Pour le printemps, la marque allemande Festo a introduit ses eMotionButterflies : des drones qui ont la forme de papillons bleus et qui possèdent un système de caméras infrarouge leur permettant de se positionner et de se déplacer en groupe. Un travail qui allie poésie et technologie à découvrir en images.
La photographe libanaise Rania Matar a longtemps voyagé pour sa série « A Girl and Her Room ». Le passage entre la fille et la femme l’a toujours fascinée ; c’est pour cette raison qu’elle a décidé de capturer des jeunes filles du monde entier dans leurs sanctuaires. On peut voir des visages de libanaises, des palestiniennes, des anglaises et des américaines, au milieu de chambres qui reflètent leurs milieux socio-culturels.
Chaque année, a lieu les Architizer A+ Awards : un concours d’architecture qui récompense les meilleures créations dans plus de 90 catégories. Parmi les finalistes qui ont été annoncés la semaine dernière, découvrez les 5 derniers en liste dans la catégorie « Musées ». Pour information, les votes restent ouvert jusqu’au 6 avril.
Foster + Partners has been appointed to design an £8 billion transport system for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that will encompass a network of new metro, ferry, bus, and cycle terminals.
Norman Foster’s London-based firm, which was rumoured to be working on the project back in October 2014, has signed a contract reportedly worth £54 million to develop a long-term vision for the future of the city’s transport infrastructure.
The masterplan will include the design of all new metro stations, the trains and the branding. Foster + Partners will also create a series of new public spaces beneath the elevated railway tracks.
“Designed in response to the local climate, the masterplan is city-wide and draws on the high-density, compact urban model of the ancient quarter of Al Balad, with its mixture of uses and comfortable, walkable shaded streets,” said the firm in a statement.
Related story: Zaha Hadid wins competition for Saudi Arabian metro station
“Currently only 12 per cent of the population live within a 10 minute walk of Jeddah’s transport nodes – the project aims to achieve 50 per cent, through a process of densification and strategic planning,” it added.
“Each station node will create a new neighbourhood, with a unique character, and together these will create a diverse and vibrant city.”
Foster + Partners – whose past projects include a concept for a zero-carbon city in Abu Dhabi and a proposal for a “cycling utopia” in London – is the third company to be signed up to Jeddah’s public transport project.
In May 2014, architecture and engineering firm Aecom was given an 18-month contract to provide pre-program management consultancy services, while French railway engineering firm Systra was appointed in July to provide preliminary engineering designs.
Jeddah is the second-largest city in Saudi Arabia, after the capital city Riyadh. It is also set to become home to the world’s tallest building – the Kingdom Tower currently under construction is expected to have a height of 1000 metres.
According to the Saudi Gazette, the new metro system could be completed by 2020 and open in 2022.
The post Foster + Partners to design all stations and
trains for new Jeddah transport network appeared first on Dezeen.
This blackened plywood box added by architect Antonin Ziegler to one end of a rural home on France’s northern coast provides a private library and garage for its inhabitants (+ slideshow).
Parisian architect Antonin Ziegler added the 60-square-metre reading room to an old stone house in Senneville-sur-Fécamp, a region on the coast of the English Channel in northern France.
Ziegler was commissioned to design the extension – named Cliffs Impasse after the property’s clifftop location – to provide a home for the owner’s expanding book collection.
The library walls are clad inside and outside in plywood boards and three of its four sides feature large windows.
The pale ply was left untreated on the interior but the exterior is blackened with pine tar – a sticky preservative used to weatherproof maritime structures – as a contrast to the pale grey stonework of the original house.
The black cladding folds away from the front of the structure to provide an entrance to a garage that is concealed in the base of the structure.
“On the last path before the earth falls away into the sea, a small country house is tucked into an embankment,” said Ziegler.
“Inside, piles of books are stacked in every corner and recess. The rhythm of the day is marked by the turning of pages and punctuated by the comings and goings of the house cats.”
“At the end of an impasse, on top of a cliff, at the end of the world. What better place to escape from the world, to create a space that allows thoughts to run wild?” he added.
A narrow passageway with glazed walls connects the timber-clad volume to the stone gable of the existing home.
The passage leads through from the kitchen, and arrives at the foot of a new staircase leading up to the first-floor library.
Books are shelved on floor-to-ceiling units constructed from pale plywood. The timber ribs of the building’s structure slot between the shelves and extend across the ceiling, supporting another strip of shelving that hangs from the ceiling. The ribs also run between a series of windows on the opposite wall.
These form part of an L-shaped section of glazing that wraps one corner of the extension, providing views over the nearby village and the steeple of a church, while a smaller window is set into the rear wall to provide a view through the structure.
