Hasta La Ideas

Milan 2014: German designer Hanna Emelie Ernsting has developed a chair with an integrated red blanket that wraps around the sitter like Little Red Riding Hood’s cape (+ slideshow).

Designed by Hanna Emelie Ernsting and called Red Riding Hood, the piece is a round-backed, grey armchair with a grey and red blanket attached around and under the seat.

When there isn’t a sitter the blanket falls, grey side down, over the back of the seat. When someone sits in it they can draw the blanket around them like a cape.

“Evenings are the time for stories, dreams and fairytales,” said Ernsting. “After a strenuous workday, we long to escape for a time from everyday life and lose ourselves in the world of a book or film. These contrasting circumstances underlie the design of this armchair.”

“The chair reinterprets these two facets of day and evening, work and leisure time, reality and fairyland, waking and dreaming – the rational and the whimsical,” she added.

The material used is loden, a traditional German-Austrian woven wool fabric that is often used for coats because of its water and dirt-resistant qualities.

The armchair is on show in hall 13 booth D27 at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan.

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the sitter with a red hood appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: Finnish design brand Iittala is showing a collection of boxy shelves, plywood furniture and glass lamps in Milan this week (+ slideshow).

The homeware collection includes a series of metal storage units by Danish designer Cecilie Manz. Called Aitio – meaning theatre box in Finnish – these can be wall-mounted to hold small objects.

These shelves are made from powder-coated steel and come in a variety of whites and greys, as well as yellow. There are also plastic hooks that clip over the edges. “My focus with Aitio was functionality, simplicity and aesthetics,” said Cecilie Manz.

The Kerros shelf by Swedish designer Matti Klenell is a side table made of plywood, which can also be used as a tray. Klenell described the shelf as “a new kind of object that sits somewhere between furniture and a household product”.

Additions to Iittala’s lighting collection include a new grey version of the Leimu lamp by Norwegian designer Magnus Pettersen, the Kuukuna lamp by Oiva Toikka and the Nappula Candelabra by Matti Klenell.

The Kuukuna, a mouth-blown glass light, was originally designed in 1986 by Toikka and has been resurrected in a slightly larger version.

Klenell’s six-candled candelabra comes in white and has evolved from the single candleholders designed by Klenell in 2012. These are now available in red and yellow. All are made from powder-coated steel.

The designs are on show at in hall 16, place D30, at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile from 8 to 13 April.

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feature in Iittala’s latest collection appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: trees appear to float within this forest-like installation by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, at Cassina‘s stand at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan this week (+ slideshow).

Sou Fujimoto‘s Floating Forest suspends trees contained in mirrored cubes throughout Cassina‘s space at the furniture fair, exploring the architect’s interest in the contrast of nature and architecture within the Italian brand’s Milan exhibition space.

“I feel that Italian design is very powerful because of their history and because of their visions for the future,” Fujimoto told Dezeen. “They have both, not only traditions, and can still maintain the identity and quality of Italian design.”

Each hanging container is suspended from metal wires and covered with mirrors on the outside to reflect the trees and give the appearance of effortlessly hovering throughout the exhibition.

The furniture is arranged as individual rooms on a gridded floor plan.

“Some of the trees are floating at different heights to create articulations from space to space,” Fujimoto explained. “The installation creates the excitement of walking around as the scene is gradually opening up to you.”

The installation comprises a mixture of hanging trees as well as freestanding trees, arranged purposely to allow maximum floor space for visitors to pass through the showroom. “The trees are similar to the typical Japanese tree Momiji, as the shape is beautiful and the leaves are very delicate,” said the architect.

The piece will be installed at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Hall 20 Stand D1/E6, until Sunday.

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Cassina’s Milan display space appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: designers including Maarten Baas, Arik Levy and Maxim Velčovský introduce their new pieces for Lasvit in this movie filmed at the Czech lighting company’s Emotions show in Milan earlier this week.

