Hasta La Ideas

If there’s such a thing as a manufacturer’s version of an otaku—someone who is fiendishly obsessed with one thing—it’s gotta be Sugatsune. The Japanese company produces specialty hinges and closing mechanisms for all kinds of applications, and while that might not sound sexy, their Multiple Motion Sliding Door System that we looked at here remains the most innovative cabinet door solution we’ve ever seen.

If you think about it, standard out-swinging hinges aren’t always the best solution, they’re just the incumbent ones. Watch someone pushing a baby stroller and trying to enter a store, and witness how awkward it is—they must get close enough to the door to grab and pull the handle, but must then back up to let the door clear the stroller, then they have to squirt through the doorway and use their shoulder to prevent the door from closing on them. In instances like that, it would be better if there was a solution in place like Sugatsune’s Lin-X Lateral Swing Hinge:

I realize that will probably never happen for interior doors, but at least they’re making them for cabinets. Anyone in a wheelchair would probably appreciate not having to back themselves up just to swing a cabinet door open.

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all photographs by Haldane Martin

Truth Coffee might be the coolest coffee shop you’ve ever seen—or been to, if you’ve found yourself in a sleepy slump in Cape Town, South Africa. The shop is an ode to the best roasted coffee in a perfectly executed space. But like a beehive needs a queen, the shop wouldn’t be half as mystifying without its centerpiece—the custom built coffee grinder. “Professor Jones’ Fabulous Coffee Bean Contraption” (as the grinder is rightly named) was built by Steampunk sculptor Chris Jones. See the video below for an interview with the man behind the machine:

From the smooth curves of the metal table in the booths to the natural look of the wooden tables, Truth Coffee mixes the fantastical feel of Steampunk with a clean and relaxing coffee house vibe. Read on for more photos.

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In business, they say your client list speaks for itself. With a client list that includes the Japanese Imperial Palace and the Vatican, Oriental Carpet Mills is doing something right.

Since 1935, this carpet mill has manufactured and supplied premium quality carpets (in addition to their notable clients mentioned above), to government offices, public facilities, major corporations, hotels, restaurants and places of worship in Japan and around the world. While the client list grows impressive the further you go down, the company has stayed true to its roots, still producing out of its original location in the small town of Yamanobe, Yamagata Prefecture, in the Northeastern region of Japan.

Oddly enough, the story of Oriental Carpet Mills begins with severely damaged crops during an especially cold winter in the 1930s. Since the severe cold nearly ruined the farmers’ crops, many local women and girls were being forced out of their homes to work in less-than-desirable conditions—some even forced in to prostitution—because their families didn’t have money to feed themselves. The founder, Junnosuke Watanabe, decided to rectify his town’s situation by employing (almost exclusively) women to work in his new carpet mill. In order to further his carpet mill’s quality and skill level, Watanabe invited seven carpet-making experts from China to trade their skills and knowledge with the workers in his factory. Through continual iteration and improvement, Oriental Carpet Mills has refined (and continues to diligently iterate on) their process in order to achieve the quality that attracted their high profile clients. To this day, the staff at the carpet mill remains heavily female.

The process behind Oriental Carpet Mill’s high quality product contains the following 4 steps, carried out by highly skilled craftspeople:

1.) Spinning and blending meticulously selected wool from all over the world.

2.) Carefully dying (and testing the dye) to create subtle color differences

3.) Weaving process that is continually iterated with new techniques to create detailed designs and subtle color transitions

4.) Mercerizing, or a chemical wash that produces a sheen and smooth touch

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As part of MoMA PS1’s forthcoming EXPO 1: New York exhibition, a “large-scale festival exploring ecological challenges,” the contemporary art center is bringing rAndom International’s “Rain Room” to its sister organization in Midtown Manhattan.

Rain Room is a hundred square metre field of falling water through which it is possible to walk, trusting that a path can be navigated, without being drenched in the process. As you progress through The Curve, the sound of water and a suggestion of moisture fill the air, before you are confronted by this carefully choreographed downpour that responds to your movements and presence.

The digitally-inclined art/design collective is pleased to bring “Rain Room” to MoMA following its debut at the Barbican Center in their hometown last fall, where it recently closed after a five-month engagement. We can only assume that some of our readers have already had the pleasure of seeing the installation in London, but we’re definitely looking forward to experiencing it in person.

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That old craftsperson’s motto about making the back of the cabinet as nice as the front may not apply to set designers, but that doesn’t make their job any less hard. Particularly when you’ve got to design a 360-degree studio set, as Florida-based Innovative Show Design recently had to do for NBA TV.

The basketball-based network’s design requirements called for a set where they could shoot multiple shows in the same day, with each area remaining visually distinct, while still retaining the overall look of the NBA. In addition, a regulation-sized half-court would be integrated into the set, allowing analysts and/or actual players to “illustrate scale and perspective on air.”

ISD whipped up renderings, beginning with the constraints of the basketball court and the studio’s dimensions—the fixed numbers, in other words—then designed the rest of the wraparound set to fit. The color scheme was predetermined by the NBA, and the design team chose “motion” as the overarching theme. “We looked at the game itself, and considering the game is constantly moving, we wanted a set to have that energy. We looked at the arcs created by the ball as a player shoots,” said ISD designer Mark Dowling.

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