Product news: this white cratered moon is actually a densely filled ice cream cake created by London designers Doshi Levien for Häagen-Dazs.

Each Ice Moon is pitted with smooth craters. Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien say they were inspired by Georges Méliès' 1902 silent film Le Voyage dans la Lune, Armenian surrealist Léon Tutundjian's relief work of 1929, a childhood Bollywood song and the near-spherical shapes of early ice cream bombes. "The moon idea came from many different places and has elements of fantasy, adventure and imagination," they say.

The white moon consists of a pistachio biscuit base, layers of macadamia nut ice cream and meringue and a coating of raspberry ice cream. The orange moon has crunchy chocolate at the bottom, layers of nutty ice cream and salted caramel and a coating of vanilla ice cream.

"Our concept is almost spherical, so the ice cream has to be moulded in two separate parts and then put together without seeing the join," explain the designers. "We love the ephemeral nature of ice cream and design to be eaten; we never had a design meeting before in which we ate the prototype."

We previously featured an ice cream parlour in London with a raw concrete interior and another laboratory-style parlour where the ice cream is frozen with liquid nitrogen.

We've also published an in-depth report about the cross-pollination between the worlds of food and design – see it here.

Other projects by Doshi Levien we've featured recently include an armchair inspired by Le Corbusier's designs for the city of Chandigarh and a dressing table made up of geometric elements.

See all stories about ice cream »
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for Häagen-Dazs appeared first on Dezeen.

Raw concrete and rough limestone clad the interior of a London ice cream parlour designed by branding studio Vonsung.

Located inside a historic building in Fitzroy Square, the gelato shop is filled with bulbous black sofas and cylindrical white stools.

Ice cream packaging and signage were also designed using a monochrome palette.

The only colours to be found in the shop are inside the ice cream cabinet.

This is the second story on Dezeen this week about an ice cream shop in London, following an Italian gelato stall that evokes the seaside - see all our stories about ice cream parlours.

Here are some more details from Vonsung:

Polka Gelato

Vonsung recently completed the total identity design for Polka Gelato, from naming, identity, branding, signage, website to spatial design. Based in a conservation area, Fitzroy Square, Polka Gelato opens its doors to showcase their artisanal way of creating ice cream. Despite all the talk of a double-dip recession in the UK, the client's wish was to offer something enlightening, from old to young, a sense of affordable luxury amid these difficult times.

The ambition of the new ice cream brand was to open a gelato store sourced only from the finest ingredients of precious, exotic fruits, herbs, spices and flavors. The vision was to bring the age-old history of Italian gelato to London, while a recent trip to New York sparked a new revolutionary thought – the gelato popsicle. To realize this vision, London's design studio, Vonsung, was invited to work on the dream.

The character of the listed building situated near the Fitzroy Square, is clearly that of a London period building. The dilemma was how to avoid the ice cream parlour formula of pop-culture, primary colours interior decoration, without making a disconnected piece of modern design that clashes with the building’s original identity.

An early decision was to place the Polka’s colourful, beautifully crafted gelatos as the central focal point and make the surrounding interior resemble the sculpted nature of the hand-made gelato.

The concept of the store plays with the complementary characteristics and the related dichotomy between male and female; child and adult; night and day. This is reflected in the design through the formal language and tactile quality of the finish materials used. The surrounding interior is unified with a single colour used on all surfaces.

Housed inside a concrete/limestone mix surrounding, the furniture piece on the floor is designed as a strong, masculine and dynamic form whilst the lighting enunciates femininity to create more fluid contour lines. The store is designed in a more playful manner creating different zones that maintain the perspective view between them.

Joseph Sung (Creative Director Vonsung) has strived in his precedent projects to experiment variant ways to explore materials. Among the natural, old, and time-proven material, Sung has derived at lime concrete for this project. Being situated in a historical setting, Sung felt that juxtaposing old and new material would give expected meaning for both, as exemplified using external architectural material within the interior space of the gelato store.

Stemming from the client brief, Sung identified with the key word, 'artisan', and made every effort to not to allow the solid masses of concrete material to feel uncomfortable for the visitors, but feel a sense of skill, artistry of the space. The boundaries of the interior wall and ceiling were made to be permeable as possible by way of shadow gaps and openings. Also, to reduce the monolithic manner of concrete, Sung mixed limestone into the batch and applied a smooth finish to the raw concrete.

The result was an interior space, which kindles the feeling of being an insider in an environment; simply put, it recognises what may feel like being within a creamy gelato batch. By adopting this method of design, Sung drew the attention to the timeliness of the space and architecture. All faculties of perception and senses, particularly tactility, facilitate the customer experience.

Known for increasingly severe minimalism, this project is Sung's latest interpretation of totality of branding design, however restrained and serene but rich in texture and delicate modulated light. With the aim of creating a space that will age better with time, our design creates a circular passage allowing the customer to experience the space in multiple ways and interpretations.

Furniture staged in key points throughout the store creates the spatial concept using a small space changing to an open condition.

Looking from the outside, the interior resembles a tale of a spaceship landed on the moon. If you taste a scoop of Polka Gelato, you may well think you are (over) the moon.

