Hasta La Ideas

Work at home with fewer distractions behind the misty screen of this desk by Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Thijmen van der Steen.

“More and more people work within their living space nowadays,” Thijmen van der Steen told Dezeen. “The desk I designed offers the possibility to do this in a more pleasant and focused way.”

The screen folds out to create a defined workspace for the user that minimises distractions.

The semi-transparent voile screen is printed with a graduated blue that fades to white towards the top.

When work is done, the screen folds around the desktop to hide the computer, files or other objects. The desk can then be used as a source of soft light by placing a lamp inside.

We reported from Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven earlier this year where we picked our top ten graduate projects from Design Academy Eindhoven, including a toy pig farm based on industrial farming methods and a collection of modular clothes to show off different parts of the body.

Other workspaces we’ve featured on Dezeen include a desk with a fabric cover inspired by aeroplane cabins and a boxy desk that looks more like a doll’s house.

See all our stories about Design Academy Eindhoven »
See all our stories about desks »
See all our stories about furniture »

Here’s some more information from Design Academy Eindhoven:

Fading Desk

The computer has established itself as part of the living room without being a conscious part of it. The division between living and working is fading. Fading desk plays with this phenomenon and gives the computer a place of its own that is very worthwhile. Not a boring workspace hiding in an unobtrusive corner, but an elegant piece of furniture that engages with the interior.

The semi-transparent cover does not close off the workspace from its surroundings, but aids concentration. Vice versa, you can see the computer, but details disappear behind the misty print. When work is done, the screen is closed. Put a lamp in it and it becomes a special light object in your home.

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Thijmen van der Steen appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch Design Week: twenty-five designers set up their own production lines inside a former textile factory in the Netherlands last week, making furniture, lighting, clothes, shoes, food, paper and more with the help of visitors.

Above: The Invisible Line by Francesco Zorzi, using heated tools to make monochrome drawings on thermal paper.

Curators and initiators of the C-Fabriek project Itay Ohaly and Thomas Vailly invited designers to create their own production lines, machines, tools and products for what they call “the New Factory.”

Above: CONSUMER LABORatory by Joong Han Lee and Thomaz Bondioli, involving customers in the customisation and production of jewellery.

Each installation is a combination of studio, factory and shop where consumers can watch and collaborate on the manufacture of their goods.

Above: Printing Lab – An adventure in Graphic Design & Manual Printing by Olivia de Gouveia, an open printmaking workspace where participants print their own image of a factory.

“C-fabriek is a place where designers work, create and manufacture, but also present their processes and methods to the public,” say Ohaly and Vailly. “By doing so, they are reclaiming control over their creations and suggesting alternatives to industrialisation, production and consumption.”

Above: Creative Factory Line01 by Itay Ohaly, moulding objects inside polystyrene packaging.

Ohaly’s own Creative Factory Line01 makes objects like lamps, vases and stools by drilling into a block of polystyrene to make a mould, which is then filled with resin and rotated in a spinning frame as it hardens.

Above and below: Creative Factory Line02 by Thomas Vailly, using rotational moulding to make objects inside stretched latex.

The mould doubles as packaging and is hacked away by the customer once they get the product safely home.

Vailly’s Creative Factory Line02 also makes use of rotational moulding, this time creating resin objects inside a stretched and inflated latex mould.

Above: Inner Fashion Line. Product and context design by Laura Lynn Jansen, process design by Thomas Vailly. A tight inner stretchy fabric and a loose non-stretchy outer fabric are pulled over an inflated balloon then bonded in selected places with glue. Once removed from the former, the bonded points gather the fabric to shape a garment.

There was also a paper mill recycling newspaper and leaflets from the city called the Paper Poo Machine, a food preserving machine, a fashion house making garments by gathering fabric with dots of glue and a human fax machine making prints on thermal paper with heated tools.

Above and below: FootMade – Custom made shoes by Eugenia Morpurgo, shaping shoes around the customer’s feet using connectors that replace glue and stitching in the shoe’s construction.

C-Fabriek took place at the Schellensfabriek as part of Dutch Design Week from 20 to 28 October.

