Sougwen Chung has always had an affinity for computers and digital technology. The artist had her first website at the age of ten—”an oddly personal site,” she recalls….
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Milan 2014: architect David Adjaye is showing his debut furniture collection for Knoll in Milan this week, which is now available in new colours.
The Washington Collection for Knoll was originally launched in October and includes two cantilevered side chairs called the Skin and the Skeleton.
The collection is very much an exploration of the “body in space” – but on a smaller scale than my architectural work,” said Adjaye.
“Knoll has always had an amazing ability to produce furniture that is a distillation of the zeitgeist of the age – it was this relationship between life, space and objects that resonated with my own work. Finding specific conditions, amplifying them and making them aesthetic while giving them the potential to be part of our world is what I am interested in,” he added.
The Washington Skin Chair is cast in three parts using injection-moulded nylon, reinforced with glass. The shell and legs are then joined using mortise and tenon joinery and stainless steel fasteners. The legs are reinforced with an aluminium brace that is covered with nylon.
The Washington Skeleton chair is made form die cast aluminium and, like the Skin chair, is cast in three parts and joined using steel fasteners. It comes in various durable painted colours or a copper plated version that allows the chair to tarnish with age.
“We worked very closely with Knoll’s technical team and it was a fascinating learning curve,” explained Adjaye.
“Making production furniture is very different to creating objects – and it is not something I had done before,” added Adjaye. “The furniture went through many iterations, studies and tests. To make the cantilevered legs, for example, Knoll developed the material technology to allow the back to flex and the T-junction in the legs has a metal insert to resist stress. As a result, the chair’s form is minimal, yet can withstand 300lb.”
The chairs are on show at the Piazza Bertarelli, Milan. Knoll is also showing new collaborations with London-based designers, Edward Barber & Jay Osgerby, alongside a selection of recently updated pieces by designers, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Florence Knoll, Eero Saarinen, Tobia Scarpa and Marcel Breuer.
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for Knoll in new colours appeared first on Dezeen.
Our Ad of the Week is the Oreo Snack Hacks campaign, which sees the cookie brand invite three LA chefs to use the biscuits to make new, unexpected snacks – some that look pretty disgusting, others surprisingly tasty…
Snack Hacks is the latest in a series of interesting ad campaigns from Oreo over the last couple of years, all of which have made great use of digital media. This campaign lives on Oreo’s Tumblr page (which is itself a thing of beauty) and consists of three short documentary-style films featuring chefs Rob Choi, Michael Voltaggio and Nguyen Tran.
A lot of brands have been making short documentaries of late. Too many, some might say. When done badly, they are boring, or, worse, self-aggrandising and smug. Done well though, as Oreo has here, they can serve as excellent pieces of promotion.
The trick to success lies in being both interesting and authentic. These shorts don’t hide the fact that they are about promoting Oreo, but when the chefs discuss their memories of the cookies growing up, it feels like they have genuine warmth for the brand.
Plus the hacks themselves feel real. The chefs were given restrictions – the recipes could have no more than four steps – but otherwise were left to come up with their own ideas. The results are varied, but maybe that’s down to personal taste – to me, Choi’s Oreo-encrusted chicken strips actually look pretty delicious, whereas Tran’s Oreo-and-cherry-soda bread pudding left me cold. But opinions on the food aside, the fact that I watched the films all the way through and have a view on the recipes is proof that the campaign has worked.
The public are also invited to submit their own Oreo Snack Hacks ideas, with Oreo posting its favourites on the Tumblr site. And the recipes for the three chefs’ Snack Hacks are all available online too. Here’s Choi’s chicken one to get you started:
Oreo Midnight Hack by Rob Choi
2 Boneless, skinless chicken breasts (1⁄4 inch thickness; about 1.5 lb.)
1 Cup (15 cookies) Golden Oreo cookies, wafers only
1 Cup all-purpose flour
2 Eggs, lightly beaten, with 1 tbsp of water added
1 Cup panko breadcrumbs
1 Cup chopped Italian flat-leaf parsley
Kosher salt, fresh ground pepper
Vegetable oil for frying (about 2 Cups)
