Product news: London designer Benjamin Hubert has created a series of tables with legs and tops made of metal mesh for Italian brand Moroso.
Designed by Benjamin Hubert for Moroso, these circular tables have been made by manipulating expanded steel, which is more commonly found on industrial equipment and architecture, to form cylinders and disks for the legs and tops.
“In reference to its industrial origins, Net is purposefully geometric and simple in its design language,” explains the designer. “The tables have a large surface with expanded steel perforations that give a feeling of lightness while being small enough to not allow small objects to slip through.”
The tables come in a range of powder-coated paint colours and are available in various different sizes.
New York designer Stephen Burks filled the Milan showroom of Italian brand Calligaris with colourful ropes and columns of plastic chairs lashed together last month (+ movie).
Called Variations, the project was curated by PS design consultants and involved Burks travelling to Calligaris‘ production centre in Manzano, where he conducted experiments in composition using the company’s range of chairs.
Burks altered the brand’s existing products by wrapping and weaving cords around and through their structures.
He also created installations from the chairs by piling them high and binding them in striped ropes.
“The experiments that we’re doing now are, in one way or another, helping explore the future of plastic chairs,” says Burks. “What happens when we have so many plastic chairs that are all so similar – are there ways that we can use craft to find a unique positioning?”
Thirteen kilometres of multicoloured ropes were strung from floor to ceiling in the showroom during Milan design week to create vitrines for the resulting pieces.
The experiments may form the basis of a new seating collection by Burks’ studio Readymade Projects and the installation will be taken to the Paris showroom as part of Paris Designer Days from 4 to 9 June.
We interviewed the designer at our Dezeen Live event during 100% Design at the end of last year, where he talked about the importance of branding for designers.Watch the interview »
Dezeen and MINI World Tour: as digital technology changes the way we work and relax, Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa discusses its impact on furniture design in this movie filmed in Milan last month.
Fukasawa sitting on his Papilio armchair and footstool for B&B Italia
Speaking to us at the B&B Italia showroom in Via Durini, Fukasawa shows us how he designed the Papilio range of armchairs, sofas and beds – which all feature wide, butterfly-like backs – in response to the way people use their mobile phones and tablet computers.
“In your life, everything is integrated,” he says. “So you lie down on the bed, watching TV, calling on your mobile, working, eating food. That’s why I designed these chairs and the bed with a back.”
Papilio armchair and footstool for B&B Italia
Shrinking technology is changing the types of furniture people use at home, he says. “Why do we need such a big table to work at, or a huge screen?”
But Fukasawa rejects suggestions that furniture itself will become embedded with technology. Instead, he strives to create high-quality, iconic pieces of furniture that will last for years. “I don’t like to put any kind of technology in a lounge chair,” he says. “Hi-tech should be smaller but life doesn’t change much. Just keep the quality.”
Infobar A02 mobile phone
Fukasawa also demonstrates the Infobar A02 mobile phone, which he designed in conjunction with legendary interface designer Yugo Nakamura. The phone’s interface features icons that behave like bubbles that can be dragged around on the screen.
The designer established the Infobar brand for Japanese manufacturer KDDI and has designed a number of devices including the Infobar 2, which have been extremely popular in Japan but have never been made available abroad.
Wall-mounted CD player for MUJI
Among Fukasawa’s other clients is MUJI, the Japanese homeware company for which he has anonymously designed numerous products, including the iconic wall-mounted CD player. “I’ve designed a big number of products for them but they never give out the designer’s name,” he says.
“I’m really trying to design iconic products,” says Fukasawa, who was born in 1956 and is based in Tokyo. “I’m always using the same minimalistic, simple design. And people like it.”
Berlin architect Elisabeth Lux has designed a writing desk for furniture brand e15 with sliding storage compartments that can be pulled out and rearranged.
The Nota desk combines a fold-down writing surface with a series of manoeuvrable storage boxes in contrasting colours that can be arranged vertically, horizontally or removed altogether.
The desk is made from lacquered MDF and is available in white with mint and grey storage units or grey combined with black and light blue storage units.
Product news: cable clutter is hidden away under the lid of this extension lead from Swiss design brand Punkt.
The ES 01 socket hub by Colombian designer Georges Moanack conceals five plugs under its cylindrical cover.
A central button allows all five devices to be turned off at once.
“I wanted to make crawling under furniture to untangle cables a thing of the past, and the design challenge was to find an attractive and accessible solution to this problem,” says Moanack.
The power cord is three metres long and there are six different socket types available for different countries.
Like all Punkt. products, it comes in red, black and white.
Punkt. launches its third product: the ES 01. The ES 01 is an original extension socket that has been designed to tackle a ubiquitous lifestyle problem: cable clutter. The ES 01 plugs 5 sockets and is available in a range of versions to comply with the different power supply standards of a wide selection of countries.
Punkt. ES 01: finally a solution to the cable clutter that plagues modern lifestyles and makes a mess of interiors. All of your cables and plugs converge neatly in the ES 01 extension socket, tucked away under its sleek rounded lid. Convert cable chaos into a clean design feature for the home or office.
No hiding power stations under furniture, no crouching down to untangle dusty cables, and no power damage to your devices; just an attractive, sturdy design piece that blends in well with all interiors and simplifies cable management. Get organized and power your gadgets and devices with the ES 01!
The young Colombian designer Georges Moanack designed the ES 01 under the art direction of Jasper Morrison. The ES 01 combines Georges’ fresh outlook with Jasper’s talent and experience, resulting in an ingenious solution to a ubiquitous problem.
The armrests of these chairs by Swedish designers Claesson Koivisto Rune reach out as though asking for a hug.
The Hug range by Claesson Koivisto Rune for Italian brand Arflex features deep, thin arms that angle upwards and outwards.
“The friendly and welcoming gesture, seen most clearly in the ‘open-armed’ position of the armrests, is meant as a universal invitation, saying ‘come, sit with me a while and I’ll put you at ease,'” say the designers.
The upholstered seat, backrest and arms sit on a wooden plinth supported by legs in a contrasting colour.
The Hug collection includes a dining chair, a lower side chair and a high-backed club chair that’s more enclosed.
Tel Aviv designer Nir Meiri used seaweed to create the shades of these lamps.
Nir Meiri made the lamps by draping fresh seaweed over a structure of thin metal spokes attached to a metal base. The final shape of each lampshade is formed as the seaweed dries and shrinks, before being set with a preservative.
Through the unconventional use of seaweed as a main material for a domestic environment, the product plays on the tension between the artistic and the commercial.
Ancient cultures have appreciated and utilized seaweeds for different uses. Today, seaweeds are cultivated and harvested on a commercial scale, as a result of a growing interest driven by environmental concerns.
The Marine Light lamp combines a metal base and a structure of thin metal strings for the lamp-shade. The seaweeds are applied on the metal strings while still fresh. As they dry, they shrink and obtain the form of the lamp-shade. A mixture of preserving material is applied to preserve them.
The light reflected through the seaweeds and the morphology of the lamp induce underwater images Furthermore, the use of seaweeds, borrowed from other disciplines into the world of design, might inspire new thinking in the field.
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