Electronic musician Alexis Georgopoulos (aka Arp) is no stranger to collaboration or experimentation. The NYC-based artist has worked with as many fellow musicians as he has painters, sculptors and illustrators. His latest work with Minneapolis studio…
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All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!
ARB is a chain of stores in Australia that makes accessories specifically for 4X4 trucks. As opposed to most 4X4 owners in the US, it appears 4X4 owners in Australia occasionally take theirs off road. (Who knew?!)
One of the things ARB manufactures is tents that attach to 4X4s (by extending off the truck bed or the trunk or on the roof or in some other awesome manner) and regular ground tents for hikers who drive exciting places off road. But, lo! Their tenting doesn’t stop there! They also make a special cutie patootie itty bitty tent just for your boots. The ARB BootSwag:
We really aren’t pulling your leg with this. It is a real, genuine product. According to their website, “the ARB BootSwag provides a sheltered enclosure for storage of footwear and other items.”
Now, I would assume that one’s tent or enormous 4X4 would also provide this kind of shoe storage … but, apparently not?? I’d also think a large zip-top bag could do the same thing and keep snakes and spiders (or whatever deadly critters roam the Outback) out of one’s boots (this does not, as the bottom flap doesn’t close). But, what do I know? I drive an all-wheel vehicle and the only “off roading” I’ve ever done is in a busy Target parking lot after a big snow. And the closest I’ve come to camping in the last two decades was in a cabin with central air.
Thanks to reader Richelle for introducing us to this fun unitasker.
Post written by Erin Doland
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Basé à Londres, le photographe Aaron Tilley nous offre une série d’images de Food Design où il utilise des pâtes comme motifs pour le sol et comme structure d’escaliers. Sur une deuxième série de trois photos, il met en avant ses talents par plusieurs démonstrations : une sculpture de champignons ou encore une part de gâteau recouverte d’un beau jardin. À découvrir dans l’article.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Photos by Kyle Oldfield, winner of our design school photo contest
Yesterday we published the last installment of our D-School Futures series, in which we interviewed the chairs of 11 leading industrial design programs about the evolution of ID education. Along the way, we gleaned quite a few insights into what it’s like to be an ID student today, how schools are reacting to rapid changes in the industry, and what all of this means for incoming students and recent graduates. For those of you who haven’t had time to read the full series—or who just love a good listicle—here’s our shortlist of five essential takeaways.
1. Now Is a Really Good Time to Launch a Design Career
OK, so you would expect the chairs of design programs to be bullish about the profession; they couldn’t very well tell us that now is a crummy time to get a degree from one of their programs. Even so, our interviewees gave us the distinct impression that now actually is a really good time to be getting into industrial design, or any design field for that matter. With the economy looking increasingly healthy, design firms are hiring new graduates at a steady clip—and, more importantly, businesses of all stripes are continuing to recognize the importance of design to their bottom lines.
2. Designing Physical Stuff Is Not Becoming Less Important—If Anything, the Opposite Is True
Worried that designers of actual, physical stuff are going to become obsolete in the coming decades, as more and more of our daily tasks are handled by digital tools? Don’t be. As several of our interviewees noted, physical objects are not going away anytime soon—and, besides, as digital tools become more advanced, people will expect richer and more nuanced experiences in ye olde three-dimensional world. “While our tools and experiences are moving toward digital interactions, there will always be physical, visual or multi-sensorial manifestations that are part of the input and output of those interactions,” Art Center’s Karen Hofmann told us. “Design will be the differentiator in how successful or meaningful those product experiences will be.”
L’hôtel Praktik Bakery est un hôtel, situé à Barcelone, qui a la particularité d’être aussi une boulangerie traditionnelle. Avec une décoration intérieure à la fois moderne et rustique, réalisée par Lazaro Rosa-Violán, ce lieu unique en son genre possède 74 chambres pensées dans des tons noirs et blancs.
Competition: to coincide with the Brutalism series on Dezeen, we’ve teamed up with UK publisher Café Royal Books to give away a bundle of photography books featuring buildings including Trellick Tower and Preston Bus Station.
Founded in 2005 by photographer Craig Atkinson, Café Royal Books publishes both modern and retro documentary images that often explore themes of architectural history and social change.
Related story: The Dezeen guide to Brutalist architecture
“I like raw materials, vastness and things that are challenging. I don’t like fuss or decoration and Brutalism fits all of those things,” Atkinson told Dezeen.
“Brutalist architecture is generally very functional, made with excellent materials and is non-apologetic. I’m not often bothered by buildings that try to fit into their surroundings.”
One winner will receive five photobooks based on famous Brutalist buildings around the UK: Robin Hood Gardens, The Barbican Estate, Alexandra Road Estate, Preston Bus Station and Trellick Tower.
Each book contains between 28 to 36 pages of digitally-printed photography. Visit the Café Royal Books website to see the full collection of publications.
Click here to read more stories from Dezeen’s Brtualism series »
Competition closes on 15 October 2014. One winner will be selected at random and notified by email. The winner’s name will be published in a future edition of our Dezeen Mail newsletter and at the top of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.
The post Competition: win a bundle of five photobooks
on Brutalist buildings appeared first on Dezeen.
News: a competition to design a new Guggenheim Museum building in the Finnish capital has attracted more than 1,700 entries – more than any competition of its kind – but opponents to the scheme have launched a rival ideas contest.
Organisers of the Helsinki Guggenheim architecture competition say that they have received 1,715 submissions from graduate and qualified architects.
