Egg Collective creates "lyrical and elegant" coffee table and couch for latest collection

Egg Collective furniture

A sofa with “puzzle piece” cushions and a wooden table with mismatched legs are among Egg Collective‘s new works fillings its cosy showroom in New York City.

The New York design collective has created five new pieces that have been strongly informed by its storefront in Lower Manhattan, which opened earlier this year. The collection comprises the Hornbake sofa, the Finn table, the Howard chair, the Landry bookcase and the Martie console.

Egg Collective furniture
A low wood table and a couch are among the studio’s newest designs

Having worked on the collection simultaneously to designing its showroom, Egg Collective created the pieces to be in tune with the new space.

“The products were actually informed by some of the decisions we were making in the architecture and vice versa,” Crystal Ellis told Dezeen at the showroom’s opening in May. Ellis is one of Egg Collective’s three founders, joining Stephanie Beamer and Hillary Petrie.

“We really feel like there is a conversation that is happening between the space and the objects that were brought in,” Ellis said.

The Hornbake sofa features curved seat cushions

Among the designs is an L-shaped sofa with curved seat cushions that join together in an irregular layout, as opposed to the box shapes of traditional cushions. It is shown in the showroom upholstered in a mustard fabric but the textile can be customisable.

“Tailored yet completely relaxed, the Hornbake sofa’s boxy exterior is juxtaposed by its soft sinuous interior,” said the studio. “Lyrical and elegant, the seat cushions interlock like puzzle pieces.”

Egg Collective furniture
Three different legs support the Finn table

Also featured is a square-sized, solid wood coffee table with rounded corners. One rod and two wood slabs form its three legs underneath. “The Finn table is solidly constructed yet playful,” said Egg Collective.

Following these irregular lines is a larger wooden bookcase called Landry. The piece features a middle shelf and a back that can be removed for a more open design. Differently designed supports serve as its three legs as well.

Egg Collective furniture
Another piece in the new collection is a rectangular bookcase

The Martie console features a triangular top with curved edges resting on three slender rounded wood legs that all extend up through the top of the piece.

Martie comes in two heights, with its taller one forming a work desk.

All of the wood pieces can be made in walnut, blackened walnut, natural white oak, blackened white oak or bleached maple.

Egg Collective furniture
This table can be made higher to serve as a desk

Rounding out the collection is a “statuesque” upholstered chair. Rigid U-shaped units wrap over arm supports to create a layered piece. Called Howard, the chair is built with a solid wood frame and hand-tied springs, and can come as a sectional or straight sofa as well.

Egg Collective was founded by Beamer, Petrie and Ellis in 2011 in New York, after the three first met at college in Missouri and rejoined forces years later to start designing furniture.

Egg Collective furniture
The Howard chair has cornered forms that create a layered design

The new products join a host of other pieces designed by studio, such as a variety of credenzas, side tables, coffee tables and mirrors in addition to its handmade wooden furniture collection.

Another design studio to launch new furniture designs in New York City is Irish label Orior, which has also opened a showroom in Tribeca filled with its colourful pieces.

The post Egg Collective creates “lyrical and elegant” coffee table and couch for latest collection appeared first on Dezeen.

Not just another regular looking mechanical pencil…

Rather sardonically titled “Not Just Another Black Pencil”, Matteo Ercole’s pencil design is everything a stationery-lover wants. Bringing an avant-garde design to mechanical lead pencils, Ercole’s concept is as luxurious and desirable as most state-of-the-art collector-edition fountain pens are. With a thick, robust metal body, complete with an anodized finish and a matching-tone speckle (just like you’d see in professional camera bodies), Not Just Another Black Pencil is a delight to look at, as the light gently bounces off its satin-finish body, and I imagine it’s a pleasure to grip too, with the cold metal feeling just great against your fingertips.

The pencil comes with a standard 3.15mm lead inside it, secured with a rose-gold crown that rotates to tighten or loosen its grip on the lead. The lead exits the metal body early, and is then held in place with an additional metal clip, giving the pen its unique silhouette, while creating that bit of intrigue and reveal that makes you absolutely fall in love with this incredibly alluring piece of stationery!

Designer: Matteo Ercole

Sony Plans to Release a Wearable Air Conditioner Next Year

The biggest complaint about Sony’s newly announced Reon Pocket wearable air conditioner is that it won’t be ready in time for users to get relief from this year’s global heatwave. The device looks like a thin Apple mouse and can be worn with a special shirt that has a discrete pocket for it at the base of the neck, where it uses the Peltier effect to either lower or raise your body temperature, depending on the season. Sony probably couldn’t have timed the announcement better—as so many of us are struggling to stay comfortable, a personal air conditioner has never sounded more appealing.

