The silhouette of the Eiffel Tower is the icon of Paris. It is familiar and definitive. This, however, may change as the top of the tower is to be reshaped in to the form pictured above. Yikes!

Serero Architects of Paris has won the competition to redesign the structure’s public viewing platform and reception areas. The winning design (above), which will be 276 metres (905ft) above the ground, will not require any permanent modification of the existing structure. It will double the capacity of the public viewing area on the tower’s top floor.

The new platform will be bolted onto the tower using a web of Kevlar, an extremely strong and lightweight carbon fibre used in the construction of racing cars and body armour. The new platform will use a cantilevered design similar to the way that an aircraft’s wings are attached to the fuselage.

What do you think of this change?

via The Guardian

Alpha Romeo, which has been going strong in Europe for years and is slated to return to North America, recently launched the Mi.To. a very stylish hot hatch. Video goodiness is below:

(photo: Virgin Mobile Canada)

Virgin Mobile Canada is quickly capitalizing on Eliot Spitzer’s recent “troubles.” The ads will run next week in a free Toronto newspaper.

C|Net adds:
“At Virgin Mobile,” the ad goes on to say, “you’re more than just a number. When you call us we’ll treat you like a person, not a client. Whether you’re #9 or #900, you’ll get hooked up with somebody who’ll finally treat you just how you want to be treated.”

According to Nathan Rosenberg, chief marketing officer at Virgin Mobile, the ad will run in two Toronto daily newspapers this week as part of the company’s “You call the shots” campaign. “We weren’t planning on an ad featuring Governor Spitzer, but he caught our attention this week,” said Rosenberg.

Paul Makovsky posits in Metropolis Magazine about recent shifts in gendered design in architecture and design.

The principles of universal design tell us that products should be functional for the broadest possible spectrum of users. But designers and manufacturers have long targeted two distinct niche markets: men and women. (Just think of razors: women’s versions look like plastic flowers, men’s like props from The Terminator.) Lately, however, we’ve noticed a handful of products and projects that toy with traditional gender roles.

While the thesis is intriguing and raises an interesting question, this mini-mini essay comes up short in its execution and rationale.

From the Detroit News:

General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. have made cool, smartly equipped little cars such as GM’s Opel Tigra and the Ford Ka for Europeans for years, but Detroit executives were reluctant to offer them at home.

Sophisticated small cars may be ideal for Europeans living in old cities with narrow streets, the thinking went, but Americans associate luxury with spaciousness.

Now that’s starting to change. At the Geneva auto show this week, GM and Ford will display two stylish small cars that are aimed at European audiences but are likely to find their way into U.S. showrooms, too.

With the continuous rise in gas prices and changing fuel economy regulations, the Big Three automakers are starting to bring smaller cars designed and produced by their European divisions to these shores.

Happy Spoon is the spoon that smiles back at you. Buy them from Spoon Sisters.

via Happy Mundane

The box above may not look like much, but Casulo - yet another clever Danish furniture design innovation - contains an armoire, a desk, a height-adjustable stool, two more stools, a six-shelf bookcase, and a bed with a mattress. That is enough furniture to fill up a studio apartment.

Check out the video below to see how it all unpacks.

via swissmiss

From the creative mind of Scott Amron comes the Die Electric Experiment, which aims to modify household electric outlets, lights switches and plugs into having a new purpose.

Pictured above is ‘Off’, which begs the question, do you turn on the light, or hang something up? OFF, the light switch hook, provides a hanging function when in the OFF position. It is a fully functional light switch. It was designed to persuade people to use less energy. Off sells for $35.

ToothHold, my favourite Die Electric product, is cut power cord that holds toothbrushes, or other stuff, and would be perfect suspended over the bathroom sink area. ToothHold sells for $145.

These are just 2 of the 11 products that comprise the Die Electric range. Check all 11 out here.

What a clever idea - use an old walkman to camouflage and protect your ipod.

It appears that the latest trend for paints for cars is shine-free matte coatings.

It’s easy to see why automakers are keen on the trend. Ed Welburn, GM’s vice president for design, said nearly all automakers are experimenting with matte because it shows off the pure design of the car.

“It reduces the design to the very core elements because you’re not influenced by the surroundings at all. You don’t have the reflections of trees or buildings or the reflection of clouds or anything on the car because of the matte finish,” Welburn said at the Detroit show, where GM’s Hummer HX and Chevrolet Groove concepts had matte finish. “You see the pure surface development and nothing else.”

Aaron Bragman, an auto industry analyst for the consulting company Global Insight, said another reason matte finishes are taking off is that young drivers, who are used to the flat finishes on their cell phones and laptops, no longer equate shininess with luxury.

