Milan 2014: design duo Formafantasma is presenting a collection of engraved drinking glasses that form new patterns when stacked together, at an exhibition curated by Rossana Orlandi in Milan
Commissioned by the MAK Museum in Vienna and produced by Austrian brand J.& L. Lobmeyr, the Alphabet collection of glasses and a carafe by Formafantasma are engraved with twelve different patterns.
The etchings reference motifs found in both J.& L. Lobmeyr’s archive and at the Geymüllerschlössel castle, in which the museum is housed.
Placed upside-down on the table one inside another, any two engraved patterns will combine to form a new pattern.
Delicate gold lines on each glass suggest the correct alignment. The bigger glass protects the smaller one like a crystal dome used to cover a still life composition.
“The design highlights the pleasure of diversity within a set of objects while revisiting the rules of table setting,” said Formafantasma.
The pieces were originally created for a site-specific installation called The Stranger Within for the Dining Room of Geymüllerschlössel.
They will be shown at the Rossana Orlandi-curated Bagatti Valsecchi exhibition, Via Gesù 5, in Milan from 8 to 13 April.
Milan 2014: Venetian designer Luca Nichetto has reimagined a traditional Tyrolean chair for his latest collaboration with Casamania, debuting in Milan this week.
Luca Nichetto‘s La-Dina is a contemporary reinterpretation of traditional wooden chairs from the Dolomite mountain range in west Austria and north-east Italy.
Its name is a pun on Ladin – Ladina in Italian – the language spoken by the people who once built their settlements in the region.
Luca Nichetto has simplified the form, using rounded lines and including a small upside-down triangular hole that punctures the back rest.
The legs are fixed into the solid wood of the seat, which in turn is secured to the backrest using a clamping wedge.
La-Dina is made from ash wood and is available in a range of colours.
The design marks Casamania‘s 30th anniversary and the 10th anniversary of its collaboration with Nichetto.
Milan 2014: Dutch designer Hella Jongerius is launching her first range of rugs as the newly appointed design director for Dutch firm Danskina (+ movie).
Duotone rug by Hella Jongerius
Showing at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan, the collection includes six designs, four of which are by Jongerius. Her designs are called Bold, Cork&Felt, Duotone and Multitone.
Duotone swatches by Hella Jongerius
“A rug is a two-dimensional product,” Jongerius said. “There is no construction needed, just an expression of yarn and colour. A Danskina rug has clear colour concepts, the colour and texture on the floor is very important in giving a space a certain atmosphere.”
Multitone rug by Hella Jongerius
Each design is created using a different mix of techniques, materials and colours. According to senior designer at Danskina, Edith van Berkel, Duotone took the longest to design. “We worked on this fabric for a longer time. We thought it was interesting to make a nice balance of colours. It was made with a flat woven carpet warp in one colour and weft in the other so that the design appears in squares.”
Multitone rug by Hella Jongerius
In contrast, the hand woven Bold design is created by using just one piece of wool yarn that is dyed in two different colours. This makes the two block colours in the rug appear to grip one another.
Bold rug by Hella Jongerius
The Cork&Felt design is the only unwoven design, instead made of assembled strips of cork and felt. The strips appear randomly in the design making each rug unique.
Bold swatch by Hella Jongerius
The Multitone rug started out as a colour blanket to see how colours mixed and was not supposed to be in the collection at all. “We thought the colours worked so well that it deserved a place in our collection,” said van Berkel.
Lucky swatch by Karin An Rijlaarsdam
The other pieces in the collection are two hand-knotted designs by Dutch designer Karin An Rijlaarsdam.
East swatch by Karin An Rijlaarsdam
The rugs will be on show in Pavilion 16, stand D20 at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Milan until 13 April.
Competition: Dezeen has teamed up with MVRDV to give readers the chance to win a pink Twin House cushion from the studio’s Vertical Village furniture collection, which launched in Milan this week.
The Twin House cushion is one of 26 colourful foam “houses” that have just been put into production by Dutch architecture studio MVRDV and Belgian furniture label Sixinch.
The cushions were originally designed for the centrepiece of an exhibition in Hamburg about the studio’s Vertical Village research – which examined alternative solutions for apartment blocks in East Asia – but were used as seating by visitors and staff.
The Twin House cushion
“The flexible, durable foam elements became an instant crowd pleaser,” said MVRDV in a statement.
MVRDV decided to develop a furniture collection from these foam elements and chose to make 26 objects in the shape of houses proposed for the Vertical Village.
