On the rooftop of the new Standard hotel in New York City hotel owner Andre Balazs shares the finer architectural points of his latest creation. A handful of design bloggers, including MoCo Loco, were invited this afternoon to get a personal tour of the hotel with Mr. Balazs. The new flagship Standard was both built by, and is now operated by, the Balazs company which means that the building design benefited from their years of hotel operating experience and no expense was spared to make it the best guest experience possible (developers are usually not the operators of a building and often cut corners to save money). Examples; colorless/tintless exterior glass to optimize the many views and distance the building from common green glass office buildings, 16 different room types for variety - none of which the traditional shoebox design, wider South facing rooms to take advantage of the abundant light, custom made bathrooms with separate showers and water closet... the list is long. The pictures after the jump tell more of the story.

Here's the first in a planned series of posts where we ask design people to share their favorite places worldwide.

The Apartment's Stefan Boublil - pictured right - has just returned from a whirlwind business trip to Tokyo. Before he left we asked him to document the (albeit tiny) leisure part of his trip and come back with his Top5 favorite places. So he gave us six. Here they are with his comments, with more after the jump:



the kurage restaurant this art café and shop is waaayy funner than detroit's automobile union cafeteria!

the cathedral st. mary's as if a spaceship had landed in a residential neighborhood...

the graphic city you can pretty much point you camera anywhere and the lines will connect.

the prada building i have longed to see the herzog & de meuron take on frivolity for as long as i can remember. i was not disappointed.

the subway feeling like darth vader barging in on princess leia's "diplomatic mission to alderaan," the tokyo subway is clean as a whistle.

bonus points

the asahi beer hall it is a great place to have lunch with your fellow salarymen.

More after the jump...

Alcantara® LAB held the Extraordinary, Every Day Travel Contest to find new items that incorporate Alcantara upholstery to help us through our daily nomadism and improve any journey we take. The first prize went to Francesco Marcellini for Bag Lap, a laptop bag that becomes a work surface. The second prize went to Ozio, a travel case that also functions as a seat, by the I.DE.A Institute Design Centre. Make waiting times more comfortable. Reporter, a travel digital camera by Paolo Virgolini, took third place, and a special prize was awarded to Add-Off, by Cristian Ciacchiné, Alice Cappelli and Leandro Lisboa. This item consists of a pair of ear-covers and an eye mask that wrap up together.

+ alcantaralab.com

We spent some time in Boston this week and got a call from Lorn from Propellor Modern suggesting we stop in at Bodega 100%. It happened to be just around the corner from our hotel, so we headed down to the corner neighborhood store.

Replete with all the usual convenience stuff tightly packed into every crevice, it was an authentic experience down to the glass doored soda fridges with one exception, behind one of those fridges was another space, a very spare modern one...

... filled with the latest streetwear and gear (mostly for sneakerheads). All one needs to do is stand in front of the right door in the cramped convenience store and the fridge slides open to let you in.

Above: the same window seen from the inside (left) and outside.

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In anticipation of next year's International Contemporary Furniture Fair here are the answers to the question we asked you late last week:

Seeing as the Jacob Javits Center is in a somewhat barren/ industrial area, where are the closest good restaurants?

Per your submissions, here they are:

- Daisy Mays 100% BBQ
- Hells Kitchen Inc 100% (where we ate on Saturday, see photo above)
- GO GO Curry 100%
- Chipotle Mexican Grill 100%
- Pam Thai 2 100%
- Becco Restaurant 100%
- Wichcraft 100%

Everyone who submitted was thrown into a hat and we drew Audrey. We'll be sending her a copy of Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan's Apartment Therapy Presents: Hundreds of Design Solutions book. Thank you for the tips!

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1 VOTESThis ICFF weekend the editors of MoCo Loco stayed at The Pod Hotel on the East side of New York City. What can I say first about The Pod? The Roomlinx internet blows. On several occasions this editor was blocked for using too much bandwidth while uploading images for the two preceding show posts. When it was working the internet would also simply stop working. Which explains why so few photos and posts. A big thank you to Treehugger for the desk and internet access I've got now to write this.

That said, The Pod is true to it's name, the rooms are very small... but smartly functional. The room I had reminded me of a train sleeper, with each square inch maximized for utility and instructions for use of the bed (the pillows are in the closet). Other cues; a small inset stainless washbasin and mirror off to one side and a small shower and toilet behind a sliding glass door. The rooms may be small but they're fully equipped with a desk and chair and both task lighting and a big fluorescent on the ceiling. There's a nice modern lobby and lounge and an outdoor patio garden where they serve breakfast. The elevators are small and slow so stay on a lower floor. As for services in the neighboorhood, there's a Pax restaurant 100% on one corner and a Food Emporium 100% on the other as well as several finer restaurants scattered along the street. If it weren't for the internet access problems, and maybe the elevator, this would be a great place to stay. See the room after the jump.