This is a sentimental post for me and in true Italian style here is a post filled with passion and romance. Col’cacchio, on the foreshore in Cape Town, is where I met my gorgeous husband and business partner 9 years ago on the 21st September 2001, the night of the summer solstice. WOW! Back at the turn of the century, when we were young and free, dancing wildly on the tables at Vakka Matta and having late night dinners at Col’Cacchio. We considered Col’Cacchio our dining room and Vakka Matta our lounge as we lived in a loft just up the road. We ate at Col’Cacchio every week, creating our own Pizzas topped with sesame seeds and oober delicious big fat juicy chili prawns or the melt in your mouth gnocchi with our favourite starter, every time, the capreses salad washed down with bottles of delicious wine. At the end of every evening we shared the famous Italian Kisses. I am happy to declare that my favourites are all still on the menu.

A few weeks ago I went back to the place my romance began. I remember sitting at that table on our first date. Nervous. Excited. The future ahead of me. Looking up at the stunning Strega painting on the wall. The eyes of the fat ceramic ladies that are stuck on the walls smiling down at me. A carnival of adventure behind me. This venue is packed full of history, a real Cape Town heritage. It has a fond memory for everyone. This restaurant has hosted and looked after and loved and cherished all of her patrons. A true Italian restaurant filled with history. Walking around this restaurant looking at the art on the walls tells a story. The chalk-paint menu up on the top – it is all still there. The identity of Col’Cacchio started here. This is her truth and this is her foundation. The next Col’Cacchio I ate at is in Stellenbosch on one bright sunny day visiting friends. Col’Cacchio guaranteed me the same excellent menu with a beautiful courtyard seating. Next I ate at Willowbridge with family and once again a stunning stylishly relaxed setting with the same guaranteed excellent menu. Next time we met a friend at Cavendish with children and babies. Sitting in the middle of a busy mall is challenging with little ones, however, we felt comfortable and well looked after and once again we were met with the same guaranteed excellent menu.

What caught my eye at this visit, amongst other things, is the launch of spring at Col’Cacchio. I think it is fantastic that a restaurant has taken the initiative to celebrate spring. This is a progressive restaurant that is leading the way with an innovative introduction of themes, competitions and promotions. It is a known fact that visual aids help to uplift an environment and to show the public that they (the force behind Col’Cacchio) are there and that they are aware of you. That, in my opinion, is welcoming. Knowing that somebody is looking after an already beautiful environment shows me that they care. The hours that it takes to fold a paper flower are long. Trust me, I know. It is clear that each one of the 18 restaurants receives personal attention. When you add in love and care you can taste this in your food. You can feel it in your body and soul. This is a restaurant that cares. Look at their attention to the details.

Here is a visual feast for your eyes. The above thumbnail pic is from the Col’Cacchio website.

Welcome to Col’cacchio Cape Town

The visual identity inside the restaurant

The visual aids celebrating and promoting a spring menu

at, into, or across the space separating

This theme has caught my interest of late, so here is a post on a few international creative sites, following this trend in one form or another.  The theme is all about being in the space, in the moment or in the time between.

First, have a look at Min Jeon Seo’s porcelain sculpture of cast ballet dancers arms, suspended in space, as if in motion. The graceful elegance of the form of the arms is contrasted with the harsh, yet beautiful, tattoo’s drawn onto the arms. This could be a great concept for a window display using fiberglass mannequin arms (using the many different arm positions) and either cladded with paper, fabric, metal (or any material you can think of) or drawn, painted, marked with any type of medium you can think of and then suspended allowing the viewers to use their own imagination and complete the details and the many possibilities. I found this via a tweeted post by Taxi.

The next visual art that caught my eye is Spaces etc. by Ron Gilad. This I found via a tweet from Design Indaba of an interview with Porky Heffer (Animal Farm and the designer of the man-size birds nest made from kubu cane and Elliot the V&A cratefan) who mentions Ron Gilad’s work, spaces etc. have a look at all his brilliant work on his website as I am only showing you one of his masterpieces “OPEN UNFOLDED SPACE”

This led me to remembering seeing a pop-up-shop design in February 2010 on The Cool Hunter for a British luxury men’s brand, Alfred Dunhill at the New York Fashion Week. Camper Design use light and a metal structure to construct a store in and open space inside a vacant meatpacking district warehouse. This bespoke design categorises the quality of the brand in the highest level. Every part of the design and placement of the suits floats above the expected level and ordinary is knocked out as you enter into something extraordinary.

This is the Spirit House Chandelier designed by Daniel Libeskind for the Royal Ontario Museum that I found on Max4Object. This will be installed at the Royal Ontario Museum using only innovation in lighting design to create a sculptural shape that seem as though they are floating in air.

Fishing for compliments is a airy display-alive with undulating aquatic shapes designed by the London based Spanish sculpture and window designer Ion Ander Beloki at Ja! studio that I found through Yatzer.

I found Damian Ortega’s Controller of the Universe suspended sculpture on Trendland. Damian Ortega a Mexican artist living in Berlin uses everyday objects and suspends them into an extraordinary piece of art.

Recently Selfridges in the UK had a number of suspended sculpture window displays. This was conceptualised and installed by a Brighton, UK  designer and animator, Kyle Bean who specialise in hand made models and stop frame animation. I found this on PSFK .

On a final note here is, for me, by far the most amazing exploration of “between”, a photography collective by NAM, that I found via My Modern Met post by Eugene When Gravity Fails.

Originally established by graphic designer Takayuki Nakazawa and photographer Hiroshi Manaka, there are currently over ten artists from various backgrounds in the the group. Together, they seek to push the boundaries in the world of visual arts, as they explore their theme — “Fantasy in Life.”

Thumbnail by Visual Panic