“The objects are not furniture in the traditional sense, they are more experimental and appeal by being surprising: how does one use a soft house in a living room?” said MVRDV.
The Twin House cushion is shaped like a semi-detached house, with the space in-between the roofs becoming the seat or a cradle for a baby.
The centrepiece of the Vertical Village exhibition in Hamburg
Other pieces in the collection include The Barn, The Factory, The Depot, The Cloud, The T and The Terrace House.
The cushions are made from foam rubber with a PU coating and come in a range of colours. The winner of this competition will receive a pink Twin House model, as pictured.
The Vertical Village furniture is currently on display as a sculpture at Interni‘s event Feeding Ideas for the City at Università degli Studi in Milan.
Due to shipping limitations, this competition is only open to readers in the EEC countries however the cushions are available to buy on the Vertical Village website.
Competition closes 7 May 2014. One winner will be selected at random and notified by email. The winner’s name will be published in a future edition of our Dezeen Mail newsletter and at the top of this page.
Here’s some information from MVRDV:
What started as a radical urban vision for the densification of the East Asian Metropolis has now turned into an iconic series of furniture, bringing vision and innovation to your home. The pieces are available in a wide variety of shapes and colours – allowing you to tailor your own personal Vertical Village. The product is flexible, waterproof, seamless, hygienic and comes in a range of striking and sophisticated colours. The objects are made of foam rubber with a PU coating, which is 100% recyclable and safe according to DIN EN71-3 standards for Children’s toys.
After the Vertical Village exhibition in Hamburg, a 4 metre tall installation made of 80 of these foam elements returned to the MVRDV offices, it was spontaneously used by the staff and visitors as furniture becoming part of office life. In daily changing settings it is used as seats, waiting lounge, playground, pedestal for models and even for the odd deadline powernap. And so a furniture collection was born as a by-product of urban research. The 26 objects are in the shape of houses proposed for the Vertical Village and one can sit, lounge, work and play. The coated foam is resilient and can withstand office life, family life and even outdoor use.
The centrepiece was made from 80 foam elements
And why not put some unexpected architecture in an interior? A semi-detached house, a volume with a gap or a cloud shape? The objects are not furniture in the traditional sense, they are more experimental and appeal by being surprising: How does one use a soft house in a living room?
Under the title ‘The Vertical Village – Individual, Informal, Intense’ the research project explored the rapid urban transformation of East Asia, the qualities of urban villages, and the potential to develop much denser, vertical settlements as a radical alternative to the identical block-like architecture of standardised units and their consequences for city life. The research was exhibited in Taipei, Seoul, Sao Paulo and Hamburg, usually accompanied by a large sculpture of a possible Vertical Village. After metal and plastic shapes in Seoul and Taipei in Hamburg the foam was the best solution for the 4 meter tall sculpture, leading to this furniture application.
The foam objects are in the shape of houses proposed for the Vertical Village
The furniture is available from April 7th online at www.vertical-village.com. The sculpture will be displayed at Interni’s Feeding New Ideas for the City, at Università degli Studi in Milan, in collaboration with Viabizzuno lighting.
News: the proliferation of computer renderings and prototypes on sites like Dezeen is making real products “look extremely boring,” according to Dutch designer Marcel Wanders.
Furniture brands are struggling to make their products appear interesting in comparison to online fantasies, said Wanders in an exclusive interview with Dezeen.
“You are so able to present every crazy idea as if it is reality, the whole universe of communication is so strong,” said Wanders. “But now it’s difficult for a company to be anywhere interesting in a world that is so dominated by prototypes and great and bright ideas.”
“The Dezeens of this world are extremely inspirational, but have no realistic dimension any more,” he added.
Wanders was speaking to Dezeen in Milan at the launch of the latest collection by Moooi, the furniture and lighting brand he co-founded in 2001 with Casper Vissers.
Moooi has grown rapidly by recruiting a roster of international designers to create unusual products that sit alongside new work by Wanders, who was one of a generation of Dutch creatives nurtured by conceptual design company Droog.
“It’s funny that in the 1990s Droog was doing all this wonderful work,” Wanders said. “It was interesting that we kind of invented something which I call today ‘virtual design’. We started making prototypes as if they were real, we communicated them in Milano as if you could buy them. That was at the same time a kind of communication being invented as a mass medium.”
Today, designers are able to get international attention for products that are not ready for market and in many cases don’t even exist as prototypes, Wanders said.
“Now I think it is so big, this virtual design, the prototypes are so important in the world of design and the alternative ideas are so important,” he said.
