The bar for gratuitous pop-up shop gimmickry was set pretty high last year, sometime between Nicola Formichetti’s prism walls and Tommy Hilfiger’s temporary beach house. That makes Odin New York’s new pop-up, a 350 ft² pristine white cube dedicated to its Fragrances and Home Fragrances line, all the more refreshing. Odin teamed with design provocateurs Snarkitecture to create an interior based on the brand’s signature black-on-black bottle. Instead of display cases, the store is filled with two cascading waves of white cement casts of the Odin bottle, one emanating from the floor and one from the ceiling. Just a few real products are scattered among the white clones, instantly visible for their contrasting color but, oddly, almost like negative space instead of the main attraction. It’s certainly a unique way of selling products.

Though known as a men’s lifestyle brand, the fragrance collection offers six unisex scents and four candles for the home. The pop-up is open for the next six weeks.

After five years in seclusion, Holton Rower is emerging with a solo show in New York City. His pour paintings, on display at The Hole through May 26th, are vibrant displays of acrylic paint left mostly to its own devices. Standing above large planks, Rower pours paint down thick wooden protrusions, allowing the paint to grow, or not, as wood blocks and other obstacles permit. Though at first the method seems simple, Rower has refined the process and his technical skills to an extent that intention and spontaneity are evident in equal measure in the work.

Upon entering The Hole, visitors are welcomed by the simplest of Rower’s works. The paintings in this room consist of fewer colors, layered in rings up to an inch wide. The paint retains its separateness from the surrounding rings, resulting in smoother lines and more definition. The works in the second room employ more colors applied in thin rings, with colors mixing and forming intricate designs, begetting a comparison to a topographical map of mountainous lands. The third room contains five titanic works, some with protrusions, cut-outs, and seemingly several points from which paint was applied, creating contiguous, vaguely defined abstract rings of color. This room feels a bit like the grand finale on the Fourth of July; the biggest, brightest and most complex work of the show is here, though these are not necessarily the most thoughtful or compelling pieces.

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It is quite literally everywhere. It covers 70% of the Earth’s surface and accounts for approximately 60% of our own composition. The thought that we could be running out of water seems unimaginable, and yet the combination of overuse, contamination, and the effects on the water cycle posed by climate change likely makes water the most unstable and therefore the most valuable resource of the 21st Century. The UN estimates that 3.4 billion people may suffer water shortages by 2025, and the problem stands to worsen from there forward.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Jessica Yu illustrates in her new documentary that water strains are fast becoming a vital concern not simply for a portion of the world’s population but for just about all of us. She recently spoke to Planet about directing “Last Call at the Oasis” and the things she learned along the way:

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When the back-to-the-earth movement first took hold in the 1960’s and 70’s, a great number of people abandoned their subdivisions and cities and set out to build their own homes. Today, as Americans grow more passionate about sustainability, home remodeling, and artisinal craft, it seems like the perfect moment to look back at the handmade house movement and also at the houses themselves. A new book, Handmade Houses, by Richard Olsen, does exactly that.

Olsen revisited first-wave handmade houses around the world, many of which are now thirty and forty years old. Built lovingly and exuberantly from timber, fieldstone, plaster, and sod, these aren’t the kinds of houses that adorn typical coffee table books. The book’s warm, personal narratives and sumptuous photographs are pleasing, and at the same time offer some powerful, countercultural propositions about lifestyle, aesthetics and design. These are houses that were built one-at-a-time without regard for conventional styles, with an eye to the character of the owner rather than the demands of the market.

Olsen recently shared his ideas with Planet about the origins of the handmade houses movement, its relevance today, and his own quest to build a handmade house.

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As an unwritten policy, Planet’s Greenspace features tend to steer clear of the hot-button political debates of the moment. Concern for our environment may have unavoidable political implications, but we’re generally more likely to use this page to provide photo depictions of the Appalachian Trail than reports from the campaign trail. This Earth Day, however, I’m breaking from tradition and using today’s column to make a rare endorsement.

