Hasta La Ideas

New York’s Cooper Hewitt is trying to tackle the global challenge of climate change with its sixth design triennial, Nature. Director Caroline Baumann picks out five of the most forward-thinking designs in the show, covering issues such as animal extinction and plastic pollution.

The Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, which opened on 10 May, takes over two floors of the Fifth Avenue museum, as well as its garden. It features projects by designers, biologists and scientists, with a large focus on combatting the effects of climate change.

“The exhibition as a whole is meant to be a call to action at this moment in our history when climate change is one of the most important global challenges facing us today,” Baumann told Dezeen.

One million species on the verge of extinction

There are 62 projects in the show, covering a wide range of fields. Works are grouped into seven categories: Understand, Simulate, Salvage, Facilitate, Augment, Remediate and Nurture.

On the whole, the show places a real focus on the role humans have played in global issues. Animal extinction gets a lot of attention, in line with the recent UN report that revealed that a million species of plants and animals are on the verge of extinction.

“Several projects focus on extinct species, and we want people to realise how dire this loss is,” said Baumann. “The UN report was unbelievable and shows how timely this exhibition truly is.”

Exhibition to inspire “conversations and change”

The Cooper Hewitt’s triennial is one of several major exhibitions addressing the issue of climate change this year, along with the Triennale di Milano show Broken Nature, The Factory of Living at Centre Pompidou and Eco-Visionaries, which moves from Lisbon’s MAAT to London’s Royal Academy.

In an interview with Dezeen when the exhibition was first announced, Baumann said there has never been a more critical time for design exhibitions to focus on the environment. She still believes this is true, but stresses that action must follow.

“We’re aiming to make them more than exhibitions, but real inspiration to conversations and change,” she added. “[We’re] thinking about how can we come together and unify through design and collaboration with other human beings.”

Nature is on show until 20 January 2020, and a concurrent exhibition is also running at the Cube museum in Kerkrade, the Netherlands.

Read on for Baumann’s picks of the five must-see projects in the show:

Vienna studio Mischer’Traxler has brought its Curiosity Cloud, which debuted at the V&A in London, to form the entrance to the exhibit. It comprises a series of glass bulbs filled with fluttering, hand-made insects.

“Curiosity Cloud was customised for Cooper Hewitt and is meant to raise awareness for our visitors the minute they enter the museum,” Baumann told Dezeen. “What you’re seeing is a variety of species – some endangered, invasive, or local species – each one different from the next.”

“The designers have made these so meticulously, that if you look carefully, you can see all the details of each insect like the bumblebee – one of the bees has two little white dots on its bum that identifies it as a particular kind of bee,” she added.

The activity of the hand-made insects responds to the movement of visitors. The insects buzz more rapidly with more people in the room, hitting the sides of the hand-bulb glasses. They slow down as the surrounding space quietens, offering visitors a moment to view them more carefully.

“The project is activated by human presence, so as you walk through you hear this incredibly delicate sound,” Baumann continued.

“They slow down once there are fewer people in the room. Only then are you able to see how carefully each one is painted.”

Tree Of 40 fruit by Sam Van Aken

Contemporary artist Sam Van Aken has planted a hybrid tree in the museum’s garden that is set to grow with 40 different varieties of fruit by summer. Called the Tree of 40 fruit, it forms part of Aken’s ongoing series of the same name, which aims to preserve varieties of fruit that are becoming less common.

“Sam Van Aken is an artist who collaborated with botanists and biologists to bring back some heirloom fruit varietals,” said Baumann.

“Plums, apricots, peaches, etc, some of which have not been seen in years, are combined into one tree using ancient grafting techniques.”

In addition to its produce, the tree will eventually bloom in various tones in the summer, as shown in the picture above.

Aguahja 2 by Neri Oxman

Designer and researcher Neri Oxman has installed the colourful Aguahja 2 pavilion in the stairwell of the Cooper Hewitt. The sculpture is formed of curved panels that Oxman and her team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created by manipulating natural materials with computation and digital fabrication.

“Aguahja 2, designed by Neri Oxman and manufactured by MIT Media Lab Mediated Matter Group, is made entirely from natural biodegradable elements: primarily pectin and chitosan (shrimp shells),” said Baumann.

“Neri and so many other designers are looking at how can we rid the world of plastics,” she continued.

“We can’t get rid of the plastics that currently exist, but we can look into eradicating new plastics in the future. So that’s what this powerful project is all about. Behind it is an exercise in materials – different experiments that come out of the Mediated Matter lab.”

The Substitute by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg has used artificial intelligence to create a film of a northern white rhinoceros, which became extinct last year.

