Hasta La Ideas

The first thing that I added to my workstation, when I became a serious online writer, was a set of coasters. Coffee mugs, water bottle and last minute sandwich plates have a knack of leaving a stain and messing up a perfectly clean table-top. Hence to maintain the sanctity of my sacred space, a coaster became a must. If you are as finicky about keeping your desk as spotless as me, then the Keyboard Coasters is a quirky solution that I recommend. Perhaps it’s that geek-quotient of keyboard design that is striking, nevertheless, it’s worth a try.

Package includes a set of 4 coasters: 2 black coasters and 2 white coasters

Designer: Yujin Ono [ Available @ YD Store for $20 ]

Keyboard Coasters by Yujin Ono are available @ YD Store for $20

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(The Keyboards And Coasters Story was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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2. Democratize Coasters
3. Hot or Cold, Cup Sleeves and Coasters

Though many contemporary soft goods companies offer handmade products, few take their process as far as Kyle Mosholder. The one-man-team designer and maker behind Brooklyn’s d’emploi works from his home studio armed with just a single Depression-era Singer sewing machine. Mosholder makes small batches of bags and garments using…

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Fifty billion dollars is the Hurricane Sandy damage estimate for the New York region. Which is nuts; it means if we spent $49.5 billion on defensive measures, we’d still be $500 million ahead.

Of course, even if spending that much were politically possible, we’d never be able to anticipate and design solutions to every single problem. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t trying. One major issue is being addressed with a fascinating potential solution: The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate is hoping to reduce subway flooding by installing gigantic, inflatable plugs.

If this problem and that solution were presented to you at design school, you’d quickly home in on the two big issues: Materials and deployment. What are the things made out of, and how do we get them into place? At first I thought the same thing all of you probably did—we deploy Jose Carreras and a team of Metropolitan Opera singers into the tunnels during a hurricane, and put them to work blowing up gigantic balloons that only their lungs could fill—but the DHS went a different route.

Their man with a plan is Dr. Ever J. Barbero, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering with a specialty in advanced materials. (He’s been working on the problem for years, prompted half a decade ago by a surprisingly prescient DHS.) During his materials research phase Dr. Barbero contacted a company called ILC Dover, which is like a super design-build firm specializing in product design for government and industry—they made the airbags for earlier Mars Rover landings—and they recommended he use Vectran (even though I believe Jose Carreras is allergic to it).

Vectran is technically known as an “aromatic polyester”—I don’t like the sound of that, but it probably can’t make the NYC subway system smell worse—and it’s comprised of fibers spun out of a liquid crystal polymer. It’s moisture-resistant and “stable in hostile environments,” so we could even use it at that sketchy J-train station at Sutphin Boulevard. It’s typically used as a reinforcing material in boat sails, ropes, high-end bicycle tires, and even woven into the strings of rackets made by Yonex for badminton, a sport I’m told Jose Carreras is quite good at.

Says the Department of Homeland Security of the Resilient Tunnel Project, as it’s officially called:

“We’re utilizing the strongest fabrics in the world,” explains [Project Manager Dr. John] Fortune. “Textile engineering is cost-prohibitive, so we sought to obtain fabrics available on the market.” Using a commercially available fabric reduced development costs and will make plugs more affordable for mass transit operators.

In Dr. Barbero’s early trials, he had an enormous spherical plug made of the stuff—and it tore right down the middle during testing. The water pressure in a flooding tunnel is apparently very high, unlike in my shower. Barbero then doubled down on the layers, adding an inner polyurethane bladder, and added a third layer on the outside made from Vectran belts woven in a cross-hatch pattern, like those Nike Innevas. The idea is that if one belt failed, the surrounding ones would prevent a catastrophic failure. But there is more testing to be done, with an estimated several more years before the thing is ready to go.

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Industrial designer Konstantin Grcic worked with furniture brand Emeco to create the chairs and tables that furnish the new Parrish Art Museum on Long Island, recently completed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron.

The Parrish Art Museum recently moved to a new building by Herzog & de Meuron, a single-storey structure near the town of Southampton that resembles two long, narrow barns placed side by side.

Konstantin Grcic and Emeco’s Parrish collection includes a table, chair and lounge chair, all with curving legs made from recycled aluminium and seats made of reclaimed pine.

“The Parrish chair was given a round tube, forming a belt that defines the space around you – a space where you can feel protected,” said Grcic, adding that the chair manages to feel spacious while using very little material.

“The pine on the aluminium chair looks almost like tractor seat,” he added, “which has something old fashioned and genuine about it.”

Above: photograph by Konstantin Grcic

The collection will be launched in Milan next April, with tabletops made of high-pressure laminate rather than pine.

Grcic recently designed a mirror for a poodle as part of the Architecture for Dogs project and also contributed a bench covered in a glass mosaic to an exhibition at the V&A during the London Design Festival.

Above: photograph by Richard Lewin

Famous for its aluminium chairs, the American brand Emeco was founded in 1944 with a commission from the US government to produce the now classic Navy chair, also known as the 1006. Earlier this year we reported on a collection of aluminium chairs designed by French architect Jean Nouvel for Emeco.

