Hasta La Ideas

Coffee for design-minded gourmet campers

Coffee snobs don’t have many options when it comes to camping, a hobby dominated by single-serving packs of less-than-tasty instant brews. For those unwiling to sacrifice fresh brewed flavor on mountain treks (not to mention superior design), Snow Peak and Nau have teamed up to produce a limited edition collection of titanium café ware. Included in the upscale camping set are a lightweight French press, milk foamer and stacking mug—everything you need for a fireside cup of joe. Plus, the durable titanium will resist rusting, making this a generational investment that is sure to remain landfill-free.

Joining the French press, frother and mug is a stainless steel Japanese knife and wooden case, which opens to form a handy travel cutting board. Staying true to their northwestern roots, the brands have also brought in Stumptown Roasters to supply a bag of Organic Holler Mountain Blend, an international combination of South and Central American coffees with earthier Indonesian beans.

The Café Luxe Kit sells from Nau for $125.

Innovation takes over the City of Light

The 12th edition of Designer’s Days decorated Paris inside and out last weekend. The celebration brought a varied bunch of innovative creations all over the city, involving a blend of venues and actors, famous design brands, exclusive creators, art schools, designers’ studios and workshops, embassies and outdoor installations. Every branch of design was part of the feast, including industrial design, interior decoration, homeware, furniture and more.

The festival marked an occasion for brands to debut innovations like the decorative “Add-on” heaters designed by Satyendra Pakhalé for the Italian company Tubes Radiatori, which was shown at Centre Pompidou museum. Trying to convert utilitarian heaters into decorative pieces, “Add-on” utilizes an enlarged surface area to spread heat, and the system’s polyhedric modules can be freely assembled to create infinite decorations. The lattice-style form makes this piece ideal for a room divider, resembling an Arabic Mashrabiya.

Exclusive rug company Dedar commissioned the New York-based Stephan Burks for an artistic performance around rope and fabrics. The artist invented seats with large bunches of tough rope partly covered with caoutchouc and wrapped with zipped corsets inspired by African textile culture and patterns.

The famous inventor of the bag-free vacuum cleaner, Dyson, exhibited prototypes made by fresh design graduates as part of its sponsorship program, with all projects reflecting the brand’s focus on air. Dyson gave an award last year to the “Airdrop“, an innovative system able to produce water for irrigation by capturing moisture from the atmosphere, and the utility of the low-tech device for drought-ridden countries is quite promising. “Kerio” is a home dry cleaner that implements air technologies to replace a washing machine, steaming clothes in a low-water, eco-friendly system. The “Wind Up” lamp, which is turned on and off in the manner of a candle by simply blowing on the bulb, is as simple as it is poetic.

Recent graduates from the prestigious École Boulle design and interior architecture school were also given the opportunity to show their achievements and allow the public to discover this up-and-coming generation. One creation, the “Mister T” table by Antoine Lesur smartly embeds in the piece a ready-to-use set of table, tray, basket and cushions. The light shape of the armchair by Eric Naveteur has also been selected along with the “Pouff” by Norman Bouzidi, a table and seat designed for snack and improvised parties, with storage spaces in the locks.

Italian brand Poltrona Frau asked the French designer Noé Duchaufour Lawrance to create a scenography for its store. The result is an organic chain of leather that emerges from armchairs and spreads all over the showroom, featuring gigantic arms or roots that connect all the pieces of the collection. The piece communicates both the appealing power of leather as well as the brand’s superior level of creative execution.

Many other leading brands on the market commissioned famous or new designers to produce something for the occasion. Silvera-Poliform exhibited the new line “Plia” of side tables designed by Victoria Wilmotte in wood and stainless steel, which reflect light through their beveled edges.

Jean-Michel Wilmotte displayed bushes of street lamps on the famous Ponts des Arts of front of the Louvre, evoking connections between architectural heritage and contemporary design.

We discovered work by the textile designer Tzuri Gueta, who makes a unique line of silicone jewelry evoking blood vessels and anatomic desiccations, as well as weird shellfish and a motorbike helmet, all in sexy silicone lace or in a “rain pearls” curtain trying to marry rain, water and light.

The 1.5 km long promenade “viaduc des arts”, gathering designers and craftsmen workshops, provided a large scope of pieces made for the event like a rocking hobby-horse that brayed like a galloping horse and could imitate sounds of smooth and tough surfaces.

Plenty of other interesting and intelligent ideas for small urban places were on show, such as mini mobile plant pots hung on folded hard plastic maps and planted tables as interior gardens. A clock in a blown-glass bulb recalled Napoleonic clocks under their glassy globe, and we were taken by a poetic variety of lamps: candy-like love-apple lamps in red blown glass and melted sugar sat alongside flower and feather lamps.

The Italian Embassy opened its doors to the public for a tour through the past decades of major achievements in Italian design—all displayed in the golden apartments of an 18th-century palace, such as the famous “Him” chair by Fabiola Novembre for Casamania.

