Fashion Monday with JJ Lee

The horizon has broadened. JJ Lee is now writing about women's fashion. The first piece is about my visit to Hajnalka Mandula's Homer Street boutique. Check it out at The Georgia Straight.

On Friday, Nick Sully and Hannah Teicher won the Cleveland Design Competition - Project 2007. The architectural designers received the nod for their proposal for the down-and-out neighbourhood of Irishtown Bend in Cleveland. Described by organizers as, "unused, overgrown, and largely inaccessible," Sully and Teicher proposed turning the abandoned riverside site into an urban agricultural wetland that would bridge two adjacent neighbourhoods with walkways. Check out their winning project . And here's Teicher beginning the interview with a d escription of the project . Note: Nick Sully recently started his own architectural practice in Vancouver. To find out more visit nicksully.com . Hannah Teicher is an architectural intern with a diverse developing practicing combining sociology and architecture.

Photograph by Yvette St. Amant Tuesday night, I moderated a discussion with interior designer Robert Ledingham at the presentation centre for Stirling House, a development near the Vancouver School of Theology at Point Grey. Ledingham designed ten suites in the luxury building, branded the Ledingham Collection. Potential buyers, Ledingham fans and former clients (I assume they are the one and the same) were in attendance. We talked about Ledingham's 40 year career and how he has epitomized west coast style with his early years of practice at Thompson Berwick and Pratt and later in his collaborations with distinguished Vancouver architects like James Cheng, Peter Busby, and Arthur Erickson. Ledingham was a delightful presenter and it was quite a novel experience for me.

The Graphic Designers of Canada awarded typographer Jim Rimmer an honourary fellowship at its general meeting in Montreal. Scott Cohen, who recently had his design for Gastropod received a silver medal by Vancouver Magazine's Restaurant Awards , is designing a new Tomato, the iconic Cambie street eatery. The location - behind Mark James on West Broadway. And word is, the time is ripe to bid adieu to the Canada Line chaos at Cambie. Erin Templeton just opened her first boutique at the location of Modernize Tailors. That's 511 Cambie. With her experience in vintage retail, design, and as a green grocer in UK, marvelous Ms. Templeton will definitely turn it into a grand success.

Last year the Vancouver Art Gallery mounted a major exhibition on the works of architect Arthur Erickson. Never thought of as a retrospective, the show focused on Erickson's continuing investigation into certain themes: light, concrete as a poetic material, and nature and the landscape. Here is show curator Nicholas Olsberg, former director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, in conversation with Vancouver By Design (16 minutes) .

Men's hair hasn't been this well tended in a long while. With the rebirth of barbering, where unisex treatment gives way to man-centric services, a man can get a refined haircut and avoid both the fro-fro and the dogding discount do. Read about it at The Straight .

Typecasting machines spewing hot lead. Basement studio. Tons (metric?) of cast iron. What's not to like? Jim Rimmer has been working in printing and typography for the last 50 years. And the last few years his dedicated self to the letterpress and limited edition books. Now his work has caught the attention of the Graphic Designers of Canada. This week the GDC will vote on whether to bestow him their highest award - an honorary fellowship. To find out more about Jim Rimmer, VBD visits Jim's studio.

I started hearing about this guy named, Horst. A bit of a legend. Photographer and great portraitist Alex Waterhouse-Hayward had nothing but great things to say about him. If you visit, his site you can a see fine portrait of Horst. Horst's name also started popping up on all sorts of sites on photography. Alex calls him "the Merlin to his Excalibur." You see, Horst Wenzel is the FILM camera repair technician to some of the best photographers in Vancouver and even has his fans on the other side of the world. I really wanted to meet him and finally did at the Vancouver Camera Show on Sunday. Then I visited his home workshop where Horst and I had a chance to talk about his craft at a time when digital photography is dominating the profession.

A final exam - fashion style - Kwantlen University College's fashion students got a chance to show their stuff to Ruth Ho, the buyer for Canadian by Design at The Bay Downtown in Vancouver. Ten of the 34 coats will be put on display at the department store for the Fall 2007 season. To hear what the selection day was like click here .

The Surrey Art Gallery just opened The Art of the Sari. The exhibition examines one of the oldest styles of clothes still in continuous use. Fusing weaving, embroidery, and fashion, the sari is a living art. There were dozens of beautiful works but VBD wanted to find out more. VBD toured the show with some of the people who organized it. You can find out more about the show here .

I really do live in a silo. Here is a monster design blog I've only just discovered (makes me feel inadequate)that deserves a visit .

Mike Chadwick's recent book, Vancouver In Focus: The City's Built Form is an opportunity to consider the art of architectural photography. While Chadwick's images were taken with a Pentax SLR, the more common professional photographer's choice for architecture is the field camera. It's the camera with bellows and requires a tripod and makes large negatives. More importantly, field cameras have a complex structure, an architecture even, in its design that compensates for distortions which occur when one shoots with an SLR camera. And to help us understand the art of architectural photography, VBD interviewed Simon Scott. Simon Scott is one of the city's best (highly recommended by architects who know) and he agreed to join VBD in front of Arthur Erickson's MacMillan Bloedel building in Vancouver to talk about his art and craft.

Just announced in Canadian Architect , Vancouver firm Acton Ostry Architects have won two awards for their use of wood in their design. At the BC WoodWorks Awards, they received the Institutional Wood Design Award and the Architect Award. Check out, their website and also listen to my previous interview with Mark Ostry (not "Ostrey") on design and religion for CBC special series, Sacred Spaces .

LATEST - The Penny has dropped but VBD thinks her design sense is top notch. Penny's own apartment highlighted her elegant neo-classical minimalism. Her suite featured an antique Recamier chaise longe and some of her grandfather's black and white photographs of flowers. The photos reminded me of the photo studies by German master photographer, Karl Blossfeldt. Beautiful. And it looks like Penny has her grandfather's eye for composition and design. Good luck, Penny. You're VBD's Designer Superstar!!! Previous March Madness is in the Sweet 16 round but for Penelope Page it's the Final 3. The Vancouver-based interior designer is one of the trio remaining in HGTV's Designer Superstar Challenge. VBD had a chance to interview Penny at her home studio. If you want to know if she makes the Finals, tune in tonight at 10 PM to HGTV . Also check out her website .

An interview that will prick up your ears: psycho-acoustics. It's the art and science of how sound and space effect our health. A forum took place in March at UBC on the topic. It's part of the dWellbeing lecture series at Green College. VBD had a chance to speak with a presenter before the event. Murray Hodgson is a professor of engineering and an acoustic designer. Here's his interview with VBD. For more information on the next (and final) dWellbeing lecture visit http://www.dwellbeingforums.net/forum3.htm .