Watching the first episode of BBC's Broadchurch, it was a bit of let-down to see the citizens of this English seaside town living just like Americans: driving around in the same cars, using the same kitchen appliances, and carrying the same smartphones. Only the characters’ accents, and the dramatic (and perilous) cliffside beaches give the setting away. That and the sight of two detectives walking along the boardwalk eating soft-serve vanilla cones with chocolate bars sticking out of them like swizzle sticks. Their conversation ends when one tosses his in the rubbish bin and stomps away, shouting, “Thanks for the 99.”

A “99” is a vanilla ice-cream cone that’s adorned with a special, shorter version of the Cadbury Flake bar, and can also refer to that special Flake bar itself. There’s something a little goofy about sticking a candy bar into a cone instead of sprinkling its crumbs (or flakes) on top, or blending it all together. But the 99 can be executed in some stylish variations, like setting the chocolate at a rakish angle, or tucking it straight up-and-down just below the ice cream’s top swirl. It’s a charming eccentricity.

August 24, 2013 by Nalina Moses

In a startling episode of last season’s Mad Men, ad executive Don Draper sabotages a pitch to Hersheys by explaining that their chocolate bar is so deeply linked to everyone’s idea of childhood that there’s really no need to advertise. For a Brasilian friend it’s Amor pacoca candies that remind her of childhood. They’re made from a mixture of ground peanuts and sugar that’s pressed into a block the size of a matchbox and wrapped in wax paper. The candy stays firm until it’s handled, when it crumbles like sawdust. It’s especially nice with vanilla ice cream and stays gritty and flavorful even after the ice cream melts, a little like the chocolate crumb filling in Carvel cakes.

The Amor colors (stop-sign-red, egg-yolk-yellow and bright white) remind me of two of my own best-loved childhood treats, Parle-G biscuits and McDonalds. But the Amor logo is super-modern, with the A-M-O-R in groovy, blockish letters, and the lowercase s-i-n-g-’-s below bouncing happily up and down. There’s a red A-M-O-R on each side of the block too, emphasizing its thickness. This candy can be handled like a board game piece, hidden in a fist, or slipped into a pocket. It might be the perfect size for a childhood treat.

August 20, 2013 by Nalina Moses

When talking about the clever new micro-home he designed for Vitra, architect Renzo Piano cited designer Charlotte Perriand’s Refuge Tonneau as an inspiration. She developed the mass-producable mountain cabin in 1938, in collaboration with architect Charles Jeanneret, but couldn’t secure funds to get it built. Then in 2012 Cassina built a single unit from her original design for display at that year’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile. It’s an impressive contraption, a tin hut with room to sleep six adults, that can be assembled on any stable terrain in four days. The form is clunkily utilitarian, a ten-sided white metal drum with high porthole windows, a ship’s ladder, and a peaked roof a little like the Tin Man’s hat. Inside it’s lined with soft, yellowy pine flooring, panels and furnishings.

Still, I’m more smitten with Perriand’s photo-collage rendering of the Refuge than the actual thing. Look at how she stages the cabin, perched in the Swiss Alps. There’s a gentleman on skis about to step out the door and down the steps, where he’ll greet a lass who’s sunning herself on a stone. The snow looks like a blanket draped over the rock face, with some clumps sprinkled near the structure’s feet like powdered sugar. The Tonneau looks less like a mountain retreat than an Apollo lunar module. The bouquet of mechanical elements at its top, flues to regulate airflow, looks like a newfangled radar tracking device. Perriand’s vision is bold and sweet.

August 15, 2013 by Nalina Moses

The Renzo Piano show (Fragments) at the Gagosian gives us one table piled with things (books, drawings, sketches, photographs, prototypes, models) for each of twenty-four of the architect's projects. So there’s a table for the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in New Caledonia, another for the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and another for the New York Times Building. More models and prototypes hang from the ceiling on wires, twitching like helium-filled balloons, while the walls of the gallery remain entirely empty. If the curators wanted to steer clear of a conventional installation, they’ve succeeded, but the tables don’t serve Piano’s work well, giving a confetti-like blast of information (fragments) for each building rather than a sense of what it is. It’s especially disconcerting because Piano has a gift for synthesizing various building components (image, skin, structure, mechanics) in a single form. Many of his buildings are skeletal; they take their origin in a frame (interior or exterior), and all their workings cling to it.

The best parts of the displays are the large-scale mockups and prototypes for individual building parts. Ceramic blocks (glazed in sun-drenched yellow, orange and green) from the Central Saint Giles office blocks in London have a high class kookiness. A wood cladding prototype for the new addition to the Fogg Museum, with boards nestled snugly over one another like a row of sleeping animals, promises that the project will be beautifully crafted. And an arm-long structural rib from a 1983 IBM Traveling Pavilion, a delicately cambered redwood arch with a worn aluminum Celtic-cross-shaped connector, has the presence of a relic. These and the other large-scale models get at the constructedness of Piano's buildings. While they’re pragmatic things – like machine parts – they’re supremely elegant, designed with care but little fuss. (Compare that to the parts of Santiago Calatrava’s building, which embody a lot of fuss.) We can find all sorts of things (drawings, photographs and narratives) about Piano’s buildings online. Why didn’t the curators just pack the gallery with those things we can’t?

Studio at Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Genoa. Photo by Fregoso & Basal. Courtesy of Renzo Piano Building Workshop.

August 13, 2013 by Nalina Moses