reincarnation and the power of the mind to heal physical ailments like cancer. (After the reporter tells him what she thinks of this — picture everyone in the Bronx doing the cheer that bears the borough’s name and you get the idea — he becomes guarded, but he does say that as a hypnotist, he regressed people to past lives.)

The Michaelses moved around, running a bed-and-breakfast in California, a llama ranch in Colorado. One day when they took a few of their llamas for a walk, a neighbor complained because they had walked across his property, and they knew it was time to move along.

They moved to Montana. Mr. Michaels’s communications business was thriving, but he had started drinking at night and smoking marijuana. Then, in the summer of 2004, some neighbors told him about a spiritual healer in Brazil named John of God, who could tell the state of your soul by looking at a photo.

Mr. Michaels sent the healer a picture, and it came back with a red X through it. His heart started pounding. He flushed all the pot he had just bought down the toilet, left his beer in front of a neighbor’s door, went up on the hill behind his house, where his first dog, One Eye, was buried, and wept. He reflected on his life, thought of all the hurtful things he had done as a young man and resolved to do better.

That was when he wrote his book about how to live a richer life and began giving “life assessment” workshops and playing Santa Claus in Trout Creek, intercepting the letters children sent to Santa at the post office and buying them gifts himself. He left waitresses $100 tips. He considered building a three-story lodge for his workshops, but the bank wanted to be too involved.

So the next thing you know, here comes the Hobbit project. Children were not admitted at first (Mr. Michaels did not want their sticky fingers on his expensive furnishings), but so many people wanted to bring them that they are now welcome if they are well behaved.

Mr. Michaels takes the reporter on a tour of the rest of his property: his three-bedroom home; the alpacas; the flying machine, which he has flown up to Cougar Peak (once a bald eagle with a fish in its talons flew alongside him). He seems to have bought all the toys he couldn’t afford as a boy, he is told.

Mr. Michaels agrees.

“There was a time my father wanted a pond on his property, and my brother and I spent two summers and a winter cutting down trees.”

He says.

“My brother and I worked for two summers, my father never even said ‘thank you.’ I decided to build my own pond, and I have a nice island out there and electricity on mine and a lighthouse where the lights go on.”

At the reporter’s request, they go up the hill where Mr. Michael did his vision quest, sitting beside the dog’s grave and thinking about what would become of his own spirit when he died. Four pets are now buried there, and when Mr. Michaels and his wife die, they will be buried there, too.

That evening, he and his wife invite the reporter to a supper any fat-bellied hobbit would appreciate: ribs made according to Mr. Michaels’s secret recipe, potato salad, huckleberry pie. Then it’s to bed.

The reporter tries on Gandalf’s felt wizard hat (too pointy) and the fuzzy deer-hide slippers (too clammy) and, unable to figure out how to turn off the red light on the headboard, throws a blanket over her head and tries to sleep. It occurs to her that she is 30 feet under a hill and the deceased pets are across the road under another hill. It seems as if there should be something profound in this, but the reporter cannot figure out what it is.

The next morning, when she goes to her car, she sees muddy paw prints on the door near the handle, about the height of a hobbit, a bear cub or a dog — a mystery that will remain unsolved. Then it’s back on the August road.

COMMENTARY:   That's what I call vacation house that is quite literally out-of-this-world. Located in a remote section of Montana.  Where the sky is blue and clear during the day.  And you can really see the stars at night.  Located where there are wild animals roaming closeby.  Where the air is clean, and you can read and just kick back and release.  If you like solitude of living out in the wild, away from humanity, and tourist crowds, then The Hobbit House is for you.  At $245.00 per night, that's a real bargain compared to some of the high-priced hotels and resorts.  

The Hobbit House lies in the colorful forested foothills of the Cabinet Mountains up in the Shire of Whitepine Valley approximately 8 Miles S.E. of Trout Creek, the huckleberry capital of Montana and 16 miles N.W. of Thompson Falls. This lushly appointed Tourist Home is tastefully furnished with a crafted King Size Bedroom, HD-Blu-Ray Color TV, 3 Phones and Wi-Fi, XM Radio and a designer’s kitchen furnished with customized granite counters, and all the appliances and tools a chef needs for gourmet creations, including a deck with gas barbeque. This “Hobbit Experience” is a must see if you are into the imaginative and mystical. Another reason to visit Montana!  

