Marc Newson has returned to a familiar client, Dom Perignon. He's worked with the fancy champagne brand three times in the past and was even included in Phaidon's &Fork book for his work with them (here's his efforts from 2006, his first project with them, we believe). With this latest, it's once again a type of carrier/cooler and called Black Box. To our eyes, it looks vaguely like the packaging you find electronics packed in once you get past the outer cardboard layer. Of course it also prominently features the brand's label and a silhouette of a bottle, so everyone will know what you're type of champagne you're carrying as you're, say, waiting for the bus or on a brisk jog. Here's a bit of info about the structure of the case from the press release over at Dezeen (who also have a couple of great photos):

The result is a striking travel case created especially for a bottle of Dom Perignon Vintage 2000, made of polycarbonate, a durable modern material, which has the added advantage of thermal compatibility. "As for the 'hot and cool' aspect, there's the literal interpretation: It does have the physical attribute to maintain temperature. And it has to be a hot and cool -- as in 'desirable' -- product", explains Newson. The bottle is completely insulated thanks to a double mold: The Black Box protects its precious contents from shock and temperature variations, thus preserving it while making a design statement all its own. Once it has been used as a portable stylish isotherm, the handle can also be removed to retain an uber cool design piece.

Pair that with Newson's new run-forever, absurdly expensive Atmos 566 clock and maybe you'll finally feel complete.

Jeff Koons fondles an inflatable in his Manhattan studio last night, where guests including BMW President Jim O'Donnell, architect Richard Meier, and every museum director in a 50-mile radius celebrated the announcement that Koons will create the next BMW Art Car.

Last March, when a selection of BMW Art Cars were exhibited at New York's Grand Central Station, we tried our best to convince the impeccably dressed BMW execs to spill the beans on who would follow in the footsteps of such artists as Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and Jenny Holzer. Despite our eyelash-batting pleas (in charmingly bungled German), they would divulge only that "plans were underway" for the next creative customization. Well, now the secret is out: Jeff Koons is creating the seventeenth BMW Art Car as the program celebrates its thirty-fifth year. The announcement was made last night at a event held at Koons's Manhattan studio (as followers of the UnBeige Twitter feed already know). "The entire BMW Group is looking forward to this celebration of contemporary art by Jeff Koons, one of the greatest artists of our time," said BMW president Jim O'Donnell in making the announcement. Koons, who first expressed his desire to create a BMW Art Car in 2003, said that he is honored by the commission. Stay tuned to UnBeige for details on the model Koons will be working with as well as his preliminary design (is chromium steel too on the nose?). The completed car will be unveiled later this year.

"I tried to portray speed pictorially," said Andy Warhol of the BMW M1 he transformed into an Art Car in 1979, pictured above on exhibit in Grand Central Station's Vanderbilt Hall last spring. "If a car is moving really quickly, all the lines and colors are blurred." (Photos: UnBeige)

Previously on UnBeige:

Admit it. Your seven-year-old nephew could out-HTML tag you any day and you think that a Cascading Style Sheet is something with a thread count. That's where the mediabistro.com mothership comes in. They've asked us to tell you about the upcoming weekend course in HTML Fundamentals. On February 20 and 21 in New York City, artist, designer, and interactive developer David Tristman will teach you the basic structure of HTML and many commonly used tags as well as the role of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in HTML pages and current recommendations such as XHTML. By Sunday, you'll be creating fully functional web pages and geeky birthday cakes like the one pictured above. Register here to get cooking with HTML.

Last November, we reported that the Berkeley Art Museum was another victim of the economic downfall, as their plans to build a new Toyo Ito designed building to move into evaporated due to insufficient funding. But the museum, along with the Pacific Film Archive, sound like they're going to try to make the best of it (and still escape their current "seismically unsafe" building) with the announcement that they've decided to move into a former printing plant, one with landmark status to boot. The benefit is that the new/old building is located near downtown Berkeley, making it far more visible and apt to receive more visitors. And although there will still be a great deal of construction needed to prepare their new digs, the museum is appreciative of both the lessened costs and that now they can be much more green:

"It would be controversial to tear down a landmark, but if you're adapting it, that's far more popular," he said. "I think it's expected that there would be modifications, and people simply have to compare tearing something down to making some changes.