Reon pairs with—surprise, surprise—a mobile app that lets users control the temperature. Sony claims it can lower body temperature by 23 degrees Fahrenheit or raise it by 14 degrees. The design is pretty subtle, it weighs only three ounces and doesn’t make any sounds.

While initial reports touted a 24-hour battery life, Sony recently chimed in and let Engadget know that the actual battery life will be a paltry two hours. That tiny detail, combined with the fact that you have to use it with a special shirt, certainly limits how users can take advantage of the device. But perhaps, as one commenter already pointed out, the more interesting thing about this product is thinking about it less like a cool new gadget and more as a “progression in how we view clothing.”

None of the downsides have curbed enthusiasm for Reon. The product was crowdfunded in less than a week on First Flight, Sony’s own accelerator platform that launched in 2015 to champion new projects by Sony employees. The release is planned for March 2020—just in time for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics—and the product will initially be available only in Japan, so the rest of us will likely be waiting even past next year’s summer.

California’s Denim Representation by Ian Berry

Déjà mentionné dans ‘incredible murals’, c’est aujourd’hui sur sa série «Hotel California» que nous nous concentrons. On peut y observer l’aspect technique du travail de Ian Berry, en particulier dans la réflexion et la lumière sur la piscine. Deux éléments qui ont d’ailleurs attiré l’attention de l’artiste dans l’état de Californie. Si à première vue, ses œuvres pourraient donner l’illusion d’être des photographies ou des peintures, c’est en fait un assemblage de couches et de nuances de jeans en denim, que les spectateurs observent. Un travail incroyable et approfondi qu’il effectue depuis 2005.

 

 

 

 

Ian Berry June 2019

 

 






When Food Turns Into Art

La nourriture n’aura jamais autant comblé notre vue! L’artiste Adam Hillman s’amuse, dissèque et réinterprète les couleurs et les textures des aliments pour venir former des oeuvres inusitées. On y retrouve des collations du quotidien, des agencements selon le coloris des fruits et légumes, mais aussi quelques peintures classiques revisitées culinairement. Visitez son compte Instagram.










Watch an Industrial Designer Rate and Improve on Existing Kitchen Tools

If you’re a designer, it’s likely you interact with objects on a daily basis and think, “there’s a much better way to design this [insert object here],” or more simply, “this thing is trash!” So attain a bit of catharsis today by watching seasoned industrial designer and Smart Design co-founder Dan Formosa rate and test out kitchen gadgets for Epicurious:

While Formosa only employs a couple methods for testing a product’s effectiveness, it still reveals to the non-designer the many minutiae involved with getting a kitchen tool right they may have never considered. To make the video even better, Formosa does some sketching to demonstrate how each object could be designed to improve on the original. Bon appétit, designers!

How would you have redesigned one of the objects featured in the video? Share in the comment section below.

Superstudio co-founder Cristiano Toraldo di Francia dies aged 78

Cristiano Toraldo di Francia dies aged 78

Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, the Italian architect who co-founded the radical design collective Superstudio, has died at the age of 78.

Di Francia started the radical design collective Superstudio in 1966 with Adolfo Natalini while studying at the University of Florence. They were subsequently joined by Gian Piero Frassinelli, Alessandro and Roberto Magris, and Alessandro Poli.

Superstudio helped start Italy’s radical architecture and design movement among the avant-garde in the 1960s and 1970s.

Di Francia denounced modernism

In 1966 Superstudio collaborated with Archizoom Associati to create a colourful installation-as-manifesto that denounced modernist architecture at the Superarchitettura show.

“Superarchitettura is the architecture of superproduction, superconsumption, superinduction to consume, the supermarket, the superman, super gas,” the groups declared on a poster for the show.

Superstudio’s most famous work, produced in 1969, was Continuous monument: an architectural model for total urbanisation, which imagined a dystopian future where a super grid called Il Monumento Continuo covered the world. The series of photo collages were an attack on 1960s urban planning methods and modernism’s penchants for concrete boxes.

Campaigner for sustainable urban planning

Born in Florence in 1941, Di Francia studied architecture at the prestigious University of Florence and graduated in 1968. His thesis, Holiday machine on the Calabrian coast, was published in Domus magazine and the drawings he produced to accompany it have since been acquired by the Centre Pompidou.

With Superstudio, Di Francia campaigned for environmental justice. As students they had been radicalised by the 1966 Flood of the Arno in Florence, a disaster that claimed 101 lives and had been caused in part by urban development.

They were critical of architecture’s modes of production, and during the early 1970s they made a series of films about the harmful effects of construction on the environment.