“Now you go on Dezeen and you go through the pages and you find a company like Cassina and oh my God, I mean it’s not even their fault, how could they be interesting between all these bright and virtual ideas which nobody is ever going to do? How could a chair or a lamp be interesting?”
“All that is realistic starts to look extremely boring in the world of all this inspirational stuff. It’s a really interesting problem that we’re going to face. It’s a bit difficult to be in such an exciting world because they to start to feel really boring.”
Milan 2014:a series of talks will launch this afternoon in Nike’s Aero-static dome at Palazzo Clerici, forming part of the FOMO algorithmic publishing project organised by Joseph Grima with Dezeen.
Three afternoons of talks called On The Fly will kick off today with Clemens Weisshaar, Atelier Bow Wow, Folder, Linda Fregni and Bart Hess discussing the theme of weightlessness in design.
The talks will take place at Palazzo Clerici inside a dome created by Arthur Huang, founder of MINIWIZ, which uses Nike’s Flyknit technology to create a temporary events space.
They are free to attend and each afternoon the speakers will tackle a different theme related to design practice, presenting a minimum of two images to accompany their talk.
During the talks a real-time publishing algorithm – developed by Joseph Grima’s design research group Space Caviar and called Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) – will automatically create written articles from live speech and social media streams using the #OnTheFlyMilan hashtag.
The FOMObile in action at Palazzo Clerici in Milan
These will be collated in a PDF that will then be printed and saddle-stitched on the spot from the FOMObile – a roving publishing press with its own built-in power generator and solar-powered wi-fi hotspot. The resulting publication will be distributed for free in Milan and made available on the Dezeen website.
The On The Fly talks will be FOMO’s first test in a real-world environment. Anyone, anywhere will be able to take part by using the #OnTheFlyMilan hashtag on social media on Wednesday 9, Thursday 10, and Friday 11 April between 5.00 and 7.30pm CET.
Today’s event will be moderated by Joseph Grima, founder of Space Caviar and the former editor of Domus.
Talks on Thursday will be hosted by Gianluigi Ricuperati and will include Ianthe Roach, Pier Nucleo and Italo Rota, who will all discuss the theme “seamlessness”. On Friday, Marco Velardi will host Formafantasma, Martino Gamper and Anna Meroni talking about sustainability in design.
Scroll down for the full schedule for On The Fly:
9 April, Weightlessness with Joseph Grima
17:00 Clemens Weisshaar 17:30 Yoshi Tsukamoto, Atelier Bow Wow 18:00 Folder: Marco and Elisa 18:30 Linda Fregni 19:00 Bart Hess
Weightlessness will explore how external masses and strains, or lack thereof, shape the thinking and production of design. How does the experience of our environments impact on the design process? What does this mean for the final product? With a shifting landscape of outside forces, what does this mean for practice? What would freedom, or weightlessness, from this mean for our work and for us?
Seamlessness will ask whether consistency is good for design. Is a process, or product, designed without interruption a good thing? Is a perfectly consistent object or idea something positive? What can the messy convergence or merging of technologies, processes or people add to a project? How do these transitions and interfaces of design change or challenge us for the better?
The Nike Aero-static dome
11 April, Sustainability with Marco Velardi
17:00 Formafantasma 17:30 Brent Dzekciorius 18:00 Anna Meroni 18:30 Martino Gamper 19:00 Arthur Huang
Sustainability will take the practice of contemporary practitioners and explore the social, political, economic, and environmental aspects of sustainability. What is the impact of designing sustainably? How do we sustain interdependence between process, products and disciplines? These conversations will attempt to understand the life cycle of design, and the flows of work systems.
Milan 2014: explore the space created by Marcel Wanders and Casper Vissers in Milan to showcase the new range from their brand Moooi, with this interactive showroom.
Moooi has taken over an old warehouse in Milan’s Tortona district to create an atmospheric showroom.
Products have been set up in clusters, as if in rooms of a house, against giant architectural and interior photographs by Massimo Listri that help create smaller spaces in the large building.
“We implemented something which is interesting for interior designers to see,” Marcel Wanders told Dezeen.
“If you look at all these objects they are a bit displaced. They should be in houses and projects and they should live in surroundings which have their own kind of depth and logic,” said Wanders.
The exhibition is accompanied by eerie sounds created by Dutch musician Fontane, to emphasise the surreal nature of exhibiting home furnishings in an industrial space.
The ability to create a bespoke atmosphere for the showroom is one of the reasons why Moooi presents away from the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, the trade fair taking place on the other side of the city.
