Le photographe français Julien Palast nous présente sa série de clichés appelée « Skindeep ». Reprenant la beauté de la forme humaine et de ses contours avec des corps enrobés, le rendu coloré et original est très réussi. Des courbes et des matières à découvrir dans la suite en images.
According to a recent study released by the UCLA Center on the Everyday Lives of Families, U.S. families have reached “material saturation.” The back areas of our homes (closets, basements, attics, cupboards) are so stuffed with possessions that our things spill out into our front areas (table tops, floors, furniture) and create more visible clutter than ever before in the history of the world. We’re no longer enjoying leisure activities and our children’s stuff is at the top of our clutter piles.
Published July 1, 2012, Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century examined the homes of 32 southern California families. The visits took place from 2001 to 2005 and involved families with two parents who worked full-time and who had 2 or 3 children in the home (and at least one of those children was between 7 and 12 years old). The families represented multiple ethnic groups, neighborhoods, occupations, and income levels. Data was collected on each family through week-long in-person site visits, interviews, videos, and surveys.
The study makes one point very clear — clutter and children have a strong correlation.
Our data suggests that each new child in a household leads to a 30 percent increase in a family’s inventory of possessions during the preschool years alone.
How is it that children lead to such a drastic increase (30 percent!) in possessions? The researchers provide two explanations: parental guilt because of working outside the home and generous grandparents.
The United States has 3.1 percent of the world’s children, yet U.S. families annually purchase more than 40 percent of the total toys consumed globally. Spilling out of children’s bedrooms and into living rooms, dining rooms, kitchens, and parents’ bedrooms, the playthings of America’s kids are ubiquitous in middle-class homes. … A sense among working parents that they have less time to spend with their children may be spurring them to shower kids with toys to compensate for a perceived loss of quality time at home. Other relatives contribute to children’s material assemblages, including about $500 spent by grandparents each year on toys, clothes, books, and other gifts. Given the high divorce rate in the U.S., many children wind up getting gifts from multiple sets of grandparents.
Another interesting correlation emerged during the study of the 32 families was that the number of items on a family’s refrigerator seemed to have tracked to how much stuff cluttered up the home. The more densely populated the front and sides of the refrigerator, the more crammed the house was with stuff.
… the refrigerator panel may function as a measuring stick for how intensively families are participating in consumer purchasing and how many household goods they retain over their lifetimes.
U.S. families are no longer taking advantage of the bicycles in their garages, the hot tubs or swimming pools in their backyards, their swing sets, or their patio equipment. Items conducive to relaxation were purchased by the families in the study, but rarely or never used.
Leisure is indoors. Most families have cluttered home offices or desk spaces with computers that are visually stress inducing and intrude on indoor leisure time, reminding families of workplace commitments. The material residue of families’ vanishing leisure includes these overused home offices and rarely used back yard patios and play areas.
In a recent interview in The New York Times, Anthony P. Graesch, an assistant professor of anthropology at Connecticut College and one of the researchers of the study, commented that he believes U.S. families are overwhelmed by their stuff. Stress levels are almost as high as the clutter.
In this interview, he provided more reasons for how he believes physical possessions have taken over U.S. families.
We can see how families are trying to cut down on the sheer number of trips to the store by buying bulk goods. How they can come to purchase more, and then not remember, and end up double purchasing.
In short, a family’s desire to save time ended up costing space and creating anxiety. Finally, he postulated families could reclaim their homes and stress levels if they became more comfortable with letting things go.
The inflow of objects is relentless. The outflow is not. We don’t have rituals, mechanisms, for getting rid of stuff.
Like this site? Buy Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week from Amazon.com today.
Maple gets made over into cubes, flakes and wafers
To those who grew up tapping maple trees, the toothsome sap is more than the backbone for a flavorful syrup. Maple is as much an ingredient as a way of life, which goes a long way toward explaining its cultish following. Tonewood, a budding maple company that sources product from a number of family-owned operations in North America, is capitalizing on maple’s applications beyond syrup—forming it into wafers, cubes, flakes, creams and seasoning. As Tonewood founder Dori Ross explains, “I want to promote the versatility of maple.”
