Hasta La Ideas

For those who can’t ever have too many shoes, these 16 modular components combine to make 256 different pairs. 

Watch this movie on Dezeen Screen »

The MyShell256 shoes by graduate designer Sharon Golan are each assembled from four parts, strapped to the wearer’s foot with silicon bands.

The rigid thermoplastic pieces move independently as the foot flexes with no connecting bridge between the heel and ball of the foot, much like Julian Hakes’ Mojito Shoe.

Golan developed the range while studying at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem – see more work by the academy’s graduates here.

She plans to develop a range or jewellery and bags using the same concept.

Check out all the weird and wonderful shoes on Dezeen here.

Here are some more details from Sharon Golan:

‏My shoe collection originated from a minimalistic design concept, which at the same time allows for great variety.

‏The inspiration came from the terrestrial crust, which is shaped by internal pressure and stress- it cracks, swells, moves,
and responds to any changes, in the same way as the foot.
‏
My set of shoes combines basic shapes, different techniques with industrial materials.
‏
16 modular units are inspired by four models – parts of fruit peel, egg, earth, and shell.
‏
These units are can be assembled using silicon-rubber bands, resulting in 256 different shaped shoes.

‏The project is accompanied by an interactive internet site (coming soon), showing the entire set of shoes.

See also:

.

Invisible Shoe by Andreia Chaves	Footwear by Victoria Spruce	Lolice shoes by Belma Arnautović

New Designers 2011: design graduate Brendan Magennis has made a collection of flat-packed furniture that has no screws or glue and can be assembled with just a few hearty whacks of a mallet.

Magennis used a Japanese woodworking technique called a hell joint, where wooden wedges are driven into the ends of each dowel to pack them tightly inside the receiving hole.

Called Whackpack, the series currently comprises a table, bench and side table, with other pieces under development.

Magennis designed the collection while studying contemporary furniture design at Bucks New University and was shortlisted for the New Designer of the Year Award at the graduate show in London last month. See all our stories about New Designers here.

The text below is from Brendan Magennis:

My product Whackpack Furniture was shortlisted for the New Designer Award on preview night. It is a range of furniture stimulated by the discovery of the ‘Hell Joint’ through Japanese Joinery.

Whackpack Furniture is a flatpack inspired creation aimed for today’s nomadic lifestyles and shrinking apartments sizes. It is designed to fashion a new way for the consumer to construct furniture using wooden, a mallet and satisfying strength.

No allen keys and no glue required. The Whackpack range is made up of three pieces at the minute with other projects underway. I presented the Whackpack Coffee, Whackpack Jardinere and the Whackpack Bench at New Designers.

See also:

.

No Screw No Glue by Joost van Bleiswijk	Stool by Michael Marriott for Paul Smith	Clamped Stools by Daniel Glazman

Show RCA 2011: footwear designer Victoria Spruce presented these sculptural shoes at the Royal College of Art graduate show earlier this month.

The collection combines shiny plastic shells with traditional leather soles and matte-leather linings that are revealed as the uppers twist and fold.

Dezeen is quite keen on crazy footwear – check out more stories about strange shoes here.

See all our stories about Show RCA 2011 here.

Here’s some more information from Victoria Spruce:

The collection was originally inspired by organic, flowing sculptures, giving the idea that the object could consist of one flowing continuous line and material.

Through using hard materials and new technologies combined with traditional shoemaking materials and techniques an element of contrast is highly visible yet working together as one.

Emphasised by the use of tonal matte leathers to line the plastic and traditional leather soles, the contrast between the modern plastic look and the traditional aspects becomes even further evident.

The result is a combination of hard and soft, a contrast of matte vs. shine, and an unlikely pairing of modern technology and traditional techniques creating sculptural and fresh new footwear.

Fashion Womenswear
Specialism: Footwear

Supported by: The Worshipful Company of Leathersellers, Richard Paice and Daniel Rubin (RCA Footwear Scholarship).

See also:

.