After years of inaction on the pressing environmental issues of our time, the country needs a president with bold ideas and a vision for the long-term protection of our resources and lands. We need a president willing to talk about change in the context of climate. We need someone willing to think outside of the fossil fuel-powered box and “go big,” as they say, offering a shock to the system in the spirit of “Nixon goes to China.” It is for those reasons that I’m stepping outside the parameters of my own box to support Richard Nixon for president in 2012.

This April 22nd marks 18 years since Nixon died, so I suppose my endorsement has little value. Ignoring that complication, there’s also the fact that he resigned in disgrace the last time around. But let’s not forget the full legacy of our 37th president. Before Watergate, there was the Clean Water Act, which turns 40 later this year.

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Robert Presutti is one of this year’s Global Travel photo contest winners. He has been working and living in New York City for the past 18 years. A large part of his work is dedicated to travel. Assignments have taking him to countries like Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Georgia, Japan, Mexico, Colombia etc… In the past two years he has been working on two major projects, one in Colombia, in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta with the Kogi and Arhuaco indians for a future exhibit at the Smithsonian and the other project in Georgia with the nuns of the Phoka monastery. Robert also contributes to the New York Times regularly.

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Andrew Geiger placed second in the portrait category of this year’s Global Travel Photo Contest with an image from his ongoing work documenting the many vanishing cultures of the world. Geiger recently returned from the Rajasthan region of India, where he witnessed the inevitable disappearance of its traditional dress and ancient customs. “I have realized from my travels that documenting these places and people will be the only way for my children to experience the native customs the younger generation from these places are shunning,” he tells PLANET. Although he travels extensively, Geiger still has yet to find a place as beautiful and special as his home state of Montana, where he lives with his family.

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Lung Liu won fourth place in the portrait category of our 4th Annual Global Travel Photo Contest. Liu is a photographer working out of Vancouver, Canada who’s produced in-depth studies of Thailand, Vietnam, and Haiti after the earthquake. He was born in Vietnam between two conflicts, and spent time in a refugee camp as a child before being sponsored by a church to live in Canada. A road trip down the majestic US west coast inspired him to travel internationally for photography.

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Juliette Charvet placed third in the general category of our 4th annual Global Travel Photo Contest. Juliette is a French photographer based in New York City, specializing in street and travel photography. After graduating from the Paris School of Journalism, she spent over a year in Vietnam and Lebanon, perfecting her photographic skills at the news agency AFP. She now travels extensively with her camera, always trying to capture the world in its most comprehensive authenticity. “To me, travel photography is about seeing our surroundings with wonderment,” she says.

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Filmmaker Whit Stillman’s small, idiosyncratic body of work is highly regarded, even venerated, by a discerning group of moviegoers. Arch, witty dialogue; cheerful but flawed characters; and a touch of social commentary mingle easily in his ensemble dramedies. It’s impossible to mistake a Whit Stillman film for anyone else’s.

His first feature, Metropolitan (1990), about a set of young, upper class New Yorkers, was full of razor-sharp dialogue and savage wit, yet it rang true emotionally and was embraced by many from less privileged backgrounds. Barcelona (1994), starring Taylor Nichols and beloved Stillman favorite Chris Eigeman, was a similar comedy of manners, but set abroad with considerably raised dramatic stakes. The relatively big-budget The Last Days of Disco (1998), starring Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale, along with Eigeman, may have been a box office disappointment, but it too boasted sharp dialogue, excellent performances, and engrossingly imperfect characters – the Stillman trifecta.

Which brings us (14 years later) to Damsels in Distress, a more lighthearted film, though set in a somewhat familiar milieu – an insular East Coast college campus – and featuring typically self-important yet fragile characters. Actress of the moment Greta Gerwig stars as Violet, ringleader of a group of girls who are figuring out their love lives while trying to save their fellow students from depression, bad odors and general low standards, mainly through dancing. Though Taylor Nichols has a small role as a teacher, Eigeman is noticeably absent.

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