“It is the perfect natural sweetener,” says Ross. “It is low on the Glycemic Index, high in minerals and antioxidants. It is also a low calorie sweetener and you only need a bit as it is sweeter than refined sugar.” Tonewood’s variation of form allows sap-crazed eaters to sprinkle maple on capuccinos, fresh fruit, salads and even meat.
Ditching the plastic jug common in maple production, Tonewood goes for a refined aesthetic more aligned with Italian olive oil. “Maple has an under-realized versatility and it’s time that it was showcased in a modern way,” says Ross. “The majority of maple in Vermont is sold in plastic jugs with farm scenes on jug. The beautiful color tones of the maple grades need to be seen.”
Due in a large part to climate change and shorter winters, the maple industry has seen truncated harvest seasons and smaller yields in recent years. As supply drops, appreciation for the once-bountiful product rises. Commenting on the glory of maple, Ross says, “It is the only crop that you don’t cut down, don’t harvest, don’t spray with pesticides or herbicides. Maple trees just keep on producing sap generation after generation.”
Tonewood products are available at the company’s online shop.
Images by James Thorne
Wave Paint Bucket is a paint-can redesign that is done pretty impressively. What you have is a lid that is fashioned with a wave and the paint tin that features a groove around the rim. It’s been done before, but this is a refined version. Essentially, the groove kinda doubles up as a funnel to pour out the paint, the lid doubles up as a palette and the functional style of opening the can makes the whole user experience a lot better! Super!
Designers: Yin-Kai Lee, Fu-Yu Cai and Shuo-Ren Shy
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(The Wave Makes It Better was originally posted on Yanko Design)
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Retour sur ce projet d’architecture « Fincube », le nom de cette structure pré-fabriquée qui peut être installée et démontée en très peu de temps. Située à Ritten en Italie, cette construction au design très réussi est une création du studio allemand Aisslinger. Plus d’images à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.
A bird’s skull inspired the hollow heel of these 3D-printed shoes by Dutch fashion designer Marieka Ratsma and American architect Kostika Spaho.
Ratsma and Spaho used the shape of a bird’s cranium for the front of the shoe, with the tapered beak as the spike of the heel.
The lightweight and efficient structure of the hollow skull allowed the shoe to be 3D-printed using less material.
Other 3D-printed shoes we’ve featured on Dezeen include ‘invisible’ and mirrored designs by Andreia Chaves and a bespoke pair by Marloes ten Bhömer.
See all our stories about shoes »
See all our stories about 3D printing »
Photography by Thomas van Schaik.
Here’s some more information from the designer:
The Biomimicry shoe is the result of a unique collaboration between Dutch fashion designer Marieka Ratsma and American architect Kostika Spaho. The idea for this shoe highlights the aesthetics and the shape of the bird skull, along with the characteristics of the lightweight and highly differentiated bone structure within the cranium. Such structure requires less support material, resulting in optimal efficiency, strength and elegance. Nature has been the main source of inspiration for the making and shaping of this shoe.
By looking at nature in a different way, she can open our eyes to ingenious systems and ways of life. Nature can inspire us towards inventive designs and productive, successful collaborations. Also for fashion, nature can be a great inspiration, especially for the use of materials and smarter constructions. Fast developing techniques such as 3D printing can help us by giving the possibility to approach nature’s shapes even more closely. Nature functions as no other in the use of sources, collaborations and bundling forces. The insight that nature gives us can be used for a new way of approaching design.
The post Biomimicry Shoe by Marieka Ratsma
and Kostika Spaho appeared first on Dezeen.
Up above is an Apple patent drawing from 2002, showing the Apple Store glass staircases many of us know. The staircase sides are made from separate panes of glass.
This past Saturday your correspondent attended the re-opening of Apple’s SoHo, NYC flagship store. The newly-remodeled space is a heckuva lot bigger than it used to be, but what is bound to catch any architect/designer’s eye is the staircase. At first blush it seems the same as before, but look closer and you’ll see that this…
…on the sides, looks like this:
It’s insane; the sides are made from a zigzagging yet continuous, seam-free piece of glass that looks to exceed 30 feet at its longest point.
