Hasta La Ideas

Product news: these mirrors by London designer Mathias Hahn can be swivelled up and down with wooden handles sticking out the sides.

Mathias Hahn combined a classic hand mirror with a slim stand to create the Me mirror, which comes as a tall, freestanding design or a small tabletop version.

They’re available in a range of colours and are now in production with Swedish homeware brand Asplund.

We previously featured Hahn’s collection of coloured glass vessels inspired by making jam and a pendant lamp that clamps to its own flex, plus he discussed five examples of his work in a movie we filmed in Cologne in 2011 – see all designs by Mathias Hahn.

We also recently published a matte steel sink with a polished patch that acts as a looking glass and a mirror and vanity box that hang off a leather strap – see all mirrors.

Here’s some more information from the designer:

Me mirror

A classic hand mirror held by a wooden handle. Being attached to a stand the mirror can be rotated and adjusted by both the axis of the handle and the vertical section of the stand. A plain and diverse to use mirror, reminiscent of historic mirror stands, that is located in bath rooms, dressing rooms or hallways, giving this product a rather independent and furniture related feel than a wall mounted vanity mirror.

The Me mirror family consists of two different sizes: one tall, floorstanding version and a smaller one for tables or sideboards. The mirrors are now in production with Swedish manufacturer ASPLUND and are available in a variety of colours.

Thinking of the typology of mirrors, the usual concept is either a wall hung piece or a hand held mirror sitting in a drawer. The idea for the ‘ME’ mirrors is, to turn the tool of the mirror itself into a product which is able to move into different areas of a domestic environment. Rather being treated as a a piece of occasional furniture than a product which is linked to singular location.

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for Asplund appeared first on Dezeen.

Danish brand Normann Copenhagen has launched a table-top mirror with a dish in the base to hold small items, created by Spanish designer Javier Moreno.

The Flip mirror can be turned up, down and rotated 360 degrees. It is available in either black, white or a sand colour.

Javier Moreno says: “The tray design on the base means that flip is both a traditional mirror and an easy and simple storage utility for small items.”

Javier Moreno set up his own studio in Alicante in 2010.

We’ve featured products from Normann Copenhagen before, including a colourful modular storage system by Henriette W. Leth and circular kitchen knifes by Italian designers LucidiPevere Studio.

Maison&Objet took place in Paris last month. See all our stories about design at Maison&Objet here, including cutlery based on chopsticks by Toyo Ito and a chair draped in a wooden mat by Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance.

See all our stories about mirrors »
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for Normann Copenhagen appeared first on Dezeen.

Designers including Marco Dessi, Tomáš Král and Adrien Rovero created experimental mirrors for an exhibition organised by Adam Štěch of Czech design firm OKOLO and curator Klára Šumová during Designblok 2012 in Prague this month.

Thirty designers contributed objects, sketches or prototypes to the exhibition. The finished pieces include a handheld mirror by Italian designer Marco Dessi which doubles as the lid of a box (pictured above) and a set of three boxy freestanding mirrors by Swiss designer Adrien Rovero (below).

Speaking to Dezeen, the curators picked some of their favourite mirrors from the collection. “I love the solutions of ‘ECAL style’ designers such as Tomáš Král, Adrien Rovero or Camille Blin. Their concepts are very minimal, aesthetic and functional,” said Štěch, referring to a house style he sees emerging from the University of Art and Design Lausanne (ECAL).

“The Alice mirror by Camille Blin [pictured above] is great exercise in utility,” he continued. “There are only three demountable elements: a mirror, a steel rod and a magnet which holds everything together. At the same time, you can change inclination of the mirror. Also, Tomáš Král’s Spring mirror [below] is based on the quality of the material, aluminium, which is bent and simply connected by strings.”

Co-curator Klára Šumová picked Berlin designer Uli Budde’s Eclipse mirror (pictured below) among her favourites. “[It’s] actually possible to hide the mirror surface with an easy movement. It is a beautiful and functional object and composition on the wall – you see yourself only when you need to,” she told Dezeen.

“Then there is one which built a personal relationship with me as a personal object,” said Šumová, referring to the mirror by Czech design studio Llev in the shape of a Czech lake (pictured bottom), which is covered with a leather case laser-cut with silhouettes of flying birds. “It’s a poetic and intimate one,” she added.

Above: mirror by Romain Lagrange

The exhibition was held at the Clam-Gallas Palace and designed by Lenka Míková of Prague-based architecture firm Edit! using wooden boards in pastel colours inspired by the palace’s baroque interior.

Above: mirror by Jakub Berdych

Other mirrors we’ve featured recently on Dezeen include a series of hinged brass mirrors that look like butterflies and a mirror with faded edges that gives its reflections a dreamy quality.