1. Pulse cookies (wafer only) until fine
2. Mix cookie crumbs, panko and parsley in plastic bag. Season with salt and pepper
3. Coat chicken cutlets in flour and dip in beaten eggs
4. Add cutlets to cookie/breadcrumb mix and coat well
5. Heat oil in frying pan and fry breaded cutlets until cooked through (about 4 minutes per side).
The dream of many a design enterprise—the best designers, meaningful materials, Italian production, a community of fans, reinterpretations made by artists—TOG is all of this, and more. “All creators together” is the idea behind this new design…
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Photos by Gustav Almestal
In college, I became the master of bin organizing. I’d stack towers of those black and blue mailing bins—you know, the ones where you’ll win a hefty fine if you’re caught snagging them in public— until they haphazardly leaned forward, compromising my coveted DVD collection. I would’ve loved to get my hands on a system like this. Part functional and part artsy conversation starter, the ROOM Collection Furniture System by Erik Olovsson & Kyuhyung Cho lets you create your own structure from 25 different pieces.
Each cut-out block has been inspired by a different object’s shape and, as you can see from the photos, the whimsical countours welcome all kinds of household storage/display space, from morning coffee mugs and lamps to bottles of wine and shoes. The designers explain: “Each block was inspired by specific objects, creating various shapes and sizes. The round for wine, zigzag for phones, tablets and laptops, or peaked for an open book. Each block can be a room to invite any object, the composition is unlimited.”
The Doma Indian School is a horse farm in San Luis, Argentina. It’s operated by the father and son..(Read…)
Après les prints de la publicité Sony Bravia, le photographe Nick Meek possède également des séries personnelles d’une aussi belle qualité. Il partage ses voyages aux quatre coins du monde avec une luminosité saturée et un trait de lumière chaude qui vient très souvent adoucir les contours de ses photos.
Disco Hammock by Eagles Nest Outfitters and Robert Murdoch."- Big enough for two and luxurious..(Read…)
Milan 2014: designers including Maarten Baas, Arik Levy and Maxim Velčovský introduce their new pieces for Lasvit in this movie filmed at the Czech lighting company’s Emotions show in Milan earlier this week.
Lasvit launched nine new collections at its Emotions show in Milan, including designs by a host of international designers as well as a series of kinetic sculptures by the company’s in-house team.
Czech designer Maxim Velčovský, who is also the company’s art director, created a series of hanging glass lamps called Frozen, which are created by pouring molten glass over a dome-shaped mould and left to cool.
“I was very much inspired by nature, when water becomes ice,” he says of the lamps, which are displayed in a cluster with drops of water running down them. “People are not sure whether they are looking at ice or glass, so they they knock on the lamp trying to figure it out.”
Dutch designer Maarten Baas created a modular chandelier called Das Pop using his signature Clay method in which a synthetic clay is moulded around a metal frame.
“It’s made all by hand and with Lasvit’s craftsman we also made hand-blown lightbulbs,” he explains. “Das Pop is one of my favourite Belgian bands, which is where the name comes from.”
Arik Levy designed a series of simple crystal-shaped pendants, which are available in a variety of different colours and opacities.
“We get reflections off the facets, even when the light is off,” he says. “When it’s on and when it’s off it always stays beautiful.”
The show also features the first glass chandelier by Daniel Libeskind. Called Ice, the piece is made up of clear glass cells blown into angular moulds, creating sharp, icicle-like forms.
“When you blow crystal, it’s typically bubbly and round,” says the American architect’s son, Lev Libeskind. “Our language has always been more angular and sharp. So we said, “What would happen if we took our sharpness and impose it on the glass?” The result provides a really interesting counterpoint between material and form.”
Lasvit’s Emotions show also features two moving glass sculptures, including a hanging lotus flower designed by Petra Krausová, which opens and closes in time to music and is controlled by an iPhone app.
Visual artist Jakub Nepraš also created a sculpture made from shards of glass shaped like a tree, onto which a series of digital images are projected.
“There is craftsmanship, there is poetry behind each collection and this year there is also a lot of technology on show,” explains Lasvit founder and president Leon Jakimič. “I believe we are the first company to combine glass art with really advanced technology.”
Lasvit’s Emotions show, which also features designs by Michael Young and Czech designers Jan Plechac and Henry Wielgus, is at Office Stendhal on Via Stendhal in Milan and is open from 10am to 8pm until 13 April.
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craftsmanship with advanced technology” appeared first on Dezeen.
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