“The video features a northern white rhino which is now extinct, but brought back to life using data generated by artificial intelligence,” said Baumann. “You can put on headphones and actually hear the sounds made by the last male rhino named Sudan.”

“It is a very emotional piece because man is the reason that the rhino no longer exists,” she continued. “The video starts with a pixelated mosaic in an empty room and as you keep watching the rhino’s form becomes lifelike and you can feel like you can almost touch him and you can hear him.”

The paradox of the state-of-the-art technology and the lost species is intended to raise questions about humanity’s focus on the creation of new things, while neglecting those that already exist.

“This work is an incredibly powerful reminder to our visitors about what we are doing to the planet and species and what we might do and to begin thinking about how to reverse some of this damage,” said Baumann.

Warka Water Tower by Arturo Vittori

Italian architect Arturo Vittori is showcasing the Warka Water structure he designed to offer an alternative clean water source for remote communities in the developing world. The system comprises an-easy-to assemble, lightweight bamboo frame with a mesh lining. Rain, fog and dew condense against the mesh and trickles down a funnel into a reservoir at the base of the structure.

“It’s made out of readily available materials and is such a poetic creation because what it’s doing is collecting dew and rain and fog and you think to yourself – how the heck can that collect anything significant?,” Baumann said. “Well, it actually does to the tune of 20 gallons a day.”

“And what does that do? That saves people in remote areas from having to travel miles to collect water,” she continued.

“Usually those collecting water are women and young girls, so this is also saving them the physical pain they sometimes endure in hauling water from far away. This project specifically is collaborating with nature and embracing nature to save time and resources to free the women and their children to do other things – to be educated to make life richer.”

The post Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial is a “call to action” against climate change appeared first on Dezeen.

In partnership with Austin–based construction technologies company ICON, and nonprofit New Story, Yves Béhar has revealed plans to build the world’s first 3D-printed community this summer in a yet-to-be-disclosed, semi-rural location in Latin America. The ambitious project plans to provide homes for over 50 families.

Images of ICON’s proof of concept home in Austin (courtesy of ICON)

The project adapted ICON’s $4,000 3D-printed home—which debuted during SXSW in 2018—through a variety of community workshops. “As we spoke to the community members, we realized that a single house design doesn’t respond to the needs and expectations. This led us to design a system that allows for different programs, climate factors, and growth for families and spaces,” noted Béhar. The community is said to be comprised mainly of farmers and palm weavers of varying ages, who often live in multigenerational homes and typically on less than $200 per month.

The designs feature outdoor kitchens and space for residents to keep chickens and gardens. Inside, an open living space with a clerestory is a response to the tropical climate and designed to maximize ventilation. 3D-printing allows for lots of built-in elements such as counters in the kitchen and bathroom, seating, shelves and ledges in the walls and embedded structural hooks for closets, storage, and clotheslines. Each lot is 1,300 square feet, while the living space adds up to approximately 600 square feet.

“We’ve created options and areas for customization that families can choose from to help them personalize their homes, feel a sense of ownership, community, and security,” Béhar added. One such tweak would be adding a tint to the concrete to allow for different color walls and a diverse feel once the community is complete. “The design and technology also allow the home to adapt to the local environmental conditions such as climate and seismic activity with simple enhancements to the base structure, by incorporating additional reinforcement into the wall cavities and using the walls themselves to resist lateral movement.”

Working off of their prototype in Austin, ICON developed the portable printer that will build the homes out of local concrete. The device is engineered to work in remote areas that may lack access to water, power, and labor infrastructure. Once things get off the ground, they’re expected to move quickly—each home can be printed in just 24 hours with nearly zero waste.

Project Hurrah! is an urban musical instrument designed by Karol Murlak, Danielle Begnaud, Kasia Michnowska, and Marzena Krupa. This playful and interactive installation is a celebration of the hundredth anniversary of diplomatic relations between Poland and the United States.
The installation takes the form of a large-scale xylophone composed of stainless steel vertical tubes. When tapped consecutively with a drumstick, the tubes play the Polish birthday and anniversary song, Sto Lat. Users don’t need to have any previous musical knowledge to experience the joy of playing music. The tune, known to every Pole and some Americans, recalls universal themes of fun, friendship, and love.

Credit: Guillermo Hernandez Martinez

Credit: Guillermo Hernandez Martinez

Credit: Guillermo Hernandez Martinez

Credit: Guillermo Hernandez Martinez

Credit: Guillermo Hernandez Martinez

Credit: Guillermo Hernandez Martinez

Credit: Guillermo Hernandez Martinez

Credit: Guillermo Hernandez Martinez

Credit: Guillermo Hernandez Martinez

Credit: Guillermo Hernandez Martinez

View the full project here

London studio PearsonLloyd marries the convenience and economy of flat-pack furniture with quality materials in a chair designed for new Copenhagen brand Takt.