“Open on three sides, it is like a book opened onto the landscape,” said the architect. “From it, we can perceive the village and the horizon along the sea below.”
Rows of strip and pendant lighting hang from the timber ceiling, illuminating the large window at night – a feature the architect says draws attention into the extension and away from the house.
“Beyond simply providing a view for its inhabitants and offering a place for evasion, the space also creates a new image within the landscape,” he said.
“The focus on this newly unveiled space creates a relationship that tends to make the existing house disappear.”
Photography is by Antonin Ziegler.
The post Blackened timber reading room extends
a coastal home in northern France appeared first on Dezeen.
Comments update: Plans to construct Europe’s tallest skyscraper next to Peter Zumthor’s world-famous spa building in a tiny Alpine village attracted over 140 comments this week.
The design by Morphosis Architects comprises a 381-metre-tall mirrored hotel tower, which outraged many readers.
“It’s grotesquely over-scaled,” said Galicer. “You’ll be able to see it from miles away, even above the mountains.”
Other commenters piled in to criticise the proposal, describing the design as “lazy“, “obnoxious” and “shockingly bad“. But one commenter calling themselves grb called for a closer examination of the project: “It’s worth noting Mayne made serious design decisions here, worth real consideration.”
Other readers agreed. “It minimises sprawl,” said Samopop. “If you build up, you don’t build out.”
“I hope this gets built,” davvid wrote. “Architects today have lost their courage. It’s bold but that doesn’t mean it is destructive.” Read the comments on this story »
End of the road? Elon Musk, founder of electric car company Tesla, thinks that driving will be outlawed because it’s “too dangerous for humans”. But will autonomous vehicles be safer?
“When it comes to a possibly fatal crash, the machine will choose the least damaging option,” wrote Adam. “What if the option causes death to the driver?”
“Humans make decisions when driving based on variables which go beyond simple algorithms,” agreed Cogs. “I am not ready to hand my life over to a robot car.”
Other commenters lamented the loss of driving purely for enjoyment, but archimago said autonomous cars are just a logical progression.
“You’ll still be able to own a car and drive it on private roads. Think about it more like driving a horse-pulled carriage on a highway… of course it’s outlawed.” Read the comments on this story »
Emeco V Ikea: Emeco revealed its intention to sue Ikea for allegedly copying a chair designed by Norman Foster.
“It’s very similar, but then it’s also a very basic chair,” observed Stam. “I am not surprised more than one person could imagine a chair like this.”
Others felt Ikea had undermined the American furniture brand. “By producing a similar version that is so much cheaper, Ikea takes away some of the exclusivity of Emeco’s more expensive chair,” said John.
Regular Dezeen commenter Arjay Cee described the situation as “the unaffordable suing the unpalatable”. Read the comments on this story »
Serpentine whine: SelgasCano’s colourful design for the 15th Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens proved divisive.
“Please bring back the star architects,” wrote Martin. “This is so bland.” Jimmy agreed, describing the design as “boring stuff seen a million times”. “They should go for edgy and inventive people,” he said.
But others described the project as the most “interesting concept for years” and an opportunity for the Madrid-based architects to become a household name.
“I think the design is very interesting,” said Piero. “People misunderstand the purpose of the Serpentine Pavilion… its main purpose being for architects to create experimental designs.” Read the comments on this story »
The post “Architects today have lost their courage” appeared first on Dezeen.
SomeOne has worked with illustrator and craftsman Christopher Wormell to create a new symbol for Glenlivet whisky, replacing the brand’s thistle marque with a linocut depicting the river that flows through its estate.
Founded in 1824, Glenlivet is apparently the second biggest selling single malt in the world and the biggest selling in the US. The brand has used a thistle marque for the past 50 years but with its global export business growing, felt it needed something more distinctive.
The new marque, pictured top, depicts a packhorse bridge over the River Livet, which flows through Glenlivet’s distillery estate in Northeast Scotland and is the water source for the drink (the whisky’s Gaelic name is also a reference to the river, translating as the valley through which the Livet flows). The bridge was apparently used by bootleggers to smuggle whisky from the estate in the 19th century, and is pictured within a perfect circle above the phrase ‘Estd. 1824’.
Glenlivet’s previous logo
David Law, co-founder of SomeOne, says the marque aims to better represent Glenlivet’s heritage and location “while giving it a more contemporary edge.”
“The growth in the whisky market globally has been stratospheric, and Glenlivet wanted a signifier that would be understood in different markets, from China to the US. A thistle is a symbol of Scotland, but it’s very generic and doesn’t necessarily translate globally,” he explains.