Lasvit launched nine new collections at its Emotions show in Milan, including designs by a host of international designers as well as a series of kinetic sculptures by the company’s in-house team.

Czech designer Maxim Velčovský, who is also the company’s art director, created a series of hanging glass lamps called Frozen, which are created by pouring molten glass over a dome-shaped mould and left to cool.

“I was very much inspired by nature, when water becomes ice,” he says of the lamps, which are displayed in a cluster with drops of water running down them. “People are not sure whether they are looking at ice or glass, so they they knock on the lamp trying to figure it out.”

Dutch designer Maarten Baas created a modular chandelier called Das Pop using his signature Clay method in which a synthetic clay is moulded around a metal frame.

“It’s made all by hand and with Lasvit’s craftsman we also made hand-blown lightbulbs,” he explains. “Das Pop is one of my favourite Belgian bands, which is where the name comes from.”

Arik Levy designed a series of simple crystal-shaped pendants, which are available in a variety of different colours and opacities.

“We get reflections off the facets, even when the light is off,” he says. “When it’s on and when it’s off it always stays beautiful.”

The show also features the first glass chandelier by Daniel Libeskind. Called Ice, the piece is made up of clear glass cells blown into angular moulds, creating sharp, icicle-like forms.

“When you blow crystal, it’s typically bubbly and round,” says the American architect’s son, Lev Libeskind. “Our language has always been more angular and sharp. So we said, “What would happen if we took our sharpness and impose it on the glass?” The result provides a really interesting counterpoint between material and form.”

Lasvit’s Emotions show also features two moving glass sculptures, including a hanging lotus flower designed by Petra Krausová, which opens and closes in time to music and is controlled by an iPhone app.

Visual artist Jakub Nepraš also created a sculpture made from shards of glass shaped like a tree, onto which  a series of digital images are projected.

“There is craftsmanship, there is poetry behind each collection and this year there is also a lot of technology on show,” explains Lasvit founder and president Leon Jakimič. “I believe we are the first company to combine glass art with really advanced technology.”

Lasvit’s Emotions show, which also features designs by Michael Young and Czech designers Jan Plechac and Henry Wielgus, is at Office Stendhal on Via Stendhal in Milan and is open from 10am to 8pm until 13 April.

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craftsmanship with advanced technology” appeared first on Dezeen.

News: architect Daniel Libeskind has hit back at his critics, comparing his own work to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and saying that he doesn’t try to be liked, at the launch of an exhibition in Milan this week.

Speaking to Dezeen at the launch of Where Architects Live, a major installation of pavilions, photographs and films about the homes of starchitects, Libeskind said that it takes time for the public to appreciate greatness.

“When things are first shown they are difficult,” Libeskind told Dezeen. “If you read the reviews of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, it was a failure, a horrible piece of music.”

“You have to give it time. Architecture is not just for the moment, it is not just for the next fashion magazine. It’s for the twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred, two hundred years if it’s good; that’s sustainability.”

Asked if he was bothered by the high levels of criticism his recent work has received, Libeskind replied that he never reads his critics and said that he doesn’t try to be liked.

“It’s a democratic world, they can say whatever they want,” he said. “How can I read them? I have more important things to read.”

He also made reference to a passage from the Bible, adding “look at 6:26. “Woe be to the man who is liked by everyone”. So if you read the New Testament, don’t try to be liked by everyone and do what you believe in.”

Libeskind cemented his reputation as a major name with the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which opened in 2001, but in recent years has come under attack from critics of his angular style.

Speaking about Libeskind’s plans for the World Trade Centre rebuilding project in 2008, LA Times critic Christopher Hawthorne said: “anyone looking for signs that Daniel Libeskind’s work might deepen profoundly over time, or shift in some surprising direction, has mostly been doing so in vain.”

British philosopher Roger Scruton accused Libeskind of being one of a group of architects who “have equipped themselves with a store of pretentious gobbledegook with which to explain their genius to those who are otherwise unable to perceive it,” in an article in the UK’s Times newspaper in 2011.