Melissa shoes by Zaha Hadid Architects	Hakes shoes SS11 by Julian Hakes	United Nude Shoes by Rem D Koolhaas

New Designers 2011: Kingston University graduate Andre Pereira has created a series of products to help with tricky DIY tasks, including these paint brushes that clip onto the edge of a tin of paint.

The DIY series also includes a brush guard that holds bristles together for neater corners and edges.

In addition, Pereira presented colour-coded wire strippers to help with wiring a plug and proposes that a plug’s prongs could be insulated with colour-coded plastic.

A heat-sensitive sticker attached to radiators would indicate when they need bleeding.

Pereira presented the project at graduate show New Designers 2011, which took place 6-9 July in London.

See all our coverage of the event here.

Here are some more details from Andre Pereira:

DIY Series: Painting

Brush Guard, Overhang Paint Can, Hanging Brush

The painting series promotes a clean working environment, through permitted conveniences, and reducing the amount of skill needed to carry out a professional job.

The ‘Brush Guard’ restricts the brushes bristles from spanning out when pressure is applied, giving the user greater control when painting straight lines. It also promotes tool longevity to often throw away tools keeping the brushes shape when not in use. Both the ‘Overhang paint can’ and the ‘Hanging Brush’ permit the user to rest wet paint brushes providing the user with a clean working environment. The Overhang paint can’s handle rests on the stopper permitting the user to rest their paint brush on the groove. The ‘Hanging Brush’ has notch which hooks onto paint can edges allowing the paint to drip into the can rather than down its side and the floor.

DIY Series: Maintenance

Plug Strippers, Coloured plug, Radiator Sticker

The maintenance series has been designed to simplify often overlooked tricky household tasks.

The Plug Strippers are designed to cut and strip the wires of a cable to the required lengths making the fiddly task of wiring a UK plug easier. The order the wires are stripped relates to the order in which they are attached to the plug. The strippers would consist of three blades 2 stripping blades and one cutting blade with the housing being compression moulded.

The Coloured plug is simple, by colouring the existing insulated pins with the according colours of the wires that would attach to them, assures the user they are wiring the plug correctly preventing the plug from being accidentally mixed up.

The Radiator sticker is thermochromic, meaning it reacts to a specified temperature; indicating to the user when to bleed their radiator. Air is a poor conductor of heat so when it builds up at the top of radiators it greatly reduces the heating systems efficiency increasing the amount of energy needed to heat a room. This means the bottom half of the radiator would be hot and the top half colder. By putting the sticker at the top of the radiator you are able to tell whether there is air trapped: When the heating system is on a red ring should appear showing that the system is working. When the system is on and the sticker remains completely yellow,then there may be air trapped.

See also:

.

Ben Fursdon at New Designers	Hannah Niskanen-Benady at New Designers	Oscar Medley-Whitfield at New Designers

Furniture designers’ obsession with clamps has taken a new turn with this stool held together with one of the woodworking tools.

The legs of the Clamped Stools by Daniel Glazman are held against the seat underside by a single clamp integrated in the third leg.

Glazman designed the stool while studying at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem.

Check out some more examples of clamps used as furniture components here.

Here’s some more information from Glazman:

My name is Daniel Glazman.  I am a young industrial designer recently graduated from the Bezalel arts and design academy in Jerusalem.

The ‘Clamped Stool’ is a three leg knock-down stool, assembled with a single clamp based joint, integrated with one of the stools legs that locks the whole construction together, giving it its strength.

The concept of the ‘Clamped Stool’ was born after I looked at some DIY furniture and thought to myself that they are not so simple to assemble and there is more desperation than satisfaction from the process of the assembly.

I decided to design a knock down stool that the whole construction will be held on a single joint, familiar from the field of hardware tools and this way will be easy and intuitive to assemble and fun and satisfying at the same time.

In a process which included six models, the familiar clamp had integrated with one of the legs, resulting with a stable, contemporary designed stool.

See also:

.

Clamp Desk by Coudamy and Coulondres	A.M.L. Clamp Light by Andreas Martin-Löf	Ad Hoc by Peter Schäfer