Pharrell Williams nous dévoile le clip de Gust of Wind, morceau de son album GIRL, sorti en 2014. Une troisième collaboration avec les Daft Punk, qui dans ce clip ne sont représentés que par d’énormes casques de pierre en lévitation. Le chanteur quant à lui est accompagné par une troupe de gymnastes dans une forêt aux couleurs automnales. Un clip réalisé par Edgar Wright.
Seeing as seating and transportation are the proverbial bread and butter of design, the occasional hybridization of two functions in a single form is all but inevitable, manifested in various shapes and sizes. So too can conveyances be reimagined as articles of furniture, as illustrated by these two projects.
First up, the Randonneur Chair by Two Makers is easily the most interesting piece of cycling-inspired furniture we’ve seen in a long time. Rather less cheeky than Jeremy Petrus’s homage to George Nelson and certainly more elegant than the regrettable ‘Fixie Table,’ the bespoke piece holds its own as a classy rocking chair even as it unmistakably alludes to the bicycle frame as a design object. The Randonneur Chair is characterized by exposed brazing at the joins, as well as lugged construction to the effect of a proper headtube and seatstay cluster, bolt and all); other features include dual bottle cages and the Brooks handlebar tape to accent the drops. While I personally would be curious to see a more subtle version of the chair sans these details, it works equally well with the overt reference points.
Inspired by classic hand-built racing and touring bicycles manufactured by the master Constructeurs of the 1940s, the Randonneur Chair is handcrafted from Reynolds 631 tubing, hardwood and bicycle saddle leather. Using bicycle geometries and traditional frame-building techniques, it is both a celebration of cycling and of bespoke British craftsmanship.
Pour l’année 2014, la célèbre marque Moleskine a lancé une édition limitée de carnets qui s’inspirent de l’univers des LEGO. C’est la deuxième fois que ces deux marques collaborent ensemble. Chaque carnet possède une brique LEGO en relief sur sa couverture ainsi que des autocollants à l’intérieur.
World Architecture Festival 2014: architect Ole Scheeren has revealed more about the motivations behind The Interlace, an “important prototype” for housing where horizontal buildings are stacked diagonally across one another to frame terraces, gardens and plazas (+ slideshow).
Conceived as the antithesis to tower blocks, The Interlace is made up of 31 apartment buildings that have been arranged and stacked in a honeycomb arrangement to frame eight large hexagonal courtyards.
“Housing – through the quantities that it has been produced in, and the formulaic nature it has taken out of an almost lethal mix of building regulations, efficiency and profit concerns – has become simply compressed into a very standardised format. I think this project shows in a really dramatic way, and also in a significant scale, that something else is possible.”
Scheeren led the project while working at Rem Koolhaas’ OMA, although he now runs his own studio, Buro Ole Scheeren.
The development, which was handed over to residents at the end of 2013, accommodates 1,040 apartments of varying sizes. The six-storey blocks are stacked up in twos, threes and fours, creating three peaks of 24 storeys.
Parts of the blocks rest over others, but several also cantilever outwards to shelter spaces below. This offers residents elevated gardens and roof terraces, both private and communal.
The large multi-storey voids between blocks also help to bring light and ventilation right through the site, as opposed to the isolated environments created by clusters of isolated towers.
Comparing the building to the radical housing developments of the 1960s, Scheeren said the project helps to foster communities: “I guess in the 1960s there were a number of really good ambitions and really powerful ideas but maybe what was missing was a sensitive-enough understanding of the humane, of structures for inhabitation.”
“They were incredible structures and I’m really interested in using this structural dimension, but to really imbue it with a very acute sense of place, of space, of inhabitation of people who actually live and work and exist in those places,” he said.
The eight large courtyards, which have names such as Theatre Plaza, Lotus Pond and Rainforest Spa, offer a variety of amenities, from swimming pools and gyms to barbecue areas, tennis courts, games rooms, and even a one-kilometre running track that surrounds the site.