“Every year we decide not to [go there] because the fair makes it really difficult to make a really wonderful show,” Wanders explained.
“The limitations of the fair are tremendous, simply to get a nice space. Besides that even if you get a nice space then it’s a square with nothing. You get a floor. It’s just not the right thing for us at the moment.”
Known for its wide-ranging palette of colours, Kvadrat‘s felt-like fabric was originally created by Danish painter and graphic artist Finn Sködt in 1984.
“We didn’t choose the name for nothing, we used it because it gave some inspiration as to which colours we could put into the scheme,” said Sködt. “Every colour is divine if you ask me, every colour is nice. It’s only a question of using them right or wrong.”
Lasagne by Philippe Nigro
The designers were invited to create their own one-off piece using the fabric, which comes in 56 colours. “Divina is so intense that it is almost like paint, or something that has been sprayed onto a surface,” said Anders Byriel, CEO of Kvadrat. “You could not have a colour that is more vivid or clearer than this.”
Nesting Hexagons by Werner Aisslinger
German designer Werner Aisslinger‘s Nesting Hexagons reference Joe Colombo’s 1969 Tube chair, a piece comprising hollow cylinder modules fixed together in different formations, which can be dismantled and used separately like cushions.
Here, Aisslinger uses the hexagon shape as a basis to create a piece designed for lounging, which can then be stored by slotting each hexagon inside of each other. “Our concept came from the idea of a picnic, with a blanket in the grass and pillows around,” said Aisslinger. “The hexagons are ideal for lolling around or relaxing on the ground, both indoors and outdoors.”
Afternoon Nap by Martino Gamper
Working between art and design, London-based Martino Gamper has created Afternoon Nap, his second project with Divina, which features upholstered solid geometric volumes in various coloured triangulations of the fabric.
“For me, this simple shape, mixed with the complex and colourful fabric, creates a landscape where I could imagine having an afternoon nap,” said Gamper.
Pli Bleu, Pli Violet by Robert Stadler
Austrian designer Robert Stadler‘s interpretation entitled Pli Bleu and Pli Violet uses two very similar shades of blue, emphasised by the folds in the piece. “My intention was to show the quality of the textile in the most pure and direct way possible,” said Stadler. “The two pleated monochromes catch the ambient light in a subtle way.”
Divina Chandelier by Lindsey Adelman
New York designer Lindsey Adelman has created a chandelier comprised of thin brightly coloured strips of the Divina fabric layered on top of one another while London designer Max Lamb has designed a series of oversized smocks.
A special exhibition showcasing 22 contemporary interpretations of Divina by international designers
‘We didn’t choose the name for nothing – we used it because it gave some inspiration as to which colours we could put into the scheme. Every colour is divine, if you ask me – every colour is nice. It’s only a question of using them right or wrong.’ Finn Sködt.
Thread Wrapping Architecture by Anton Alvarez
In celebration of Divina, one of its most iconic textiles, Kvadrat has invited 22 international designers to reinterpret the fabric in the context of contemporary design and to create a one-of-a-kind piece. The exhibition will be presented in Milan during the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, 8 – 13 April 2014.
East-West Fan by Jonas Merian
Divina is known for its extraordinary range of colours, first created in 1984 by the Danish painter and graphic artist Finn Sködt and regularly updated by him ever since. It is a full-cloth textile with a smooth, directionless and uniform surface, very similar to the properties of felt.
Bagpacker by Silvia Knüppel
Divina translates as ‘heavenly,’ or ‘divine,’ and the name has been chosen because of the way colours can be expressed in the material. It is one of the finest products in Kvadrat’s range for showing-off colours in all their glory. The textile comes in three different variations: Divina (56 colours), Divina Melange (25 colours) and Divina MD (27 colours).
Guadalupe Daybed by Bethan Laura Wood
Finn Sködt, now 70, still continues his practice from his studio in Denmark; he is most noted for his instinctive understanding of colour. Sködt first worked with Kvadrat in the 1970s on their visual identity, soon after the company was founded, and later designed patterns and colour ranges for textiles such as Divina.
Daybed by Muller van Severen
Designers and Curators
Designers selected for the Divina exhibition include Lindsey Adelman, Werner Aisslinger, Anton Alvarez, Big-Game, Duangrit Bunnag, Gonçalo Campos, Jonas’ Design, François Dumas, Martino Gamper, Graphic Thought Facility, Richard Hutten, Silvia Knüppel, Max Lamb, Peter Marigold, Studio Minale-Maeda, Philippe Nigro, Klemens Schillinger, Muller Van Severen, Jerszy Seymour, Robert Stadler, Katharina Wahl and Bethan Laura Wood.
