Hasta La Ideas

Milan 2014: a patchwork of panels on Doshi Levien‘s Shanty cabinet for Spanish furniture company BD Barcelona references the temporary housing found in cities across Africa, Asia and South America (+ slideshow).

The Shanty cabinet hides a rational storage system behind a seemingly random series of panels that is inspired by the design variation found in informal settlements, where corrugated iron is used to create unique dwellings and colour combinations that change as they fade over time.

“A lot of people think that these improvised structures are ugly, that they have negative connotations,” Nipa Doshi told Dezeen. “We really like the beauty of the improvised.”

Corrugated iron is often seen as a cheap material in the west, but takes on a new value to residents in these homes said the designers. “To [the people who build these homes] this is a prestigious material,” explained Doshi.

The lacquered MDF cabinet features extruded aluminium legs and is set to be the first piece from a bigger collection that BD Barcelona will produce in the next year.

It is available in two different configurations – one with three shallow drawers on the right hand side which can be finished in multiple colours or shade of grey. The other has a concertina-opening cabinet.

The collection is a continuation of Doshi Levien‘s aesthetic, which seeks to combine a European approach to industrial design with a strong interest in handcraft and a “way of looking at the world that is not so pure,” said Doshi.

“It’s not a one-sided European design approach,” she explained. “There’s another world out there and there are many other ingredients we can use in design that are beautiful. It’s finding beauty in everything.”

The Shanty will launch at Salone Internazionale del Mobile fair in Milan next week.

The post Shanty towns inspire panelled storage
cabinet by Doshi Levien appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch Design Week 2013: the aluminium structures of these cabinets by Rotterdam studio Minale-Maeda poke through their plywood skins to create a coloured grid on the inside and dashed patterns on the outside.

The Wrong Colour Furniture System by Minale-Maeda has a structure made of anodised aluminium, with teeth in the bars that bite into the plywood panels and secure them in place once slotted together.

Each bar is colour-coded in cyan, magenta and yellow according to its orientation. The ends of the bars pierce the plywood panels where they are attached, creating a distinctive grid pattern on the outside with vertical cyan dashes and horizontal magenta ones.

The yellow components are only visible behind the legs and inside the cabinets, framing each module with a yellow square.

“The name Wrong Colour comes from the idea that it is like an X-ray of a piece of furniture, processed with imaging technologies like in baggage scanners to highlight differences in densities between materials and better separate them when they overlap,” Minale-Maeda told Dezeen. “It follows the idea that the project is about transparency in production and construction, and the colours are crucial in highlighting the separate elements.”

“The other reason to have three different colours is that they serve as a guide in the assembly of the piece, because each plane has a separate colour so it aids in picking the right parts for each panel and later in assembling the panels into a box,” they added.

The modular units can be stacked in different configurations and can be ordered with or without doors direct from the designers. “There is great flexibility in materials and colours that we are experimenting with, so custom schemes is one direction we are developing and the other is having a greater variety of module sizes,” they said.

Wrong Colour Furniture System was nominated for the Dutch Design Awards and is on show alongside the other shortlisted projects as part of Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven until Sunday.

“Many influences converge in this piece of furniture, including those of Rietveld, Mondriaan and Japanese culture,” commented the selection committee. “It is a modular system turned inside out in an interesting way.”

Naples-born Mario Minale and Tokyo-born Kuniko Maeda founded their studio in 2006 after graduating together from the Design Academy Eindhoven. They often highlight the method of construction a key aesthetic component in their work and past projects include plywood furniture joined with 3D-printed connectors and a collection that can be downloaded and produced locally.

The post Wrong Colour Furniture System
by Minale-Maeda appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2013: French brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec will present an aluminium sideboard for Italian furniture brand Magis plus an update to their Steelwood chair in Milan next week.

The Theca sideboard by the Bouroullecs for Magis combines an aluminium body and sliding doors with wooden shelves that bolt to the punched aluminium sides.

The aluminium comes in a black or natural finish and the shelves come in cherry or ash. The sideboard is available in four sizes.

Steelwood Galva updates the brothers’ famous Steelwood chair – launched in Milan in 2007 – and matching bar stool (not pictured) with a galvanised steel finish and beech-wood option.

Both products will be shown at the Magis showroom at Corso Garibaldi 77, Milan, between 9 and 14 April.

The Bouroullecs recently launched a DIY curtain kit based around a hanging cord that winds up like a guitar string and last year they designed a set of furniture for Copenhagen University – see all design by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec.

Other products launching in Milan this year include a wooden chair with legs like ice skates and modular furniture made from Meccano-like perforated steel plates – see all products and news from Milan 2013.

Here’s some more information from the designers:

Theca constitutes a logical continuation of our work with Magis and the manufacturing process of metal stamping – a language we had already explored with the Steelwood project. We find fascination in turning a thin sheet of metal into a rigid structural piece with a single considerable punch – but even more are we fascinated by the challenge of creating domestic pleasant objects with a technology usually used for industrial parts.