These squares form the main entrances for residents and connect up with a network of secondary footpaths that lead through to each home.
A car park is sunken down on a ventilated basement level, but lit from above by openings in the surfaces of the courtyards.
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A solo exhibition of Dutch designer Aldo Bakker‘s sculptural furniture, including a minimal swing and a number of more ambiguous objects, is on display at a Rotterdam gallery (+ slideshow).
Aldo Bakker is showing a range of new pieces and updates of existing work at Galerie VIVID in Rotterdam until 26 October.
While the functions of some of his furniture designs are evident, many of his more sculptural pieces are difficult to associate with a clearly defined purpose at first glance.
“Bakker rarely starts a design from the desire to solve a practical problem,” said Dutch writer Hans den Hartog Jager in his brief biography of the designer.
“In fact, though Bakker may unmistakably be a designer, his interest in functionality only comes in at the latest stage.”
Among his new designs on show is a minimal swing, created using a U-shaped maple wood element balanced on two similar upturned pieces on either side.
The wood is coated with iron sulphate, similar to the designer’s Anura side table from last year.
Chairs named 3dw1up feature three rounded legs that support dish-like seats, with another identical element pointing up to create a svelte backrest. The designs come in yellowheart and purpleheart timber.
The chairs are presented alongside a dark maple wood console, with two legs and a top that are flat on their outward-facing sides and bulging on the surfaces facing in.
Bakker has also created a miniature bronze version of his 2010 curvaceous Tonus stool, originally coated in Japanese urushi laquer.
The Three Pair piece sculpted from Estremoz creme Marble has an almost flat stop, which appears to be fitted over a trio of rounded objects – another reworking of a previous design.
“As a result of the de- and reconstruction, many people do not recognise the function of Bakker’s designs at first – sometimes Bakker seems to produce designs that have yet to find a use,” said Den Hartog Jager.
“I’ll probably be most remembered for putting dots over people’s faces, so its funny to do an issue devoted to the selfies of famous people,” says John Baldessari, who has applied his signature “color interventions” to a suite of celebrity self-portraits for the latest issue of Visionaire. The sixty-fourth incarnation of the shape-shifting publication, creating in partnership with Samsung, is now available in three editions—Red, Green, and Blue—each with a distinct set of portraits tucked in a canvas-clad portfolio that folds out to become a display case. After meeting with Baldessari in his Venice Beach studio, Visionaire founders Cecilia Dean and James Kaliardos recruited the likes of Dustin Hoffman, Cameron Diaz, Miley Cyrus, Marina Abramovic, KAWS, Bill Cunningham, and Gisele Bündchen to contribute self-portraits that were printed in black and white and then altered with embossed shapes and colors created by Baldessari. The resulting images range from the exotic (as when a turbaned Lupita Nyong’o gains a second chapeau in a floating, noseless face) to the serene (the clasped hands of Ed Ruscha, amidst a yellow orb and swoosh of orange). “Now we live in an age of self-celebration and constant surveillance in which nearly everyone carries some form of camera,” notes Dean. “It seems ironic and hilarious that an artist so famous for putting dots over people’s faces would devote an issue to the technology that celebrates face-time.” (more…)
Most new sneaker designs we see these days involve fancy new materials, new production methods and/or experimental soles. But in terms of function, they remain the same as they’ve been for decades. Inventor Steven Kaufman’s Quikiks, on the other hand, have a very unique design feature: They can be donned and removed without the use of your hands.
“There are 50 million people just in the United States,” says Kaufman, “with various physical or cognitive challenges that greatly limit their ability to don their own footwear.” Kaufman was inspired to design the opening/closing mechanism, which can be applied to a variety of footwear styles, after his son Alex was diagnosed with scoliosis and forced to wear a brace that prevented him from bending over to manipulate his shoes.
“I didn’t know anything about shoe making,” writes Kaufman. “I just had a vision of how it might be possible.” He then put in five long years and produced dozens of prototypes, and now his designs are finally ready for primetime. Here’s how he developed them, and how they work:
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