Hasta La Ideas

For a car that was built to be a room/cabin on wheels, safety takes on a completely different avatar. You can’t opt for the traditional seat-belt in a car that was literally designed to be practically a bedroom on wheels. That’s the dilemma for Volvo’s 360c, a car that was quite literally built to be “architecture that transports you”. Focusing on empathizing with the traveler, the car is built with no steering wheel, pedals, or even a traditional dashboard. Instead, the car is treated as a cabin either for work (giving you more productivity), or rest (allowing you to grab a few winks during your long commute), and with that status of being a cabin on wheels come a few concerns… namely “how do you protect a sleeping passenger during a road mishap?”

Especially a concern for Volvo, given its reputation of being a brand that always puts safety and reliability first, the car company decided that the traditional safety methods like seat-belts and SRS airbags would simply not do. So in comes Volvo’s replacement… a Safety Blanket.

The ideation started with Volvo’s engineering team first looked at different reclinable positions (with the seatbelt), much like an airplane, but it came with its share of constraints, like what if the person wanted to sleep on their side, or roll over. Besides, airplane seatbelts are made to secure you during turbulence, while a car seatbelt is made for much more grave scenarios. The Safety Blanket works much like the seat-belt, in the sense it restrains you at the moment of impact, but as safety measure, is much more complicated and nuanced. A seat-belt works great because you’re always seated in a certain way. When you sleep, you’re either sleeping supine, or on your side, or even your stomach. The blanket covers your body and consists of restraints that would tighten around your shoulders and hip areas in the event of a collision or hard braking.

“The idea is to select a personalized blanket for your needs and you wear it for comfort and coziness and it will then provide protection during a crash.” says Lotta Jakobsson, senior technical expert at Volvo. “The challenge is making sure it interacts with you, being different in sizes, sleeping differently.” The Safety Restraint Blanket currently is just a work in progress, but given how soon self-driving cars will begin occupying our roads, it won’t be long before a more detailed, tested, and validated version of this will begin being implemented. “You need to figure out how you won’t be injured by things,” Jakobsson said. “It’s definitely keeping us busy.”

Designer: Volvo

L’artiste japonais Toshida Masuda s’amuse à construire des céramiques d’objets pixelisés. Des chaussures, des œufs à la poêle, des mugs, et d’autres outils du quotidien qui semblent directement sorti d’un jeu vidéo. Un travail qui mène une réflexion sur ce qui est réel et ce qui est virtuel, brouillant les pistes, dans une tentative brillante de rendre l’art ludique et impertinent. Pour en savoir plus sur les activités de cet artiste hors norme, rendez-vous sur Keiko Art International.

Jury members for Dezeen and Samsung’s Ambient Mode design competition explain why they awarded top prize to a responsive fish mobile, in this movie Dezeen filmed for Samsung in Berlin.

Matthew Cockerill, Stephen Waller and Peter Hälldahl, of London- and Aarhus-based studio Swift Creatives won the Dezeen x Samsung Ambient Mode design competition for a concept called Kinetic Decor.

The design is a digital mobile made up of gently moving fish, which reacts to changing ambient light conditions and movement in the room.

The winner was selected but a jury comprising designers Neville Brody and Erwan Bouroullec, Dontae Lee, head of the design centre at Samsung Electronics, and Dezeen’s editorial director Amy Frearson.

Brody and Bouroullec praised the design for it’s simplicity and attention to detail.

“It’s present but not present – it’s got sort of an invisible touch,” Brody says in the movie, which Dezeen filmed at the IFA 2018 consumer electronics show in Berlin.

Bouroullec adds: “With tiny details, sometimes you can really go somewhere else.”

For Lee, the concept aligns well with Samsung’s overall mission to make televisions fit better into people’s everyday lives.

“I like the winning project very much because it [makes the television] more of a lifestyle object, rather than a technology object,” he says.

“There’s kind of an emotional approach [to the design], which Samsung also tries to deliver.”

The contest asked entrants to create a visual experience for the new Ambient Mode on Samsung’s QLED televisions.

The feature allows a television to blend into its environment when not in use by mimicking the look of the wall behind it. Other graphic elements or information can then be overlaid.

“Our design is a digital, kinetic sculpture that responds to the environment,” says Cockerill.

“The concept takes advantage of the sensors within the Samsung QLED TVs. If the light starts to increase, the fishes’ movements will start to accelerate and the colour of the fish will change. If someone’s presence is detected, it will trigger delightful little animations.”

The design is based on a 1950s decorative mobile made by Danish designer Christian Flensted.

“I actually bought the mobile when my son was born and it hung above his crib when he was a little baby,” Cockerill explains.

“That really inspired us to think – could we take something that is physical and actually move it into the digital realm and enhance it?”

Kinetic Decor saw off competition from four other shortlisted designs, all of which were displayed as part of Samsung’s stand at IFA 2018, Europe’s largest consumer electronics trade show.

Bird Clock by Jianshi Wu and Yitan Sun visualises the time via a graphic depiction of birds sitting on wires.

