Esprit de Cream

Edward, dishing the scoop.

I recently had the pleasure of wandering in downtown LA on a balmy summer's night. Once you leave the shiny business and museum district and head South and East, the streets start to feel softer, freer, like old familiar shoes (well worn, a bit scuffed, perhaps a bit pungent, too). People were hanging out on corners, browsing at the Last Bookstore, waiting for the bus - it's a real live gritty city, alright.

So imagine my surprise when I saw a brand new housing complex and what I took to be a hipster bike store near Fifth and Main. A cacphony of spinning gears and bobbing wheels in a tall picture window, a queue of people staring into their phones.

Peddler's also does house calls - with a portable churn.

Once inside, it became clear that something else was going on. A dapper fellow on a roller-racer was peddling away, cranking the whole moving window art piece with every stroke - but also churning ice cream! A long chain through the wall was turning an iced tub in the back room, churning out oodles of delicious ice cream and sorbet.



"Peddler's Creamery" is the brainchild of Edward Belden and a dedicated crew of idealists who are determined to think different. PC is a Benefit Corporation, a new class of business that considers social and environmental costs, as well as profit, in their business planning.
Hey, maybe corporations can be people after all...


Edward says the hardest part was the initial funding. Once he got a few committed partners, the momentum took off. Now, there is a 'Peddler's Club' - a de facto waiting list for the honor of spinning the ice cream churn.

Sophie churns, the kinetic window art turns like a clockwork.

Their excellent ice cream and sorbet features local, organic, dairy, non-dairy and vegan ingredients. They are committed to their local neighborhood; 5% of profits are donated to social and environmental causes.
Nouveau Cyclistes are alive and well in South LA, and the food scene is all the better for it.

Hungry for more info? Check out www.peddlerscreamery.com for the, ah, scoop.

Portable Power

 As we head into the winter season, the longer, darker days seem to set creative minds to thinking about alternatives to alternative (solar) power.

 The folks at frog design created a prototype personal wind turbine that earned them a Braun Prize for sustainability in 2012. This elegant device is light, portable and will allow you to power your workstation at any windy locale, no sunlight required.

Computer power, no sunlight required

Easy as 1, 2, 3.

While we're not sure that blogging from a blustery bench would be beneficial to our output, we are fascinated by the liberating possibilities of portable, personal wind power and we applaud this truly elegant and sensuous design.It beats the hell out of a Honda gas generator.

You can read all about it HERE

They say there's always magic in the air...

New York is expensive - one thin dime won't even shine your shoes. Poor creative types are always striving to live there - if you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere. Here's just such an architect, managing nicely in less space than it takes to park a Mini Cooper.

Admittedly, we'd rather have a bit more room than this, but applaud Luke for making it so.





Architects used to require layout space for plans that would eclipse this apartment size. The advance of laptop computers allows Luke to work where he lives, on the smallest of table tops.

You can see more (though there's not much more to see) by going here-
Luke Tyler's 78 Square Foot NYC Apartment

Ghost Lab Design Conference 2011

Nova Scotia site of the Ghostlab

Architect Bryan McKay-Lyons has run a summer design/build camp for creative architectural students for the past dozen years. This year, he decided a conference would be a nice change. Esteemed luminaries such as Rick Joy, Glenn Murcutt, Kenneth Frampton and Ted Flato joined nearly 200 others for this June gathering to talk about architecture, sustainability and place. Wouldn't it be something to get an invite to the Ghostlab 2012 conference!

Full story here -
Ghost Lab 2011 | Editorial | Architectural Record