The studio of Jean Nouvel, one of the most famous French architects, was open to the public to show a beautiful play on wood, featuring a line of seven wooden tables and their accessories with sober lines made out of seven varieties of woods. With the purpose of going back to the essentials and basics, the display paid tribute to both plain natural wood and to ancient assembling techniques by avoiding any metallic element such as nails. Their minimalist, elegant aesthetics proved to be the most contemporary.

Images by Isabelle Doal

Our interview with the artist about sand-blasted books, ethereal paintings and a transcendental point of view

Examining evolution through the dual lens of spirituality and science, Montreal-based book sculptor Guy Laramée creates miniature landscapes from antiquated paperbacks. Drawing upon over three decades of experience as an interdisciplinary artist (including a start as a music composer) and an education in anthropology, Laramée carves out an existentialist parallel between the erosion of geography and the ephemeral nature of the printed word.

Laramée also evokes notes of nostalgia and the passing of time with his paintings of clouds and fog. A self-professed anachronist, Laramée takes inspirational cues from the age of Romanticism and the transcendentalism of Zen, exploring “not only what we think, but that we think.” Laramée’s distinct, conceptual medium and thematic study of change has involved him in such contemplative projects as the “Otherworldly” exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design and an impromptu collaboration with WIRED UK.

We caught up with Laramée during his recent exhibition, “Attacher les roches aux nuages” or “Tying Rocks to Clouds”, at Expression: Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinte in Quebec, to learn more about his process and philosophy.

What inspired the ideas for your book sculptures and what is the process that is involved in creating them?

The bookwork came in the alignment of three things: a casual discovery, my undertaking of an MA in anthropology and the building of La Grande Bibliothèque du Québec. The undertaking of this grand library fascinated me because at that time (2000) I thought that the myth of the encyclopedia—having all of humanity’s knowledge at the same place—was long dead. I was, myself, going back to school to make sense of 15 years of professional practice and was, once more, confronted with my love/hate relationship with words. Then came this accident, so to speak. I was working in a metal shop, having received a commission for a theater set. In a corner of the shop was a sandblaster cabinet. Suddenly, I had the stupid idea of putting a book in there. And that was it. Within seconds, the whole project unfolded.

Please tell us a bit about your collaboration with Wired UK and creation of the Black Tides project.

Tom Cheshire, one of the associate editors of WIRED, wrote me one day, saying that he loved my work and inquiring about my future projects. Off the top of my head and half jokingly, I told him that I had the idea of doing a piece with a pile of their magazines (that was not true). He picked up on the idea and suddenly, a pile of magazines was being shipped to my studio. I had had a lot of offers for commissions—all involving my work with books—and I refused them all because they all made me so sad. People were trying to use my work to fit their agendas but the collaboration with WIRED truly inspired me because it fit perfectly with a project I had on my bench for a while, and for which I had found no outlet. The Great Black Tides project is the continuation of The Great Wall project. It gives flesh to a short story written in the mode of an archeology of the future.

The first piece that came out of this project is WIRELAND. It is both ironic and beyond irony. It is ironic that a high-tech magazine would include such a low-tech work in their pages—and foremost a type of work that looks so critically at the ideologies of progress. And it is beyond irony even, because the piece is beautiful. It is beautiful for mysterious reasons but I like to think that the way Tom Cheshire trusted me was a big factor in the success of the enterprise. So if there is a message in all this, I would like to think that it is this: never stop relating to people who defend worldviews, which seem to contradict yours. There is a common factor beyond all points of view.

In addition to your sculptures, you also paint. Please tell us a bit about your painting process and what inspires your fog series.

The 19th century painter and emblematic figure of Romanticism, Caspar David Friedrich, said, “The eye and fantasy feel more attracted by nebulous distance than by that which is close and distinct in front of us.” That sums it up all very nicely. What is blurred and foggy attracts your eye because you want to know what is behind that veil. It is a dynamic prop to set you in motion.

Your work frequently explores themes of the ephemeral, surreal and nostalgic. What draws you to these themes and influences them?

The Great Nostalgia is my main resource. It is not nostalgia about a lost golden age (which never existed). It is the nostalgia, here and now, of the missing half. We live between two contradictory and simultaneous worldviews: the participant and the observer. I work along the thesis that all of humanity’s joy and sorrow come out of this basic schism, something most of the great religions (Buddhism, Sufism, etc.) evoke abundantly.

My work is existential. It may depict landscapes that inspire serenity, but this is the serenity that you arrive at after traversing life crisis. You can paint a flower as a hobby, but you can also paint a flower as you come back from war. The same flower, apparently, but not really the same.

Could you please share your thoughts on the theme of the Guan Yin project and how it manifested in the exhibited pieces?