The responses to the BloesemKids' Craft projects round-ups are really nice so I thought I keep brining them to you … I have said it before but almost every week you can find a new craft project at BKids. Contributors like Teri from Giddy Giddy, Véronique from Pichouline and Jennifer Kirk from Ambrosia Creative always know how to come up with something nice and simple to either create yourself or togther with your child…
The projects in the image above you can find via these links: 1. Spring Wardrobe Update 2. Puppets 3. secret message decoder 4. mini-viewer 5. Hand-drum 6. The Long-Reach Gizmo;
Dezeen Wire: the Architects’ Council of Europe has condemned the proposed exclusion of 90% of architecture firms from the public procurement market.
In their latest report, the council has urged the EU to amend drafted legislation to help small and medium-sized practices bid for and obtain work in the public sector.
Read the full press release below:
ACE deplores the exclusion of 90% of architectural firms from the public procurement market, and calls on the EU to amend its legislative proposal in order to achieve improved market access for SMEs
Amendments submitted by the Architects’ Council of Europe (ACE) in response to the proposed modernisation of the Public Procurement Directive stress that the proposals will not improve access to public procurement for architects. An ACE study of professional practice reveals that the application of turnover requirements would exclude 90% of architectural firms from public procurement contracts, thereby failing to improve the SME access that the Directive sets out to achieve.
ACE recently submitted draft amendments regarding the draft Public Procurement Directive, to Rapporteur, Marc Tarabella. While welcoming the Commission’s decision to modernise the Directive, ensure efficient use of public funds, improve the business environment and generally increase SME access to the market, ACE reiterated the fact that current access to public contracts for architects is virtually non-existent. Misapplication of earlier provisions has led to an almost total loss of potential benefits – a waste of public funds and a serious handicap to EU competitiveness in the global market.
The ACE submission seeks to:
– facilitate participation of architectural firms (mostly SMEs) in public procurement;
– promote selection procedures and award criteria based on quality;
– ensure that the specific nature of intellectual services is taken into account.
SMEs: ACE advocates simplifying administrative demands and opposes setting turnover requirements for architectural service providers at three times the estimated contract value. ACE believes that it is not possible to find a limit that is appropriate to all procurement procedures and professional services, and suggests deleting this restriction and putting more emphasis on qualitative selection criteria, based on principles of sustainable development. At worst, any turnover requirements should not exceed the contract value.
Choice of procedures: ACE suggests the inclusion of design contests followed by the negotiated procedure as a standard approach to the procurement of architectural services, given the unsuitability of electronic auctions for intellectual services. ACE calls for more disaggregation and opposes centralized procurement and framework agreements as they exclude SMEs/young professionals from the market.
Contract awarding criteria: ACE welcomes the substitution of “lowest price” with “lowest cost” (including life-cycle assessment) but regrets that procuring authorities remain free to award either on price or cost. ACE calls for awards for intellectual services to be based only on “economically most advantageous tender” and to prohibit lowest price. Price is the worst criterion as it favours the candidate who devotes least time to a solution, which then impacts on the quality of the project.
ACE Secretary General Ian Pritchard said: “Unlike some other goods or services, architectural services are intellectual services which cannot be precisely defined at the outset. ACE believes that for the revised the Public Procurement Directive to achieve its ambition for growth and employment, it must take account of the specific nature of architectural services”.
If adopted on 10 October 2012, the Directive will have to be implemented by Member States by 30 June 2014 latest. To download the ACE submission to Marc Tarabella, the European Parliament Rapporteur, go to: http://www.ace-cae.eu/public/contents/getdocument/content_id/1393
The post Most architects to be excluded
from public procurement appeared first on Dezeen.
Experienced Interaction Designer
Ergonomidesign
Stockholm, Sweden
Ergonomidesign, one of the world’s top-ranking and most award-winning design agencies, is seeking an experienced interaction Designer who wants to be part of their Digital User Experience Design Team. They are seeking a person with deep experience of responsive web and multiplatform project. The ideal candidate has taken an Interaction Design lead role in large web projects and be used to work for large organisations as clients.
The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.
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.
