Slovakian designers simply making all that they like
by Adam Štěch
Based in the Slovak capital of Bratislava, the young designers behind the Allt studio produce simple-yet-poetic conceptual furniture and lighting, aiming to create a personal world of friendly products with strong backstories.
The Allt studio—whose name offers a simple abbreviation of their tagline, “all that we like to do”—was established in 2011 by Peter Simonik and Elena Bolceková. Simonik received his degree from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, while Bolceková finished her studies at the Institute of Industrial Design at the Faculty of Architecture in 2011. Both of these creative individuals personify different approaches to art and design, and together they make a strong team that produces beautiful objects augmented by original presentation.
This year, the studio exhibited work in prestigious galleries around Slovakia and the Czech Republic, as well as the GASK museum in Kutná Hora. The pair garnered attention with Allter Space, a solo show at the Art Design Project gallery in Bratislava. Inspired by hidden craft, nature, technology and everyday urban life, design objects on display included the Highstack and Lowstack benches constructed out of stacked planks of wood, reminiscent of the unfinished storage vessels found in industrial sawmills and carpentry plants. The result exuded a fresh take on form that meets functionality and exhibited strong local ties to the wood production industry in Slovakia.
Other pieces included a modular carpet system called Cityscape, inspired by the surface of street pavements, as well as the “Who is Watching You” lamp, designed after the simplification of the CCTV camera.
Simoník and Bolceková’s artistic versatility expands to include not only graphic design but also photography, which they used to highlight the presentation of their furniture in Allter Space. Their inclusion of these purely decorative designs dovetailed nicely with the essence of their products and created an environment that entirely surrounded the viewer. For more information about the studio or to contact the artists for special commissions, visit their website. Select items are also available for purchase through their online shop.
Sometimes technology, though often helpful, can be daunting. You can spend a lot of time trying to learn how to use a new app (or gadget) before really being able to use it to your benefit. That’s why it’s nice when you come across an app that is simple and easy to use while helping you keep a regular habit of getting things done. I recently discovered two that I’d like to share with you: Wonderful Day and iDoneThis.
Wonderful Day
Don't you just love an app with a happy sounding name? Well, it does a bit more than just sound happy. This app is based on Jerry Seinfeld's (not so secret anymore) productivity secret, also known as Don’t Break the Chain.
It’s a very simple concept – work on a task every day, and when you do, cross it off on your calendar. You’ll end up having a chain of X’s or check marks (or whatever mark you prefer) on your calendar. If you miss a day, then you will have a break in your chain. Over time, you’ll be motivated to keep the chain going, and if you’re like some people (moi), you won’t like seeing a broken chain.
Wonderful Day allows you to make your own chain sans the paper calendar. There’s nothing wrong with using paper, if that’s your preference. But, if you’re more tech inclined, this process can’t be any more simple. You can set multiple tasks that you want to focus on as well as the days you’ll work on them. You might have “exercise,” “write,” and “work in the garden” on your list — anything you think you’d like make a habit of doing. Each time you complete a task, you’ll see a green dot, and when you miss a task, you’ll see a red one. If you’re a visual person, this app may work very well for you.
iDoneThis is different from your usual to-do list because it’s more of a “done” list. Each day, the app asks you a very simple question: “What have you done today?” Add the tasks you did on the date you did them and the app will add a check mark for you. The more you get done, the more checks you’ll see. If you miss a day, you will see “No entries for today” and the app will send you a daily reminder, though you can turn off that feature if you’d like. You can also set future reminders along with a specific time that you’ll be notified. The developers describe it as sending a “message to your future self.”
iDoneThis is extremely simple and doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles (though you can sync with your web-based iDoneThis account). But, it’s very easy to use and can help you build a habit or routine of accomplishing a task every day. You will likely be motivated to get something done just to keep the “done” chain going.
Platform: iPhone, iPad Cost: Free, monthly subscription fee for teams ($3/person/month) Other apps like it:List
Shanghai architects Polifactory have developed a concept for a rammed earth house that generates energy from a lake on its roof.
