Hasta La Ideas

In the second movie Dezeen filmed with designer Erwan Bouroullec at Clerkenwell Design Week, he flicks through the new book documenting 15 years of work by him and his brother Ronan and talks about his favourite project ever.

Talking to Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs, he singles out the Slow chair designed for Vitra (below) as his favourite piece the studio has produced over the years because it is “lightweight, well done and comfortable”.

“We’ve always been keen on shooting our own products and showing them the way we want to,” he goes on to explain, describing how the brothers wanted the book to “speak with pictures.”

The book (above) is published by Phaidon.

Watch the first movie we filmed, in which Bouroullec speaks about the Pico tiles exhibited at Clerkenwell Design Week (above).

The post Movie: Erwan Bouroullec on his favourite
project ever at Clerkenwell Design Week appeared first on Dezeen.

In this second movie that Dezeen filmed with Mischer’Traxler at Clerkenwell Design Week, the Austrian design duo talk to Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs about their Idea of a Tree machine, which makes benches and lamp shades that are all unique records of the sunlight conditions on the day they were produced.

First shown at their graduation from the Design Academy Eindhoven, the solar-powered system rotates a mould to wrap thread round itself, first drawing the cord through a tank of glue and a tank of dye.

When there is more sunlight the mould spins faster, so the material builds up thicker and in a lighter colour, meaning the resulting piece is striped with the passing of clouds and moments of bright light.

The items are priced by length and pieces made in the winter are shorter to match the days.

Read more about the project in our earlier story.

Watch Mischer’Traxler talk about their Collective Works machine that only creates baskets when someone’s watching in our earlier movie.

See all our stories about Mischer’Traxler »
See all our stories from Clerkenwell Design Week 2012 »

The post Movie: The Idea of a Tree by Mischer’Traxler
at Clerkenwell Design Week appeared first on Dezeen.

In the third movie we filmed at Clerkenwell Design Week pop-up shops, Etsy UK marketing manager Georgina Blain explains how their global online marketplace is helping designers such as Sandra Dieckmann (work pictured) to expand from a local customer base to promote and sell their work internationally.

She describes how Etsy’s low posting fees and small commission percentage is proving particularly lucrative for artists and illustrators, who are discovering that displaying their work online gains them international exposure and therefore is much more productive than exhibiting at a gallery.

Other movies in this series feature Theo founder Thorsten ven Elten talking about design retail and Blurb UK director Teresa Pereira explaining on-demand publishing.

See all our stories about Clerkenwell Design Week »

The post Etsy at
Clerkenwell Design Week appeared first on Dezeen.

In the first of three interviews Dezeen filmed at pop-up shops during Clerkenwell Design Week this year, Theo founder and Pigeon Light (above) producer Thorsten van Elten explains how the internet is changing the way design is sold (+ movie).

Filmed at the Theo pop-up shop in the Farmiloe Building, van Elten discusses the future of the high street design shop compared to online and pop-up retail, and how he used Ed Carpenter’s Pigeon Light (above) to start his design retail business.

See all our stories from Clerkenwell Design Week 2012 »

The post Thorsten van Elten at
Clerkenwell Design Week appeared first on Dezeen.

A mobile theatre will visit Clerkenwell Design Week in London this May, inspired by a miniature concert hall above a coal-shed that used to be in the area in the seventeenth century.

Designed by London studio Aberrant Architecture, the Tiny Travelling Theatre will draw on contemporary accounts to replicate some of the attributes of the original coal shed, which was home to Clerkenwell resident and coal salesman Thomas Britton. He lived above his coal shed and started putting on a music club with a harpsichord and organ in 1678.

Design fair Clerkenwell Design Week will take place from 22 to 24 May. See all our stories from last year’s event here.

Here’s some more explanation from Aberrant Architecture:

“The SMALL-COAL-MAN’S tiny travelling theatre”

The original site of the medieval well, from which Clerkenwell derives its name, is located on the northern edge of Clerkenwell Green. Notoriously, this marks the spot where mystery plays, wrestling matches, radical performances and other “dramatic representations” of a secretive nature have regularly occurred for centuries.

Indeed it is claimed that “the secret life of Clerkenwell, like its well, goes very deep. Many of its inhabitants seem to have imbibed the quixotic and fevered atmosphere of the area” and consequently strange existences have been allowed to flourish.

Thomas Britton

“Perhaps the most curious and notable resident of Clerkenwell was Thomas Britton, who was known everywhere as “the musical small-coal man”. Britton was a travelling coal salesman, who lived above his coal shed, and in 1678 he founded a musical club, The SMALL-COAL-MAN’S Musick Club, by transforming his house into a tiny concert hall which featured a harpsichord & organ.

Despite the unglamorous “hovel-esque” venue, accessible only by a steep external staircase, the relative novelty of the series of concerts attracted a considerable audience from across all sectors of society. A wide range of artists came to play at Britton‟s house, from amateurs giving their first ever public performances to micro concerts from all the great musicians of the day, even the great George Frideric Handel. Britton designed his own programmes and “amassed a large music collection and selection of musical instruments for the gatherings.” At first the concerts were free, with coffee being sold at a penny a cup. Later concerts where paid for by an annual subscription of ten shillings.

Tiny Travelling Theatre

For Clerkenwell design week we propose to reawaken Britton’s maverick idea of a miniature concert hall for Clerkenwell and reimagine it as a tiny travelling theatre. Our new “SMALL-COAL-MAN’S tiny travelling theatre” will occupy multiple locations around the area and will host a series of events that revive & explore the intense emotion of a micro live performance. Inspired by small one-to-one spaces, such as a confessional booth or a peepshow, the “SMALL-COAL-MAN’S tiny travelling theatre” will create a direct and intimate interaction of artists with a minute audience of 2- 6 people.

Like Britton’s eccentric original we imagine that the program of events will be a mixture of unknowns making their debuts and established “stars”. Visually the tiny travelling theatre will be an explorative structure taking its cues from the ad-hoc & informal descriptions of the original with its “henhouse ladder”, interior “not much higher than a canary-pipe” and window “but very little bigger than the Bung-hole of a Cask”.