Completed: August 2011
Design: Joseph Sung (Vonsung)
Design Assistants: Jing Chen, Teresa Wong
Branding: Michiko Ito (Vonsung)

Contractor: MKM Contracts
Lighting: iGuzzini
Carpentry: Valchromat
Furniture: Modus, HAY

Click above for larger image

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A pop-up Italian ice cream stall at St Martins Lane Hotel in London evokes the seaside with yellow beach huts and striped decking.

Designed by architects Elips Design, the temporary shop serves gelato by UK company Dri Dri from a timber cart on wheels.

Pink chairs provide seating in front of two-dimensional parasols that are printed on the walls.

Coloured semi-circles decorate the glass facade of the shop, illustrating the different flavours of ice cream available.

Other popular pop-up shops we've featured in the past include a fashion store with tights stretched across the walls, a bicycle shop for Tokyo Bike and our own Dezeen Watch Store pop-up in Covent Garden.

Photography is by Carlo Carossio.

Here are some more details from Elips Design:

The Front Room of St Martins Lane’s hotel is a dynamic retail space. It has housed various creative collaborations with partners including The Convenience Store (fashion boutique), Wallpaper (photography exhibition), Angela Hill (vintage books), The Design Museum (film screening) and Nowness (video installation).

This time it will be converted by ELIPS DESIGN into an idyllic Italian beach, complete with traditional decking, coloured beach cabins, sun umbrellas, chairs and tables. The customers will be transported to the Mediterranean in the heart of London’s bustling centre enjoying their gelato DRI DRI.

The beach cabins are thought in the way to divide the space and create a back of the house for storage.

The sun umbrella are wall stickers to create more perspective in a bi dimensional space.

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Ice cream is frozen with liquid nitrogen in front of customers at this ice cream parlour designed by designers Shai Akram and Andrew Haythornthwaite in Camden, north London.

Called Chin Chin Laboratorists, the shop features a different workstation for each stage in the ice cream-making process.

Scaffolding links together the colour-coded boxes forming storage and work surfaces, and extends to task light lights above each station.

Here's some more information from Akram and Haythornthwaite:

London designers Shai Akram and Andrew Haythornthwaite were commissioned by The Chin Chin Club (Founders: Ahrash Akbari-Kalhur and Nyisha Weber) to define the direction, and design the interior, of their nitrogen ice-cream parlour in Camden.

Customers visiting the shop order and experience the making of bespoke ice-creams frozen onsite with liquid nitrogen, while the rest of the space is an experimental kitchen dedicated to the development of modern confections.

Concept: The studios approach was to build a theatrical laboratory, where the performance of making the products was the key focus of the space - molecular structures and diagrams formed the foundation for the identity and interior.

The Camden branch was given the subtitle of Chin Chin Laboratorists.

Solution: Each stage of the ice-cream making process (decanting, mixing, freezing, topping, etc) has been separated and translated into its own workstation, taking its visual character from the particular tasks performed at that point in the process.

The stations connect together across the space to form a self contained, three dimensional schematic diagram of a nitrogen ice-cream making machine.

Stations are built using a framework of scaffolding which holds colour- coded boxes.

These boxes house the equipment and ingredients needed for each stage, floating at optimal heights throughout the space.

Electrical wiring runs internally through the structural pipe work, taking power sockets directly to the locations where they are needed.

Lighting is an extension of the scaffolding framework, terminating in directional task lights for illuminating work areas.

Outside the shop (in the sunny spot) are bench seats and swings made with the same construction methods as the interior.

See also:

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Motel Out of The Blue by Maartje Dros	Yogurt shop by Cinimod Studio	More interior stories

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and Andrew Haythornthwaite appeared first on Dezeen.

Israeli architects SO have completed an ice cream and yogurt parlour in an old carpentry shop in Ramat Ishay.

The shop features two linear elements that rise and fall to form benches and tables to draw customers towards the seating area at the rear.

Graphic design is by FIRMA.

Photographs are by Asaf Oren.

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Here's some info from SO Architecture:

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In the industrial zone of Ramat Ishay northern Israel, Inside an old abandoned carpentry shop a new branch of the Leggenda ice cream and yogurt was put up.

To design a space with an airy and calm feeling, that the customer desired, in the space we had to work with, was rather difficult.

This difficulty was caused by very low ceiling of only 2.30 m, the very long and narrow proportion of 4.50X18.50 m of the place on the fondation of the building that invaded into the inner space.

The main idea was to create two linear elements that will lead the costumer into the deepest parts of the shop where the cozy sitting places are located. By doing so the visitor passes by the ice-cream and yogurt displays.

One element constructed by Lamy pine wood serves as sitting bar and camouflage for the foundations of the building.

The other linear element, serves as the display for the ice cream and yogurt displays. We used dark colored concrete as paving in order to highlight these two elements.

The entrance steel door and welcome roof were created as a single piece. The large door and facade were slightly submerged into the inner space in order to entice the visitor into the place.

Leggenda Ice Cream and Yogurt
Team: SO Architecture - Shachar Lulav, Oded Rozenkier, Alejandro Fejnerman, Ofrit Eshel
Graphic Design: FIRMA - http://www.brandhouse.co.il/

Location: Ramat Ishay, Israel
Year: 2009
Size: 135mr

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by SO Architecture appeared first on Dezeen.