Designed for a rural site in Vancouver, the self-sustaining HOUS.E+ would use turbines embedded in the walls to produce electricity from water being pumped through a system of pipes.
Additional electricity would come from photovoltaic panels on the rooftops of five blocks that rise above the water and any excess power could be fed back into the national grid.
Rooms would be set 2.5 metres below ground level, where they would be heated in winter and cooled in summer from an underground pump that uses the surrounding earth as a heat source or sink.
Two courtyards at this level would let daylight down onto the sunken floor, while more natural light would filter in through skylights.
Inhabitants would also be able to harvest their own food by cultivating an ecosystem of fish, seafood and plants beneath the surface of the water.
We also recently featured a self-sustaining house in rural China, which you can see here.
Here’s some text from Polifactory:
Hous.E+ is designed to combine new and old techniques in order to create a not only a resourceful building regarding energy efficiency and sustainability but also well equipped to actively respond to future demands of smart grid systems where energy surplus is distributed and agriculture within the city is a reality.
Above: solar energy and geothermal heat exchange
Designed for a competition in Vancouver, called “100 Mile House”, this project is more than just a concept, but reality with a twist. Therefore, it is based upon existing smart technologies, but goes a step further on solutions that haven’t been explored so far. In this house water is not only stored and re-used but also is part of a cycle that generates power throughout a series of wall embedded micro hydro-turbines. Unnecessary transportation of materials is avoid making a significant difference into the overall carbon foot print emission balance.
Above: hydropower
Hous.E+ is build upon a rammed earth wall technique that is unaffected by rain, fire or pests, plus it doesn’t require any further finishing. The walls act like breathing structures, allowing air exchange without significant heat loss, working naturally as a thermal mass, storing heat in winter and rejecting in the summer, eliminating the need for air conditioning.
Above: aquaponics healthy food growth
Hous.E+ is set to produce more energy than it consumes.
Après sa série photo sur les célébrités, le photographe Martin Schoeller a voyagé partout dans le USA au cours des derniers mois pour immortaliser les étoiles montantes des Jeux Olympiques de 2012 pour Time Magazine et Women’s Health. Des portraits de sportifs comme Gabby Douglas ou Lolo Jones.
High art in a revelatory New England field guide by William Wegman
Best known for his photographs of his beloved Weimaraners, William Wegman is an American artist with a talent for the unexpected. The recent release of his book “Hello Nature” coincides with an exhibition at Bowdoin College Museum of Art, both serving to demonstrate the artist’s intrinsic connection to nature and the New England wilderness. In the spirit of childhood—Wegman spent his summers in Maine’s Rangeley Lakes region—the compendium takes the form of a mock survival guide complete with recipes, advice and helpful anecdotes.
Wegman writes that he wished to create “a fiendish nature guide. Something that would combine the New England transcendentalism with a lifelong interest in hiking, fishing, canoeing, and birch bark. Have you ever made tea from birch bark?” For fans of his dog portraits, the woodsy art will shed light on the Wegman’s relationship to creatures. Beneath a crude drawing of a woodland critter, Wegman sums up this connection by writing, “Life wood bee boaring without animals as pets. Without pets life wood bee unbearable.”
Organizationally, Wegman’s own writings and art are broken up with a duo of essays by curators Kevin Salatino and Diana Tuite as well as a piece of short fiction by author Padgett Powell. These written works focus on Wegman’s life, his work, and the role of the environment in both. From the artist, we get a recipe for cinnamon teal duck cake, advice on birdwatching and handwritten treatises on environmental reform.
The layout of “Hello Nature” is curious. Curious in the sense that much of the writing is barely legible, the organization sporadic and the effect emotive. Curious, too, in the sense that this is not the Wegman we think we know. Weimaraners are present, but many of Wegman’s best-known works are left out. The result is that his work is given context outside of the celebrity buzz that dressed-up dogs have earned him. In short, the book is an honest look at the artist and the naturalist.