The very basic typology of the Theca sideboard can be found in all forms, from different eras dating back to the 18th century and with a great appearance in mid century’s Scandinavian design – we tried to find a contemporary yet simple and unobtrusive language.

The body (frame) of the sideboard is composed of stamped aluminium sides and solid wooden shelves, the back and the sliding doors are made of (cut and bent) aluminium. The construction is simple – bolts fix the solid wooden boards to the punched aluminium sides. Two tones are available for the anodized finish of the aluminium parts – black or natural. The shelves come in European cherry tree or black stained ash. Theca exists in four sizes, two different heights (55cm and 78cm) and two different widths (90cm et 120cm). The higher version comes with an additional shelf.

Steelwood Galva is a new version of the Steelwood chair and bar stool in galvanised steel and beech wood.

The post Theca and Steelwood Galva by Ronan
and Erwan Bouroullec for Magis appeared first on Dezeen.

This is not a distorted digital photo – it’s a cabinet that’s been intricately carved to look like one.

Created by Italian designer Ferruccio Laviani’s for furniture brand Fratelli Boffi, the Good Vibrations storage unit was carved from oak by a CNC machine.

Laviani’s piece will be displayed at the Salone del Mobile in Milan from 9 to 14 April next month.

A similar effect can be seen in a collection of 3D-printed chairs that were distorted by data from audio recordings.

We’ve recently featured a cabinet with doors made from corrugated PVC and another carved to resemble choppy ocean waves – see all cabinets.

Here’s some more information from the designer:

Good Vibrations by Ferruccio Laviani

In his second year working with Fratelli Boffi, Ferruccio Laviani has created yet another fanciful world from the depths of his prolific imagination. A concept that goes beyond individual products, it combines the expertise of a company that specializes in full-feature and tailor-made projects with the creativity of a designer who can strike a balance between the past and the future, blending the harmony and magniloquence of the classical with the charm and allure of the contemporary.

For the 2013 Furniture Exhibition, the renowned architect has created an entire universe divided into a home’s different spaces. Ferruccio Laviani enthusiastically focuses on the concrete design aspect of interior design, creating unique products that have a strong visual impact and a one-of-a-kind look, as well as coverings, panelling and flooring. This far-reaching vision blends and encompasses different sources of inspiration and questions the traditional tenets of design and furniture.

The fanciful blending of styles is paired with an innate sense of wittiness to produce furniture like the Good Vibrations storage unit. Selected for a preview of this new collection, the piece exemplifies this new design philosophy and the harmonious juxtaposition of the languages and cultures it is based upon.

Echoes of faraway places and Oriental elements are glimpsed in the “disorienting” design of this storage unit, which seems to have been “deformed” by a strong jolt or by swaying movements. Although it appears to depart from the aesthetics of the past, in fact it draws upon ancient knowledge in the use of carving and fine wood workmanship.

The appeal of this extraordinary piece of furniture lies in its ability to overturn and question classical stylistic principles such as purity, cleanness and symmetry, while evoking a comforting feeling of deja-vù and a sort of primitiveness, matched by unquestionable craftsmanship.

The post Good Vibrations by Ferruccio Laviani
for Fratelli Boffi appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: these chunky wooden structures provide the legs for a colourful range of tables, cabinets and benches launched by Barcelona design brand Sistema Midi.

The Midi Colors collection by Sistema Midi allows you to mix and match the colours of the doors, drawers, shelves and legs of each item.

The range includes five tables in various sizes, from a small coffee table to a dining table for 10 people, and four cabinets in different sizes.

The doors and drawers are veneered while the interior drawers of the cabinets are made from melamine.

Also included are two modular shelving systems and a mirror, both made from lacquered aluminium.

There are 22 colours of lacquered veneer to choose from and three wood finishes.

Other furniture collections we’ve featured on Dezeen include a range of modular shelves and tables made from thin sheets of metal and a set of shelves with leather deckchair seats hanging inside them.

See all our stories about furniture »
See all our stories about tables »
See all our stories about cabinets »

Photography by Fotodisseny.

Here’s some more information from Sistema Midi:

Your personality. Your furniture.

Personality is what best defines us, it is what makes us unique and unrepeatable. And we like to transmit it so that everyone knows what we are like. This is the reason for Midi Colors.

So that we can express our identity in the places that accompany us each day with furniture created and conceived to our measure.

This is the first collection of Sistema Midi that has a vital, colourful personality where the warmth of the textures and the new materials are felt right down to the finest details.

And as each of us has our own character, this tailor-made transversal collection has perfect versatility to adapt to our characteristics.

The post Midi Colors
by Sistema Midi appeared first on Dezeen.