Jul 22
Jul 22
Kimchi Kooks: Small-batch, fermented delights made in NYC by a mother-and-son artist duo
Posted in: Uncategorized
Kimchi has always been a source of Korean pride—yet the obligatory side dish (and cultural symbol) has made headlines in the past few years as cheaper Chinese imports have taken over restaurants and supermarkets. New Yorkers now can get a taste……
Continue Reading…
Jul 22
Underwater Photography of Children Playing Sports
Posted in: UncategorizedLa photographe Alix Martinez a créé une série de magnifiques photographies sous-marines originales. Elle met en scène des enfants pratiquant leur sport individuel ou collectif, sous l’eau d’une piscine. La technique de l’artiste donne un aspect irréel et imaginaire à ses clichés .
Jul 22
Low Riding Electric Motorcycle
Posted in: UncategorizedLe designer japonais Kota Nezu a créé le concept d’une moto électrique originale portant le nom de Zecco. Celle-ci présente, en effet, une assise basse et est entièrement assemblée à la main. Certaines parties sont faites d’un alliage d’aluminum sculpté et le modèle est alimenté d’une batterie lithium ion. La production est limitée à 49 exemplaires qui pourront être personnalisés selon les demandes des acheteurs.
Jul 22
Wandering Creature made from Discarded VHS Tape
Posted in: UncategorizedSi vous vous promenez dans la campagne islandaise, peut-être croiserez vous le chemin d’étranges créatures faites de bandes magnétiques flottant dans le vent. Philip Ob Rey, leur créateur, a photographié ces monstres énigmatiques dans le cadre de son projet « V »HS, errant au beau milieu de paysages désertiques.
Jul 22
Roots trail from house suspended above a construction site by Leandro Erlich
Posted in: UncategorizedA root system sprouts from the concrete foundations of this house installation that dangles from a crane above a construction site in Germany.
Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich suspended the model house, called Pulled by the Roots, above the construction site for a new underground tram system in the southern German city of Karlsruhe.
The installation is designed to challenge the residents’ perception of the construction works as an “eyesore” and to act as a reminder that “underneath the tons of metal and concrete of our cities, a vital organic presence remains.”
Roots affixed to the base of the structure create the illusion that it has been torn away from its plot like a tree.
Related story: Alex Chinneck performs architectural “magic trick” with Covent Garden building installation
“In the modern era, we are tempted to see human innovation as inorganic and divorced from the natural world,” said Erlich. “The speed of technology and the increasingly virtual dimension in which many of us we live only encourages this tendency to separate our inventions from the earth that sustains us.”
“Pulled up by the Roots highlights this tension. As living beings on an ever-changing planet, we can never be apart from the organic world; the architecture that we create is part and parcel of our environment.”
The installation is part of the summer festival The City is the Star – where a series of hyperreal sculptures have been installed across the city including a truck with its rear wheels parked on the facade of a building.
“Karlsruhe’s citizens have seen their sidewalks disrupted and intersections re-routed; large cranes have become a dominant figure in the cityscape,” said the artist.
“As we consider our impact on the natural world, climate change and the fate of the oceans, this piece reminds us that human culture and nature are intimately linked.”
Erlich’s past works include an installation in east London where visitors to a replica facade of a house laid out on the ground were reflected in a huge mirror to create the illusion that they were hanging from windows and scaling walls.
Fellow installation artist Alex Chinneck has also worked with urban architecture to create optical illusions, including a building that appears to levitate and a house with a slumping brick facade.
Pulled by the Roots continues until 27 September 2015.
Photography is by Leandro Erlich Studio.
Project credits:
Artist: Leandro Erlich
Clients: ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Stadtmarketing Karlsruhe GmbH, Karlsruher Schieneninfrastruktur-Gesellschaft mbH (KASIG)
The post Roots trail from house suspended above a construction site by Leandro Erlich appeared first on Dezeen.
Jul 22
Naoto Fukasawa designs minimal kitchen appliances for Muji
Posted in: UncategorizedDesign brand Muji is releasing a pop-up toaster and an electric kettle by Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa at stores in the UK, USA and Europe (+ slideshow).
Following success in Japan, Tokyo-based Fukasawa’s white minimal appliances have recently launched at selected stores in the USA. They will be stocked in the UK from November and be released in other European countries next year.
The collection includes a smooth-sided toaster that features round edges and functional flat sides to allow it to sit against a kitchen wall.
A temperature dial is situated on the side of the appliance, along with a function for frozen bread and another button that pops the toast up. Hidden within the base is a tray that slides out for removing crumbs.
The designer discussed the new products during a recent talk held in Tokyo, and acknowledged how toasters had become “less angular” but still needed to remain square-shaped to optimise their functionality.
“Toasters have also become somewhat less angular, but they’re still more square-shaped than rice cookers,” he said.
“There are reasons for this. In order to toast the bread so that the inside’s moist and the outside’s crunchy, there needs to be a certain distance between the heater and the bread.”
Based on a typical jug shape, Fukasawa’s rounded kettle is designed to be easy to hold and use. It is able to boil a cup of water in 80 seconds and automatically switches off to save electricity.
