Coup de coeur pour Plasma Studio, qui a imaginé ce superbe complexe résidentiel appelé « Dolomitenblick ». Situé à Sesto en Italie dans la province de Bolzano, ce concept est une véritable réussite architecturale qui propose 6 lieux de résidence. L’ensemble est à découvrir en images dans la suite.
There seems to be no shortage of interest in surf culture recently. While not all of us are gifted with natural surfing ability, the draw to the sport’s free-spirited culture never seems to fade. For both legit surfers and casual enthusiasts looking to land a piece of art inspired…
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Interaction Designer/Analyst
Bresslergroup
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Bresslergroup, a leader in integrated user interface & industrial design, is seeking a hybrid information architect/usability expert. The ideal candidate has experience with conducting user research and designing interfaces for diverse platforms such as handhelds, desktops, public kiosks, consumer electronics, and medical devices to name just a few.
New York’s Grand Central Terminal is an ideal spot for a flash mob–remember when Moncler Grenoble’s stone-faced model-dancers took to the floor in Carlo Mollino-inspired skiwear? As part of the big 100th birthday bash, the insta-happening experts at Improv Everywhere recruited 135 LED-flashlight-wielding performers to light up Grand Central’s grand windows, mesmerizing passersby. The impressively choreographed affair, a project cooked up with MTA Arts for Transit, was something of a homecoming for Improv Everywhere, which in 2007 staged “Frozen Grand Central,” a flash freeze that has racked up 32 million views on YouTube. Watch both successful “missions” below.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Product news: British industrial design brand Dyson has launched a combined tap and hand dryer so hands can be both washed and dried without leaving the sink.
Infrared sensors in the Dyson Airblade Tap pinpoint the positions of the user’s hands and release water from the tap, before two high-velocity sheets of unheated clean air are released to scrape water off hands and leave them dry in 12 seconds.
As with the earlier Airblade hand dryers, the system forces air through tiny apertures at 692 kilometres per hour, passing it through a HEPA filter to remove 99% of bacteria from the air first.
Made from an anti-corrosion stainless steel that’s normally used for the construction of boats, the new product is powered by a new 16000 W motor that accelerates from 0 to 90,000 RPM in less than 0.7 seconds. The motor took seven years to develop at a cost of £26.9 million.
Founder of the company James Dyson said: “Using complex computer modelling Dyson engineers have developed a high performance digital motor. The Dyson digital motor self-adjusts 6,000 times a second to maintain optimum efficiency to create high velocity sheet of air that dries hands quickly and hygienically.”
The new motor has also been applied to updated versions of the Dyson Airblade V hand dryer, which is now 60% smaller, and the Dyson Airblade MK2 hand dryer, which has had 1.1 kg of material removed.
Industrial designer James Dyson founded the Dyson brand in 1970, when he invented the first bag-less vacuum cleaner. In recent years the company has launched the Air Multiplier, a fan with no blades, which he discusses with Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs in a podcast we recorded in 2010.
See all our stories about Dyson »
See all our stories about product design »
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Ready to unleash the next Angry Birds on the mobile-gizmo-obsessed world but need some help with logistics (i.e., cash)? Check out the Kongregate Mobile Developers program, a $10 million fund for independent developers of free-to-play mobile games. Launched yesterday by the online gaming platform Kongregate and backed by its parent company GameStop, the initiative will offer developers not only capital but also help with distribution and marketing to help their games gain traction in the highly competitive mobile arena. Taking charge of the new fund will be Urbansquall and Zynga veteran Pany Haritatos, the freshly hired vice president of Konregate’s new mobile division. “Developers are increasingly finding it harder to get their games discovered through the different app stores,” said Haritatos in a statement issued yesterday. “I personally faced these challenges in 2009 while managing my own game studio. Utilizing the Kongregate platform made my games successful, which ultimately led to my studio being acquired by Zynga.” Learn more here.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Découverte de « Full Moon Silhouettes », une vidéo en temps-réel de la lune se levant sur la Lookout Mount Victoria à Wellington en Nouvelle-Zélande par Mark Gee. Tournée le 28 Janvier 2013, cette magnifique vidéo présentée sur une musique de Dan Phillipson est à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.