Meanwhile, downstairs in the same building, architect Brian Peters was making bricks from 3D printed ceramic.

Above and below: Paper Poo Machine by Parasite9, a paper mill recycling the city’s waste newspapers and leaflets.

See all our stories about Dutch Design Week.

Photographs are by Kim Costantino and Christian Fiebig.

Above: Foodconvertors by Lucas Mullié & Digna Kosse, table-sized factories for preserving and preparing food at the same time in a kitchen where the food practically prepares itself.

Above: Impulsive Furnishing Unit. CNC machine by Christian Fiebig, concept and furniture by Itay Ohaly and Thomas Vailly. A whole furniture factory reduced to the size of a standardized plywood palette, which can be shipped and used anywhere. This machine was used to make the furniture found throughout the C-Fabriek exhibition.

Above: An element of time by Juan Montero, a clock that produces and destroys a ceramic object in a 24 hour cycle.

Above: Shaping Sugar by Amelia Desnoyers, a production line treating molten sugar like glass.

Above: Shaping bodies by Bas Geelen and Erik Hopmans, reintroducing the physical exercise to factories that’s been lost with the introduction of more automated production lines.

Click above for larger image

Click above for larger image

Click above for larger image

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and Thomas Vailly appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch Design Week: designer Doreen Westphal has created a lamp with a metal stem that can be positioned upright or at an angle against its magnetic concrete base, currently on show at Dutch Design Week.

A copper-coated iron tube containing the power cable is held in place by magnets embedded in the poured concrete base.

“People keep trying to figure out how it works but they see no mechanism,” Westphal told Dezeen. “They don’t believe that it works by magnetism because I covered the tube with copper leaf.”

The lamp is available as a table or floor lamp, which have slightly different bases.

Each allows the tube to attach upright, but when resting at an angle the table lamp balances at 45 degrees, whereas the floor lamp must sit at 60 degrees from horizontal to prevent the longer, heavier tube from tipping it over.

The power cable length can be adjusted so that the bulb points upward or hangs down from the end of the tube.

Concrete is also used as a base for the flick switch that sits further down the cable.

The lamp comes with either a white tube and orange cable or a copper-coloured tube and black cable.

Westphal is displaying her work at the On The Road exhibition at Studio Lieverse as part of Dutch Design Week, which continues until 28 October.

See all our stories about Dutch Design Week 2012 »
See all our stories about concrete »
See all our stories about lamps »

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by Doreen Westphal appeared first on Dezeen.

Competition: we’re offering readers the chance to win one of five copies of this year’s Dutch Design Yearbook, featuring exemplary designs produced in the Netherlands over the past year.

The fourth edition of the book features over 60 urban, product, graphic and fashion design projects including the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, masks by Bertjan Pot and the Stills Flagship Store in Amsterdam.

Each project is presented with a selection of images and text in Dutch and English.

The designs in the yearbook were all nominated for the Dutch Design Awards – take a look at this year’s winners here.

The awards took place as part of Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, which continues until 28 October. Follow our coverage of the event here.

To enter this competition email your name, age, gender, occupation, and delivery address and telephone number to competitions@dezeen.com with “Dutch Design Yearbook 2012” in the subject line. We won’t pass your information on to anyone else; we just want to know a little about our readers. Read our privacy policy here.

Competition closes 20 November 2012. Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeenmail newsletter and at the top of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.

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Design Yearbook 2012 to be won appeared first on Dezeen.

Slideshow feature: Dezeen editor Rose Etherington selects her top ten projects from the Design Academy Eindhoven graduate show at Dutch Design Week, including a system for decontaminating polluted land using plants and a method for turning debris from demolished buildings into new construction materials. We’ll be running more detailed stories about individual projects in the show over the coming days.

The Academy was in the news earlier this summer when all three heads of the Masters courses resigned over a dispute about educational reform, then returned to their posts after claiming victory a few days later.

The show continues at deWitteDame, Design Academy Eindhoven, Emmasingel 14, 5611 AZ Eindhoven as part of Dutch Design Week, which runs until 28 October.

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Eindhoven graduation show appeared first on Dezeen.