Ecrit par Jason Drew & Andrew Jones et dirigé par ce dernier, voici la dernière vidéo illustrant le morceau de Modeselektor & Thom Yorke « This ». Mixant avec talent l’animation 3D et réalisation classique, cette vidéo sombre très intéressante est produite par FutureDeluxe et Fractured Films. A découvrir dans la suite.
“Il design in tasca” è un agile e intelligente libro scritto dall’architetto, designer e professore Valerio Sacchetti. Come si intuisce dal titolo, il libro è una sorta di guida per definire gli aspetti principali del disegno industriale: l’etimologia, le origini, gli esempi migliori e le relazioni con la società e l’arte nei diversi periodi storici. Tutti questi argomenti sono già stati affrontati da altri studiosi, ciononostante il libro merita di stare nella biblioteca ideale di Elmanco per lo stile asciutto e ironico, e per la mancanza di remore nel criticare anche oggetti comunemente riconosciuti come capolavori del design, quando questi presentano inconvenienti che complicano la loro produzione o utilizzo.
“Il design in tasca” può essere una lettura illuminante per gli studenti dei corsi di design, ma anche per tutti quelli che provengono da ambiti professionali differenti e vogliono acquisire i fondamenti di una cultura progettuale su cui c’è molto interesse ma altrettanta confusione.
Il Disegno Industriale è un’attività prima di tutto umanistica, come sosteneva Dino Gavina (maestro di Sacchetti), ma è anche un’attività legata alle tecnologie di produzione che influenzano la forma e il contenuto funzionale degli oggetti. Il libro ribadisce continuamente questa assunto perché lo splendido mestiere dell’industrial designer richiede il possesso di una cultura vasta e trasversale, e favorisce chi ha esperienza diretta del lavoro di artigiani e operai.
Il consiglio finale di Sacchetti è proprio questo: entrare nelle officine e passarci mesi per capire come si fanno le cose, e scoprire quali sono i delicati equilibri di una soluzione economica che non pregiudica l’espressività di un oggetto.
L’espressività può diventare, tuttavia, il limite di un prodotto quando le funzionalità più basilari si sacrificano in nome dell’interesse che forme sofisticate e stravaganti possono suscitare. E’ il caso di tanti prodotti di successo sviscerati da Sacchetti, come il celeberrimo spremiagrumi di Philippe Stark, ma anche della lampada Kelvin T di Citterio e della Chaise longue disegnata da Le Corbusier insieme a Charlotte Perrieand e Pierre Jeanneret.
Del primo sappiamo ormai tutti come sia inutilizzabile, la seconda non può essere pulita in tutte le sue parti rovinando alla lunga il suo originale effetto luminoso, mentre la terza è una seduta rivoluzionaria ma non ergonomica a causa dell’assenza di braccioli e dello spessore sottile che ne impedisce un uso prolungato.
Malgrado i loro limiti, questi oggetti sono diventati icone e grandi successi commerciali ed è difficile pensare un designer baratterebbe tale successo con una maggiore integrità progettuale. In nome di chi dovrebbe farlo, dato che il pubblico continua a comprare questi oggetti?
Probabilmente il pubblico continua a comprarli perché sono diventati dei veri e propri brand ma la questione è complessa e le risposte non sono univoche. “Il design in tasca” affronta queste ed altre delicate questioni con una chiarezza comprensibile anche ai profani, e questo è un grande merito.
La lezione più importante che emerge dal libro è comunque quella che ha contraddistinto i maestri di tutte le discipline: prima di rompere le regole bisogna conoscerle bene. Strade facili per il successo non esistono e capire l’evoluzione che ha portato gli oggetti alla loro forma attuale (vedi il capitolo 5 e la storia della bicicletta) deve essere il fondamento di ogni designer.
We’ve added a new board to Pinterest compiling all the best photos of kitchens from the pages of Dezeen. We now have over 3000 followers on Pinterest – join in here.
Maps usually display only one layer of information. In most cases, they’re limited to the topography, place names and traffic infrastructure of a certain region. True, this is very useful, and in all fairness quite often it’s all we ask for. But to reduce cartography to a schematic of accessibility …
And speaking of copper … how about a whole bike made of copper! While Lisette was in Milan visiting the Milan furniture fair 2012 she spotted Dutch designer Bart van Heesch at Studio zeta. He was one of fifty recent Design Academy Eindhoven graduates chosen to exhibit in Milan. And although he was there showcasing his luxaflex made from circles of brass (see the images below in this post) . I also love to show this incredible bike and the cool accessories from him.
Another graduate who made it to THE '50' in Milan is Eva Smeltkop with her Refrigerator 02. A small, transparent storage appliance, in which sweets and snacks not only keep well, but also look good. Thank you Lisette for the images!
More info about Studio Zeta and The 50 design graduates is right here.