Although Superstudio refused to built beyond installations, their politically charged work was executed in collages, drawings, films – and even furniture pieces.

In 1968 they made the Sofa Bazaar, an oversized half circle chair with a high back that was upholstered in shaggy pink fur. Their Quaderna 2600 table, with its all-over white and black square grid – is still in production by Zanotta.

Di Francia designed public works of architecture after Superstudio

After Superstudio dissolved in 1980 Di Francia started working as an architect, first in Florence and then later in Filottrano with Lorena Luccioni, an architect who he married in 1999.

During his career Di Francio designed public spaces, train and coach stations, pharmacies, clinics and bus shelters. He also designed the interior for the Circumvesuviana train for Breda, and the exhibition space for the Maestri della Carrozzeria Italiana show in 2000 at the Centre Pompidou.

His most controversial solo work was La Pensilina di Santa Maria Novella, a bus and taxi shelter in Florence’that earned the moniker Pensilina di Toraldo di Francia after its designer.

Critics said it was out of touch with the nearby 15th century Santa Maria Novella church, although Di Francio’s design referenced its unusual patterned facade, and it was dismantled in 2010 after becoming a magnet for antisocial behaviour.

Other notable works include the San Paolo di Prato Banking Institute, the Banca del Chianti headquarters and the Florence Statuto Railway Station.

He also designed furniture for Itlian brands including Poltronova and Flos, and was the editor in chief of MAPPE magazine.

He taught and lectured at universities in the US, Japan, and across Europe, and in 2003 Di Francio helped found the School of Architecture and Industrial Design of the University of Camerino.

The post Superstudio co-founder Cristiano Toraldo di Francia dies aged 78 appeared first on Dezeen.

Splendid Shark Bay in Australia

Une fois encore, Tom Hegen nous amène au plus proche de la nature. Cette nouvelle série photographique aérienne a été prise lors de son séjour en Australie. Un plaisir visuel qui met en valeur la déclinaison des nuances et textures lorsque l’océan et la terre se rencontrent.

«La péninsule de Shark Bay est située à l’extrémité ouest du continent australien et s’étend sur environ 23 000 kilomètres carrés. L’UNESCO la considère officiellement comme un site faisant partie du patrimoine mondial en raison de sa précieuse vie marine. Les éléments naturels et dynamiques de la terre et de la mer fusionnent pour créer certains des paysages les plus captivants de l’Australie. Cette baie des requins [Shark Bay] a été nommée ainsi en 1699 par William Dampier, en raison de la présence importante de requins dans les eaux environnantes», indique l’artiste.

Suivez Tom Hegen sur Instagram et son site web.












Apple offers new augmented reality art tours in six major cities

Apple augmented reality art tours

Apple has collaborated with New York’s New Museum to launch a series of augmented reality (AR) experiences that will see six large-scale virtual artworks take over major global cities.

Called [AR]T, the AR experiences will feature works by seven artists chosen by the contemporary art museum, that will pop up across London, San Francisco, New York, Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

American artist Nick Cave imagines colourful alien-like figures dancing on buildings

Offered to the public for free from Apple stores across the globe, the virtual artworks will appear from 10 August 2019.

The artists involved are Nick Cave, Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, Cao Fei, John Giorno, Carsten Höller and Pipilotti Rist.

In the various works, large alien-like creatures can be spotted dancing atop city buildings, and portals offer a glimpse into alternative, sketch-style worlds with no perspective.

John Giorno’s artwork is titled Now at the Dawn of My Life

Groups of ten people will each be given an iPhone with the [AR]T app and a set of headphones, before being led by an Apple team member around each city.

During the sessions, which will last around five to 10 minutes, participants will encounter the six interactive artworks in famous public spaces like London’s Trafalgar Square or New York’s Grand Army Plaza in Central Park.

Viewers will also be able to take still and video imagery of the AI art pieces during their experiences.

Djurberg and Berg’s piece, titled This Is It, imagines a digital fairy-tale world

“The New Museum has always led at the intersection of art and tech and we could not have asked for a better partner in Apple to support the fantastic visions of these pioneering artists,” said Lisa Phillips, director of the New Museum.

“Augmented reality is a medium ripe for dynamic and visual storytelling that can extend an artist’s practice beyond the studio or the gallery and into the urban fabric,” she added.

The virtual artworks will be available to see from 10 August 2019

Each artist has used AR to reimagine or invent new ways to express core themes of their art practice.

Djurberg and Berg’s work, titled This Is It, introduces viewers to digital fairy-tale worlds by revealing magical creatures inside hollowed out trees, while Giorno’s Now at the Dawn of My Life sees inspirational phrases float around in the air.

