Disney Pixar has released a preview of The Blue Umbrella, their upcoming six-minute animated short directed bySaschka Unseld. It will feature a musical score by composer Jon Brion and the voice of singer Sarah Jaffe. The Blue Umbrella is set to play in front of Disney Pixar’s upcoming animated film Monsters University, which will be released in theaters on Friday, June 21, 2013.
International trade fair for home and contract textiles Heimtextil is the biggest international trade fair for home and
contract textiles and the gl..
Most notable for their high-tech toys and innovative electronics, Paris-based Parrot takes a step off the beaten path with Flower Power, a sensor-driven gardening gadget that aims to help thumbs stay green on the go. Resembling a plastic plant stock, the small indoor/outdoor device gathers soil information and uses…
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While the rest of us were enjoying the dulcet tones of Bing Crosby, Amanda Ghassaei of Instructables was as busy as ever over the holiday: she posted a ‘compilation’ video of her experiments in 3D printing 12” records, for which she has unsurprisingly published the plans on Instructables, on the day after Christmas. “In order to explore the current limits of 3D printing technology, I’ve created a technique for converting digital audio files into 3D-printable, 33RPM records and printed a few prototypes that play on ordinary turntables.” Suffice it to say that it’s a significant improvement upon Fred Murphy’s diverting Fisher Price records:
This project was my first experiment extending this idea beyond electronics. I printed these records on a UV-cured resin printer called the Objet Connex500. Like most 3D printers, the Objet creates an object by depositing material layer by layer until the final form is achieved. This printer has incredibly high resolution: 600dpi in the x and y axes and 16 microns in the z axis, some of the highest resolution possible with 3D printing at the moment. Despite all its precision, the Objet is still at least an order of magnitude or two away from the resolution of a real vinyl record. When I first started this project, I wasn’t sure that the resolution of the Objet would be enough to reproduce audio, but I hoped that I might produce something recognizable by approximating the groove shape as accurately as possible with the tools I had.
The project isn’t a major breakthrough in 3D printing (per our Year-in-Review prognostication), but it’s certainly an inventive bit of lateral thinking. Ghassaei notes that even the top-of-the-line Object Connex500 cannot emulate the traditional process of stamping vinyl (video after the jump), citing digital equivalencies to denote the low fidelity of the 3D printed records, which sound something like listening to a radio broadcast through a thin wall.
Though the audio quality is low—the records have a sampling rate of 11kHz (a quarter of typical mp3 audio) and 5-6 bit resolution (less than one thousandth of typical 16 bit resolution)—the audio output is still easily recognizable… The 3D modeling in this project was far too complex for traditional drafting-style CAD techniques, so I wrote an program to do this conversion automatically. It works by importing raw audio data, performing some calculations to generate the geometry of a 12″ record, and eventually exporting this geometry straight to a 3D printable file format.
The effect is most felicitous for Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place,” where the lo-fi crackle and narrow frequency range somehow underscore the warm solace of the opening track from Kid A. Daft Punk, on the other hand, sounds better with more bass as a rule of thumb, while Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker” needs more treble; the alt-rock cuts need a more volume all around. (The song selection is something like the weeknight playlist at any given bar in the Mission or Williamsburg… not that there’s anything wrong with that: it’s easier to judge the quality of familiar tunes than obscure ones.)
Speaking of reuse, I’ve mentioned how I do what I’m guessing many of you do, and reuse all of my incoming cardboard boxes by turning them inside-out for re-shipping. Well, the sticky people over at 3M and Scotch apparently want in on this box-reusing action. In the bottom of my last Staples package I found this freebie:
Yep, Scotch/3M now answers “the three R’s” with “four R’s” of their own: “Reinforce, Re-cover, Remove, Re-seal.” Their four new products aimed at getting you to reuse cardboard boxes for shipping are as follows:
Reinforce: Corner and Edge Reinforcers. The user is meant to place these across a box’s centerline and on the corners, to shore up dumpy boxes after they’ve been through the UPS grinder. It’s really just pieces of tape, with the corner reinforcers being a tape square partially bisected by a slit, so you can hit all three dimensions of a corner.
Re-cover: Cardboard-colored, self-adhering paper that you cut to size, then stick over the delivery-system graffiti on your used box.
Remove: A label remover that, as far as I can tell, is some type of shallow-bladed safety knife.
Re-seal: Simple, self-adhering mailer flaps like you find at the FedEx.
My first thought was that these are extraneous, as any ID’er or craftsperson worth their salt already has all of these raw materials or can whip some up. But for high-volume applications, like offices or businesses that need to turn a lot of boxes around quickly, I could see these being useful. And as I wrote in the post on the Globe Guard Reuseable Box, anything that sets people onto reusing before they resort to recycling is probably a good thing.
After a relatively quiet start in August 2012 young woodworker Ryden Rizzo—producing under the moniker Allied Maker—quickly found his supremely simple homeware designs garnering much attention around the web. Now with the holiday media rush behind him, Rizzo returns to his workshop to update some of his stately designs…
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American musician Brian Lewis Smith has made his latest track I Could See You As A Mayan available exclusively to Dezeen Music Project. Right now, this is the only place you’ll be able to hear it.
I Could See You As A Mayan is a gentle, lo-fi instrumental with delicate keyboard melodies and bass-lines that emerge from the warm crackle of tape fuzz. “It was the first time that I used a cassette tape recorder extensively,” Smith told Dezeen Music Project. “The idea was to amplify all of the little crunch and hiss sounds that come from using older gear in order to create a bed of texture that the tune can lay upon.”