Named after the cross structure that forms its four legs, the Cross chair has a plywood seat and backrest, with the structure itself made from solid oak to give it the feel of a non-flatpack, high-quality chair.

The “strong but light” wooden chair was designed with the “goal of accessible pricing without compromising on quality or adversely affecting the environment”, according to PearsonLloyd.

The chair comes delivered in a recyclable flatpack box as four disassembled pieces of timber, with six screws.

Made from FSC-certified wood, it requires minimal instructions and a single Allen key to assemble at home.

The simple cross structure ensures that assembly of the seat is intuitive, without the frustration people often find assembling flatpack furniture.

“We wanted to find a design that communicated the principle of the assembly in a direct, understandable way,” explained founder and director of PearsonLloyd, Tom Lloyd.

“The way the two cross members overlap was inspired by the inserts in a wine box. It is immediately apparent that they go together in some way, meaning that almost no instructions are necessary.”

By the same token, the chair can be easily disassembled for recycling at the end of its life – a feature that was important to the Danish brand.

“We believe that modern design must consider both the form of a product and its full life-cycle – including responsible manufacturing, shipping, the user experience and how the product can be repaired, reused and recycled,” said founder and CEO of Takt, Henrik Taudorf Lorensen.

Ease of assembly and disassembly is one of a number of features by which Takt aims to reduce the chair’s environmental impact.

The brand sells directly to customers online to cut shipping costs and reduce supply chain complexity, which in turn reduces the emission of CO2 in transportation.

Six flat-packed Cross chairs fit into the same volume as a standard chair.

“Takt is aimed at people who want to reduce their impact on the world’s environment,” said Lloyd.

“Our flatpack design of Cross chair reduces the packaging size of a chair considerably while also engaging the customer in a self-evident assembly process that we hope will be joyful.”

The design is available in natural wood or with a black lacquer finish. It can be supplied with a seat pad upholstered in a variety of organic aniline leathers – meaning they are dyed with soluble dyes – or natural wool fabrics from Kvadrat.

PearsonLloyd is well-known for its designs for transport, including a number of projects for airlines including Lufthansa and a redesign of economy class seating to make better use of space.

The post PearsonLloyd gives flat-pack furniture an upgrade with Cross chair appeared first on Dezeen.

Design awards are often a mechanism to discover good design. A panel of judges help identify designs with potential, and reward them for being a good concept, or having a good execution. China’s premiere awards program, the Design Intelligence Award (DIA) operates on a slightly different path. It doesn’t just discover good design. It develops it. Working in part like an award program and in part like a product accelerator, the DIA Awards have a long, arduous, meticulous process. They identify good work, but push it to be better. Great designers convene to form jury panels who spend day after day looking at projects and participants are put through what one might consider pretty effective crash course in design, presentation, and innovation. Not just winners, but even participants come out with insights and skill-sets that put them on a pedestal, because the DIA Awards don’t define talent… they refine it too.

The DIA Awards differ from most award programs primarily because of this intricate and methodical judging process, which almost borders on educational, feeling like an evaluation you’d get at a design university, rather than a divided panel of judges. Feedback and criticism are constructive, and the DIA Award approach to judging projects is extremely holistic, taking into account everything from the quality of its concept, to its usefulness, feasibility, impact on a personal as well as global scale, its sustainability as a product and as a business, and its marketability. Its judging process is broken into three segments too. The first round of judging happens online, as jury panels spend an entire week analyzing projects with potential. The second round is done on-site, as jury members interact with the physical product, judging it up close, and on a much more real and tactile level. The third round is where things get interesting. Imagine giving your own TED talk about your project… The third round is just that! An oral evaluation round, where contestants are required to present their idea in the format of an oral presentation to an audience of judges, business heads, media personnel, and consumers.

Good design comes in many shapes and forms, which is why each design need individual attention and a fresh approach. The exhaustive judging process for the DIA Awards involves closely inspecting and reviewing every aspect of every product, down from its brief, intent, to its visual expression (your presentation and rendering skills), to description, proof-of-concept, and finally to your ability to talk about your product. After this degree of scrutiny, the products that emerge victorious truly look a class apart. They’re clearly defined, well-designed, and address a very established void or need in the marketplace. Winners of the DIA Award receive a hefty cash prize that goes up to 1 million RMB (approx. $145,000 USD), and are armed with all the skills and assets needed to take their product to the next step. Winners also get inducted into the “DIA Platform”, a platform that integrates hundreds of venture capitals, incubators, manufacturing enterprises and governments. Excellent participants are also invited to industrial events including capital docking, product hatching, intellectual property auction, etc.