“The submissions represent the largest number of entries recorded for a competition of this kind, surpassing the 2002 competition for the Grand Egyptian Museum, which received 1,557 entries, and the largest architectural competition in Helsinki, for the Helsinki Central Library, which attracted 544 entries in 2012,” said the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation.
Related story: ALA Architects wins Helsinki library competition
The organisation is behind a string of art institutions around the world, including its New York home – a spiral building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright – and the Frank Gehry-designed museum in Bilbao, Spain, whose unusual architecture was credited with bringing significant new tourist income to the city leading to the popularisation of the phrase “the Bilbao effect”.
It is now working with the City of Helsinki to create its next museum, which will be the first to be designed through an international open competition.
The first stage of the competition, which was open to graduate and qualified architects, closed last week. Designers from more than 77 countries sent in submissions, with the majority coming from the US, Italy, Finland, Britain, France and Japan.
“When we launched the competition for the design of the proposed Guggenheim Helsinki, we hoped that it would inspire architects everywhere — emerging and established alike — to imagine what the museum of the 21st century could be and catalyse a global exchange of ideas about architecture and its traditions, urbanism, public buildings, and the future of cities,” said Richard Armstrong, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation.
An 11-strong jury – including Tokyo architect Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, founder of Atelier Bow-Wow and Chicago based architect Jeanne Gang – will draw up a shortlist of six designs from the submissions to continue to the second stage.
The project is reported to have a budget of over $130 million, and involves the city paying the Guggenheim a licensing fee of a further $30 million.
It has already attracted controversy, with some critics describing it as a vanity project and objecting to the idea of a major American cultural brand occupying a prime site in Helsinki.
Architect and writer Michael Sorkin has now teamed up with Finnish architects and artists to launch a rival competition called The Next Helsinki, which is focused on generating other ideas for revitalising the city’s South Harbour.
“The City of Helsinki is tempted to spend hundreds of millions of municipal euros in return for the benefits of the branding of the city with someone else’s mark – is this really the best use for the site and tax money?” said the Next Helsinki team. “Help us seize this opportunity to highlight the city’s singularity, and its residents’ appetite for social, environmental and cultural justice.”
The Next Helsinki competition is open for entries until 2 March 2015.
Main image courtesy of The Next Helsinki.
The post Controversial Helsinki Guggenheim competition
attracts record number of entrants appeared first on Dezeen.
The Folio Society has released a new version of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, which features a newly commissioned introduction by Irvine Welsh and some exquisite illustrations by Ben Jones…
The book is published in hardback and comes in a slipcase. There are seven illustrations by Jones spread throughout, and he has also designed the cover, an embossed image of a man in a bowler hat.
The bowler hat became an iconic symbol for the book after Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 movie pictured central character Alex DeLarge and his droogs wearing the hats alongside white overalls. Jones sees its inclusion here as a tribute to Kubrick’s film, and its importance to the novel. “I do think that Kubrick is a big part of the book becoming immortal,” he says in an interview filmed by the publishers, shown below.
Despite this, Jones tried to avoid Kubrick’s imagery elsewhere in his illustrations for the book. “‘I purposely stopped myself from watching the film while I was working on the job,” he says, “mainly because I wanted to get away from Kubrick’s iconic visual style, and develop my own take on the book, and stay true to Burgess’s vision.”
Jones used collage to bring Burgess’s bleak, dystopian world to life in his illustrations. “I like the idea of collage, that you can take something that’s existing, and turn it into something completely new,” he says.
The Folio Society’s edition of A Clockwork Orange works from the restored version of the text, first published in 2012, and includes the once-banned 21st chapter, as well as an expanded glossary, compiled with reference to Burgess’s handwritten notes and letters to his editors. It is available for £29.95 and can be bought directly from the publishers here.
As someone recently introduced to regular bicycling by Citi Bike, New York’s bicycle share program, I love bike lanes. I just wish there were more of them; their relative Manhattan scarcity, and my unwillingness to brave the laneless streets with the battle-hardened bike pros, mean I must often choose circuitous routes in order to safely remain a wussy.
I assumed NYC won’t add more bike lanes because of the added cost and the resultant auto traffic congestion (more room for bikes means less room for cars). So I was very surprised to read a NYC Department of Transportation study [PDF] released this month that found that adding bike lanes actually increased the flow of auto traffic.
How is this possible? In two words, clever design. But before we get into the details, for those of you not familiar with the style of NYC’s newest bike lanes, let’s have a look at the old system:
As you can see, placing the bike lane there leaves the cyclist in danger of getting “doored” by someone getting out of a parked car without bothering to look first. And the painted buffer between the cyclist and moving traffic offers zero protection from a car that veers out of control. So in 2007 they started shuffling things around like this:
With this improved design, the cyclist now rides adjacent to the sidewalk. The painted five-foot buffer prevents the cyclist from getting doored by a parked car, which now resides in a parking lane that provides a solid physical barrier protecting a cyclist from colliding with a moving auto. And if you look at the dimensions listed, you’ll see the buffer can now safely be reduced by two feet in width, while the bike lane got wider by the same amount.
So right off the bat this second design is smarter than the first, and the numbers bear that out: In 2001, the old-style lanes were in effect. In 2013, the new-style lanes were in existence. And there has been a “75% decrease in average risk of a serious injury to cyclists” in that time period.
Alors qu’il avait déjà pu nous impressionner, le talentueux créatif allemand Antoni Tudisco a signé pour Yatra une série de visuels 3D du plus bel effet symbolisant divers pays. Une campagne appelée « Come Back Richer » et signée McCann India.
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