Other pieces include Rist’s International Liquid Finger Prayer, which invites participants to chase after a multicoloured, shimmering form that hurtles through the city landscapes.

Apple visitors can also partake in an in-store teaching lab

This interactive walk is just one of three different sessions users can choose from.

Participants can also receive a 90-minute in-store [AR]T Lab that teaches them the basics of creating AR using Swift Playgrounds – an app that helps teach people to code.

Cave also designed an interactive AI experience of floating, multicoloured objects

Alternatively, visitors can go into any Apple store worldwide to experience an AR art installation.

In addition to reimagining his alien-like Soundsuits figures on the Apple [AR]T Walks, Cave also designed an interactive AI installation for users to experience in-store, called Amass.

With the [AR]T Viewer in-store app, users can initiate American artist Cave’s interactive experience of “a universe of positive energy”, surrounded by colourful, floating Ikon Elements.

Carsten Höller creates portals to other worlds with his Through art piece

“Today at Apple offers a window into the creative arts made possible by our products and customers,” said Apple’s senior vice president of retail and people, Deirdre O’Brien.

The launch of Apple’s AR experiences comes just a month after chief design officer Jony Ive announced his departure from the company.

The exit will come into fruition later this year as the British-born designer plans to start an independent design company called LoveFrom.

The post Apple offers new augmented reality art tours in six major cities appeared first on Dezeen.

Could a specially-woven fabric help reduce signs of aging?

This isn’t one of those yellow-makes-me-look-younger or vertical-stripes-make-me-look-thinner sort of deals. The designers behind the Sildior claim to be able to physically pause the signs of aging by relying on a specially engineered fabric with an anti-aging Sericin protein built into it. This is the Sildior, a towel woven from 100% Mulberry Silk, a high-grade silk obtained from the cocoon of the Bombyx mori silkworm. The silkworm is also responsible for producing a protein called Sericin, found in most cosmetics for its ability hydrate the skin and reduce the presence of wrinkles. Engineer the Sericin, a by-product of silk-weaving, back into the silk and you’ve got yourself a fabric that can literally make you look younger!

Partnering with expert silk-weavers in Portugal, designer Mark Reissi created the Sildior, a luxury towel that helps keep your skin hydrated and flawless. The towel comes made 100% from high-quality mulberry silk, and is designed to be hypoallergenic and super-absorbent. Fibers of the towel are infused with the Sericin protein that act upon the skin when you’re wiping yourself down with the towel. The Sildior towels come in a variety of colors and sizes, sporting a graphical representation of the mulberry silk balls that are unwound and woven into the fabric. Anti-aging fabric… what will they think of next?!

Designer: Mark Reissi

Click Here to Buy Now: $29 $65 ($36 off). Hurry, only 1/20 Left.

Sildior – World’s Only 100% Mulberry Silk and Anti-aging Towel

Sildior silk towels aren’t just highly absorbent, but the protein “sericin” present in the silk prevents the skin from falling victim to the harmful bacteria that causes unnatural aging and wrinkles in your skin.

100% mulberry silk offers a smooth touch for your skin and does not lose integrity over time. With natural ingredients at their core, the silk towels tend to keep your skin fresh and youthful for a longer period of time.

Why Mulberry Silk

Mulberry silk is 100% natural, odorless, hypoallergenic, highly absorbent, smooth, and doesn’t or damage your soft skin as you dry yourself after a long relaxing hot bath. Every one of their hand, body, and face towels gives you a silky touch and anti-aging treatment of sericin, a natural protein found in mulberry silk.

Sericin, has been proven to prevent wrinkles, spots and age lines. Let the proteins in silk rejuvenate your body with beauty, energy and anti-aging elements so that you stay young and feel youthful for decades to come.

One of the best features of silk towels is that they don’t become corrosive or rough with usage. Silk threads will always stay silky smooth to offer a gentle caressing touch for the skin.

Below: 3 Sizes For Everyday Use

Sildior Towels’ Story

“We are proud to call ourselves the pioneers in the industry of silk towels. Our experts traveled across the globe in search of the top towel manufacturers. From the birthplace of towels, Turkey, to India and Pakistan (home to the largest towel manufacturers in the world), no manufacturer possessed the ability to create a silk towel from 100% silk yarn,” Mark Reissi tells YD.

“Our trip across the globe took us to Portugal, where we found an old and family owned production facility, which specializes in high end towel production. Our team shared our vision with them, and we soon became partners in creating an anti-aging gift for the world. It had never been done before, and we took it upon ourselves to introduce, engineer, and invent the world’s first 100% silk towel.”

Click Here to Buy Now: $29 $65 ($36 off). Hurry, Only 1/20 Left.