Sending your project through the Design Intelligence Awards helps accelerate its growth and put the project as well as you on a trajectory to success. Scroll below to look at some of the winners of the DIA Awards over the years. Chances are you’ve probably heard of or seen them somewhere or the other, just because they’re so brilliantly defined, designed, and executed!

Click Here to Apply Now! Last Date for Submission: May 28th, 2019. Hurry, only 13 days left!

Vibram Furoshiki by Vibram S.p.A.

Ditching shoelaces, velcros, and those new-fangled self-lacing robotic shoe-fastening alternatives, the Furoshiki by Vibram is an innovative new way to wear shoes.

Developed by Vibram, a leader in outdoor, leisure, work, fashion, orthopedic footwear, the Furoshiki’s revolutionary nature comes from the way it’s work. The Furoshiki is a flat piece of footwear that wraps around the foot, securing it in place. This wrapping action allows the shoes to secure themselves tightly around your foot, taking its shape. Additionally, the shoes can be manufactured and shipped as singular, flat SKUs, making them economical.

A winner of the DIA Excellence Award, the New Vibram Furoshiki “wrapping soles” are comfortable, secure, light, easy to carry around, easy to clean, and most importantly, easy to wear!

KanDao Obsidian 3D VR Camera by JU&KE Studio

Colored black to look powerful and premium, and christened Obsidian because it’s an unshakeable force to reckon with, KanDao’s VR camera comes with 6 fisheye lenses arranged in a hexagonal layout. Here’s where the mind-boggling feature list begins. The Obsidian doesn’t just shoot in 360°. It shoots in 3D 360°, and at a boggling resolution of 8K, using a clever algorithm that processes both left and right channels, stitching together the videos and images captured in real-time.

Awarded a DIA Excellence award, the Obsidian is beautiful, useful, and innovative. Its design combines aspects of sheer desirability, with an interplay of matte black and copper, and contains an absolute powerhouse of technology on the inside!

HEXA Robot by Vincross Inc.

With 6 legs that give it much more dexterity and balance than a quadriped, the HEXA is a talented, adorable robot that can walk on any surface and perform quite a few tasks. The all-terrain hexapod comes with an open operating system, a web camera, multiple hardware interfaces, and a powerful SDK, which you can use to develop skills for the robot, using basic If/Then tasks to give it commands. HEXA can react by walking, waving, grabbing, sending data or controlling connected Internet of Things devices.

The DIA Innovation Award winning HEXA successfully completed its kickstarter campaign, and even secured another design award on the way to its design and commercial success!

NUMS Ultra-thin Smart Keyboard by Beijing Luckey Technology Co., Ltd.

NUMS’ stunning innovation comes from its conceptual simplicity and functional effectiveness. It recognizes a problem, and solves it in the most ingenious way possible, without extra moving parts, and without a learning curve. A simple transparent piece of plastic with adhesive at one end and no circuitry whatsoever, the NUMS just sits on your laptop, giving you the magic of a numpad (and much more) on your portable computing device.

The sticker, aside from acting as a protective guard for your trackpad, bestows it with the powers of a virtual numpad. Install the NUMS driver and you’re ready to go. Swipe down diagonally from the top right corner to toggle between trackpad mode and numpad mode. The NUMS can be used for crunching numbers, keeping accounts, and even for games! Moreover, within the NUMS software, you can program buttons to act as hotkeys and shortcuts, allowing you to open softwares, run scripts, and just be an absolute powerhouse of productivity!

Securing the DIA Excellence Award, the NUMS is just ingenious as it is simple. It provides extra features without any compromise or additional effort… and it’s so thin you practically don’t notice it. Who thought a small plastic sticker and a powerful idea could accomplish so much?!

YEV Electric Violin by Yamaha

Electric instruments, unlike acoustic ones, don’t rely on air vibrations to generate sound. They do it through fluctuations in a magnetic field caused by the vibrating strings… so in essence, an electric instrument doesn’t need to be voluminous, or hollow. The YEV capitalizes on that, with its intriguing body that explores organic curves and a skeletal design. Extremely strong and lightweight, the YEV stands out on stage for having no apparent rear surface regardless of the angle it is viewed from, and truly shines as a bastion for creativity… an essential in music! Available in both 4 and 5 stringed variants, this DIA Top 100 Award winning instrument is also backed by Yamaha’s world class audio engineering.