“Hello Nature” is available for purchase from The Bowdoin Store and on Amazon. The accompanying exhibition of over 100 works is on view at Bowdoin College Museum of Art through 21 October 2012.
MIT Media Lab’s CityCar concept had been in the works for years prior to its unveiling as “Hiriko” (Basque for ‘urban car’) this past January; a new video demo is the occasion for a recent wave of press. The two-person electric vehicle has attracted quite a bit of attention for its manifold innovations, including the (not yet street legal) electric chassis:
The design utilizes a novel technology called Robot Wheels. The Robot Wheel modules are controlled electronically using by-wire systems made popular by the aerospace industry and is attached to the four corners of the foldable chassis designed by the MIT team. Each Robot Wheel can be independently controlled allowing the CityCar to execute tight maneuvers that are helpful when driving in cities such as spinning on its own axis to achieve an “O-turn.” The removal of traditional drivetrain elements like gasoline engine, transmissions, and gearboxes allows for an unencumbered chassis thus freeing up space for folding linkages.
The “folding linkages” between the two sets of wheels allows the Hiriko to fold from eight feet long down to five, and coupled with the pivoting wheelbase, the car takes up just one-third of a standard parking space: it’s literally a straightforward solution to maximizing curbside parking, with potential to alleviate pockets of congestion caused by poor parallel parking. Moreover, the novelty of the canopy-style windshield (seen in the video below) belies its true benefits: the upward-swinging door safely deposits both passengers on the curb. (This would also be a boon to door-fearing cyclists.)
Labored voiceover aside, the demo of the chassis at 1:00 is pretty cool….
But—lest the Hiriko become the next Segway—the technology angle is just one side of the story: the vehicle has vertical and horizontal implications, from manufacturing to transit dynamics. The Times‘ Wheels blog has a brief history of the CityCar project and its economic upshot and the Guardian is optimistic about its social impact. Beyond the hardware innovations, Hiriko was developed with a sort of hybrid ZipCar-meets-bikeshare accessibility model:
The team also created a new model of mobility that would utilize the CityCar and other lightweight EVs in a shared-use scheme. By deploying CityCars at charging points distributed throughout a metropolitan area the MIT team envisioned a new network of vehicles that would allow any user of the system to simply walk-up, swipe an access card, pick-up a vehicle, and drive to any other charging point. Called Mobility-on-Demand, this strategy would provide high levels of convenience and flexibility found in shared systems like bike sharing programs, available in much of Europe and now in North America.
This, of course, is none other than the ‘First and Last Mile’ problem, those tiresome gaps between your home, your mass transit hub, and your workplace. In many cases, it’s more convenient to default to a car, which will take you from door-to-door (or at least garage-to-garage) despite the congestion and footprint; hence the challenge for urban planners. An article in Pacific Standard sums it up nicely:
Drivers use them like shared bikes, picking up a car at a Hiriko depot near where they’re coming from, and dropping it at one near their destination. Thus they address the “last mile” problem of mass transit and “might be most useful at the edges of cities where the transit network is sparse,” explains architect Kent Larson, director of the MIT research group. “In an inner city where it’s very walkable to begin with and then you have good trams or subways or buses, you don’t need the vehicles so much. But at the edges you have a desperate need for additional mobility.”
Even so, the Hiriko strikes me as at least one step (and one generation) removed from reality, at best a new subcategory of public transportation… and at worst the electric successor to the Mini Cooper and the SmartCar; simply a smaller, more efficient car, as opposed to an ideological breakthrough. This last characterization is not intended as a criticism but a counterpoint to hyperbolic headlines such as “Car Sharing With Crazy Folding Cars Is Coming To Europe“; for what it’s worth, I have utmost respect for the “anti-disciplinary research team” behind the Smart Cities project and their late adviser William Mitchell (1944-2010). In fact, I believe that the Hiriko is an absolutely worthy solution to their stated mission “to take on the biggest issues facing cities today: congestion, inefficient energy and land-use, air and noise pollution, and carbon emissions leading to global warming.”