The electrical lead can be neatly wound up underneath the base, which has a gap that allows the plug to feed through while keeping the appliance flat against the countertop.
“The closer an object gets to the human body, the easier it will be to adapt to if it has a softer, gentler form,” said Fukasawa.
“Our job, you could say, is not to give forms to objects, but instead to determine their positions. If it’s going to be installed near a wall or used while in a human hand – that’s what’s important.”
His rice cooker was originally designed for the brand in 2002, but is now also available in the USA. Its rounded body features a simple control panel and the lid has an integrated spoon holder.
The kettle and toaster will be available from Muji’s Tottenham Court Road store in London from November, while all three designs will be stocked at selected stores in the USA.
Fukasawa previously designed a wall-mounted CD player for the Japanese brand, which is known for its minimal home products offered at a relatively low cost.
Fukasawa is also the founder of Japanese homeware brand Plusminuszero, which launched its first collection in the UK in 2009. The Infobar mobile phone and minimal dials to monitor air temperature, pressure and humidity for Italian brand Magis are among his recent product designs.
Watch the designer explain the impact of digital technology on furniture design in our exclusive video interview »
Other recently reimagined kitchen appliances include Royal College of Art graduate Ted Wiles’ toaster that needs hugging to operate and Kingston University graduate Jake Rich’s pod-shaped microwave on wheels.
The post Naoto Fukasawa designs minimal kitchen appliances for Muji appeared first on Dezeen.
Jul 22
MVRDV's Parkrand apartment block is "like a big mansion" says Jacob van Rijs
Posted in: UncategorizedMVRDV co-founder Jacob van Rijs explains how the firm created an Amsterdam housing development where over 200 homes share one big “outdoor living room” in the latest movie from our exclusive series (+ movie).
Completed in 2007, the Parkrand Amsterdam apartment building is a block made up of five connected towers that together frame a communal garden for residents.
MVRDV raised the garden above ground level, allowing it to also function as a huge balcony overlooking the park beyond.
“How do you make a building that is both open and connecting and at the same time housing a lot of apartments?” asks van Rijs in the film.
“That was part of the plan, to make kind of one big block of, let’s say, 225 units with one door and a collective interior space with views to the green,” he explains. “So the scale of the building relates to the scale of the park – it’s like a big mansion.”
Giant plant pots are dotted around the space, along with elephant-shaped seats and playground equipment. Parts of the building bridge across overhead, creating a sense of shelter.
“You can say there are big, collective spaces where you can have a party or you can just play with your friends, and it also shows the possibilities of having a sort of space between public and private,” says van Rijs.
Related story: MVRDV plans skyscraper with a “curving waist” for Vienna
“The theme is that everything becomes larger, everything is enlarged, so a room becomes a space of eight storeys high and a flower pot becomes three metres high suddenly and the tiny, tiny elephant becomes suddenly a chair.”
Different material finishes were selected for the outward and inward facing exterior walls. “On the outside, this kind of a rough, more rough crusty side – it’s dark, more rough, with large balconies,” continues the architect.
“Inside the block everything is white and that is to do with the light reflection, the effect of bouncing light helps to lighten the interiors. The bricks were specially made for this project. It gives the feeling of an internal space, an interior wallpaper and it becomes almost like an urban setting again.”
Parkrand residents Ruud and Karina Valk describe the building as a preferable alternative to the simple stone houses found in countries like France.
“We have the feeling that we live outside of Amsterdam because you have beautiful trees, beautiful field – it’s very nice to have this in Amsterdam,” says Ruud. “It has something very special,” adds Karina.
The building replaced three L-shaped slab blocks that stood on the site previously. MVRDV followed the project up with another Amsterdam housing project – a block on the docklands – as well as a mixed-use block in Lyon, France.
Van Rijs co-founded MVRDV in 1993 with partners Winy Maas and Nathalie de Vries. This is the fifth movie in a series profiling the firm’s work, which also features a Paris office block with a hollow centre and a library contained within a glass pyramid.
Photography is by Rob ‘t Hart.
The post MVRDV’s Parkrand apartment block is “like a big mansion” says Jacob van Rijs appeared first on Dezeen.
Jul 22
Sonos PLAY:1 Tone is a Study in Minimalism
Posted in: UncategorizedSonos recently released a new limited edition offering of their flagship PLAY:1 wireless speaker—the Tone is a monochromatic matte black or white speaker in a soft touch finish. To celebrate the release of the newest member of Sonos’ suite of products, Core77 spoke to the Tad Toulis, Vice President of Design at Sonos and Core77 contributor. Toulis shares insight on the design process, the challenges facing designers working in consumer audio, and why he’s recently been fascinated with Scandinavian design.
**Read more with Tad Toulis in the Core77 Questionnaire
Core77: The PLAY:1 Tone reduces the color of your foundational PLAY:1 speaker to a matte black and matte white. What was the process of arriving at such a minimal treatment?
Tad Toulis: With design at Sonos, we ask ourselves: How do audio products—in this time and place—appear in the world in a way that dovetails with what’s happening in technology and sound? From a design perspective, there’s a lot of ways to do that. Our number one challenge as a company is that we live in a bunch of environments that we can’t control. So we have to design in a way that fits in and stands out in a range of contexts.
