The Starck Reality of the French President's office accessories..oh, and the Euro!.

"Behind the summits and meetings, France wants its European presidency to be all about style and impeccable good taste.

Appalled by the tacky plastic pens, badges and Velcro-fastening free shoulder-bags that are often synonymous with major events like this, the foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has enlisted an artistic director: Philippe Starck, the French design guru famous for his style pieces, from chairs to juice-squeezers.

"There are lots of things that traditionally are given to journalists, ministers, delegates," Starck has explained to the news agency AFP. "For the first time in the history of the EU, everything produced will be of high quality."

Starck, famous for interiors that included the private apartments of former Socialist president François Mitterrand, will style select interiors and exteriors of buildings for some events.

He has also produced more than a dozen EU presidency items, including pens, notebooks and small bags which will be given out to delegates. The stylish goodie bags have already caused ructions when a Starck-designed European briefcase was sent to all French MPs, featuring stationery, a towel rail and a pale grey tie. Some of the women MPs, who all received the ties, denounced it as the height of male chauvinism.

But for ordinary EU citizens unable to blag a set of Starck freebies, he has designed a special two-euro coin - 20 million of which will go into circulation across Europe from today.

"Bernard Kouchner wants the French presidency to have a very interesting, very creative profile, " Starck said. The idea was to show "a very modern, very creative France of high technologies, not France wearing a beret, but an avant-garde France"."
The Guardian 1 July 2008

Starck has also just been commissioned by the BBC to head up a new series about the future of design. Why didn't they choose someone English, there's so many fab designers in the UK - why Starck! He needs to do one over here....the deco revolution has started in France, and soon we'll have "trés grande designs" "Brico SOS" and "Comment reviver votre longere"

Patrick Blanc's Vertical Gardens

Check out Patrick Blanc's beautiful vertical gardens currently on show at the International Design Centre in Melbourne.

This year's festival has the theme Strength in Numbers, and celebrates both collaboration and brilliant solutions to pressing contemporary issues. French artist and scientist Patrick Blanc's vertical garden, transforms a 47 square metre wall into a living and permanent installation.

"This garden needs no soil, and only a small amount of water. It has its own irrigation system. Cities are developing at such a fast rate, and we no longer have room for gardens. He's not just presenting an option, but a beautiful, practical option. The environmental message can be communicated in so many forms, and I think having statistics thrown at us is not the only way."

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