Hasta La Ideas

Dezeen Wire: designer and co-founder of British brand Established & Sons Sebastian Wrong has launched The Wrong Shop, his own retail venture focusing on limited edition products by leading designers.

The Wrong Shop launched at the Qubique design event in Berlin with an auction of editioned furniture by Sebastian Wrong, Konstantin Grcic, Jerszy Seymour and Wrong with Richard Woods, which raised £4,000 for children’s charity Kids Company.

The new project will encourage designers to work outwith the boundaries of commercial production and explore complex, experimental and unorthodox methods of production.

See all of our stories about Established & Sons here and stories from Qubique here.

Here are some more details about The Wrong Shop:

Sebastian Wrong Launches The Wrong Shop at Qubique in Berlin

Designer Sebastian Wrong will launch his new, personal venture, The Wrong Shop, during the Qubique furniture and design trade show in Berlin, on 26 October 2011.

‘The launch will be in the form of an auction with proceeds going to charity,’ says Wrong. ‘I am very excited to be launching it in Berlin, an exciting city at the forefront of European creativity.’

The auction of new products designed by Richard Woods & Sebastian Wrong (chair), Konstantin Grcic (table), Jerszy Seymour (chair) and Sebastian Wrong (table) will take place during the opening festivities on the first night, 26 October 2011, 7pm. But the pieces will be on display for the duration of the show, until 29 October.

Wrong’s role as Design Director at Established & Sons has given Wrong inspiration to start a side-project that allows the world’s leading designers to explore their creativity without the usual restrictions that come with volume production in a retail-driven market. During the Qubique auction guests will have the chance to bid on these first-off, signed series. Profits from the auction go to the Kids Company charity. (www.kidsco.org.uk)

‘The provenance of production is an essential feature of this business,’ says Wrong. ‘We manufacture in small series which we sell directly to our customers. This allows us to be more flexible in the design and develop products of a quality normally associated with bespoke manufacturing. But most importantly, it moves consumers closer to the source of the manufacturing process, about which we are very transparent. There is huge skill and specialist knowledge in the making of a beautiful piece of furniture. You will appreciate your piece more if you understand who made it and how it was made.’

About Sebastian Wrong

Sebastian Wrong studied sculpture at Norwich School of Art before forming his own manufacturing company in 1996 and later co-created the The Lane design brand that ran for four years. He designed the Spun Light in 2002 (now produced by Flos) and is a founding member and Design Director of Established & Sons. He also teaches Product Design at the Royal College of Art.

Sebastian’s extensive knowledge of manufacturing processes and materials, as well as his passion for quality product fabrication, are essential components of his Wrong Shop mission.

Dezeen Wire: the Design and Technology Association is urging people to complete an online petition to retain design and technology as a compulsory part of the UK’s National Curriculum.

Design and technology is one of the subjects that could become optional in schools following the government’s announcement in January that it intends to slim down the curriculum. The petition is supported by key members of the creative and manufacturing industries, who believe the subject to be vital to the UK’s economic development.

Anyone wishing to support the campaign should visit the the Design and Technology Campaign website to sign the online petition or contact their local MP.

Dezeen Wire: a meals-on-wheels service that brings home cooked food to elderly residents is one of three projects that will share £100,000 awarded by the UK government’s Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) to the winners of a competition that called for innovative ideas to help elderly citizens live more independent lives.

The competition was organised by the Technology Strategy Board and the Design Council and the three winning companies will use the development contracts to continue refining and testing their services with the elderly community.

The Design Council’s Chief Design Officer Mat Hunter said: “These next generation services will help us maintain our quality of life as we age. All three teams show how understanding real, human needs inspires better solutions and we believe that this design-led approach will encourage the wider economy to embrace this emerging business opportunity. We look forward to seeing these compelling concepts brought to life and to market.”

See previous announcements from the Design Council on Dezeen Wire.

Here is some more information from the Design Council:

New projects will develop innovative services to help older adults live independently for longer

Three innovative small companies have each been awarded government contracts worth £100,000 to develop new services that aim to help older adults live independently for longer through adopting better approaches to food and nutrition.

The awards follow the companies’ success in the ‘Independence Matters – Home and Away’ competition for development contracts, a joint programme between the Technology Strategy Board (www.innovateuk.org) and the Design Council (www.designcouncil.org.uk). The contracts, awarded through the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI), will enable the three companies to work with designers to develop human-centred service solutions that help to ensure the independence of adults in older age, and which are ready to be scaled-up and rolled out to the commercial market.

The companies awarded the funding are:

FutureGov (London): Casserole is a modern twist on the meals on wheels service which will connect food enthusiasts in the community to cook an extra plate or two of home-made food for people in their area who would benefit from it.  Casserole aims to connect communities one good shared meal at a time.”

Sidekick Ventures (London): League of Meals is a tool to digitise older adults’ home recipes, share them with a private network, and enable them and others to organise social meal events to enjoy home-cooking.

VISION Culture CIC (Worcester): Improving Nutrition in Older People will test and develop a service that will improve the knowledge and skills of older people in order to maintain their long-term well-being in a less clinical manner.

Commenting on the contract awards, Jackie Marshall-Cyrus, the Technology Strategy Board’s Lead Specialist for Assisted Living, said: “Much of the current service provision around nutrition encourages older adults to rely on others.

Rather than seeking to maintain their own skills and independence, it takes away the opportunity they have to continue to do what they can for themselves, or to address their changing nutritional needs and tastes.  These three exciting service development projects will offer a way to reverse this, through providing good nutrition and good nutritional advice, enabling older adults to continue to interact with food in the way they wish to, and enhance social interaction.”

Mat Hunter, Design Council’s Chief Design Officer added: “These next-generation services will help us maintain our quality of life as we age.  All three teams show how understanding real, human needs inspires better solutions and we believe that this design-led approach will encourage the wider economy to embrace this emerging business opportunity. We look forward to seeing these compelling concepts brought to life and to market.”

The ‘Independence Matters – Home and Away’ funding competition was launched in February 2011 and followed extensive research by the Design Council to identify key areas in which innovations could make the most difference in helping older people to live independently.  Nutrition and independent living are strongly linked and the ability to continue to prepare and eat food into older age as you always have done is a fundamental part of maintaining your sense of identity, quality of life and independence.  Access to good nutrition not only ensures healthy living (warding off both obesity and malnutrition) but also, as eating is an inherently social activity, it helps to maintain emotional and mental well-being.

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Dezeen Wire: sports architecture firm Populous claims that original plans to air condition a stadium they are designing for the 2022 Football World Cup are too expensive and “notoriously unsustainable” when used in desert environments – The Independent

Populous director John Barrow says they are now considering other options for creating a comfortable climate inside the Sports City stadium and is encouraging the Qatari government to alter its building schedule to give new technologies time to develop.

You can see our previous story on the 2012 London Olympic stadium, also by Populous, and all our stadium stories here.

Dezeen Wire: industrial designer James Dyson has called on engineers and designers to develop the new ideas needed to revitalise the UK economy – The Guardian

Dyson says that only tangible engineering can address issues such as global warming and population growth, stating: “The allure of digital should not distract us from the bigger challenges.” He adds that the government must “focus on investment in ideas,” urging them to support design education and creative businesses.

We published the winner of the 2011 James Dyson Award for innovative student engineering projects on Monday and you can see more stories about James Dyson here.