Gerard Puxhe created a design called Architectural Extension, which creates the illusion of an extension of the room the television is placed in, which the user can customise in different ways.

Alex Warr and Zach Walters created a design called TimeFrame, which creates the illusion of an aperture in the wall and it changes shape depending on the time.

Sphere by Duhan Ölmez and Irem Deniz Akçam of Doisign showcases layers of information on the TV screen, visualising them in the form of a globe.

In addition to winning €8,000 in prize money, Swift Creatives now also has the opportunity to commercialise its idea with Samsung.

“Any designer loves to see their ideas come to life, so its been great to see the designs here at IFA,” Cockerill says.

“We look forward to working with Samsung to see how we can develop this to hopefully get it into Samsung’s televisions around the world.”

This movie was filmed by Dezeen at IFA 2018 in Berlin for Samsung.

The post Competition-winning design for Samsung’s Ambient Mode transforms TV into “lifestyle object” appeared first on Dezeen.

The Phoenix residence that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for his son is back on the market, because funding to support its donation to the School of Architecture at Taliesin fell through.

David and Gladys Wright House owner Zach Rawling has listed the spiralling property in the Arizona city’s Arcadia neighbourhood for nearly $13 million (£10 million), after coming to a “mutual agreement” to end a collaboration with the School of Architecture at Taliesin.

Rawling gifted the structure to the school in summer 2017 – bringing an end to years of speculation about its fate, which included plans for its demolition – on the condition of raising $7 million (£5.4 million) in endowment funds by 31 December 2020.

The House and the school teamed up to create a joint fundraising organisation called the David Wright House Collaborative Fund. But, after only one year, Rawling and the school’s dean, Aaron Betsky, decided that this goal, and working together, is unachievable.

School and David and Gladys Wright House end financial agreement

“Over the past year, we have learned that the fundraising timetables of both parties do not lend themselves to a joint campaign,” Rawling and Betsky said in a joint statement posted on the David and Gladys Wright House website.

The David Wright House Collaborative Fund will now be dissolved, and proceeds already raised will go to the school.

Among the main concerns for the project, as highlighted in the statement, is that the funds were intended to be used for repairs and maintenance of the 66-year-old residence.

This was highlighted as a potential financial drain on the School of Architecture at Taliesin, which instead will continue to raise money for its own endowment.

“With the school in its fledgling years, the prevailing thought was that the divergent donor interests would effectively divide its support base rather than enhance it,” said the statement.

“Uncertainty regarding future capital improvements at the House and the long-term cultural development of the site in Phoenix increased this concern,” it continued, adding that the school and house “will continue as friends, architectural enthusiasts, and supporters of the cultural community”.

Sale follows saga around fate of Wright’s house

Wright, one of the 20th century’s most important architects, designed the concrete-block residence for his son and daughter-in-law. The property is elevated above ground, and accessed via a spiralling ramp that continues up onto the roof, much like the architect’s iconic Guggenheim museum in New York.

Following its completion in 1952, it was used as a family home until it was left abandoned 2008, starting a decade of uncertainty about its future.

Developers threatened to demolish the building in 2012, but Rawling stepped in and bought the property with plans to turn it into a museum. This idea was met with strong opposition from neighbouring residents, who feared that too many visitors would spoil one of Phoenix’s most exclusive addresses.

In June 2017, Rawling revealed that the property would become a part of the architecture school, based for part of the year at the Wright-designed Taliesin West compound in nearby Scottsdale. The school was founded by the architect in 1932 as an apprenticeship for a small number of students, and was known as the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture until a rebranding effort last year.

The David and Gladys Wright House would have provided an additional teaching space for the institution, along with the Taliesin estate in Wisconsin, where the school currently offers an accredited Master of Architecture graduate programme based on Wright’s architectural principles.

Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation hopes future owner “preserves” house’s legacy

As the future of the property once again remains uncertain, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation has commended Rawling on making “great strides in raising awareness of and appreciation for the house”, and called for the future owner to similarly “embrace its history”.

“All of Wright’s buildings are treasures that teach us how to build better and live more beautiful lives, and it is our hope that all Wright sites end up in the hands of good stewards who will preserve both the buildings and the ideas they advance,” said the organisation’s president Stuart Graff in a statement.

“Wright’s legacy is inextricably linked to Arizona, and this house that he called ‘How to Live in the Southwest’, is an integral part of that story,” he added.

“We hope the next owner of the home will embrace this history, and we look forward to working together in partnership to preserve the Frank Lloyd Wright legacy to inspire future generations to build better and live better.”

The news of the property listing follows concerns for the future of other Wright buildings, which have grown since the architect’s Lockridge Medical Clinic in Montana was bulldozed earlier this year.

The medical centre marked the first of his intact buildings to be demolished since the Francisco Terrace apartment building in Chicago, and Munkwitz Apartments in Milwaukee, were destroyed in 1974.

The post Frank Lloyd Wright house intended for Taliesin architecture school up for sale appeared first on Dezeen.

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