The marque was produced in linocut by Christopher Wormell, who worked from preparatory sketches drawn up by senior designer Tom Myers. It has already been applied to Glenlivet’s website and will be rolled out across packaging and branding over the next few months.
Logo sketches
“We’ve worked with Christopher a few times and thought he’d be perfect for this. We did some sketch work with him in mind, got it to look roughly how we wanted, then asked him to refine and finesse it. Chris works in wood cut as well as linocut, but we chose linocut [for the marque] as it’s a slightly quicker process, and we knew we’d have to make several small adjustments and tweaks to make sure it would work in small and large scale,” says Law.
“The refinements mainly consisted of bringing a little more finesse and tonal balance to the image, so that it worked a little more illustrative-ly than merely as a flat graphic symbol,” says Wormell.
“I worked on quite a few versions of the image at the sketch stage, between five and ten I think, mainly trying to get that tonal balance right and the curve of the bridge – it needed to mirror the circle of the icon, yet maintain an illustrative perspective. Once the sketch was just about there I cut the image on a lino block, converting all shapes and textures into solid black and white,” he adds.
Wormell has produced some beautiful linocut and wood cut work in his career, including editorial illustrations and artwork for packaging, as well as a series of children’s books about animals. “I’ve been making linocuts for many, many years – for most of my life,” he says. “Drawing with a lino cutting tool feels natural to me; making white lines on a black ground and thinking in terms of solid blacks and bright whites…these are the things that make [it] the perfect medium for simple, iconic imagery,” he adds.
Glenlivet’s packaging has also been streamlined, with a new deep purple introduced on boxes and gift bags. “There was a lot of ornamentation in previous iterations, we wanted to strip it back a bit and focus on the signifier,” adds Law. The brand font and typeface, however, will remain the same.
With new premium offerings such as Haig Club aiming to target younger consumers, and new distilleries opening up across England and Scotland in response to growing demand for whisky abroad (growth slowed last year, but the value of Scotch has risen over 80 percent in the past decade), it’s no surprise long-established distilleries are keen to revise their identity and packaging. (Glenlivet is one of several Scotch whisky brands to update its identity, following Glenfiddich last year, Laphroaig in 2013 and Chivas in late 2012).
In global markets in particular, where audiences may be less familiar with heritage brands, older names need to reinforce their history while creating an upmarket look that will appeal to both seasoned drinkers and a growing younger market.
Glenlivet’s new marque has a handcrafted, historical feel, but is detailed and streamlined enough to work on a range of applications, while referencing the story of the product’s origins. It’s not as recognisably ‘Scottish’ as the previous logo, and global audiences are unlikely to immediately understand the significance of the bridge and river, but it does have a more contemporary feel and gives Glenlivet a unique, distinctive symbol instead of a national one that any Scottish brand could adopt. It’s also nice to see a new marque created using traditional techniques, and works well on the new two-colour boxes.
One of the most revealing Y20 talks was Sharon Werner’s insight on collaboration.
Sharon is the founder of Werner Design Werks, a small design studio of storytellers artists and designers located in Saint Paul, Minnesota. They do both large and small projects, from brand development to packaging, for companies of any size from all over the world. No matter the size of the project, their commitment is to create authentic brand stories that people care about.
During her presentation, Sharon described how her small team works on adapting and navigating to meet the future. They follow three simple steps: listen, talk, design; and work in collaboration with other designers so they are open and flexible to different points of view. “The answer to how do we keep moving forward is collaboration.” Collaborators bring inspiration as well as expertise to their projects they are part of the process from the beginning. Freelancers and junior designers attend meetings with clients, as it is important that they hear from the client directly. There is no hierarchy in her company, she believes that is how research and creativity flows best.
Werner Design Werks’ portfolio includes a series of children’s books, Alphabeasties and other Amazing Types, Bugs by the Numbers, Alphasaurs and other Prehistoric Types, published by Blue Apple Books. I couldn’t miss the opportunity to get a copy for my 4-year-old alphabet fan & zoologist, and Sharon kindly signed it with a cute note for him (“Tomas, T is for Tiger”).
Alphabeasties books were also a good example of collaboration between Sharon and Sarah Forss, senior designer at Werner Design Werks. The project started as a fluke, it was their own personal project and suddenly someone was interested in publishing it as a book. Sharon recalls thinking, “What can we bring to an alphabet book that hasn’t been done before? Typography, that’s what we know about!” and so the first book was born. As the younger generations are paying more attention to design nowadays, the project aimed to demonstrate “that typography is fun, that type has a personality and can express more than simply the words being spelled.” It was a creative outlet but it not always easy to find the time to work on side projects. The tactics that worked for Sharon to push that personal project was treating it like a real project with a real client; carving up the time to do it. She emphasized the importance of giving personal projects the attention they deserve, from your website to a project you are passionate about.