In 2012, novelist Will Self accused Libeskind of putting money before art in an outspoken attack on high profile architects reported in British architecture magazine BD.

And last year architecture critic Owen Hatherley said that Libeskind’s students’ union for London Metropolitan University “was one of the first instances where it became crystal clear that Libeskind’s formal repertoire of Caspar David Friedrich crashing and banging was not, actually, about war or the Holocaust.”

“All of its vaulting, aggressive gestures were designed to “put London Met on the map”, and to give an image of fearless modernity with, however, little of consequence to actually do,” wrote Hatherley in BD.

Libeskind added that critics will become less relevant as we enter a new era of change where “everyone can compose Beethoven’s Fifth”.

“We don’t live in the era of the old fashioned idea of masterpieces done by the masters,” he said. “Everybody isn’t powered to be creative and in a democratic society – it is freedom that creates the beauty, it’s not authorities. I think that is the era of change.”

Photograph is by Davide Pizzigoni.

Below is an edited transcript from our conversation with Libeskind at the opening of Where Architects Live:

Journalist: Why did you decide to show your house in this exhibition?

Daniel Libeskind: It’s very simple, I decided to show my house because a house is not really private. I have no secrets, so all the secrets are shown and of course my house is not just about just furniture and light.

You know the house is the most important space because that’s where people live. That’s where they go to sleep, that’s where they meet, that’s where they have their intimate moments. So there can be nothing more important than the domestic environment. The domestic environment is no longer seen as some mechanical functionalistic machine to live in, in my view, and it is something that has to do with the global memory with where we are, where we are coming from and where we are going.

Journalist: How is this changing?

Daniel Libeskind: First of all, the house changes with every look of a person, with every glance, with every shift of the eye, with every face, with every piece of light that comes through the house. The house doesn’t just change, the house is actually heavy. It’s difficult to change the physical but today with objects, with furniture, with interiors, with internet, with the world-wide-web, we can live actually elsewhere to where we are. We can be in New York and be living in Tokyo, we can be in Africa and live in Milano. So we are interconnected and this is the connection which created completely a new social idea of the what the world is, what the genius loci is and where we are located.

Marcus Fairs: Daniel, your work sometimes gets a lot of criticism. Do you pay any attention to the critics?

Daniel Libeskind: You know, if you read the New Testament, look at 6:26. “Woe be to the man who is liked by everyone”. So if you read the New Testament, there is a warning, don’t try to be liked by everyone and do what you believe in. And of course, when things are first shown they are difficult. You know, if you read the review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, it was a failure, they thought it a horrible piece of music. You have to give it time. Architecture is not just for the moment, it is not just for the next fashion magazine. It’s for the next twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred, two hundred years if it’s good; that’s sustainability. Sustainability is not just clever technologies. Having a house becomes part of something important.

Marcus Fairs: So do you compare your work to Beethoven’s Fifth then if people don’t understand how your buildings might be perceived in the future?

Daniel Libeskind: Hey, you know something? Today everyone can compose Beethoven’s Fifth. We don’t live in the era of the old fashioned idea of masterpieces done by the masters, everybody isn’t powered to be creative and in a democratic society, it is freedom that creates the beauty, it’s not authorities. I think that is the era of change. Everybody has the impetus to be an artist, to create their own house environment. To do something which is beautiful that is desirable by them and not just put to them through the market, through the power of systems, through ideology. I think we’re in a great Renaissance era of rediscovery and that human beings are at the centre, not technology.

Marcus Fairs: So you’re not bothered by your critics then?

Daniel Libeskind: Look I never read them. It’s a democratic world, people can say whatever they want.

Marcus Fairs: You never read them, did you say?

Daniel Libeskind: How can I read them? I have more important things to read.

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in their eyes too, says Daniel Libeskind appeared first on Dezeen.