Photography by Glen Jackson Taylor for Core77
There’s so many events and exhibitions all over Milan during the Salone Internazionale del Mobile that you could almost be forgiven for skipping out on the long trek to the Rho fair grounds. Luckily for the organizers we’re in the minority, and the exhibition halls were packed. So packed it was a little uncomfortable at times feeling more like navigating a crowd at the end of a gig than a trade show.
There wasn’t much press-worthy new product launched this year, most companies were content reissuing updates to their classics which could be a reflection on the European recession. In fact, so many of the established design-driven companies focused on their legacies with the use of product timelines incorporated into their exhibition booths that we could have made it a category.
Some highlights included this minimal wall mounted desk/storage unit for small apartments by Core-faves Yael Mer & Shay Alkalay and we’re loving the shadows cast by Sunrise, an outdoor table setting by Ludovica + Roberto Palomba for Driade. As usual, the SaloneSatellite was full of inspiration, especially this stunning bench by student Danah Al Kubaisy as part of a materials and fabrication class at the American University of Sharjah. At the Melbourne Movement stand, Tate Anson’s Tryst Stool was getting a lot of attention with his water-jet cut pattern technique for bending timber, and Thomas Schnur’s Rubber Table was just straight-up awesome!
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a chair perfect for studying or read and even a quick nap in between.
Patchy timber shields the glazed upper storeys of this extension to a historic town hall in southern Spain by architects Viar Estudio.
The extension creates a new entrance courtyard at the side of the original 16th Century town hall, a former prison decorated in the Plateresque style in the centre of the World Heritage town of Baeza.
Above the glazed doors to the extension, an extended first floor cantilevers outwards to shelter arriving visitors.
This first floor also bridges across from the rear of the building to connect with a second block just behind.
This new four-storey building has the same timber shades across its extruded windows and features a wooden staircase that ascends in front of a shimmering golden wall.
The interior walls of the original town hall remain exposed and intact, so the junctions between new and old are highlighted.
See more recent projects from Spain here, including an outdoor swimming pool and a concrete sculpture museum.
Photography is by Fernando Alda and you can see more pictures of this project on his website.
Here’s some more information from Viar Estudio:
The Baeza Township Project has been read as a unit in a duration, as a constant change process where the new design has been thought as an additional stratum, as the last sediment layer in time the building has created. The thought about the temporal process of architecture is fundamental.
Historical architecture is based on overlays, accumulating many different pasts in what could be called the «durée» of architecture.
Henri Bergson said that the ultimate reality is not the being, nor the changing being, but the continuous process of change which he called «durée» or duration.
Architecture has a way of being in time, a becoming that lasts, a change that is substance on its own.
The rythm of the duration and of the successive changes connotes a dissolution process, subtraction, addition, mutation or a change of uses that befalls all architectural ensembles through time.
The Baeza Township Project is entwined within the concept of architectural «durée».
It is designed thinking about the additive condition of the site, in the quality of change as the substance of the project and as a part of the character of the building in time.
The mixed state of -perception/memory- is what makes us see objects as a continuum, as relationship nodes.
Thus, when we think, design or build our memory –which is also duration- is imprinted in the objects and architecture becomes a way of inscribing time on matter.
Man’s impression in every manipulated object –material or speculative- sets us in a place in time because as we build, pile, glue or pour we change the geologic, industrial or poetic time of matter humanizing it, making it ours, giving it –as we impress our vital time in it – a human breath.
The fundamental question: How do we understand the historic building?
The answer rose slowly; we think of the building as a fragment –almost a stump-, as an element enwrapped in itself, with no ability to suggest, nor create, nor to define its own structure.
The strategy was to clean up the building’s additions, to accept the historic building as an unfinished fragment and to envelop it with new construction.
The historical building –the fragment- does not create a new building; it is the town’s logic which generates, encloses and wraps the existing fragment; it is the spontaneous city growth, the organic structure of its patios what hugs it.
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In the picture today an all-time favorite of mine the Flowerpot(s) by Verner Panton. The Flowerpot is a design icon and truly has stood the test of time. Awarded many times for his genius designs Verner Panton brought the Flowerpot in 1969 to the stage and and named it after the happy days of Flower Power. The orange one in the image above is the FlowerPot table lamp VP3.
Finding an orignal vintage one form that era is probaly nicest but I would easily buy a new one. Many online shops have them available and &Tradition from Denmark is the current manufacturor.
The two images above are also from the Flower Pot family, called the VP4. More info here at &Tradition.
What if materials could defy gravity, so that we could leave them suspended in mid-air? ZeroN is a physical and digital interaction element that floats and moves in space by computer-controlled magnetic levitation.
by Jinha Lee, in collaboration with Rehmi Post, and Hiroshi Ishii
leejinha.com/zeron
tangible.media.mit.edu
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