Reading more about Sharon’s work I found an interview she recently did for AIGA. I thought I would include here part of it, because her collaboration working model really resonated with me and with the Y20 audience:
(AIGA): Clearly this is a model that has worked for you. I’m sure you’ve had opportunities to expand the size or staff of your studio, but you’ve chosen not to do that. Why did you made that choice?
(SW): Well, I love to work with a lot of different people. Sometimes I think when you’re in an office environment; there can be a lot of petty “officeness.” No matter what the agency, no matter what the environment, there’s just this stuff that happens that’s peripheral to the actual work. Sometimes the morning chitchat you have with colleagues is really nice and fun, but when it happens all day long, it’s crazy. I think having a smaller studio, we can avoid that, and then we can bring in people to work on very specific tasks and specific things. Then we can move on and bring in new people. You don’t get caught up in everyone’s personal issues. Another reason I’ve decided to keep the studio small is that I like to stay involved with the actual work and process. As an owner, it’s difficult to do that with more people. You tend to get caught up in the management of people.
Keeping the studio small allows us to stay more focused. We don’t need to sit down and have staff meetings. We know the status of everything that’s going on all the time. I personally like that, though I don’t know if that’s right for everyone. That’s just my personality. I don’t want to sit in a staff meeting. I just want to do the work and I want to brainstorm.”
For the full interview please see http://www.aiga.org/sharon-werner/
Sharon was featured in UPPERCASE issue #14 and at the end of her presentation she kindly agreed to pose with the magazine. Janine visited Sharon in her studio a few years ago, take a look in this post to see more.
NYC’s bars and restaurants currently suffer from an aesthetic issue we call “Edison bulb overload.” We get it, it’s cool that you can see the filament. But how long can this nostalgia-driven trend last? While LEDs are clearly the future, few people have nailed a non-clinical aesthetic for LED bulbs that people trying to create moody spaces will swoon over.
Except for maybe Buster & Punch, the London-based design brand started up by architect/industrial designer Massimo Buster Minale. B&P has thrown out the traditional pear shape we all know for the bulb, instead going for an unapologetically modern take on the teardrop. For the filaments they’ve gone with rational straight rows, giving the impression of computer-controlled order versus the imperfect squiggles of an incandescent filament. According to the company, “The resin light pipe at the centre of the bulb…allows the bulb to create a subtle ambient light, whilst at the same time throw focused spot light onto tables & surfaces below.”
The glass for the bulbs is offered with three options for tint: “Gold,” “Smoked” and “Crystal.”
They’ve also designed a line of unadorned pendant lamps to hang them from, their “Heavy Metal” line. The three color variants have a Machine Age aesthetic to them that perfectly complements the bulbs.
The optional leather shades is where they lose me a bit. They’re made of “the finest quilted Italian calf-leather” along with rubber and brass, but for a bulb and socket that pretty, I prefer to see them bare.
Learn more here.
Technology improves at a rapid pace and the devices we love today are the outdated clunkers of tomorrow. Who’s got a VCR sitting around? I do. And although you may have a plan to replace, donate, or properly dispose of unwanted hardware, you still might have a pile of cables on hand. Fortunately, this often-overlooked pile of clutter is easy to handle.
I recently read an article on MacObserver that’s full of suggestions for managing unwanted cables. Writing for MacObserver, Kelly Gulmont begins with practical advice:
Start by making sure your friends and family all have what they need too. Perhaps they need extras for car charging or computer bags or whatever.
The cable you don’t need might be exactly what a relative or friend wants. Gulmont continues, describing various options for recycling: Best Buy and Staples have free programs and “… 1-800-Recycling and the National Center for Electronics Recycling will hook you up with the appropriate local facilities.”
I will add schools and scouting groups to the list of possible cable donation recipients. Many have STEM programs that are always in need of donations, and the cables they need often aren’t the latest and greatest.
Other suggestions: Be sure you know your devices well to know exactly which cables you need for your devices. When you donate or recycle your equipment, include the appropriate cables with the device in your donation — especially duplicates. Also, check with your local municipal and/or county recycling centers to learn where to dispose of the cables so when it is appropriate to trash them (such as broken and unsafe cables) you know the location to drop them off and the process.
Cables are insidious things that love to congregate in homes and never leave. The good news is there are several options for finding them a new place to be. Happy organizing!
Post written by David Caolo
Let Unclutterer help you get your home or office organized. Subscribe to our helpful product shipments from Quarterly today.
The post What to do with old unwanted cables appeared first on Unclutterer.
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.
