Hasta La Ideas

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers: micro-robotics and 3D-printing are poised to revolutionise fashion, says the designer of Lady Gaga’s bubble-blowing dress, in the second part of our interview with Studio XO.

Despite a conservative fashion industry, rapid changes in technology will transform the clothes we wear, says Benjamin Males, of London-based fashion and technology company Studio XO.

“We believe fashion is quite antiquated,” he says. “While everything around us becomes intelligent, becomes more computational, our clothes are still very old-fashioned”.

This will not be the case for long, says Males, who believes that advances in micro-robotics and transformable textiles will soon make their way into everyday clothing, helping create clothes that can change shape using small motors.

“We believe in the next decade we’re going to see some pretty amazing things happen around transformable textiles and mechanical movement in our clothes: we are looking at introducing that in the next five years,” he says.

He points to the ubiquitous use of smartphones as evidence that people are becoming increasingly comfotable with having sophisticated technology on or very close to their bodies.

Moving up and down a clothes size may soon be possible without having to buy new clothes, predicts Males.

“We [will soon be able to] change the fit of our clothes at the push of a button, or our clothes could form new architectures around us,” he says.

Males is one of the founding partners of Studio XO, whose work includes dresses for Lady Gaga: Volantis, a flying dress powered by 12 electric motor-driven rotors, and the bubble-blowing dress Anemone, which is documented in this movie.

Males describes Studio XO’s Anemone as a provocation and a commentary on the future of textiles.

Anemone is a dress that blows large and small bubbles, the small ones creating a foam structure around the wearer and the large bubbles flying away.

Males calls the mechanisms that create this effect bubble factories. These are small, 3D-printed jaw mechanisms. When they open, a fan blows out large or small bubbles depending on the size of the mechanism’s aperture.

The dress was unveiled in 2013, when Lady Gaga wore it to the iTunes festival. It is the second so-called bubble dress which Lady Gaga has worn, the first one being a nude leotard with plastic transparent globes attached to it.

The music featured in the movie is a track by Simplex. You can listen to his music on Dezeen Music Project.

Dezeen and MINI Frontiers is a year-long collaboration with MINI exploring how design and technology are coming together to shape the future.

The post Clothes will shrink to fit “at the push of a
button” within five years appeared first on Dezeen.

Le studio Twentysix2 est né de l’esprit de Tom Davie passionné par l’art et le design. Il fait des typographies très intéressantes en jouant avec les matières pour créer son propre alphabet. Un S formé par un pancake, un P incrusté dans un livre, et bien d’autres typographies à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.

Given that most of you love oddly specific minimalism, you should be familiar with “Ultralight” backpacking. If not, start here. Regardless of your fitness level, the appeal of ultralight is undeniable—it speaks to the core of good design: make it simpler, keep it functional. UL definitions vary in pound-maximums and philosophies, but for most it boils down to the fact that the lighter your gear, the more you are free to do. For the hardcore aficionados, UL is literally a lifestyle, where the weight of everything is known in grams and ounces and enthusiastically hacked away at. For the general practitioner, the aim is to carry as little as possible outdoors without sacrificing safety. General guidelines often suggest that a full pack should weigh less than 10lbs to qualify as UL, and under 25 to make it into the lightweight bracket. (When in doubt, call things “lightweight” rather than UL if you want to avoid the semantic title-mongering of true believers.)

While all detail-oriented hobbies attract a certain percentage of wonks, UL is a growing trend for a reason. Efficiency out on the trail/mountain/river/etc. is a big part of the draw, along with the basic body-mechanical fact that lowering pack weight reduces strain and increases comfort… Comfort you are free to negate by doing something painful like a through hike. How many of us have tried “backpacking” only to find it a gigantic heavy drag? It may seem obvious from a designer’s armchair, but simplifying the systems frees the user to focus on other things, like the beauty of the trail. And counter-intuitive though it may be, removing the load bearing structure and cushy padding and webbing and pockets and D-rings on a backpack can actually make it more comfortable. Rather than trying to be every bag for everyman, Ultralight gear is task-specific, minimal, and as a result ergonomically approachable.

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This dating site is looking to hook someone up as a designer for their mobile interface, which introduces millions of users to new people. OkCupid—which is located in New York, New York— is the fastest-growing online dating site. This team member will lead the design of mobile features from concept to release; design visual interfaces, user flows, and compelling interactions; translate complex ideas into elegant, intuitive designs; work closely with front-end developers, software engineers, and other designers; and explore and experiment with the future of the OkCupid interface.

To land the job, you’ll need one or more years of professional mobile app experience (with high user volume, preferably); a swoon-worthy portfolio of interface designs; proven understanding of interaction design concepts; and an excellent sense of typography, layout, and mobile design principles. If this sounds like the job for you, Apply Now.

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This office and workshop for a theatre designer in Osaka was designed by Japanese studio Mattch to look like a glazed box hovering between two solid curtains (+ slideshow).

Nagoya-based Mattch wanted to reference the profession of the client with the design of S-Office, so developed a building with an L-shaped outer structure that frames the activities of its occupants like actors on a stage.

“A curtain of the stage opens and becomes the background,” explained studio co-founder Takenaka Ryuji.

Each floor of the three-storey building has a different function, so was given a different-sized floor plate. The middle storey is the largest, so it projects ahead of the ground floor to shelter the entrance and create the impression of a floating structure.

Inside, a turquoise-painted steel staircase spans the height of the building and is lit from above by a large skylight.

This contrasts with a series of exposed steel ceiling beams that have been picked out in red, as well as other structural details highlighted in shades of blue and yellow.

The ground floor accommodates a double-height workshop for producing props, while an office for quiet work is located on the split-level first floor and the upper level contains a top-lit meeting room.

The office uses a half-landing as part of its floor space. It also features wall-mounted shelving units that follow the diagonal line of the exposed steel bracing.

These shelving units reappear on the second floor, this time in a horizontal arrangement. Here, they line a semi-circular alcove which holds the meeting area.

This space is illuminated by a cluster of colourful pendant lamps and looks out onto a glazed conservatory with a pitched roof.

The post Set design studio in Japan by Mattch
plays with theatrical imagery appeared first on Dezeen.