With limited edition work, they’re either partner driven, relationship driven or concept driven. The PLAY:1 Tone we did on our own initiative because we felt like there was something interesting to say there.
For concept editions, we try to achieve a moment of focus to take advantage of the product in a way that expresses an idea or makes you reconsider how you look at that product. After we had done the Blue Note effort, which was a deep exploration of color, I wanted to figure out a way to map out a different territory that was kind of restrained but would give us a different creative challenge. Tone started emerging because I was really interested in this idea of what the smallest change we could make that would give us the most different effect in the product. And as we started looking at that problem and doing these single color monoblocking experiments, we got purer and purer with that expression. And that idea connected with the sound quality of Sonos products.
So then the question became: How do we reconcile this idea of clear sound with this visual proposition. And when I came across the quote from John Cale that appears on the packaging, “We’d hold a chord for three hours if we could,” it felt like a testimony to the highest achievement in an art form. Beyond the physical stamina that it would require, it underlines how much richness such a reduced thing could be. There’s a real history of artists working with very reduced palettes that do the same thing—making you look at things differently.
How does a monochromatic black or white speaker make a consumer think differently?
A small idea, paint one white, paint one black, gives you a totally different read of the product. And that includes seeing the grill totally changed from being an element that lives between the top part and the bottom part of the speaker to being a sort of textile. With the soft touch paint, in the matte black or white, it adheres to the grill in a different way giving it a ceramic treatment—awakening how you see something differently but also connecting it to a domestic space, fitting into the home. So it’s not just the consumer electronics product, but it’s a domesticated object.
With the investment in research and manufacturing, why wouldn’t Sonos just add this to it’s regular product offering?
We treat the limited edition as a sandbox—it’s experimentation, an exploratory lab for designers. I used to be a big fan of François Truffaut and he was a big critic of cinema and then he became a filmmaker. In my case, having been a consultant, having worked a bit in house and having written about design, one of the things that’s great about this opportunity is to take what I’ve observed, built up in my experience, and say, how do we operate as a design team inside this problem space and what do we do with design? The great blessing I have is to be in this company where I sit across hardware and software and have the opportunity to deploy those ideas. That’s really the opportunity. So all of it is one body of work.
What role does design have to play in the future of this product category?
Ideas are what make business work. And ideas are what make design work. The idea here is really reflecting on sound. How can we talk about ourselves in a way that connects what we are to how we want to be, visually? Design is emotional but it is also logical. Ideas make it happen but it’s the experiment in deployment.
I’ve recently been really fascinated with Scandinavian design because it is rational with an emotional twist. And that is the wavelength we’re trying to mine. We have a phenomenal technical spine, we have phenomenal acoustic performance and we want to deliver an incredible design solution that has a point of view while working with those parts.
The limited edition PLAY:1 Tone is now available at Sonos.com.
Jul 22
What Industrial Design Students Had to Carry, Part 5: Cases to Go Places
Posted in: UncategorizedThus far in this series of what ID students had to carry or own in school, we looked at:
– Paper
– Tools
Of course, none of these items carry and organize themselves. So in addition to whatever backpacks and messenger bags each student owned, we had some or all of the following:
ArtBins
Virtually all of us had the ArtBin tacklebox. (I’m surprised to see that the exact same three-tray model I used, which was purchased in the late ’80s or early ’90s, is still being sold here.)
I also had a smaller one-tray model that I used for “dirty” supplies—charcoal, pastels, solder, etc.—but I can’t find an image of that long-discontinued item anywhere.
ArtBins these days seem to have gotten much fancier. The modern-day ones look swoopier and some of them have little flaps up top that provide access to compartments in the lid.
Pencil Cases
The ArtBins only kept things separate on their shelves, where space was limited; so if you had an overflow of pencils/markers/brushes or whatever, you’d have additional plastic rectangles like these with dividers.
Marker Cases/Stands
Not all of us had these, but you’d see them on some of the desks in the studio. I never considered these a staple, but then again my marker renderings sucked.
ArtBin Telescoping Tubes
To transport rolled-up drawings and draftings, this telescoping ArtBin tube was another must-have. It featured an adjustability ring so that you could alter the overall length; if you didn’t lock this down properly, your tube would compress and scrunch your drawing.
The ArtBin tube became a little more fun to wear after Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves came out.
I spent a few moments attempting to Photoshop an ArtBin Tube into here, then thought “What am I doing with my time?” Portfolio Case
Best case scenario was you had your large pads of paper all in one location, either studio or dorm/apartment, but occasionally this set-up didn’t work and you had to transport them back and forth. Best then to keep it safe in a portfolio case.
Portfolio cases came in several sizes, and accomplished several things: It kept your pads protected; it made you look like a complete tool; and it visually broadcasted from across the street to the local kids within Pratt’s high-crime precinct of the early ’90s that you were an easy mark. If you think you can outrun a hard-eyed, boxcutter-carrying 14-year-old with one of these strapped on you, think again.
These things were also nightmares to carry on windy days.
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