The decor of hotels can be something of a mixed bag: It can be very elegant, it can be very tacky, and it generally has a store-bought look to it. But the generically named Guest Hotels group has found a way to dispense with all of these generalizations. Starting this summer, the five hotels will become galleries for contemporary artwork for guests to enjoy. Having recruited staff from the ICA and Design Museum to......

We're considering giving our notice at Londonist Towers and upping sticks for a new home. Specifically, we want to move into Jean Prouvé's Maison Tropicale. The prefabricated bungalow, standing on the front lawn outside Tate Modern, is in London as part of the excellent Prouvé retrospective at the Design Museum. Dating from the 1950s, the Maison was an attempt at creating lightweight, flat-pack housing for colonial authorities that could easily be loaded into a......

Tourist season in rain-soaked down-town London, and all the big museums are, shall we say, a tad busy. But Londonist always has something up its sleeve for a rainy day. And for those of you inclined towards higher aesthetic planes, we would strongly recommend the Design Museum in Shad Thames, more particularly their current exhibition featuring the works of ‘starchitect’ Zaha Hadid. It is hard to over-state the achievements of this prolific lady –......

Helsinki has gone Eurovision bonkers over the past week, in advance of tonight's semi-final. Helsinki's Esplanadi park has become a European Market for the duration of Eurovision. Participating countries are displaying their culture, tourism and food. Helsinki's best karaoke club has been holding a massive Eurovision karaoke championship! The main square, Senate Square, hosts special shows tonight and Saturday, where fans can watch both shows on big screens. The Finnish votes will be broadcast......

We just stumbled across this post on Cool Hunting Dot Com and almost dropped our collective wine glass when we saw what looked like two people paddling a table up the Thames. The things people do for art: their new work, entitled "Climatised Objects," are inspired by global warming's dramatic effect on our weather systems that provoke life-threatening situations like earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. Objects like a vase that doubles as a flashlight when......

It's officially autumn in London when Culture Crawl retreats indoors and the weekend stretches ahead full of things to see and do in enclosed spaces. That's no bad thing: the crawl is very cool this week... Saturday 23 September Design Mart continues at the Design Museum. Seven specially-selected product and furniture designers who have graduated within the last five years are featured as new and exciting names to know in this annual survey of......

The second part in our guide to the best holiday season art exhibitions (read Part 1). Design Museum: Robert Brownjohn Retrospective of the American graphic designer at his peak in the 50’s and 60’s. His work includes the title sequences for the James Bond films Goldfinger and album artwork for the Rolling Stones. Why you should see it: Brownjohn injected a little rock’n’roll into modern typography. He’s like the Jagger of font, man. Design Museum,......

In order to show our readers that Urban Junkies is a really worthwhile addition to Londonist, we took their event advice and checked out the Under A Tenner installation at the Design Museum. We made our way down the Shad Thames (which was unfortunately overrun with tourists, and families with strollers; Londonist does not mean to offend with this comment, both groups simply make walking at any kind of normal stride and pace impossible).......