Brew-talism from Bluejacket

Bluejacket released a new beer, Turnstiles, bedecked with Metro’s coffered vaults.

Local brewer Bluejacket has released a new beer, Turnstiles, that celebrates the DC Metro with a can wrapper depicting the coffered vaults of the system’s underground stations. Scaling down the idea of Metro wallpaper to a more portable and potable package makes sense for Bluejacket, which began weekly unveilings of smaller production runs in cans in February.

Designed in-house by creative director Kris Mullins, the Turnstiles can is part of a limited release program from the brewery that allows greater control on beer freshness. The Bluejacket brewery is housed within repurposed boilermaker shops, which were originally part of the Navy Yards manufacturing facilities; the brewery takes its name from the term for someone enlisted in the Navy.

Tasting notes from Bluejacket:

TURNSTILES is an IPA with Amarillo, Centennial & Citra – 7.0% abv. Double dry-hopped with Amarillo, Centennial & Citra, Turnstiles is teeming with citrus aromatics, accompanied by floral & herbal notes. Juicy & softly bitter on the palate.
$15 x 4-pack.

If your daily ride on Metro makes you feel like you’re hurtling through concrete tunnels in a tin can, now you can upend that metaphor by raising a can that celebrates concrete tunnels. Pairs well with our Brutalist Washington Map, which also features all of the Metro stations.

Fancy a Brutalist Bath?

via Tetra Soap

In 1950, two French engineers, Pierre Danel and Paul Anglès d’Auriac, developed and patented the tetrapod, which is an interlocking, four-footed concrete shape that they proposed for use in sub-aqueous walls. Used to protect seashores worldwide, tetrapods accumulate to form robust sea walls that alleviate coastal erosion by dispersing wave forces around their shapes while remaining stable due to their interlocking ability.

Patent drawing for Tetrapods: MY6300031 (A) – Improvements in or relating to artificial blocks for building structures exposed to the action of moving water

More than a half-century later, a Hong Kong-based company called Furnitury incorporated the same form for its Tetra Soap products. That’s because soap is slippery, according to a Tetra Soap video the company used in its Kickstarter promotional materials. The tetrapod shape of the soaps interlocks perfectly with our pentadactyl limbs, allowing for ease of grip without the ungainly appendage of a rope. To make the the soaps, a mixture of palm, coconut, and extra virgin olive oils blended with myrrh and sandalwood is poured into formwork that yields the tetrapod shape; once formed, the soaps are then cured for 30 days.

 

Tetrapods on the coast of Okinawa, Japan

Tetra Soap is available for purchase individually, in trios, or as a miniature sea wall set of 12.

H/T to Dezeen

Bring Your Commute Home with Metro Vault Wallpaper

Brutalist Metro Station DC Mural Wallpaper from MuralsWallpaper
Brutalist Metro Station DC Mural Wallpaper from MuralsWallpaper
via MuralsWallpaper

The grandeur of Washington’s vaulted concrete Metro stations elevates the time spent within them. Sure, there will always be people who complain about light levels and cheer for whitewashed vaults, but for those who appreciate the monumental scale of the 600-foot-long stations and their coffered allusions to architecture of the Pantheon and of Daniel Burnham’s Union Station, there’s now a way to bring that experience home: MuralsWallpaper, out of Liverpool in the U.K., has released a design called “Brutalist Metro Station DC Mural Wallpaper.”

If it’s not obvious from the name, this wallpaper design features the coffered vaults of an unidentified—yet pleasantly familiar—D.C. Metro station. MuralsWallpaper offers other Brutalist and concrete choices as well, including one that features London’s threatened Welbeck Street car park, but this D.C.-centric one rings our BrutalistDC bells for obvious reasons. At £36.00/m(no word yet on whether any proceeds would benefit WMATA), it’s a much better deal than actually vaulting your ceilings and waiting for the concrete to cure. And it’s certainly a more aesthetically pleasing solution than painting your walls white.

Concrete options from MuralsWallpaper

via MuralsWallpaper | H/T to Dezeen