Hasta La Ideas

The LEGO NASA Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover($30) is avaiable to purchase online from the..(Read…)

Hosted by Don Lehman, Core77’s podcast series is designed for all those times you’re sketching, working in the shop, or just looking for inspiration from inspiring people. We’ll have conversations with interesting creatives and regular guests. The viewpoint of Afterschool will come from industrial design, but the focus will be on all types of creativity: graphic design, storytelling, architecture, cooking, illustration, branding, materials, business, research… anything that could enrich your thought process, we’ll talk about.

When I was in high school and just starting to think about college, I knew I wanted to get into design, but wasn’t sure what that meant exactly. I liked making things and loved all of my art classes, but design wasn’t talked about much back then, which made it hard to learn about. And then, the iMac came out.

In the shadow of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, it’s hard to remember what a big deal the iMac was, but it was a really big deal. Pretty much every computer at that point was a beige box, and then out comes Apple with this translucent, Bondi blue, space orb. The aesthetic was head turning, but it was the design of how people would use it that captured my 16-year-old attention. Plug in the keyboard and mouse, plug it into the wall, and start surfing the internet. An all-in-one, fully considered, user experience. The iMac saved Apple from bankruptcy and helped put design on the map in the late 90s. Its designers were actually featured in interviews. And those interviews ended up being my first encounter with both the term industrial design and the leader behind the iMac’s design, Jonathan Ive. From then on, I knew I was going to be an industrial designer.

I think it’s safe to say that over the last fifteen years, no design team has had more impact than Apple’s. Even once you get past the success of their products, they’ve reshaped not only how the world views design, but how the design industry views itself. For all that notoriety and impact, we actually know very little about Apple’s design team. Today we talk about Jony Ive and Apple’s Industrial Design Group with author Leander Kahney. Leander is the editor and publisher of cultofmac.com and has written three books about Apple: Cult of Mac, Cult of iPod, and Inside Steve’s Brain. His latest is called Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products.

Get the Afterschool Podcast, Episode #15 – Author Leander Kahney: Available at the iTunes store or direct download via Soundcloud below.

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Bright red walls contrast with vivid green lawns at this art and culture centre in Portugal by Lisbon architecture firm Future Architecture Thinking (+ slideshow).

Located in the town of Miranda do Corvo, Casa das Artes is made of three differently sized volumes that are painted red all over to help the building stand out as much as possible from its surroundings.

Asymmetric roof profiles were intended by Future Architecture Thinking to correspond with the angular rooftops of nearby houses, as well as with the irregular geometries of the distant Lousã Mountains.

“The proposal is based on a contemporary language that is structurally very strong through the continuity between the facades and the roof,” said the architects.

“The slopes of the roof look for identification with the city rooftops and the use of the strong colour is intended to create a building which is immediately recognisable by the public,” they added.

A chimney-like skylight stretches up beyond the roof, drawing evening sunlight from the west down to a covered terrace at the building’s entrance.

The largest of the three volumes accommodates the stage of a 300-seat auditorium, while seating extends back into a second block positioned behind.

This block also contains the auditorium foyer, which doubles up as a split-level gallery for temporary exhibitions, while an independent cafe is housed in the third and smallest block.

Photography is by João Morgado.

Read on for more information from Future Architecture Thinking:

Casa das Artes in Miranda do Corvo

The Casa das Artes (House of the Arts) in Miranda do Corvo expresses the meeting between two identities, rural and urban, in a landscape marked by the Lousã Mountains.

The building features a contemporary and volumetrically expressive language. The sloping roofs establish a dialogue with the geometry of the mountain landscape, in an analogy to the village rooftops. The dynamism achieved through the continuity between facades and roof is accented by a strong red colour, emphasising its design and highlighting the building through the surrounding landscaped area vegetation.

More than a building, the Casa das Artes pretends to be an iconic landmark, celebrating the place where people meet, where culture and art happens, a space capable of promoting and stimulating creative activity, increasing the population quality of life.

