Back in 2008 I posted about how Missoni Hotel was going to open up here in Kuwait and yesterday I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek tour of the place.
I noticed two things when I first walked into the lobby, the first was the amount of colors that filled the place and the second was the cleaning lady vacuuming using a Dyson. The hotel is full of beautiful summer colors and wild fabric designs that magically seem to all work together. I spent the whole time amazed at how tasteful everything was put together, it’s just incredible the amount of thought and work that went into it.
The second thing I noticed as I mentioned earlier was the Dyson vacuum cleaner but I then also spotted Bang & Olufsen speakers in the lobby ceiling followed by Bang & Olufsen TV’s in the hotel rooms. I even spotted Bodum toasters and very cool looking pots and pans in one of the hotel rooms mini kitchenettes. It’s a hotel that’s design driven, from the typeface the hotel room numbers are written in to the power plug sockets in the wall, everywhere you look you see good design which is very rare to see here in Kuwait.
They have 169 rooms so it’s not a small boutique hotel and the majority of their staff are from Italy so really once you walk into the hotel you could easily forget you were in Kuwait. The rooms had some very beautiful furniture which I right away asked if they were going to be available for purchase (turns out they will be). The hotel launches March 1st and they’re located in Salem Mubarek Street opposite American University of Kuwait in the same building where Symphony Mall is. I shot the pictures in this post but they will be sending me some more pictures which I will add to this post once I get them.
Update: Arabian Business has some more pictures which you can check [Here]
Today is the first day of REUSE 4.0 which is being held on the premises of the Australian College of Kuwait. REUSE 4.0 features a dynamic mix of art galleries, music, film screenings, mixed media installations, a lounge, go-kart sprints, trendy eco-fashion & accessories, prizes, surprises & more. My brother got invited to exhibit his abandoned Amiri Hospital pictures at the event and he was there yesterday and took some pictures of the event which you can check out below.
REUSE 4.0 is being held from today January 11th till Thursday the 13th. It’s open from 4pm to 9pm and you can get a lot more information from their website [Here]
I hadn’t noticed this before but there is a huge mural covering the graveyard wall in Kuwait City right after JW Marriott hotel. The mural depicts life in Kuwait in the past. I recorded the whole thing on video which you can watch above. [YouTube]
Is it just me or does anyone else dislike the color of our current taxi’s (pictured above)?. I hate the beige and white combo and it really doesn’t add any life or color to the Kuwaiti cityscape.
On the other hand I love the color of the old taxis with the bright orange paintwork(pictured above). They’ve got more personality and when you see a group of them together its very colorful.
So why don’t we apply the orange color on the current taxis? New York have the yellow cabs, London the black cabs and we could have our orange cabs again.
Today I noticed Kuwait Times got redesigned. I used to really hate their old layout since it looked really outdated but the new design is the complete opposite. Their typography and grid layout is very clean and it’s just wayyy more enjoyable to read now. You can check out their new design by viewing their digital edition online [Here]
I also spotted Arab Times ads on buses saying they will be updating their design in the coming few days as well.
Blogger chillnite posted pictures of what looks like a replica of the Taj Mahal that is being built here in Kuwait. According to him it’s a new mosque located off the 7th Ring Road. The picture above is of the Kuwaiti Taj Mahal while the one below is the original one in India. [Link]
Wallpaper* magazine featured an article on the Octium Jewellery store at 360 Mall. It’s not the first time Kuwait was featured in Wallpaper*, I know of at least one other time since I posted about it [Here]. Too bad the Wallpaper* article doesn’t really show how beautiful the Octium store really is. [Link]
Starting December 22nd SAS will be closing down for renovations. The pictures above and below are 3D renderings of how the hotel will look like once the renovation is completed. I originally thought it was going to be a minor face lift of the interior but it looks like its going a major revamp. Sadly this also means Peacock, the best Chinese restaurant in Kuwait will be closed for at least a year. [Link]
Life with Cacao is a chocolate café thats located at the 360 Mall and Nat has been working on their branding for awhile now. Just a few days ago she finished working with a very cool illustrator on some funky iPhone and Blackberry wallpapers for Life with Cacao which I found very cute and worth sharing on the blog.
There are a total of ten wallpapers that come in four different sizes to fit the various devices. You can download them all in one zip file by clicking [Here]
Update: They’re now all available on Flickr [Here]
It’s been a really long time since I last posted but that’s because I’ve been really busy. I quit my job at Watan TV last February and opened up my own little design studio called Push+Pull (Mark is too lazy to change the “Who Posts Here?” section of the sidebar).
One of my recent projects was the branding of 52 Degrees, the first Kuwaiti open concept store that will be opening up soon in Tilal Complex. The official launch event is tomorrow (Wednesday) but i wanted to give everyone a sneak peek at the logo. Tomorrow night they will also be announcing the names of all the local businesses that have signed up with them among other things.
For now you can check out their blog where they’re uploading pictures of the preparations for the event [Here]
The Ministry of Interior have redesigned their website (for the worse in my opinion) and with it have removed an English version. You can’t view an English version of the site which means expats will have a much more difficult time trying to check and see if they have any speeding fines and other online services. Luckily they still haven’t deleted the old English site yet and it can still be accessed by manually replacing the word arabic in the url with the word english.
A forum member brought up an interesting topic which I hadn’t been aware of before.
It seems the one dinar note has a picture of Shuwaikh port on one side. The picture is supposed to be of the first ship which docked at Shuwaikh. It happened to be a Swiss ship, so it had a cross on the chimney, like the one that appears on the Swiss flag. For obvious reasons the cross was colored out. I of course didn’t believe the story, but then I happened to come across one such note.
The picture above is the KD1 note he came across that has the Swiss flag. I quickly opened my wallet and checked the KD1 notes I had and noticed the chimney on mine didn’t contain the flag (check image below).
I thought this was very interesting specially since I hadn’t heard of this before. It reminded me of the Saudi airlines logo which used to have a hidden cross in it as well (not deliberately of course). Below is a scan I made from the design book Pentagram: The Compendium regarding the Saudia logo and also a brief mention of the Swiss flag and the Middle East.
Mark and Nat, a married couple who are living in Kuwait. Mark is a creative director at an ad agency while Nat runs her own design studio called Push+Pull.
