Stay Cool this Summer, With "Coolhaus"

Summer is here and what is a better way to cool off than with ice cream! We've all tried ice cream sundaes, waffle bowls, and globs of ice cream on cones, the but after a while that gets boring. That's when Coolhaus comes in and saves that day.

Coolhaus (a wordplay on Rem Koolhaus's name), is an icecream company that takes your design senses on a ride, and will be sure to fix your ice cream cravings this summer. The co-founder of Coolhaus, Natasha Case, was not trained as a cook or chef. She was actually trained as an architect — which helps explain the name.

Case always had a interest in combing food and architecture. She began this exploration of food and architecture while she was still in grad school at UCLA. "I called it 'Farchitecture,' food plus architecture," she says. "I just got into different ways of using food as the medium to talk about architecture. How could food send people a message or educate people about design?" After graduating, Coolhaus was born.

Many of her famous ice cream sandwiches pay homage to the architecture greats. I.M. Pei, becomes "I.M. Pei-nut butter." Mies van der Rohe — one of the pioneers of modern architecture — becomes "Mies Vanilla der Rohe." But the principles of building design really come into play in the construction of the shop's famous ice cream sandwiches:

"There's definitely an architecture to the sandwich," Case says. The bottom cookie is the foundation, and it has to be pliable, so that "as you're eating the sandwich [it won't] fall apart and not just crunch off," she says.The ice cream in the middle serves as the glue — it holds the whole structure together, Case says. And finally, you've got to mind the top cookie. "If it's too hard and too crunchy, it's just going to push all the center of the ice cream sandwich out."

Coolhaus is quirky, wellcrafted, and above all addicting! We tried if for the first time in New York last year, and be prepared if you haven't tried it yet--you WILL fall in love. Cheers to Summer and good ice cream!