The project was conceived by creating versatile spaces, technically suitable for different kinds of events, in order to serve all segments of the population.

The deployment area was optimised to favour landscaped spaces, allowing the creation of an amphitheatre for outdoor events, integrated in a garden which is a public space for the village, with several spaces and inviting pathways for leisure.

The building consists of three volumes reflecting different sorts of use: the first one containing the stage areas, the second comprising the audience and foyer, and the third with a cafeteria and a future museum area, which constitute a visually independent volume.

The proposed diversity of accesses for the building attempts to emphasise the characterisation of this site as a public space, while allowing the public direct access of specific places, such as the museum area and cafeteria, independently, without passing through the auditorium.

The main entrance is through the foyer. This space may function as exhibition area which can be divided into two by a short flight of stairs. From here depart two paths to an auditorium for nearly 300 people, with a motorised orchestra pit and six technical levels, properly equipped for holding theatre performances, opera, concerts, conferences or lectures.

The cafeteria can operate independently from the rest of the building, or even serve as an entrance point providing access to the auditorium. This space has a covered terrace with a skylight oriented west, channelling sunset light into its interior. The terrace area gives access to a multimedia room. The facade of the museum area is facing the northern part of the garden where one of the main entries is located and the outdoor amphitheatre.

Client: Municipality of Miranda do Corvo
Location: Miranda do Corvo, Portugal
Area: 2.360 sqm

Architect: FAT – Future Architecture Thinking
Project Team: Architect Miguel Correia, Architect Cláudia Campos, Architect Sérgio Catita, Architect Patrícia de Carvalho, Architect Miguel Cabral, Architect Margarida Magro, Architect Sara Gonçalves, Architect Telmo Maia, Architect Gabriel Santos, Architect Hilário Abril, Engineer José Pico, Landscape Architect Sara Távora
Builder: TECNORÉM – Engenharia e Construções, S.A.
Year: 2010/2013

The post Art and culture centre with bright red walls
by Future Architecture Thinking appeared first on Dezeen.

There’s no denying that levitation of any sort is pretty awesome—whether you’ve only seen it in movies or our previous coverage of magnetic levitation, levitating table lamps or this hovering LED. There’s something about seeing something move with no visual force that’s so intriguing. You may have seen this shape-shifting water video from science and illusion videographer Brusspup as it hit the Internet early in 2013:

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In this series, Matthew Sullivan (AQQ Design) highlights some designers that you should know, but might not. Previously, he looked at the work of Martino Gamper.

Ugo La Pietra: Born in Bussi sul Tirino, Italy, 1938

“Art furniture” is a fairly detestable moniker. It carries with it a sense that said pieces are not quite art and not really furniture—either art is slumming or furniture is longing. Clearly, and it may seem overly reductive (but I can’t see much actual distortion), for all human endeavors, some creations are simply good and some not so much. All things have value but not all are superlative, whether art or decorative art, sculpture or industrial design, painting or graphics, drawing or illustration, essay writing or whatever. To separate the functional arts from the fine arts is like trying to differentiate between the acceleration rate of a falling pound of goose feathers and a falling pound of duck feathers. Art and design are not dualistic—and our subject, Ugo La Pietra, is really the most instructive on these matters. He considers his life’s output (50-plus years, spanning a wide range of disciplines) to be, plainly, research.

La Pietra came of creative age during the ambitious days of radical 1960s culture. Working with and alongside such provocateurs as Hans Hollein, the Haus-Rucker-Co, Ettore Sottsass, the Situationist International, Coop Himmelblau, Archizoom and Superstudio, he developed his own critical method of making. In his own words, he pushed for the “decoding and rereading of what has been forgotten, or ill used, or is somehow, for more or less legitimate historical reasons, petrified” (Ugo La Pietra, “1960-1990: Thirty Years of Experimental Research”).

Above: the 1966 Globo Tissurato lamp (left) and a ceramic piece from 1991. Top: the Libreria shelving unit (left) and La Pietra with his Globo Tissurato.

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