This production technique provides the perfect platform for Smith, whose background is in jazz music, to demonstrate his musicianship. Melodic phrases weave intricately in and out of earshot throughout the track, with subtle variations and flourishes that only reveal themselves after repeat listens.
You can listen to another track by Brian Lewis Smith that we featured on Dezeen Music Project last year here.
About Dezeen Music Project | More tracks | Submit your track
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You As A Mayan by Brian Lewis Smith appeared first on Dezeen.
Japanese studio FORM/Kouichi Kimura Architects designed this concrete house in Shiga to be deliberately alien to its neighbours (+ slideshow).
Named House of Silence, the two-storey building contains rooms with split levels and varying ceiling heights, creating a segmented structure with overlapping volumes and protruding walls. “The client wanted to have a house which is not influenced by the environment of its location,” explains architect and studio founder Kouichi Kimura.
“This house will give you the experience of going through a variety of sequences, like going through cloisters with the light,” he adds.
Above: photograph is by Kei Nakajima
The roof staggers up to its highest point in the north-west corner, creating a tower that Kimura refers to as a belfry.
Unlike the surrounding houses, most of the building’s walls and ceilings are concrete and the architect has also picked out a few surfaces with textured ceramic tiles.
A small courtyard contains seating areas slotted into horizontal recesses.
Some furniture inside the house uses the same materials as the architecture, so tiled worktops appear to extend from the walls and a glass dining table rests upon a precast concrete base that matches its backdrop.
One long concrete wall extends along the north-west facade, enclosing a large parking area for residents.
Japanese architect Kouichi Kimura set up his studio in Shiga in 1991 and other projects he’s completed include the House of Representation that features a large light chimney and the House of Integration based on traditional folk houses.
See more stories about FORM/Kouichi Kimura Architects »
Photography is by Takumi Ota.
Here’s some more information from Kouichi Kimura:
House of Silence
The client wanted to have a house which is not influenced by the environment of its location.
This architecture, which is composed of a concrete volume, has not got many windows and is closed by walls, but has got a variety of space inside that you will never imagine from outside.
The rough concrete finish, shiny tiles and an opening like a belfry will give you a hint of the variation of spaces inside.
The inside spaces are divided by the ceiling height, the different levels of floor and type of lights, and are then connected by the circulated line of flow.
Above: photograph is by Kei Nakajima
The inner court is cut off from the outside environment and shows a variety of expressions as the light changes.
Above: photograph is by Kei Nakajima
Moreover, the contrast of the height makes the space even deeper and wider than it actually is.
This house will give you the experience of going through a variety of sequences, like going through cloisters with the light.
Above: photograph is by Kei Nakajima
It exists as a landmark in the town, but it also has highly secured privacy and variety of spaces inside.
Above: photograph is by Kei Nakajima
Architects: FORM / Kouichi Kimura Architects
Location: Shiga, Japan
Client: Private
Construction Year: 2012
Site Area: 394,42 sq m
Constructed Area: 321,23 sq m
Above: ground floor plan
Above: first floor plan
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Kouichi Kimura Architects appeared first on Dezeen.
If you’re getting prepared for grad school, the MFA Products of Design priority application deadline is coming up on February 15th. The progressive program, launched at SVA, chaired by Core77’s Allan Chochinov, and having just now completed its first semester, is casting a wide net:
We are looking for all kinds of applicants for the MFA program: the highly-skilled, seeking more meaningful applications; the deeply-knowledgeable, looking for greater scale and impact; the passionate, looking for more rigor and process; and of course the iconoclastic, looking for a home.
And scraped from their Q&A page:
Q: Who should apply to this program?
A: We’ve had great interest from working designers, a few years out of school and looking for more meaning in what they do with their acquired skills. Designers at this stage are often disillusioned by pumping out toxic garbage, but they haven’t given up on their belief in the power of design. These kinds of people are precious, because they’ve got the skills in place, and they’ve got the passion to put them to more meaningful use. They just need a nurturing, challenging place to discover new opportunities in the world of design, and to really dig deep into what they uniquely have to contribute. Here I’d say, “We want you back.”
We are also looking for extraordinarily creative individuals who actually should be in design. The skill sets and vocabularies required of a design person are rapidly changing, and there are now many many places for creative people to contribute to the enterprise of design. We are looking for people with deep, comprehensive skills in a couple particular areas, and who hunger for ways to integrate those skills into something bigger. That’s the thing–we’re in the business of training people to become great designers–sure. But we’re also in the business of empowering creative, strategic, and fearless people to do great things in the world of design. Designers crave influence from the edges, so we welcome people with excellent chops in something vital, who are intensely curious about making a difference and who are enamored of the fact that design deals in scale; that a single action can multiply out to great effect.
(Some nice special effects: The Design Research class will be taught at IDEO; the Material Futures class at Material ConneXion; Design Narratives class at Project Projects; working professional faculty with deep industry connections, including Paola Antonelli, Masamichi Udagawa, Sigi Moeslinger, Jason Severs and more; heart of NYC.) Apply Page is here.
 | We fashionistas are always looking for an unique item that make us stay on top of the trend. The unique find of today is this Contrast Sleeve Leather Pullover from Thakoon. Contrast of leather and knit sweater in gray and lavender is surprisingly chic and trendy. Thick cable stitches surround the neckline and extend to the long sleeves closed by the tortoiseshell buttons at the cuff. With the classy look of the leather top and traditional look of the knit sweater, you can create semi casual or formal style with different bottoms and coordination. |
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