Often times, the stories behind companies are something worth knowing, in particular when they talk about passion, intuition, genius, downfalls, and comebacks—and especially when each step is is punctuated with victories. Maserati was born in 1914,…
Continue Reading…
News: Herzog & de Meuron and John Pawson have teamed up to design the exterior and interior of a luxury Manhattan hotel and apartment block for New York developer Ian Schrager.
Ian Schrager Company has revealed that both Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron and London designer John Pawson are involved in the design of 215 Chrystie, a new 28-storey block in downtown Manhattan.
The architecture is conceived by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, who previously worked with Schrager on residential project 40 Bond. They propose a structure with a raw concrete frame pushed to the facade, allowing for a column-free interior.
Related story: Herzog & de Meuron design skyscraper for east London
A 37-room hotel will be housed within the building’s lower levels, while 11 penthouse apartments with bespoke interiors designed by Pawson will occupy the uppermost floors.
“Our idea was to stack two very distinct typologies on top of each other, and on one hand to express their difference, while on the other to unify them within the same building skeleton,” said Herzog.
The exposed structural skeleton will frame floor-to-ceiling glazing, offering uninterrupted views of the New York City skyline. The architect said his aim was to create a building that “becomes like a city within the city”.
“To introduce a sense of scale and to further foster the expression of each individual floor, each column is slightly inclined,” he explained. “The prominent corner of the building facing Chrystie Street is where the two geometries of the inclined columns meet.”
“Rather than giving one direction priority, the two directions are braided together. The result is a sculptural corner column that becomes the visual anchor for the entire building,” he added.
John Pawson has designed interiors for the 11 penthouses, most of which will take up an entire storey. According to the designer, floor plans will maximise the sense of light and space.
“The interiors of the 215 Chrystie residences are charged with atmosphere, where the fundamental qualities of light, surface and proportions are such that the experience of space itself is transformed,” he said. “The goal was to express the details of life in the details of the architecture.”
Features will include walnut wall panelling, oak floors, stone and concrete bathrooms, and flush detailing. Lighting will be added by designer Arnold Chan.
215 Chrystie is set to open in 2016 and is understood to be one of two buildings Herzog & de Meuron is working on for Schrager, alongside an apartment block at 357 West Street.
“215 Chrystie is the ultimate expression of Uptown meets Downtown. It is both tough and refined at the same time,” said Schrager. “I’d like to think of it as ‘refined gritty’ or ‘tough luxe’.”
The building will also include a private garden, separated from the street by a dense green wall.
The post Herzog & de Meuron and John Pawson
join forces on new Manhattan residences appeared first on Dezeen.
So it’s the 1980s and you’re running a company that makes typewriters. Sure, some of your customers are switching over to these new things called computers, but overall business is pretty good, and sales are growing each year.
Then the ’90s hits, more people start using these stupid computers, and business starts to decline. What do you do? Where’s the growth market, or at least the steady market? For New-Jersey-based typewriter manufacturer Swintec, their answer was locked up in U.S. prisons.
At some point in the late ’90s, Swintec realized that a subset of the incarcerated need or want typewriters, to type up their own legal briefs, write correspondance or pass the time doing something productive. Swintec was also presumably aware of the Sony SRF-39FP portable radio, a.k.a. “The iPod of Prison“—the “FP” in the product name stands for Federal Prison, which is why the housing is transparent. Guards can easily inspect it to see if there’s contraband hidden inside.
Collage and book artist Dea Fischer and the Canmore Public Library are hosting a fun activity for Alberta Culture Days in Canmore this weekend. At Postmark Canmore, you can make good old-fashioned mail. Make your own envelopes, create some mail art, or type a letter on an antique typewriter.
Canmore Public Library
Sunday, 28 September 2014
drop in between 1-4pm
All materials will be provided at this free family-friendly event.