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call us at (406) 827-7200 
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Hobbit House of Montana
9 Hobbit Lane, Trout Creek, Montana 59874 

Here's directions to get to the Hobbit House.   Notice ~ Your GPS will not work in getting you to the Shire 

9 Hobbit Lane, Trout Creek, Montana 59874
(406) 827-7200 

From Spokane, WA via Sandpoint, ID on Highway 200: 
* From Spokane / Coeur d' Alene
* Go EAST on I-90 to Highway 95 North (Coeur d’Alene). LEFT at exit
* North on Hwy 95 to Sandpoint, ID
* Go through Sandpoint following 95 through a traffic light that states Hwy 200 straight ahead (heading East) 
* East on Hwy 200 toward Montana.
* Stay on Highway 200 thru Clark Fork, Idaho; Heron, and Noxon to Trout Creek.
* Go past Trout Creek about 8 miles and turn right just past mile market 37 on Whitepine Creek Road. Look for our Hobbit House Door Logo in Blue on the right.
* Go approximately 2 ½ miles to Hobbit Lane on right
* Park under trees in front of our Hobbit House sign
* Check-in at the house across the road 

** Remember there is a time change from Pacific to Mountain Time if you’re coming from Idaho ** 

From Spokane, WA over Thompson Pass Road: 
NOTE: This way of travel is closed in the winter months. 

• From Spokane / Coeur d' Alene
• Go EAST on I-90 to Exit 43 (Kingston). Turn Left
* Continue over free way and along the river to Prichard, ID (approx. 20 miles)
* Cross Prichard Creek
* Turn Right
* Go past Murray, ID
* You'll drive over Thompson Pass to Highway 200 (approx. 40 miles from Prichard)
* Turn LEFT at Highway 200 
* Travel approximately 12 miles almost to mile marker 37
* Just before mile marker 37 - Turn LEFT on Whitepine Creek Road. Look for our Hobbit House Door Logo in Blue on the right.
* Go approximately 2 ½ miles to Hobbit Lane on right
* Park under trees in front of our Hobbit House sign
* Check-in at the house across the road 

From Missoula, MT: (This route is 20 miles shorter) 
* From Missoula 
* Go WEST on I-90 to Exit 96 heading toward Kalispell (Highway 93)
* Stay on Highway 93/200 until you get to Ravalli 
* Turn left on Highway 200 heading to Thompson Falls. 
See directions from Thompson Falls. 

From Missoula, MT via I-90: 
* From Missoula
* Go WEST on I-90 until you reach St. Regis, MT.
* Take Exit 33 (turn Right) on Hwy 135 heading toward Paradise, MT.
* Go approximately 35 miles to Hwy 200
* Go left on Hwy 200 to Thompson Falls, MT.
See directions from Thompson Falls. 

From Thompson Falls, MT: 
* Travel approximately 16 miles almost to mile marker 37
* Just before mile marker 37 - Turn LEFT on Whitepine Creek Road. Look for our Hobbit House Door Logo in Blue on the right.
* Go approximately 2 ½ miles to Hobbit Lane on right
* Park under trees in front of our Hobbit House sign
* Check-in at the house across the road 

From Canada: 
* Go SOUTH till you hear the laughter of Hobbits...  

(8/11/11)

Courtesy of an article dated August 11, 2011 appearing in The New York Times Home & Garden

DISNEY DIRECTOR JOHN KAHRS COMBINES 2D AND 3D ANIMATION AND WINS AN OSCAR FOR BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM "PAPERMAN"

Paperman is an Oscar-winning short, directed by John Kahrs (Click Image To Enlarge) 

DIRECTOR JOHN KAHRS HAD A VISION FOR HIS ANIMATED SHORTPAPERMAN. THERE WAS JUST ONE PROBLEM. THE TECHNOLOGY TO MAKE IT DIDN’T EXIST YET.