New for 2009 is the Hummer H3T - it’s a pickup truck. Necessary? That is questionable. Given that pickups appeal to a big, but select market, will a small pickup with a Hummer face appeal to truck buyers? Will the pickup capabilities appeal to Hummer fans? Probably not with these looks. Something to watch for.

According to this rant in the January ‘08 issue of I.D. Magazine, 90’s style websites (lots of colour, flashing text) just might be the object of desire, again. Can it be true that some are nostalgic for the old days of web design?

Remember what the early web looked like? If you’ve forgotten, you could use Archive.org’s Wayback Machine to time-travel to 1996, when Netscape Navigator was the browser of choice and amateur web enthusiasts were still publishing “home pages.” Or you could roam today’s web, where designers are increasingly embracing the values and aesthetics of the Clinton-era internet.

This atavistic impulse is most apparent on the sites of a loose network of art geeks- including the programming ensemble Beige (www.post-data.org/beige), the artist collective Paper Rad (www.paperrad.org), and the web art club Nasty Nets (www.nastynets.com)-with a shared interest in reclaiming obsolete technologies. Their aesthetic, sometimes referred to as “dirt style,” is visually hyperactive and almost willfully antagonistic: a riot of animated GIFs, tiled backgrounds, underlined blue hyperlinks, images with borders, and old-school blink tags. Used now, the graphics evoke the noisy amateurism of the early web, but they’re also a rejection of today’s glossy, professional site design, which tends to efface the medium rather than celebrate it.

Why, we ask, is this happening?

But when used on purpose, Lialina observes, primitive sites can be especially successful in “sending a message to those who know”-broadcasting to other insiders an air of conceptual playfulness for artists, a DIY ethos for musicians, a deconstructed avant-garde aesthetic for fashion houses, or a stripped-down simplicity for designers. It’s fundamentally a message that communicates that these creators exist “outside the neutral palette of web design,” Lialina says.

I for one will not miss the marquee scrolling text of early Internet Explorer designed sites.

At this year’s North American International Autoshow in Detroit, Cadillac unveiled the CTS Coupe Concent, which is a gorgeous piece of machinery. Below is a video of the car’s reveal (which could have done without the pseudo soul singing).

Wallpaper magazine has put together a world-savvy committee of judges to select it’s 2008 Design Award winners. But enough about that, on to some of the winners:

Winners – International Judges’ Awards:
Best New Hotel: Riva Lofts, Florence
Best New Public Building: New Museum, New York, by SANAA
Best Fashion Collection: Jil Sander, autumn/winter 2007
Best New Grooming Product: TweezLight tweezers
Best New Private House: Ring House, Karuizawa, by TNA
Best Domestic Appliance: Katamari 01 speaker by Gyanze
Furniture Designer of the Year: Tokujin Yoshioka
Best New Restaurant; Mathias Dahlgren, Stockholm
Best City: Los Angeles
Most Life-Enhancing Item: $100 laptop, by Yves Béhar

There are 63 categories in this year’s ‘Best’. If you head over here you can see the full list. Why not review the shortlists and decided for yourself if the judge’s got things right (look for the short list links towards the right side of the screen).

While unveiled earlier this year at the 2007 Shanghai Auto Show, the Chinese designed Buick Riviera concept car will be coming to GM’s stage at the 2008 North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January. This design, even without the gull-wing doors, sets itself apart from the current range of bore on Buick and other GM lots. We will have to wait and see if GM has the chutzpah to bring even a diluted version of this car to market.

Funky DIY tip over on Curbly. Follow these instructions to transform a cereal box into a snazzy gift box.

image courtesy of wallpaper.com

Wallpaper* Magazine has launched a new directory called the Graduates Directory 2008, which is comprised of is this year’s 110 best young designers who have just graduated from some form of schooling (hence the title) in fields from jewelery design to photography to architecture. Personally, I think it is admirable that Wallpaper* takes the time and print to recognize graduates.

The Suzuki Kizashi, pictured above, which debuted at this year’s Frankfurt Auto Show seems to be destined to see production. Autoblog reports that Suzuki is planning on releasing up to three vehicles (a sedan, CUV and wagon) will be on the streets (although likely not in North America) in a couple of years. It’s a shame that such a starkly drawn vehicle may not make its way on to NA streets and parking lots. Such looks would certainly make the automotive design space here so much more compelling.

Ford Motor Company has a new car for the world to see - the Verve. The Verve will form the basis for the Ford of Europe’s Fiesta. Other markets, including North America will have to hope and (maybe) wait to see if such a nice looking car will make its way here.

Autoblog, has put together this video on what went into the design of the Verve. This video provides some nice, albeit not so substantial, look into the world of automotive design.