Hasta La Ideas

Over the next months we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

Designer: Kevin Cheng
Location: San Francisco, California, USA
Category: Products/Equipment
Award: Student Notable

2P Portable Restroom

The 2P is a portable restroom designed to counter the problems that arise due to heavy attendance at outdoor events. Through innovative placement of an external urinal, it promotes dual-functionality per unit which effectively cuts all lines in half, improves hygienic conditions and reduces cost, space and its carbon footprint.

My research began through many interviews and observations looking at the way people used restrooms, the frequency they washed their hands, and the areas in a public restrooms that often come in contact with a user’s hands. I also did a lot of research looking up past studies on handwashing, anal cleaning, and diseases, but as my concept changed to even higher traffic events, my research did as well. I started gathering articles and images and attended the Treasure Island Music Festival to gather insight on usage and observe people’s reactions. As my concept developed, I started creating sketch models, scaled down to test it’s feasibility and work with it’s mechanics and when I was more confident with my direction, I created a full scale model made with cardboard to test it’s proportion in person and how I was going to handle the issue of privacy.

Core77: What’s the latest news or development with your project?

The project was my thesis at the California College of the Arts. I realize that the aesthetics could use refinement, but I think the functionality of the design is the real breakthrough and after some obstacles, I’ve finally got it patent pending. I’m looking forward to bringing my idea past the concept phase and making it more than just a portfolio piece.

What is one quick anecdote about your project?

I spent months researching and looking at public hygiene and there are definitely many opportunities there where I imagine most designers tend to shy away from.

Read on for full details on the project and jury comments.

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Over the next months we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

Designer: Michael Harboun
Location: Paris, France
Category: Speculative Objects/Concepts
Award: Student Runner-Up

Transcendenz

In a world in which we are constantly bombarded with injunctions to react or to distract ourselves it gets scarcely possible in our everyday life to dwell upon the essential, the existential, the metaphysical… Transcendenz transforms the reality around us and enables us to live and share immersive, thoughtful experiences.

Transcendenz is a personal “design reaction” to the world in which we are living. By observing our modern societies, a certain paradox caught my interest. This paradox concerns the way we behave in time. On one hand we are, in our everyday life, constantly trying to be efficient, organized and quick. As time is money, no time should be lost unnecessarily. We try to save every single minute and to be as productive as possible, which makes us busy people. On the other hand, when we are not working, we suddenly have so much time for ourselves that we don’t know what to do with it anymore. Not knowing where to invest our time, most of us will simply consume it throughout different mediums. Facebook, YouTube, TV or videogames are some perfect examples. These information technologies provide us with a time of connection, distraction or interaction, thus taking away from us the empty time. The empty time is the most essential time. It is the time in which we are fully conscious about ourselves and our environment. It is the time in which we are sensitive to fundamental questionings and think about the existential; the type of thoughts which bring us back to our human nature, the only animal able to think beyond what he sees with his eyes and imagine the invisible. After my analysis, I aimed to create a concept which would link our modern information technologies to the invisible reality of metaphysics.

Core77: What’s the latest news or development with your project?

Transcendenz has been labelled by the APCI with an Design Observeur 2012, a label sponsored by the French Ministry for the Economy, Industry and Employment, and will soonly be part of an exhibition at the famous Cite des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris from the 9th of November 2011 to the 11th of March 2012.

Any humorous incidents while you were making your project?

Some scenes of the film have been shot inside a bus we have rented. The bus was stationed on the company’s parking lot. In one of the bus scenes, the main actor, had to dress up like a girl. He looked real. As he had to undress back later, another bus suddenly parked next to us and the driver peeked inside our bus. His reaction was worth recording too. He looked like he was hallucinating, probably thinking some very “marginal” movies were being shot on his company’s parking lot…

Eureka moments?

After writing my thesis I had the idea of Transcendenz and the message I wanted to share but did not know the context in which I should tell the story. So one day I was sitting in the bus, looking out of the window and daydreaming as usually. The passing landscapes created some thoughts and imagery in my mind. After a certain time, I looked at the other passengers, wondering if some people would be doing the same. A unique feeling, mixing sadness and revolt, overwhelmed me as I discovered that all the people around me were absorbed into their smartphones. No one looked at each other nor were wondering about the landscape and environment through which they were travelling. In that particular moment, I knew the experience of Transcendenz should be initiated in a bus. The idea of travelling physically in space while travelling mentally inside the philosophical world of Transcendenz appealed to me like a flash of revelation.

Read on for full details on the project and jury comments.

More from Michael on the project

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Over the next months we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

Designer: Jan-Erik Stange and Sebastian Meier
Location: Berlin, Germany
Category: Interactive/Web/Mobile
Award: Student Winner

Lit.

Lit is a tool for location-based literary research that enables users to explore books by locations contained in them on a multi-touch table. The system displays all the locations in any given book by little points on the map. Curved lines connect these to a scrollable ring, which represents the book.

Catalogues in today’s libraries only offer a search that is based on “describing” metadata like title, author, publishing date and so on. In the future more and more books will be available as digital texts. This offers completely new possibilities in searching these texts for data. We believed that it could be very interesting especially for scientists to be able to have a different perspective on books by making the locations mentioned in a book searchable for the user. Since the topic of my Master Thesis I’m working on at the moment is about developing new search interfaces for libraries, I’m quite familiar already with library catalogues and other search interfaces. It was exciting to finally produce something after having researched for a long time.