The cover of D&AD50, designed by Planning Unit, features a clear dust jacket printed with the numerals 10 to 50
As part of its 50th birthday celebrations, D&AD has put together a history of its half century as told by its presidents. Together, they remember the good, the bad, the arguments and the annuals. And a few take the opportunity to grind some axes too…
Cover without the dust jacket
Each year D&AD appoints a significant figure from the creative industry to act as a figurehead for the organisation. In the past, the task alternated between a designer and someone from advertising but in recent years ‘digital’ has provided a third constituency for representation. The full list of 50 past presidents (only two of them women, by the way) consists of many of the great and the good in the creative world. For its 50th birthday book, D&AD invited each past president to recall their year in charge and the work chosen for the awards under their stewardship.
It would be fair to say that D&AD has, at times, endured something of a stormy history, particularly when it comes to financial matters. Many older readers will therefore turn first to the chapter dealing with 1992, surely D&AD’s most inclement year, when Tim Delaney was at the helm. Typically, Delaney does not mince his words in remembering this time.
He begins his chapter by recalling the mutinous mutterings of the design community which was threatening a schism (something it has periodically returned to over the years). “They wanted a different Dinner,” Delaney writes. “Design Awards were always less respected by the rowdy crowds at the Awards evening, apparently … Secession was in the air. In our meetings I reminded the rebels that approximately 75 per cent of all of D&AD’s activities were paid for by the advertising community in one way or another, and that if they did, for instance, organise a separate Dinner for the Design Awards, it would most likely take place in a B&B off Praed Street.”
During this process, Delaney reveals, “one of the staff at D&AD divulged the misdeeds that led eventually, via an evenhanded and formal hearing, to the suspension and exit of the executive chairman and the financial director”. The effects of the ensuing crisis were still being felt by the following year’s president, Aziz Cami, who had to endure an investigation by the Charity Commission and go cap in hand to the industry in order to stave off bankruptcy. D&AD was saved by a total of £40,000 in loans from four leading ad agencies (underlining Dempsey’s point about the ad industry’s importance to D&AD).
Ths stormclouds of this period did however prove to have something of a silver lining as it was during this time that two figures who would lead the revival in the organisation’s fortunes came to be involved: David Kester, who became a passionate, effective and hugely enthusiastic chief executive, and Anthony Simonds-Gooding, who, as chairman, would prove to be exactly the kind of father figure D&AD needed.
While many most of the advertising presidents confine their comments to the inevitable anomalies of the judging process and their fears that the year of their reign wasn’t a ‘vintage’ one for the awards, as well as picking out creative highlights, quite a few of their design counterparts take the opportunity to loose off a few potshots at both the organisation itself and their erstwhile advertising colleagues. Derek Birdsall (president in 1965) complains about the ‘advertising guys’ taking over and that his ‘kind of work hardly ever got a look in’ while dismissing the awards dinners as ‘pretentious nonsense’. Michael Wolff (1971) bemoans the “torrent of meaningless, unoriginal and superficial work” which drowns the few good pieces in D&AD these days while Mike Dempsey (1997) is concerned that many young designers think D&AD “expensive and irrelevant” today.
My favourite grumpy design contribution has to be that of Rodney Fitch (1984), however. His opening paragraph fulsomely lists the achievements of his own business (“Our work was winning everywhere … Fabulous, clever, talented people at every desk”) before having a dig at D&AD for not giving them any awards, complaining about the Presidents’ Dinner and taking a shot at the design of “later Annuals where, for some egotists, the book design became more important than what was in it”.