A Pixar film is a beautiful thing. Long after Toy Story’s 3-D novelty wore off, artists refined their techniques, so Up could make us cry. But in these computer-generated worlds full of perfect shapes and gradients, we inevitably lost some of that old Disney magic--the nuance of incredible, hand-drawn lines.  John Kahrs thought.

“Isn’t there a way we can bring that hand of an artist back?” 

 

At the time, he was working on his storyboards for Paperman--what has since become Disney’s 2013 Oscar-winning animated short. It was going to be “an urban fairy tale in a beautiful world of light and shadow,” showcasing the latest in CG technology like global illumination and radiocity (light-based physics).  But another thought had been haunting him. Working on  Tangled  alongside legendary 2-D animator Glen Keane (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast), Kahrs watched Keane sketch on top of the CG animations during the production process. Software allowed Keane to reshape 3-D figures with his pen strokes, but ultimately, his beautiful lines were lost in the process. It seemed like such a waste.

It tells the story of any two people who share a moment on a train platform, only to never see one another again (Click Image To Enlarge)

Late in the storyboarding process, Keane’s vision for Paperman was born anew. What if it could be a hybrid of the old and new schools of animation? What if it could be 2-D and 3-D at the same time?

But, without spoiling anything, I have a feeling that things may go different, thanks to a healthy dose of Disneyfication (Click Image To Enlarge)

Kahrs began investigating that possibility in the only place he could, Disney’s R&D department. He lucked out when he met software engineer Brian Whited, who had already been working on a new piece of animation software called Meander that specialized in 2-D interpolation (using software to reason out gaps in sketched animations). With modification and refinement, it just might work.

Watch the nuance of each frame. With 117 shots in the film, Kahrs’s team focused on the composition of each shot (Click Image To Enlarge)

Keane says. 

“You hear people talking a lot about innovation--innovation comes out of necessity.  The necessity in this case was we had to figure out how to have a CG underlayer that dragged these drawn lines on top of it.”

 

Eventually, Meander proved capable of stunning feats. Today, an animator can draw a frown on a protagonist’s hand in one frame, then, several frames later, draw a smile. Meander can both track the position of that hand in 3-D space, and it can fill in the gaps, turning that frown into a smile, naturally. But much of Keane’s emphasis was tweaking the feel. In classic Disney animation, the character outlines do something called boiling, as the imperfections in cel after cel stack up--and they’re important, subconscious cues to the experience of animation feeling authentic. 

Also, aside from the narrative plays on light and shadow, each frame has hints of hand-drawn animation (Click Image To Enlarge)

Keane says. 

“It’s part of the human hand.  Those were the sort of small details that we were big on pushing one way or another.”

Following months of preliminary testing, the team had developed two test shots that they thought were compelling. The last step would be to take a meeting with John Lasseter and the rest of Disney studio leadership and sell them on the aesthetic.

What you see is actually built on an entirely new 2-D and 3-D animation system called Meander, which layers drawings on top of 3-D figures (Click Image To Enlarge)

Keane recounts.

“I think John was a little bit skeptical. He’s a smart guy. He’s seen all these painterly effects. His concern was, does it get in the way of the storytelling, or is it a way of immersing you in this world and telling the story of the characters? Once he saw these tests, they all sat up and noticed that this wasn’t just some cheap trick.”

When your brain tries to dissect each frame, reasoning how someone can possibly draw on 3-D in 2-D, you’re bound for a mental meltdown (Click Image To Enlarge)

Indeed, Paperman is amongst the most stunning animations we’ve ever seen. It combines new aesthetics with standing traditions, marrying the tangibility of CG with the human grit of a pen on paper. And in a poetic turn of technology, it was actually the 2-D animators who got to put the finishing touches on each frame of Paperman. All of those beautiful lines that started the animation process would end it, too.

But ultimately, if you just soak in each frame for the visual paradox that it is, you’ll really enjoy the film (Click Image To Enlarge)

Check out all of this year’s Oscar-nominated short films at Co.Create.