[Berkeley City Councilmember Susan Wengraf] said moving the museum to the proposed location would be more economically practical than demolishing the current building and constructing a new one.

"The adaptive reuse of an older building is the greenest thing you can do," she said. "It's very exciting that the new director is interested in pursuing that idea."

Although people like Norman Foster and his fellow Yalies might be filled with fond feelings for legendary architect Paul Rudolph, his work around the country continues to find itself in jeopardy. By way of Archinect, we've learned that Rudolph's John W. Chorley Elementary School in Middletown, NY is in danger of being demolished and replaced with a parking lot, which will serve the new elementary school built to replace the original. If this sounds familiar, it's a very similar situation to what happened in Sarasota, Florida in 2008 with Rudolph's Riverview High School, which, despite architecture activist's push to save it, was ultimately voted to be demolished because the city couldn't afford to restore it. Chorley Elementary now faces destruction as early as next year, but the New York State Preservation League is already trying to fight for its survival. Here's a quick description of the beautiful modern building and a certainly uncomfortable quote from back on its opening day:

Built of fluted concrete block, and designed to reflect the limitless potential of its pupils, each class room has its own door to the exterior, and is open within the wing, allowing teachers the capacity to teach up to eight classes at once. At its dedication, on May 18, 1969, then Superintendent of schools John L. Krause wrote "let us hope that forty years hence people will be commenting favorably on the foresight of this community during the '60's".

If you're going to start today right, why not start it the way 300 people recently did at the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn for the incomparable Tina "Swiss Miss" Roth Eisenberg's ongoing CreativeMornings series, which last time featured the equally great Michael Bierut. Fortunately, you can do just that, as they've started filming and editing the pre-work lectures and popping them up on Vimeo. So without further ado, and even though you're probably watching this at work, thus not staying entirely true to this fictitious world we've crafted for you, here goes:

Henri Cartier-Bresson's iconic 1932 shot of a puddle-jumping gentleman behind Gare Saint Lazare in Paris (at left) and nearly 200,000 other original press prints of images taken by Magnum photographers have been acquired by MSD Capital, Dell chairman and CEO Michael Dell's investment firm, for an undisclosed sum. The print archive will be preserved and cataloged by the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin, whose photography collection holds the 1826 photo by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce that is believed to be the world's first photograph. The Magnum archive contains many of the most famous images of the 20th century, from Robert Capa's D-Day photos to Steve McCurry's famed 1985 "Afghan Girl" portrait. There are images of major world events, celebrities (Che Guevara savoring a Cohiba, Edie Sedgwick looking somehow elegant perched atop a manhole cover), and social affairs by Magnum photographers including Elliott Erwitt, Leonard Freed, Bruce Davidson, and many others. While MSD Capital has purhased the physical press prints, Magnum's member photographers will retain copyright and licensing rights to all of the images in the collection.

Luxury goods conglomerate Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) is continuing to collaborate with budding designers and New York City. Last year, LVMH teamed with the Fashion Institute of Technology and the city's Department of Transportation on a competition to design bicyling gear. Now they've partnered with Parsons The New School for Design on a more extensive project—"The Art of Craftsmanship Revisited: New York"—that matches Parsons students with New York City artisans in fields ranging from architecture and furniture design to graphic arts and clock making. "This extraordinary program gives our students the rare chance to learn from highly skilled artisans in their studios," said Parsons dean Joel Towers. "The students will use this project to explore their creativity in a collaborative, cross-disciplinary environment, and will better understand the diversity of artisan professions, who contribute to the economic and artistic engines of New York."

After months of studio visits and discussions, 23 teams of Parsons students are now putting the finishing touches on original fashion ensembles and short documentary films that are inspired by and responsive to the work of a local artisan and the world of LVMH. Their works will be exhibited later this month at New York's Milk Studios during MAC & MILK Fashion Week, and awards for the top three teams will be announced in late spring. Meanwhile, additional "Art of Craftsmanship" events are being planned for the spring and summer.