Just over a decade ago came a great innovation in a staple design material. The kind you’ll come into contact with during your first year at design school. And that is an air-cured, hand-formed rubber also known as Sugru – which is the Gaellic name for “play.” It feels like modeling clay and you can mold it into any shape. We covered it when it first launched. After curing it is what you’d expect from a rubber-like material, flexible, grippy, sticky and waterproof. And it’s very practical. It can repair everything from toasters to computer cables. And withstand extremes from the dishwasher to the Arctic ocean (temperature ranges from -50 to 180 degrees Celcius.) Check out all the creative uses featured on the sugru site site. It’s pretty endless.
It’s sticking power is best shown when it bonds to ABS (see video below.) It’s sold in sets of 12 minipacks, either in multiple colors or black and white. But it’s going to stick to a lot: Aluminum, steel, ceramics, glass, wood, many plastics, leather, silicone, butyl rubber, and sugru itself. It is an electric insulator, so that is why you can safely use it to repair electrical cords. You typically have about 30 minutes to work with sugru once it is removed from its packaging and the cure time is 24 hours (per 3-5mm depth.) The cured material is resistant to UV light, oxidation, fire and water.
Jane NiDhulchaointigh (yes it’s a Gaellic mouthful) “invented” the sticky material that is similar to a combo of beloved Blu-Tack from the 80s and spackling. She discovered it when mixing Formerol (a patented formable silicone, that is the chemical base of sugru) with sawdust around her home. It took some time before it landed on the market in- when the six-person company started selling it on their web site. And smartly, NiDhulchaointigh has grown a loyal community of consumers – the kind of community that big brands are dying to have. The cool thing about the story is how much social media had a part to play in the growth. As she told Forbes magazine four years back:
“When I had the idea for Sugru, a very early insight into the product was that if you just provide the product, people won’t do anything clever with it,” she says. “But if they’re inspired by seeing things that other people have done then that means they will often have great ideas and solve problems.”
And that is just it. There are so many hacks, and ways to use sugru, that embracing the variety through social media (Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook) just fuels more business. It is that perfectly amorphous material that lends itself to fun party-like experiments that might then lead to practical. (One author tried it on affixing a bottle cap, spoon, screwdriver and a half-empty bottle of malt whiskey to the ceiling.)
It was with two scientists from Dow Corning she developed the material that is 30% silicone caulk, 50% talc. The remainder is composed of mythyltris silane, y-aminopropyltriethoxysilane, and dioctyltin dilaurate. And the product can be developed with different levels of the following: Softness, adhesion, abrasion resistance, density, ability to float and curing time. Tons of options, for infinite uses.
Dude STOP BENDING IT!
When it comes to smartphones, thin is in. But it should be of interest to product designers that as ubiquitous as these skinny devices are becoming—Apple sold 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Pluses over the weekend, for chrissakes—there really are some basic design problems with smartphones that haven’t been totally covered.
Here’s what’s been in the news: Responding to reports that the iPhone 6 Plus can be bent out of shape when carried in a pants pocket—even a front pocket—while sitting, Lewis Hilsenteger of Unbox Therapy posted a video of his iPhone 6 Plus Bend Test. The results weren’t pretty, as the image atop this entry attests, and his video quickly racked up millions of hits.
Cult of Mac, however, was quick to point out that this structural flaw is not new to the iPhone 6 Plus, nor Apple in particular. In CoM’s “The Shocking History of Bent Smartphones,” they round up examples across manufacturers and models:
So here’s the issue: We either want thin phones with large screens, or designers are pushing them on us, yet the slimness combined with broadness (i.e. increased leverage) has a major drawback for a subset of users. In your opinion, where does the fix lie—on the design side, or the user side?
by Chantel Tattoli In the field of furniture design, lighting is often overlooked, even though the right piece can define a room just as well as any Eames chair. Case in point: the beautiful timber pendant lamp…
Continue Reading…
Smarter Every Day shot close-up, slow motion video of someone being tattooed; inking starts at..(Read…)
Nouveau focus sur le designer italien Nicola Conti qui est à l’origine de cette lampe nommée TRIO. Fidèle à sa patte, l’artiste combine ici lampe, suspension en tissu et une petite table intégrée, idéale pour y laisser des petits objets tels que des clés ou un téléphone portable. A découvrir à travers plusieurs coloris pastel.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