Divina Calendar by Graphic Thought Facility
Curators include Njusja de Gier, Richard Hsu, Hans Maier-Aichen, Yves Marbrier and Constance Rubini. Kvadrat celebrates Divina during Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Milan 2014.
Stripe Daybed by Big-Game
‘We are delighted to be celebrating our iconic Divina textile coloured by Finn Sködt, a great friend and collaborator who has lent his painterly eye to Kvadrat since our early days in the 1970s. Over 30 years Divina has continued to be one of our most successful textiles, with a texture that lends itself to an intense and vibrant representation of colour. It is exciting to see the interpretations of this diverse group of contemporary designers and to pay tribute to Divina’s incredible range.’ Anders Byriel, CEO of Kvadrat.
Garlands by Studio Minale-Maeda
The Divina exhibition follows on from the success of the Hallingdal 65 exhibition in Milan in 2012, inspired by one of the company’s first and most popular textiles, designed in 1965 by Nanna Ditzel. A special book with an essay by Hettie Judah and edited by Henrietta Thompson will accompany the exhibition.
Obese Door, Voluptuous Door by Katharina Wahl
In addition to celebrating Divina a new collection of knitted fabrics by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec will be launched in Kvadrat’s Milan showroom. The company’s sister brand, Danskina will showcase a new collection of rugs created under its newly appointed Design Director Hella Jongerius; Kinnasand will open a new Milan showroom designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Toyo Ito; and the launch of Kvadrat’s new textile collection with Raf Simons (Creative Director, Dior) will be celebrated with the Italian retailer Spotti.
The chair, called Mollo, has been designed for British brand Established & Sons and is Malouin‘s first project for a commercial furniture brand.
The chair is made without any hard internal structure. The design aesthetic came about as Malouin was experimenting with the expanded polystyrene foam – an everyday foam that you might find in a mattress.
“We always knew we wanted to make something super soft and comfortable and [Mollo] kind of happened by accident,” said Malouin.
The seat and arms are created using stitches to make shapes in the material. “Imagine you are putting your finger on the foam, where that pressure is you place a stitch and that creates the seat which is lower than the armrests,” he explained. “This curves the foam is such a way that gives it its plumpness and shape.”
The prototype was made from a single piece of foam, but it will be produced using two pieces. The foam is upholstered in velvet.
Speaking about why he decided to work with Established & Sons, Malouin said, “they just came to the studio to meet me at the beginning of this experiment and they were interested in developing it. I rarely contact people because I’m too shy but I’ve always admired the brand and wanted to work with them.”
The chair is being shown until 13 April at Istituto dei Ciechi, 7 Via Vivaio, Milan.
Milan 2014: Danish design brand Menu has launched its first chair, as part of a collection by Stockholm studio Afteroom that also includes a stackable table and a stone caddy.
Afteroom Chair with the Menu collection
Taiwanese designers Hung-Ming Chen and Chen-Yen Wei of Afteroom first presented the Afteroom Chair in 2012, but are launching it with Menu at the Salone Satellite in Milan this week, alongside the Afteroom Side Table and the Afteroom Caddy.
The three-legged chair’s rounded details, such as the oak seat and back support, contrast with the solid-steel linear frame. The result is a minimal design that pays tribute to an early twentieth-century aesthetic.
Afteroom Chair with the Menu collection
“The Afteroom Chair is an homage to Bauhaus and functionalism. The simplicity of its design combined with the quality of materials is what’s important,” said Afteroom’s Hung-Ming Chen.
Afteroom Chair
“We embraced the challenge of designing something minimalistic with clean lines, without in any way compromising its comfort. In that sense we’ve looked towards classic Scandinavian features as inspiration,” he said.
Afteroom Chair
“Afteroom Chair is based on the concept of reducing the amount of materials to the minimum and by doing so pushing the aesthetic appearance to the maximum,” added Chen-Yen Wei. “It’s a designer’s job to develop functional objects without compromising the aesthetics.”
Afteroom Side Table
The chair is available in black, white, moss green and light grey.
Afteroom Side Table
To complete the collection, Afteroom have also created a stackable side table designed to be “as practical and durable as it is beautiful” and a stoneware caddy designed for tabletop storage in the kitchen, bathroom or office.
Afteroom Caddy
Afteroom will be on Stand d17 at SaloneSatellite Tuesday 8 – Sunday 13 April 2014, 9.30am – 6.30pm.
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