Holy.Shit.Shopping Vol.5 is the designers christmas fair for all who are on the lookout for design, art, culture and fashion and who want to evade the kitsch.
The idea is to get your christmas shopping done in a little bit different atmosphere- browse the stalls and the products while listening to the DJs and VJs with a drink in your hand.
It's like shopping in a club...

As an initiative to escape the pre-christmas shopping stress, the guys at Holy.Shit.Shopping developed this concept 5 years ago, as an alternative to squeezing yourself through crowded department stores and Christmas fairs. Always at a selected location with the ambiance of a club or a lounge, the customers browse the carefully selected vendors with ease and relaxation.
Back in 2004, the event drew 60 designers and 3000 visitors to the Berliner Cafe Moskau. This year, Holy.Shit.Shopping presents about 120 selected artists, designers and labels and offers a platform for all creatives to present themselves to a large audience.

Allmightys.com will take part at the Holy.Shit.Shopping event in Cologne this year. Dates are the 20th and 21st December at the RheinTriadem, Konrad-Adenauer-Ufer 1-3 in Cologne, in close proximity to the main station and the Dome.

Allmightys.com will be at booth 75, so come and find us there...!!

Staying on the topic of the Wall, today I found a neat project that was founded and is run by Tamiko Thiel and Teresa Reuter. These two have launched the "Virtual Wall", a digital reconstruction of a segment of the Berlin Wall. The project area lies between Kreuzberg and Mitte. The aim is a 3D interactive digital installation that will show the development of the Wall and it's surroundings in this area through time. Views will be from he East and the West side, so the user can freely chose from which angle he or she wishes to take a look at this dividing structure. The installation will premiere in the Museum for Communication in Berlin on August 13, 2008 and will be exhibited from August 14 to September 7, 2008.

I'm intrigued... check out their page here 

The Mauerpark in Berlin is a green area that used to be enclosed by the Wall and was nothing more than a disused piece of wasteland. Since the reunification, the area has established itself as an outdoors space for the inhabitants of Prenzlauer Berg and northern Mitte. Since 1994 the area is officially called the "Mauerpark".
The park and the nearby Sunday market is frequented by many, among them lots of tourists, especially in the summer months. Allmightys have started selling shirts here on the market on Sundays as well ;)
The nearby wall is second only to the actual remains of the Wall concerning the amount and quality of graffiti. Hundreds of sprayers and street artists are having the time of their lives here.

check out some shots...

In terms of street art, here's a very original idea: Dan Bergeron shoots portraits of the residents of Regent Park, Toronto, and superimposes them on the buildings in the area.
As many of these are torn down and rebuilt, the idea is "to make the residents literally become part of the physical landscape".
The aim is to make aware and challenge the decision of the displacement of Regent Park's inhabitants as they are kicked out of their homes in order to make way for new projects...

read more here...

Two days ago I went to the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands near Arnheim. The Museum, named after the collector Helene Kröller-Müller, is set in the huge Hoge Veluwe National Park in the south-east of the Netherlands. It houses the second biggest van Gogh collection in the world and has a considerable sculpture park around it. The building itself was designed by Henry van de Velde in 1938. The sculpture garden was added in 1961 and the new exhibition wing, designed by Wim Quist, opened in 1977. Here are a few pics i've taken ..and you can read more about the museum here...

So I am here in Chicago until the end of the week and it is a truly fantastic city. The mythical birthplace of skyscrapers does its name justice as the skyline and the amount of new construction here is incredible. I went to the Chicago Architecture Foundation yesterday, which hosts a small but dense exhibition of the city's evolution in terms of housing, transport and growth. "Chicago: You Are Here provides a tour of the spaces, places, and structures that define Chicago. It highlights the people who built the city, from the Sears Tower to the Illinois and Michigan Canal."

Very nicely done, so if you're in the area go check it out. Today's programme is the Art Institute...

If you happen to be in Berlin during the next week or so, make sure you move across town after dark (not so hard at this time of the year), and you're bound to stumble upon the Festival of Lights that takes place right now. Famous monuments and buildings along with the central avenue 'Unter den Linden' are illuminated by various spots and light installations.

It goes on from the 16th until the 28th October and admission for all sightseeing is free ;)

The festival is accompanied by a number of events, which you can find out about here...

Here is an interesting site from the World Monuments Watch List which features the 100 most endangered Sites of the world.
The World Monuments Fund (WMF), a non-profit organization, is aiming "to help hundreds of endangered architectural and cultural sites". This Watch List is "announced every two years in order to draw public attention to threatened cultural heritage sites across the globe.The Watch List is assembled by an international panel of experts in archeology, architecture, art history and preservation".

Among the sites featured are medieval remains of town centers, prehistoric wall paintings and Nature resources.

A very interesting read... find out more here.

Check out this movie about a suitcase-turns-into-bicycle.

A cool gadget for the weekend city breaks, as long as it doesn't weigh too much.

A neat idea nonetheless...

watch the film here...