(Photos: Polo Ralph Lauren)

It's out with the stetsons and in with the alpine hats for U.S. Olympians, who next Friday will parade into Vancouver's 60,000-seat BC Place Stadium dressed in Ralph Lauren's just unveiled opening ceremonies ensemble. Polo Ralph Lauren, an official outfitter of the 2010 U.S. Olympic Team, will dress the athletes in down puffer jackets, chunky cable-knit turtleneck sweaters, fleece pants, and rugged alpine boots, topped with tasseled wool and alpaca hats woven with moose, trees, an American flag, and the Polo logo. Meanwhile, for the February 28 closing ceremonies, Polo is returning to the 1920s vibe that brought berets to Beijing. In Vancouver, there will be more berets, along with toasty shawl cardigan sweaters stamped with a giant Polo pony and the Olympic team logo. Armchair athletes can purchase their very own versions of all the Olympic uniforms at Polo.com.

Nearly every government program might be seeing a trimming back of expenses next year, but before President Obama's 2011 budget arrives, there's some spending to do. The National Endowment for the Arts, and their new chairman Rocco Landesman, have launched a month-long design contest (pdf), on the hunt for a new logo "to represent the phrase 'Art Works.'" The contest is open to anyone who wants to submit and the winner will receive a $25,000 grant to complete their design. Sounds like an appealing gig, but this is still a big government agency you're dealing with (as well as a sizable chunk of money), so you'll find a 33 page entry packet, complete with all the various rules, regulations, and an increasingly complicated batch of legal jargon (page 14 is when it starts to get really crazy). Yet for all that weighty bulk of info, they also take time to explain what right away what their clever motto means:

1. "Art Works" is a noun that refers to the works of art that artists create.

2. "Art Works" reminds us that a goal of art is to work on audiences and viewers to inspire, transport, and challenge them.

3. "Art Works" is a reminder that arts workers are real workers who are part of this country's real economy. They earn salaries, support families, pay taxes. Artists are also entrepreneurs and placemakers, who revitalize towns, cities, and neighborhoods -- both the economies and the ethos of them.

What about #4 about a guy named Art who has a job? Or #5, which concerns pieces of art that can be fashioned into methods of injecting intravenous drugs?

We saw yesterday that Greenpeace is using architecture as a method of activism. New York City is doing something similar, though using a different (and deliberately punny, on our behalf) use of the word "activism." A group of city government agencies, from the Department of Design and Construction to the Office of Management and Budget, have teamed with the AIA in developing and releasing the Active Design Guidelines, a downloadable book intended for designers, architects, and city planners to help promote more physical activity among the citizenry in new and rehabbing building projects. The thinking goes is that cities used to use urban planning to fight off things like infectious diseases and crime, so why not return to that model in trying to curb obesity. Ambitious and idealistic, for sure, but certainly worth applauding and encouraging. Here's a quick description:

The Active Design Guidelines provides architects and urban designers with a manual of strategies for creating healthier buildings, streets and urban spaces, based on the latest academic research and best practices in the field. The Guidelines includes:

Urban design strategies for creating neighborhoods, streets and outdoor spaces that encourage walking, bicycling and active transportation and recreation.

Building design strategies for promoting active living where we work, live and play -- for example, through the placement and design of stairs, elevators and indoor and outdoor spaces.

Discussion of synergies between active design and sustainable design initiatives such as LEED and PlaNYC.

The usual story is that two governors will get in touch with each other before the Super Bowl and lay down a bet over whose team will win, and usually that bet will have something to do with the local cuisine, like a deep dish pizza (Chicago) vs. some sort of crustacean (any place on the southern or eastern coasts). It's become an all-too-familiar-but-still-kind-of-sweet, easy PR stunt. But this year appears different. You pit Indianapolis against New Orleans and there's bound to be some spread beyond the governor's mansions. Writer Tyler Green has found that to be case when his Modern Art Notes site found itself in the middle of a battle between the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art, after he encouraged the two museums to duke it out. When the dust settled between both museum's directors, an agreement was arrived at: If Indy wins, NOMA will loan them Claude Lorrain's Ideal View of Tivoli. If the Saints win, their hometown museum gets The Fifth Plague of Egypt by Joseph Mallord William Turner. We have no idea if this will actually go down, and can't imagine that the donors and museums' boards would give such an easy thumbs up to such a deal, but if anything it's certainly one of the most interesting Super Bowl wagers you'll ever hear of.