COMMENTARY:   The "Paperman" is one sweet short animation film.  No wonder it won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.  Disney and Director John Kahrs were able to marry 2D and 3D animation into the same film, and the result is just beautiful.

Disney Director John Kahrs (centere) accepts the Academy Award for Best Short Animation Film for "Paperman" (Click Image To Enlarge)

Courtesy of an article dated February 22, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design

 

HANNOVER-BASED DESIGNER QOOP CREATES EDEN, A NATURAL WOOD BACKPLATE REPLACEMENT KIT FOR YOUR IPHONE 5 AND 4S

Eden is a replacement backplate for the iPhone 4 and 4S made out of wood (Click Image To Enlarge)

HOW DO YOU TURN A WARRANTY-VOIDING MODIFICATION INTO AN APPROACHABLE PRODUCT?

To those who abstain from iPhone cases on aesthetic grounds, the idea of replacing the device’s machine-milled backplate with a wooden one will seem like a transgression worthy of prison time. But the modification has proven to be a popular one, and now, with a kit from the Hannover-based design agency Qoop, it’s become a fully realized product. Creating Eden, as the line is called, involved tackling an unusual challenge: figuring out how to package a warranty-voiding, specialty-screwdriver-requiring process as something an average person would feel comfortable tackling.

The modification isn’t a new one, but here, Hannover-based design agency Qoop dressed it up as a fully-realized product (Click Image To Enlarge)

It involved a unique challenge -- making a warranty-voiding mod into something anyone could do (Click Image To Enlarge)

Part of the solution is obvious: Supply that specialty screwdriver. Qoop did that--and made sure it’s something the buyer sees right away upon opening the box. Here’s your new backplate, here’s the tool you’ll need to install it. "The arrangement within the packaging box is simple," explains one of the designers, "giving the customer a feeling that it is going to be easy to replace." A tiny screwdriver rattling around loose inside a box doesn’t inspire much confidence when it comes to this type of precision endeavor.

So they went for super-straightforward packaging that when you open the box you see two things -- your backplate, and the screwdriver you need to replace it (Click Image To Enlarge)

The rest of the identity was rounded out by the designers’ decision to use real quality woods (Click Image To Enlarge)

The instructions for executing the job are similarly straightforward, essentially just four simple diagrams showing users how to proceed. It’s the Ikea approach to iPhone customization. You don’t need to know that the screws you’re dealing with are of an unusual pentalobe variety, so the included instructions don’t bother telling you. They just show you how to remove them.

The kit is available in wenge, mahogany, beech, and bamboo (Click Image To Enlarge)

You can grab your own kit on the Eden page for 89.00€, or around $120 (Click Image To Enlarge)

The kit, which is compatible with the iPhone 4 and 4S, comes in four varieties of wood: wenge, mahogany, beech, and bamboo. Going the real-wood route (and avoiding the flimsy fake-wood versions that at least double the ech-factor), became a central part of the product identity, too. a Qoop team member explained. 

"We believe that we’re enhancing the highly technical iPhone,  making it warmer and more natural."

The product picked up a "back to nature" tagline, and the team decided on a plain cardboard package that was intended to reflect their commitment to natural materials. All of the wood, the team points out, is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, which oversees environmentally sound practices.

Still, natural or not, the style may not be for everyone. But for those who are interested, Qoop has made the potentially sticky process about as streamlined as it can possibly be.

You can grab your own kit on the Eden page for 89.00€, or around $120.

COMMENTARY:   That's what I call a cool replacement to the standard drab black or white backplate on the iPhone 4S or iPhone 5.  At $120, it's an expensive alternative to what Apple offers on its iPhone, but if you love the natural colors and texture of real wood, go for it. 

Courtesy of an article dated February 20, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design 

HOW "MY MICRO NY," A 300-SQ FOOT MICRO APARTMENTS PROJECT IN NEW YORK COULD BE THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE IN HOUSING

"My Micro NYC," a micro-unit scheme designed by nARCHITECTS that won the city’s AdAPT NYC competition. (Click Image To Enlarge)

NEW YORK’S FIRST PREFAB APARTMENT TOWER WILL RISE IN 2015. ITS 55 UNITS WILL BE VERY, VERY SMALL.