Surely though it is the sign of a confident organisation that such criticism is allowed in what is a celebratory book, so good for D&AD in letting it stand. And elsewhere, there is much for D&AD to be proud of, particularly as the presidential narrative shifts from the looming disaster of the early 90s to careful rebuilding under Kester and then on to today’s pre-eminence and global reach.
And there’s some great work in there too. Although any history based on awards entries is by its very nature partial (more so in the case of graphic design than advertising), D&AD50 provides a fascinating overview of the shifting nature of the creative industry and many of the landmark pieces of work produced in the last 50 years.
D&AD50 is published by Taschen, £34.99. Book designed by Planning Unit
CR in Print
The February issue of CR magazine features a major interview with graphic designer Ken Garland. Plus, we delve into the Heineken advertising archive, profile digital art and generative design studio Field, talk to APFEL and Linder about their collaboration on a major exhibition in Paris for the punk artist, and debate the merits of stock images versus commissioned photography. Plus, a major new book on women in graphic design, the University of California logo row and what it means for design, Paul Belford on a classic Chivas Regal ad and Jeremy Leslie on the latest trends in app design for magazines and more. Buy your copy here.
Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.
CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.
This is South Africa-based guitarist Hannes Coetzee, and he playing with a teaspoon in his mouth usi..(Read…)
This wooden folly cantilevers across a garden lake to create a meditation room and children’s play den for a family living in Hampshire, England (+ slideshow).
Nestled amongst the trees at the water’s edge, The Forest Pond House is the first built project by London studio TDO and has a curved body constructed using sheets of plywood and copper.
The architects combined two concepts for the design of the structure. “The children’s den programme was about hiding and playing in the woods, and the meditation programme was about focus, relaxation and immersion in the environment,” architect Tom Lewith told Dezeen.
A glazed end wall frames a view out across the surface of the pond and the floor staggers down to create a window seat for one or two people.
Lewith explained: “Cantilevering over the pond was important to us, as we wanted the space to physically straddle the forest and pond in the same way we crossed over the two programmes. We saw the forest being dark, mysterious and busy – a place for kids to have fun. The pond we saw as more about meditation with its reflection and calm.”
The ceiling angles upwards above the window seat, exaggerating the contrast in proportions between the front and rear of the folly.
On the exterior, one wall is coated with blackboard paint to encourage children to draw pictures straight onto the building.
Tom Lewith launched TDO in 2010 alongside fellow graduates Doug Hodgson and Owen Jones. The Forest Pond House was one of 24 projects nominated for the AJ Small Projects Awards 2013.
Other follies completed in recent months include a wooden playhouse with folding window hatches and a wedge-shaped pavilion with a pool of water inside.
Photography is by Ben Blossom.
Here’s some more information from TDO:
Located in rural Hampshire, The Forest Pond House is both a space for meditation and a children’s den in the woods. Made from timber, glass and copper, it lies on the bank of a pond at the foot of a family garden.
The Forest Pond House encapsulates the ethos of TDO’s founders. Their architecture is joyful and inventive. Their buildings complement their surroundings. For them, the way in which people experience a building is paramount.
Above: site plan – click above for larger image
Three alumni of London’s Bartlett School of Architecture and Royal College of Art formed TDO Architecture in 2010. The Forest Pond House was built over nine months for £7,500 and is their first completed building.
Above: floor plan – click above for larger image
The Pond House combines contrasting surroundings and contrasting uses to striking effect. It nestles between the dark drama of the forest and the bright calm of the water. Black, angular sides address the forest; light, curved surfaces and sheet glass address the pond. As well as mirroring the Pond House’s environment, the design creates its dual functions. The dark elevations serve as blackboards for drawing in the woods. A rising floor shrinks one corner down to the size of a child. The brighter end of the Pond House, with its single source of light and bench looking onto the water, offers focus and a place for reflection.
Above: section – click above for larger image
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by TDO appeared first on Dezeen.
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