Hasta La Ideas

This is the first of a series of Q+As contributor Tamara Warren conducted with designers from the NAIAS 2011 show.

The Porsche 918 RSR was the talk of the North American International Auto Show. Porsche Design Director Michael Mauer is responsible for the 767 horsepower sexy plug-in hybrid racecar that’s due to be a motor sports contender. It’s the racier version of the 918 Spyder hybrid introduced in fall 2010 and due for showrooms.

C77: What do you feel you achieved with the 918 RSR?
Michael Mauer: There is such an intense appreciation for this car and there is the responsibility to the pleasure of driving. We had to visually capture this in the car. For design purposes we develop the design language and surfaces around it. If you look at the 918 there are subtle lines. We still stick to Porsche’s background.

How do you balance the love for past Porsches with new cutting edge design?
Maybe you need to be more careful, but we’re not doing retro design. The 918 Porsche has a strong history. It is always a balance between history and visionary, but still respecting our identity. There’s no need to do radical design changes. The shape is the same, we try to envision brand value.

What’s your process like?
I personally sketch by hand, because the little sketches are reminders when I try to visualize the cars. The younger designers like to do this on the computer.

What are your influences outside of cars?
Inspiration is everywhere. As a designer you are more sensitive and open to visual things. If you talk about interiors and materials from the furniture industry, there are a lot of possibilities there.

Tamara Warren, a Motor City native, is co-founder/editor of the car and culture blog Gotryke.com. Her articles have appeared in over 80 publications covering culture, music, the arts, automobiles and design. She has written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Delta Sky, Nylon, Vibe, Automobile and Forbes Autos. Check out her work and Gotryke.com and her clips on Tamarawarren.com.

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Our favorite swiss-miss, Tina Eisenberg, launched a new website today to help event organizers break the ice at their next mix and mingle. Similar to a nametag, Icebreakertags allow users to create their own conversation-starting question, customize with a logo, and generate a printout with 10 tags. The idea came to Eisenberg while organizing her monthly lecture series CreativeMornings. Check out our coverage of last week’s CreativeMorning with Milton Glaser. I <3 NY!

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Japanese studio Ninkipen! have completed a family house in Nara, Japan, comprising staggered rectangular volumes.

A skylight pierces both floors of the residence to draw light down into the kitchen.

The open-plan interior is finished in white, with wooden flooring and detailing.

There are no doors inside the house, instead rooms flow into one another through interconnected doorways.

The living spaces and one bedroom are located on the ground floor with a further two rooms on the next floor, each adjoining a roof terrace.

Photographs are by Hiroki Kawata.

More Japanese houses on Dezeen »
More residential architecture on Dezeen »

Here’s some more information from the architects:

This is a small residence for a couple with one child, situated in Nara, Japan.

The neighborhood is determined by a large number of individual houses spread over a gentle slope facing south.

During the design process, the lot right beside was yet empty and it was unclear what was going to be built.

Therefore, the design had to be autonomous, but at the same time it should be able to react positively on whatever was going to be built next door.

The volume of the house is constituted of an uneven volume, split and shifted both in ground plan and elevation into sub-volumes that are visually separated, but connected through continuous lighting and ventilation.

The interior space is characterized by interconnected cubes with no doors, privacy is ensured by deliberate nooks and narrowings between the rooms.

Even though the house is with 80.84 m2 relatively small, the continuous spaces that always let anticipate the following room, convey a sense of larger extent.

Project name
80.84
Architect
YASUO IMAZU/ninkipen! Architect office

Use: house
Location: Nara, Japan

Process

Design　2008.2-2008.7
Construction　2008.8-2009.3

Scale
Site area 134.57m2
Building area 65.24m2
Total floor area 80.84m2

See also:

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House of Resonance by FORM/Kouichi Kimura	Mole by Ninkipen!	Rroomm by Ninkipen!

Jewelry designer Alexis Bittar, whose cozy Upper East Side shop we adore for its mix of taxidermied wildlife and ever-more-exquisite cuff bracelets, is on a roll. Last year, the wizard of Lucite took home the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s Accessory Designer of the Year award, made a splash with ads featuring Joan Collins, and opened a trio of boutiques outside of New York (in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago). His latest project is a hospitable collaboration: St. Regis Hotels tapped Bittar to help celebrate the opening of the brand’s twenty-first luxe property—a beachfront resort in Puerto Rico where the butlers “specialize in poolside rituals” (sign us up!)—with a jewelry collection. He took his inspiration from the legendary baubles of Caroline Astor, the socialite mother of St. Regis founder John Jacob Astor IV, and created a necklace, earrings, and brooch (at right). The hand-carved and hand-painted pieces, which range in price from $310 to $490 and are available at Bittar’s stores, mix the designer’s signature Lucite with crystals and pearls. Meanwhile, we’re looking forward to his next round of print ads, which we hear were shot by artist Jack Pierson.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Introducing the 2011 Mediocrity, which of course comes only in beige:

No, it’s not a real car; it’s an amusing commentary by Subaru on the current state of mass-market auto design. The website of the viral campaign features silly and de rigueur touches like mock social networking features, a “build your own” section and the ever-important Designer Interviews, where they discuss their “inspiration” for the car’s design:

Dig it? There’s more videos here.

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