Core77: What’s the latest news or development with your project?
Our project is featured in the current issue of WEAVE magazine, a German magazine for interaction design.

What is one quick anecdote about your project?
We had a hard time designing the lines in the prototype that connect locations on the map with the book object. We wanted them to appear in an aesthetically pleasing way while at the same time not cluttering the display, so they wouldn’t be hard to differentiate from each other. It wasn’t easy to find just the right amount of curvature. As it seemed to us, the right amount we could be satisfied with was only a tiny spot in a huge range of possibilities we had for designing the curves. Finally we built a little extra prototype, another processing sketch, to be able to play around with all different kinds of curvature that helped us to find the right kind of curve.

Read on for full details on the project and jury comments.

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Over the next months we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

Designer: Arttu-Matti Immonen
Location: Kyoto, Japan
Category: Speculative Objects/Concepts
Award: Student Notable

Draw

The Draw project is a study on the subject of cross generational communication. It is a concept that relies on the natural communication tools between the young and the elderly.

I am really interested in finding out natural ways of doing the chores of a daily life. In this project I wanted to see if it’s possible to challenge the existing methods of wireless communication. The target group was set to be the seniors and their grand children. I wanted to find a simple and easy to understand form of interacting. Drawing is an universal communication tool that especially children take great pride in when they succeed in creating a picture after tirelessly putting a lot of effort in it. This will to show and share their original works made me think of a way to bring the hobby of drawing to the 21st century’s wireless world.

Core77: What’s the latest news or development with your project?

To be brutally honest as the project was a self-initiated short term design exercise, the concept hasn’t really taken off in any sense nor was it meant to do so. That being said I wish to return to it in some shape at some point in the future. For now I guess I would happy if anyone found it inspirational as a concept and was able to draw some inspiration from it to fuel their own projects.

What is one quick anecdote about your project?

I guess it would have to be the incident after receiving this award, when a friend of mine asked me oh-so-politely how long did it take me to use the extrusion tool of a 3d software to create the final shape. Less is more, I suppose.

Read on for full details on the project and jury comments.

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Over the next months we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

Designer: Colin Selig
Location: Walnut Creek, California, USA
Category: DIY/Hack/Mod
Award: Runner-Up

Propane Tank Bench

Design and fabricate a functional, durable, and elegant park bench, suitable for garden or public space, from a discarded propane tank.

In terms of function, I wanted this bench to be comfortable for people with many different body sizes. I began by making the seat 16-1/2″ high, which my research indicated is a common seat height for park benches. Next I had dozens of people of various body sizes sit in the seat so I could make adjustments to the exact position of the backrest before I welded it in place. The 38 inch diameter of the central cylindrical section of the tank forms a curve that is actually quite comfortable to sit on as well as lean back against.

The other aspects I addressed in terms of function were strength and durability. Since curved and compound curved forms are inherently structurally sound I knew that my designed would be extremely strong, especially given the substantial 5/16 inch wall thickness of a steel tank which was engineered to contain gas under high pressure. To make the piece durable enough to stand up to the outdoor elements I had the entire surface powder coated once I completed the fabrication.

Creating a pleasing visual form was the most significant factor in my design and I will let the pictures speak for themselves. I decided to color the piece in the tank’s original parchment white, reaffix a “1075” propane warning sticker, and leave the original lift hooks in place, all as a way to reference the material’s previous incarnation.

Core77: How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?

I watched the jury announcement on-line with a few friends. When my name was announced as a runner up there was much hooting and hollering. Victories are always more fun if you have others there to share them with you!

What’s the latest news or development with your project?

I am continuing to get lots of positive feedback. This week I found out that the city of San Rafael in Marin wants to have several on loan. I currently also have pieces on loan in the city halls of Santa Clara and Walnut Creek. My goal is to sell these to municipalities, especially those committed to sustainable design. I am also doing some product placement by loaning benches at corporate HQs of large architecture firms.

Tell us about a moment of insight during the development of your project

My biggest eureka moment since entering my bench into the core77 awards contest was when I realized how many other design possibilities there are for seating made from these propane tanks. I have been busy creating additional prototypes and have attached images of two of them:

The design of “Propane Tank Chaise” is based on the lines of the classic chaise lounge. A slightly larger left end and a seat that tapers down from left to right subtly reinforce the more dramatic asymmetry of the backrest. I choose to have it powder coated in antique pink to enhance it’s sensual lines.

The stylized lines of the “Propane Tank Lips” bench are based on Salvidor Dali’s 1936 “Mae West” sofa. Lips are a culturally iconic image but I don’t think anyone has ever done them before out of a propane tank. I think the same could be said for the chaise lounge.

Since these benches are suitable for a wide range of indoor and outdoor locations where resilient, avant-garde seating is desired I have begun to market them to architectural firms, construction companies, and municipalities, all of whom can earn LEED sustainability credits from the U.S. Green Building Council for installing them.

Read on for full details on the project and jury comments.

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