Originally the project was a commission for a local biennale here in Quebec, an event that celebrates linen. The theme of that biennale was “Touch”. I started with used rags, the ones that are used by mechanics and that are called “wipers”. I started by sowing them together without really knowing what I was doing. I was attracted to the different shades of these rags. They are all of a different grey, due to the numerous exposures to grease and the subsequent washings but meanwhile, my mother died. I was with her when she gave her last breath. Needless to say, that gave the project a totally different color.

So, I decided that this project would help me pass through the mourning of this loss. I decided against all reason—you don’t do that in contemporary art— that I would carve a statue of Guan Yin, the Chinese name for the Bodhisattva of compassion in Buddhist lore. It took me four months. I had never carved a statue in wood. Finally, the statue came out of a syncretic version of the original. It is still faithful to one of the avatars of these icons but there is a bit of the Virgin Mary in there. Then, I built an altar over the statue and put the altar on this 16×16 feet tablecloth made of 500 used rags. The piece was first shown in an historic Catholic church which was almost a statement about the possibility of an inter-faith dialogue—even if that was far from my concern at the time when I put it up there. To me, these rags, with the hands of these women over them, became the metaphor of our human condition. As a Japanese proverb says, “The best words are the ones you did not say.”

“Attacher les roches aux nuages” will run through 12 August 2012 at the Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinte.

Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinte

495, Avenue Saint-Simon

Saint-Hyacinthe (Quebec), J2S 5C3

Four designers creating furniture that does more than just offer a seat

by Nadine Botha

Sitting, eating, lying, bathing, storing, arranging flowers, telling the time—these are the functions to which mainstream design reduces the sum of human effort, focusing on model houses with model users whose needs do not deviate from the essentials of living. But as Unhappy Hipsters highlights, humans are more than just objects in their own domestic showrooms and, moreover, we are more often than not lonely and horrible. Here, a few young designers creating furniture that addresses more psychological functions than simply sitting down.

The Courtesy Table

The “Courtesy Table” by young Dutch designer Marleen Jansen came out of her thesis on table manners. She wanted to design a table that voluntarily forced people to remain at the table until everyone was finished eating. The bench beneath the table is hinged like a see-saw and requires both diners to remain seated if balance is to be maintained. You can’t help wondering if the second iteration will also somehow prevent diners from using their mobile phones.

Homage to Karl

The “Homage To Karl” chair by Patrycja Domanska and Felix Gieselmann is a high chair to make it easier for writers in coffee shops to observe people and distinguish themselves. Literally elevating the status of cafe hacks and affording reticent writers with some narcissism, self-staging and even retreat, the chair was inspired by Austrian author Karl Kraus, known for his patronage of Viennese cafes.

Confession

Swedish design student Nick Ross has also sought to design a micro-environment of discretion within public spaces. “Confession” is a bar with a sound-proofed hood that encourages confidential activities such as the sharing of secrets, office gossip, a personal story or even a quick business meeting in crowded areas. Like in Arik Levy’s similar atonement-orientated “Contemporary Domestic Confessional“, the privacy-seeking zeitgeist is providing solid inspiration for thoughtful furniture design.

Modified Social Benches

Besides driving a throwback to confidentiality, it is also possible that Facebook is making the world lonelier than ever before. Danish artist Jeppe Hein has hacked the typical park bench to create alternative typologies, which encourage interaction and discussion about social behavior in public spaces. The almost dysfunctional benches demand that the user be engaged with their environment and turn sitting into a conscious act, rather than blending into the anonymity of the crowd.

Portland craftsmanship meets Parisian style in a sustainable tote

Setting out to make the perfect tote, Parisian design label Jardins Florian teamed up with the Portland-based craftsmen of The Good Flock. Together they have created a stylishly minimal bag that speaks through its quality materials and handsome detailing.

Made by hand from waxed cotton canvas and vegetable tanned leather, the tote reflects the conscious design approach of both makers, who share a desire to make beautiful functional products with the least environmental impact possible. As Florian Gonzalez, founder of Jardins Florian, explains, the design process was dedicated to the art of “keeping things simple.”

“We did not want to use any hardware or zips, so that the bag would be made of only two materials, both bio-degradable,” says Gonzalez about their effort to make a tote with a closure. “The design battle to find how to close the bag in an original and functional manner led us to months of prototyping and eventually to the beautiful leather flap one can see on the final model.”

Such rigor is evoked in The Good Flock’s three design principles: “Use wholesome materials, work with a conscience and design with minimal waste.” Marco Murillo, founder of The Good Flock, heralds their work as “products that can be buried in your backyard. They are made of wholesome things that won’t hurt the earth or trees or worms, even the mean ones.”

Gonzalez describes Jardins Florian as a “modern-day Maison” that designs and sells quality goods. With an exceptional eye for design, Gonzalez also benefits from a savvy approach to collaboration, so far working with luxury brands to create his products. Currently this includes an organic scented candle made with spa brand ila and a customized limited-edition Rolex Watch with Bamford Watch Department.

The Good Flock + Jardins Florian tote bag is available online for £250 (about $387) for a limited time (they indicate the next edition will come in different colors and at a higher price).