Mayor Bloomberg inspects the model unit at the Museum of the City of New York (Click Image To Enlarge)

 

On Tuesday, Mayor Bloomberg--trailed by his perpetual entourage of news cameras--stepped through the door of a tiny but neatly kept apartment. He explored the model unit, which currently sits inside of the Museum of the City of New York, pulling down a trundle bed and peering inside of unexpected storage spaces. There wasn’t much ground to cover (only 300 square feet, in truth), and soon Bloomberg migrated to a podium to introduce the unit as the winning design in his AdAPT NYC competition, which seeks to imagine the future of housing in New York.

the building, which will contain 55 micro-unit apartments, will be the first prefab tower in New York city (Click Image To Enlarge)

Of course, it’s unlikely that Bloomberg will ever live in a “micro-unit,” but his administration is betting that millions of other New Yorkers will like the idea. Specifically, the city’s 1.8 million households of one or two people, a demographic that has ballooned over the past two decades, growing far beyond the roughly 1 million studio and one-bedroom apartments available in Manhattan.  Mayor Bloomberg explained. 

“The city’s housing stock is misaligned with the changing demographics of its population, largely because of outdated housing codes that prevent the construction of smaller units," 

 
Inside, the 300-square-foot units are designed to appeal to young professionals (Click Image To Enlarge) 

AdAPT is part of a grand experiment to change that. On a plot of land in Kip’s Bay, the city has agreed to suspend its current housing codes and allow the construction of a tower consisting solely of micro-units under 300 square feet. The winning AdAPT proposal, by a team including nARCHITECTS, developers Monadnock, and the Actors Fund HD, will begin construction on the site next year. Their scheme, "My Micro NY," calls for nine stories of long, thin units stepped back from the street. Each apartment will be prefabricated in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and arranged on site using a crane, saving precious construction days and millions of dollars.

The units are divided into a 'toolbox,' which packs a bathroom, kitchen, and fold-down table into a compact box, and a 'canvas,' the window-facing tabula rasa that can function as a bedroom, or living room, or study (Click Image To Enlarge)

nARCHITECTS, who’ve been building living spaces in New York for more than a decade, designed the units to be a bit like a cabin on a ship--full of hidden details. Each unit is divided into a "toolbox," which packs a bathroom, kitchen, and fold-down table into a compact box, and a "canvas," the window-facing tabula rasa that can function as a bedroom, living room, or study. A juliette balcony lets in air, and over head, a step ladder leads to a storage space equivalent to that of a VW Jetta. The firm’s design will pack 55 of the modular units on site, with nearly half priced below market.

A juliette balcony lets in air, and over head, a step ladder leads to a storage space equivalent to that of a VW Jetta (Click Image To Enlarge)

Some may disagree with Bloomberg’s approach to the housing shortage. Richard Florida has argued,

"Increasing density in urban cores isn’t always the right path toward building communities, providing a counterpoint to urban economists arguing that we need more flexible land use, more flexible building regulations, that we need to build more housing in some of these very precious urban areas which don’t want any.”

Florida suggests that cities which expand “out, not up” will breed healthier and more creative neighborhoods. In other words--the city should be looking at how to lure tech startups to Queens and the Bronx, not figuring out how to fit more people in Manhattan.

The units will be constructed by Capsys, a prefab company based in the Brooklyn Navy yards (Click Image To Enlarge)

But as long as Manhattan exists, there will be people chomping at the bit to live there--so why not design a better model for how we use space in these hot-commodity neighborhoods? AdAPT isn’t so much about planning how a city should grow--rather, it’s acknowledging how the city is already growing, and planning accordingly.

Wherever you fall on the continuum of Jane Jacobs to Michael Bloomberg, there are plenty of alternative proposals on view in Making Room: New Models for Housing New Yorkers at the Museum of the City of New York. Check it out until September 15.