In fairness to the Smart Cities team, the CityCar is just one of the three concepts—the most highly developed one—in their original propsal for “Mobility-on-Demand.”1
Mobility-on-Demand systems also addresses what transportation planners call the “First Mile, Last Mile” problem of mass transit systems, by providing mobility near or at a user’s origin and final destination by creating a intermodal network that is complementary and synergistic to transit systems. In addition to the CityCar, the Smart Cities team also designed a folding electric motor scooter called the RoboScooter, and an electric assist bicycle called the GreenWheel. The GreenWheel integrates Lithium-ion batteries with electric motors into a modular hub unit that could easily be retrofitted into any standard bicycle. Together with the CityCar, the RoboScooter and GreenWheel would create a Mobility-on-Demand ecosystem of lightweight and low-energy EVs, where users can select the appropriate vehicle for each trip segment.
The Destruction of Cars est une série de photographies de Jody Daunton inspirée d’un passage du livre Catcher in the Rye de J.D.Salinger sur la place trop importante de la voiture dans notre société. Une illustration de ces propos avec des images de voitures détruites à découvrir dans la suite.
Simply love the aspect of using cork in a design, and Antonio Joaquim Rocha has got it pat down with the Sourk headphones. Designed for the luxury segment, the headphones combine wireless technology with noble materials such as cork, leather and stainless steel. Apparently the acoustic insulation properties of the cork allow the user to enjoy sounds at full throttle without interfering with the surrounding environment.
I consider myself as an amateur cook but the aspect that still intimidates me is the skilful chopping that the professionals execute. The technique of Jamie Oliver is hard to replicate, simply because most kitchen knives do not encourage the proper grip. It may not be obvious to all but you need to grip the knife so that your thumb and index finger pinch the blade forward of the bolster and handle. DesignPro Knives imbibe this and make chopping a breeze.
As Chicago Cutlery explain, “Majority of knife designs actually guide the user to hold the knife at the handle, away from the ideal grip. Pros pinch the blade for better control, accuracy and speed – and recommend this position in cooking classes.”
DesignPro offers a dynamic design that highlights features an innovative grip which guides your hand to the best position on the knife for superior control and faster, easier cutting.
The knives are made with Japanese stainless steel that runs from the tip of the knife to the end of the handle for durability and an ultra-sharp blade for effortless cutting.
Each knife in the line: Chef, Bread, Utility, Santoku, Partoku, and Parer, were individually designed specifically for its task while ensuring the innovative grip philosophy for the complete lineup.
A view of Monumenta 2012 at the Grand Palais in Paris. (Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier)
Just when you thought that illy couldn’t out-dazzle its collaboration with Anish Kapoor, the espresso purveyor has teamed with Daniel Buren. The latest addition to illy’s “Artist Cups” series was created in conjunction with Buren’s Monumenta installation, “Excentrique(s),” which recently turned the Grand Palais into a kind of rainbow-kaleidoscope. Tasked with creating a site-specific work for the 14,500-square-foot nave of the Paris building (and following in the footsteps of previous Monumenta artists including Richard Serra and Christian Boltanski), the French artist was initially stumped. “The breakthrough came when I finally realized that this iron and glass architecture was based on the circle and the main tool used to design the building was a compass,” said Buren in an interview with Marc Sanchez, artistic director of Monumenta. “The most important thing for me was the confrontation between a device placed quite low down—a sort of ceiling made of hundreds of clear, colored circles—and the great height of the nave of the Grand Palais. I expected this extreme tension to emphasise not the hugeness of the building but its volume, left as empty as possible. As if to give shape to the air circulating in it.” The exhibition closed last month, but the colorful circles live on as saucers in illy’s Daniel Buren espresso cups. The beautifully packaged set of four, now available in illy’s online store, combines the Monumenta circles’ blue, yellow, orange, and green (chosen because they were the only available hues for colored film that was stretched over specially made circular steel frames) with Buren’s signature stripes, in black and white. continued…
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Just when you thought that illy couldn’t out-dazzle 