Hasta La Ideas

Time lapse of a model getting her hair and makeup done to match every decade from 1910 to 2010…(Read…)

Wiktoria Szawiel est une designer hollandaise qui fait des collections de meubles allant de petits tabourets à de la vaisselle avec des motifs délicats qui font penser à du tissage, par leur apparence. Une sélection de son très beau travail est à découvrir en images dans la galerie.

Landscapes Within serie.

Landscapes Within, Vessels.

Ordinary Chair.

Rattan Stool.

As many of our readers know, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (f.k.a. Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum) will host its grand re-opening next month, following the three-year renovation of the historic Andrew Carnegie Mansion on New York City’s Museum Mile. Although museum director Caroline Baumann hinted at many of the elements of the institution-wide refresh last fall, when she was a guest on our Afterschool podcast, she gladly elaborated on several of these initiatives in a recent conversation with our own Allan Chochinov. With the mansion at 2 East 91st St set to open in just nine days, we’re all ears as Baumann gives us a taste of what to expect.

Allan Chochinov: Let’s start at the very beginning Caroline. We’ve been (impatiently!) waiting for the museum to reopen for a couple of years now, but tell us how the project began, what precipitated the renovation, and what the original wishes for a newly imagined museum were?

Caroline Baumann: The seeds of the project were actually sown over a decade ago. Back in 2000–2001, we began to forge a new strategic plan, one that would transform Cooper Hewitt from a design museum housed in a 19th-century mansion, to a dynamic, interactive, 21st-century museum experience. From 2004–2006, we began outlining our master plan with Beyer, Blinder, Belle Architects & Planners, creating a vision for Cooper Hewitt as a design destination. At this time, there was tremendous interest in what we were doing, with long lines for our exhibitions and standing-room only for our educational programs. It was the perfect time to build on that momentum and ideate on how to expand our reach, how to grow our audience and impact.

A reconditioned space would be the foundation of our reinvention and, in 2006, the Smithsonian and our Board of Trustees approved the renovation plan, green lighting the capital campaign that made all of this possible. From 2006 to 2007, we travelled the world reviewing various design architects’ works, evaluating who could best bring our vision to life; schematics and design development took place from 2007 to 2008, and by 2009, Phase 1 was off and running, with the collection being transferred to offsite conservation and storage.

In terms of our original wishes, we wanted our newly imagined museum to allow for a completely reinvigorated visitor experience, one that could break out of the restrictions imposed by the mansion’s Georgian architecture. This is particularly evident in our third-floor renovation—previously a research library—which will now house 6,000 square feet of gallery space. We needed to create uninterrupted space to exhibit contemporary design without having to build false walls, and we’ve done just that. When we reopen on December 12, visitors will be able to experience our collections like never before in the history of Cooper Hewitt.

(more…)

Traveling with small, unmarked toiletries dispenser is quite cumbersome and for folks like me, a nightmare. To consolidate all of them into one product is the ‘All In One Toiletries’ carrier. It features several compartments around the rim, which are marked as shampoo, conditioner etc. The central pocket is good to hold razor, toothbrush and other such items. Love it for its simple functional approach towards traveling gear.

Designers: Choi Seungho and Yeon Taekwon

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Yanko Design
Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
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(The One Travel Kit was originally posted on Yanko Design)

Related posts:

1. Travel Bag-buggy
2. Travel Scale
3. Autonomous Travel Pod

Eindhoven designer Rene Siebum has added textures to a set of commercial door handles to investigate ways of making them more interesting to touch (+ slideshow).

Rene Siebum‘s Touch study resulted in 24 iterations of an aluminium door handle bought from a local hardware store.

“I noticed it is one of the most commonly used in new-build housing in the Netherlands, but also when traveling abroad it’s a recognisable model,” Siebum told Dezeen.

“I took this model as a metaphor and realised that the round hand grip like this one evokes the least sensorial stimuli.”

The designer added a range of different materials to the handles, including sand and different types of plastic.

He also used a variety of processes to alter the metal, grinding and sanding it back to make it thinner and more delicate, and carving it to provide texture.

“I first looked at how our sense of touch communicates with us, I realised the basic elements for our touch sense are texture, structure, volume and temperature,” said Siebum.

“I started the research with the idea, to take the basic known model and distort it, exploring what the model would ‘give’ me. From there on I started to explore the change of texture, volume, structure and changed the materiality to play with temperature as well.”

In one instance, the handle was chopped up into slices along its length then stuck back together haphazardly.

Another version is wrapped in a coil of metal wire, while another copies the shape of the handle with an open web of the same material.

Other recreations were formed from wood, chipboard and soapstone – chosen for their different tactile qualities.

For more experimental designs, Siebum built up layers of sand and latex to create a light, flexible model that is malleable when warm.

He melted a plastic version until it bubbled, then left it to cool so it set with smooth bumps across its surface.

Touch was presented during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven earlier this year.

The post Rene Siebum manipulates door handles
to explore the sense of touch appeared first on Dezeen.