COMMENTARY:   Micro apartments maybe new in the U.S., but they have become mainstream in other countries like China and Japan where buildable land is at a premium, construction costs are high, and population densities are high.  The only alternative is to go vertical with buildings consisting of hundreds of micro apartment units.  Checkout these 330 square foot "make your own" micro apartment units in Hong Kong:

 

And look at how this Japanese family lives in a very small urban house built between two buildings:

 

In a blog post dated November 10, 2012, I profiled the Keret House, a 4-foot wide house sandwiched within the space of two buildings. The Keret House, was conceived and finally built by Polish architect Jakub Szczęsny and finally finished at the end of 2012.

The Keret House (Click Image To Enlarge)

Courtesy of an article dated January 25, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design

 

FACEBOOK'S EPIC CAFE SERVES FREE FOOD 3X A DAY, LOOKS LIKE A SCHOOL LUNCH LINE AND CONSTRUCTION SITE, BUT THE FOOD ROCKS

Facebook's Epic Cafe (Click Image To Enlarge)

ROMAN & WILLIAMS HAS CREATED NOSTALGIC INTERIORS THAT MOST OTHERS CAN ONLY EMULATE. HERE’S THE LUNCHROOM THEY CREATED WITH FACEBOOK.

Facebook's Epic Cafe cafeteria greats staffers with the words EAT at the start of the waiting line lane (Click Image To Enlarge)

Google ruined everything. Microsoft gave out free soft drinks, but Google let employees eat gourmet food for free. How can you possibly differentiate mealtime in Silicon Valley with that act to follow?

Facebook's Epic Cafe knows how to put out the food fr Facebook staffers -- and there's plenty of it (Click Image To Enlarge)

Facebook's Epic Cafe food looks delicious. Here's one of the salad bars (Click Image To Enlarge)

Facebook aimed for cool. They hired Roman & Williams--the ultra-hip powerhouse firm behind landmark projects like the Ace Hotel--to create their Epic Cafe.  In reality, Roman & Williams is mostly the vision of husband-and-wife design team Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch, who are largely credited with the trend of alluring, faux-nostalgic interiors, pieced together through an alchemy of heirloom furniture, found objects, warm woods, grommets, and occasionally, even flannel. Their look is what the New York Times calls the "Benjamin Button school of design," or a nostalgia for a time that never actually existed. Indeed, if interiors had an Instagram filter, it’d be Roman & Williams.

Facebook’s Epic Cafe is their Menlo Park eatery created by Ace Hotel designers Roman & Williams (Click Image To Enlarge)

Facebook's Epic cafe is full of reclaimed furniture and custom pieces, all which create a post-industrial space that’s reminiscent of a schoolhouse or factory (Click Image To Enlarge)

Everything is left a step unfinished, to give the Epic Cafe's space a feel of constant flexibility and iteration, like the Facebook platform itself (Click Image To Enlarge)

The meeting between Facebook and Roman & Williams was happenstance. Everett Katigbak and Ben Barry, who head Facebook’s Analog Research Lab, actually bumped into Standefer and Alesch in the lobby of the Ace Hotel. What eventually resulted was a collaboration on Facebook’s Epic Cafe, a cafeteria that sits somewhere between a schoolhouse lunch line and a half-finished construction site. The spa has all the carefully curated objects of a Roman & Williams design mixed with the “don’t you dare finish painting those walls!” mentality of Facebook’s corporate culture.Facebook’s Everett Katigbak tells me.

“[That culture] indirectly starts with the product, not that we leave it unfinished, but we leave the product open to iteration.  It’s a continual work in progress.”

Ben Barry and Everett Katigbak at Facebook's Analog Research Laboratory (Click Image To Enlarge)

Much of Katigbak’s job is ingraining Facebook’s culture into their buildings, designing interior spaces to ensure going to work at Facebook doesn’t feel like going to work anywhere else. So when Facebook opened its Menlo Park campus, Katigbak didn’t want one big design firm painting the grounds with a single stroke. Instead, he was inspired by Facebook’s roots, the tiny company that sprouted in Palo Alto, snagging a patchwork of buildings downtown to accommodate a quickly growing workforce.