Papier Machine by Marion Pinaffo & Raphaël Pluvinage

Designers Marion Pinaffo and Raphaël Pluvinage are using paper to build simple machines and gadgets. Titled Papier Machine (a play on the word Papier Mache), the designers compiled a 13-page book where pages can be torn off and folded into various different electronic mini-machines and sensors (that can sense mass, humidity, wind, and even color… all made out of paper!), powered by simple off-the-shelf batteries. The DIA Excellence Award winning paper electro-toys rely on special types of conductive ink that are screen-printed onto the pages, bringing much more to the table than just colorful visuals. I wonder what we’ll be able to do with paper next?!

Heng Balance Lamp by Zanwen Li

The Heng Balance Lamp is perhaps one of the best examples of how awards and coverage can absolutely propel a design! This DIA Top 100 Award winning lamp is a brilliant way of showing how a product interaction that is taken for granted can be turned into a new experience that’s so entertaining, rewarding, and enriching, it absolutely piques your interest… even if you were looking at a video of it online! The Heng Balance Lamp operates rather simply. Two wooden spheres (with magnets within) are secured by strings on either end of the Heng’s inner periphery. Lift the lower sphere closer to the upper one and magnetic attraction causes them to pull towards each other, and to tug on the lower string, causing the lamp to switch on. Break the magnetic attraction and the lower sphere goes limp, and the light switches off. I could probably do this all day!

Niu M Electric Scooter by Beijing Niu Technology

Designed to breathe a new breath of life into the category of electric scooters (which have been around in China for a long time), the Niu M1 is a visual reawakening for the category, making sustainable zero-emission transportation aesthetic and cool again. The Niu M1 is bold, has a clearly defined design aesthetic, silhouette, and color palette. Designed and optimized for a brilliant riding experience, the M1 comes with a robust, ergonomic design and even includes anti-theft measures by allowing the bike to communicate any alerts to you via the Niu app. The DIA Top 100 Award winning bike rekindles the love for electric scooters with its friendly, fresh design… plus that circular headlight is virtually iconic!

Mono 3D Printed Eyewear by ITUM

Imparting a new aesthetic to eyewear is just one of the things Mono does. It also makes spectacles, a product heavily dependent on ergonomic and anthropometric design, easy to customize. Made in a single piece, these eyepieces can be adjusted to suit your facial measurements, giving you a great (or quirky) looking pair of spectacles that fit your face perfectly. Aside from that, print the Mono spectacles in a resilient, robust polymer and they can resist breakage, giving you a pair of specs that don’t accidentally shatter if you sit or step on them. A winner of the DIA Top 100 Award, the Mono spectacles are innovative and disruptive on many levels. They can be customized, are designed to be flexible, and come with an innovatively designed spiral hinge that gives the temple-pieces their flexibility. Additionally, the lenses on the Mono can easily be ejected by applying pressure with your fingers, giving you the ability to slip in tinted sunglass lenses whenever you want!

HikVision Parking Robot by HikRobotics

Perhaps the most useful application for self-driving tech is in the area of driving that annoys most drivers. Parking. Hik Vision’s self-driving palette helps out by doing that task for you. The robot sits under a metal platform that carries your car. All you do is drive onto the platform, making sure your car is perfectly positioned on it, and parking robot does the rest. Using inertial navigation, visual navigation, and a set of wheels that allow the palette to travel in any direction, including rotating in place, the robot carries your car to the nearest parking spot and gingerly lowers the platform down onto the ground. Once summoned, the robot lifts the platform and your car up, and carries it back to you, eliminating pretty much any undesirable parking experience you’d otherwise have if you were parking the car yourself.

The HikVision Parking Robot is a winner of the highly coveted DIA Gold Award because of how simply it executes and solves a complex problem that automotive companies still haven’t cracked. It uses self-driving technology in an area riddled with user-problems and solves all of them effortlessly. Imagine never having to worry about parking your vehicle ever again!!

– DIA Award is set awards of Gold Award (2 Prizes – $145,000/Prize)
– Silver Award (10 Prizes – $29,000/Prize)
– Bronze Award (10 Prizes – $ 14,000/Prize)
– Honorable Mention (around 300 prizes)
– “Design Yiwu” Special award is set awards of First prize (2 Prizes – $21,000/Prize),
– Second prize (3 Prizes – $14,000/Prize)
– Third prize (5 Prizes – $7,000/Prize)
– Excellent award (10 Prizes – $1,500/Prize)

Click Here to Apply Now! Last Date for Submission: May 28th, 2019. Hurry, only 13 days left!