See all our stories about chairs »
See all our stories about Konstantin Grcic »
See all our stories about Emeco »

Above: photograph by Richard Lewin

Photographs are by Clo’e Floirat except where stated.

Here’s some more information from the museum:

Parrish Art Museum
Mobile interiors by Emeco + Konstantin Grcic
Museum opening Nov. 10, 2012 in Water Mill, NYC, USA

Emeco and Konstantin Grcic collaborate on interior installation at the New Parrish Art Museum in South Hampton, NYC.

“The location on Long Island brings a feeling of countryside and the design process was always defined by finding the most straightforward solution fitting the surrounding – the specific needs for this specific museum in this specific region,” Konstantin Grcic reflects.

Based on local materials from local manufacturers, Konstantin Grcic matches recycled aluminium and retrieved timber with the bare building, both as fixed and mobile furniture for the Parrish Art Museum. The interior installation includes tables and chairs created in collaboration with American manufacturer Emeco.

“The collaboration with Emeco was always an important part of the project, something I had in mind as an obvious choice for the kind of furniture we needed. It is simply the only company I could think of who could bring a nice mix for this interior concept, specialists in aluminium, delivering another kind of material appearance, environmentally sound, perfect for the both indoor and outdoor and being such a truly American company – it was a perfect match,” Grcic continues.

“When Konstantin asked me if Emeco would be interested in collaborating with him on the Parrish Art Museum I was thrilled. Konstantin is one of the most innovative and original industrial designers of today,” says Emeco’s CEO Gregg Buchbinder. “Konstantin’s degree of perfection combined with his analytical rigour made the product development process deliberate and thoughtful. He managed to leverage our heritage and at the same time push Emeco into the future. The Parrish Chair reminds me of something Le Corbusier might have designed in the 1920s, yet at the same time, it looks fresh, modern, and original – it’s a real artifact of our current culture, a future classic,” Buchbinder continues.

“I have always had a fascination and admiration of the hard physical labour of the production of the Emeco’s iconic Navy chair. My ambition for the collaboration was, therefore, to do something that uses the same aluminium work but make the process more effective, less physically challenging. I think the design of the Parrish chair comes from a close understanding of what Emeco really can do,” says Konstantin.

“Developing the mobile interiors for the Parrish museum brings us to the peculiar psychology around chairs used in public spaces – exploring the idea of comfort and non-comfort. The best you can give someone in a public space is a chair that really feels like a chair. Considering the public self-awareness in a museum seat, the Parrish chair was given a round tube, forming a belt that defines the space around you – a space where you can feel protected. The chair is also spacious, achieved using very little material. Put together the pine on the aluminum chair looks almost like tractor seat, which has something old fashioned and genuine about it. At the final installation the Parrish chairs are strong individuals, yet the collection, I must say, looks even greater in multiplication. A density of tube forms composed in a very nice subtle way, an astonishing view in numbers,” Konstantin concludes.

The post Parrish by Konstantin Grcic and Emeco
for the Parrish Art Museum appeared first on Dezeen.

Traditionally, one of the challenges faced by creative communities in a Toronto or a Cincinnati has been brain drain: Talented designers are lured away by bigger cities like New York and San Francisco, leaving their hometowns in the dust. While that’s been good for the big cities, it’s lousy for the small cities in that the local citizens are deprived of a potentially helpful exposure to design.

Nowadays that’s starting to change. Cincinnati native John Dixon received his degree in Industrial Design at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, then picked up stakes and headed to Brooklyn for a furniture design internship. While he was there he learned a ton, and rather than stick around like most starry-eyed NYC newcomers, he decided to bring what he’d learned back to Ohio with him.

He wasn’t alone. While schools like DAAP do a good job of deploying students around the globe for internships, a bunch of them found themselves back in Cincinnati. As fellow ID grad Mike Nauman told a local paper, “We all saw what was going on in the world,” Nauman said. “We all fell out of love with industrial design.”

So three years ago a core of them formed a Cincinnati-based industrial design collective, Losantiville LTD., to fall back in love with design. And this time it would be on their own terms.

At Losantiville, they would pool their resources and rent a storefront. They would share a space and tools. They would build what they wanted and how they wanted. They would succeed or fail on their own merits. They hung a sign in the front that says proudly: “We made all of this right here.”

…It works because industrial designers do not need a lot of individual space, but they do occasionally need expensive tools. “This works for a person only if you are actually making things,” Nauman said. “Only if you are making dust.”

Each member pays $175 per month, which covers rent and utilities and dumpster pick ups — this is a group that makes a lot of garbage. Each month, the left over money is saved for large group purchases.
The biggest one so far: a laser cutter called a CNC machine, which stands for “computer numerical control” and cost $10,000. The machine is quite useful, but it also had symbolic significance. The ability to buy a machine like this, meant they had made it. They were serious.

Sounds awesome, no? I don’t know what the rent looks like in Cincinnati, but it’s gotta be a damn sight better than what you pay in NYC or SF.

As it stands, Losantiville consists of nine designers spread over six brands, all DAAP ID grads, and currently all dudes. They’ve got a shop, they’ve got a storefront, and you can peruse their wares here.

Here’s a vid showing what they do:

See also:
» E13 Workshop
» 2nd Shift Studio

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