Facebook's Epic Cafe has big, communal areas for socializing (Click Image To Enlarge)

Facebook's Epic Cafe also has quieter nooks for ideating  (Click Image To Enlarge)

Facebook's Epic Cafe also has some neat, vintage prints hanging around too. But there isn’t a piece of taxidermy to be seen (Click Image To Enlarge)

Katigbak reminisces.

“It was interesting to have to run to meetings across town, navigate through the city.  It had this feeling of energy we really liked and connected with.”

The Menlo Park campus itself is largely modeled to “feel like a city.” With the building serving as one blank canvas, employees were free (even encouraged) to claim their own spaces, creating a mini urban environment inside a corporate office.

And Epic Cafe had to feel like a social hotspot in this city--a place you wanted to go, meet, eat, and collaborate with friends in the company that you may not see in your normal office area.

Katigbak explains.

“On the general employee side, we wanted them to have something they felt proud of, a place ‘I’ get to eat as a destination, but flexible in a Facebook way.  They could add to it without changing the overall vibe of it.”

The resulting space is like your childhood lunchroom, reformulated for adults. It’s largely Roman & Williams, filled with postindustrial furniture (some discovered, some crafted), found print art (magazine clippings), exposed light bulbs, and plenty of rivets. But whereas Roman & Williams’s brand of alchemy generally finishes these components, Facebook’s culture demands they stay raw. It’s no pseudo-swank hotel lobby; the cafeteria is built on a concrete floor and topped with exposed rafters, like a construction site waiting for the laminate and drywall guys to show up already. Since it’s Facebook, you could probably carve your name in a chair, but since it’s Roman & Williams, destroying the cultural artefact would be sacrilege.

I asked Facebook if they’d used any tricks of social hacking in the space, much like Google had found eight-person tables were the perfect number to prevent cliques yet maintain conversations. Katigbak says.

“We don’t get that granular, to find the optimal metrics and measurements.”  

But he does see the value of communal seating in empowering “chance encounters,” and a few smaller tables have clearly been set up to allow two people to run a more focused discussion over lunch.

Indeed, the word that comes up again and again with Katigbak isn’t “synergy” or “networking.” And it certainly isn’t Google’s creed, which would probably be “optimization.” It’s simply “cool.” For however we may try to classify Roman & Williams, identifying the unifying threads or jealously criticizing its brand of quasi-retro chic, most of us agree, in this place and time, that it does feel “cool.” And Facebook’s cafeteria is pretty cool, too--for reasons a bit beyond mere association.

COMMENTARY:   What a novel idea:  A corporate cafeteria that is not finished, a work-in-progress, if you will, where staffers can add their personal embellishments to what is supposed to be the most popular spot on the Facebook's corporate campus in Menlo Park.  

However, I differ greatly when it comes to describing Facebook's Epic Cafe as "cool."  It's not cool at all.   It looks entirely too institutional.  The school cafeteria and unfinished construction zone look is most appropriate. To this I would add boring, bland, uncool, unFacebook, to name a few.  

If you are going to use the term "cool" to describe something, it should be a absolutely unforgettable, an explosion to the senses and memorable almost to the point of being historic. Facebook's Epid Cafe does not meet those standards.

Having said this, Zuck hired away executive chef Josef L. Desimone from Google in 2011, and under his able hand, has formed quite an impressive Facebook Culinary Team (see below):

Facebook Culinary Team Tony Castellucci, Chris Moss, Josef L. Desimone, and Virgil HIdalgo (Click Image To Enlarge)      

The Epic Cafe's menu is international in scale, befitting of a company with staffers from all parts of the globe. The food is highly ultra cuisine, very creative, tasty, healthy, there's a huge seletion of it, and it's 100% free to Facebook staffers, and served three times a day, and I don't think Facebook's hackers miss a meal.  Here are a few examples from the Facebook Culinary Team page:

 

Courtesy of an article dated December 13, 2012 appearing in Fast Company Design and an article dated May 18, 2012 appearing in Business Insider