Above: mirror by Beatrice Durandard

See all our stories about mirrors »
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Above: mirror by OS ∆ OOS

We also previously featured a pencil case by Tomáš Král and Camille Blin for OKOLO, which clamps pencils between its wooden jaws.

Above: mirror by Martin Žampach

Photographs are by OKOLO except where stated.

Here’s some more information from OKOLO:

Designblok 2012
Superstudio of Clam-Gallas palace
Husova 20, Prague

Curated exhibition of contemporary design and art presents mirror as a beautiful functional object, as well as poetic subject for experimentation. The exhibition curated by Klára Šumová and OKOLO documents strong actual trend of creating mirrors in the context of contemporary experimental design during the last years. The exhibition looks for new shapes, archetypes, newest trends, as well as history of typology.

Above: mirror by Antonín Hepnar

The mirror – a reflection of our own world that duplicates and creates the precise inverse copy of our reality. The mirror represents a magical object without which we would never know what we look like. The object tells stories, which we wish to disclose, and tells them to us so that we would see them in the right light. The poetical, yet surrealist quality of the mirror has always stirred artists, writers, and other thinkers in their ideas and visions. Thus, the mirror has become an object of artistic and philosophical notions and ideas that have frequently found their place on paintings, the pages of novels, verses, and films. The mirror is an object that will never cease to fascinate – including the world of design and art.

Above: mirror by Matěj Chabera

Thus, the exhibition aims to present the object of the mirror not only as a magical object full of imagination and inspiration, but also as a typological theme for designers. They consider the mirror, like all other objects, as a functional and aesthetically balanced object, the production of which requires certain specific features. The exhibition shows various forms of the mirror perceived by contemporary designers and artists. Thus, they face the problem of how to depict the mirror or one of its motifs in their own artistic interpretation. Diverse approaches of contemporary designers are confronted with works of art by visual artists who have also chosen the motif of the mirror as their theme. The result not only presents a set of functional objects, but also a complex perspective of mirrors considered both from the functional and formal points of view, as well as from the purely artistic, philosophical, and idea-based points of view.

Above: mirror by Giorgia Zanellato

Artists: Michal Bačák, Jakub Berdych, Camille Blin, Radek Brousil, Uli Budde, deForm, Marco Dessí, Oscar Diaz, Simon Donald, Beatrice Durandard, Antonín Hepnar, Matěj Chabera, Lucie Koldová, Tomáš Král, Blanka Kirchner, Romain Lagrange, Leeda + Dušan Tománek, Kai Linke, Llev, mischer’traxler, Jan Novák, OS ∆ OOS, Jacques-Elie Ribeyron, Adrien Rovero, Klára Šumová, Michaela Tomišková, Jana Trávníčková, Maxim Velčovský, Dirk Wright, Giorgia Zanellato, Zorya, Martin Žampach

Above: mirror by Llev

Curators: Adam Štěch, Klára Šumová
Graphic design: Matěj Činčera, Jan Kloss
Installation: Lenka Míková (edit!), http://editarchitects.com/
Production: OKOLO
Partners: Studio Činčera, Primalex, Designblok, Elle Decoration
Media partners: Architonic, Cool Hunting, Matandme, SightUnseen

Above: photograph by Jaroslav Moravec

The post The Mirror exhibition by
OKOLO and Klára Šumová appeared first on Dezeen.

Artist Daniel Buren plants a forest of candy-colored sunshades for “Exentrique(s), travail in situ” at the Grand Palais

Following the installation by Anish Kapoor in 2011, Monumenta 2012 invited famed French artist Daniel Buren for the fifth edition of the annual challenge to create an installation that will fill the soaring nave of Paris’ Grand Palais. Buren’s take on the site-specific concept is “Excentrique(s), travail in situ”.

True to its name, what Buren has created can best be described as eccentric—a rainbow forest of hundreds of transparent, sunshade-like plastic saucers planted on flagstaffs spreads over the entire area of the 13,500-square-meter space, playing with the light pouring into the huge, glassy cupola to cover the ground with colorful reflected spots.

For this color-dominated installation, even the central cap of the dome itself has been saturated with a blue checkerboard to resemble the stained-glass windows of a church. Working as a huge illuminated forum, the whole display is conceived to attract, reflect, expend and multiply the light into fragments of joyful colors. At night the figure reverses and the glass roof is lit by the reflected colors of the saucers, due to a sweeping electrical device. The forest also features a relatively low ceiling that counterbalances the 35 meter height of the building.

At the center of the work is an interruption in the cover of the sunshades, with disk-shaped mirrors on the floor that make the area seem like a glade among the forest of umbrellas. Their pools reflect the steel structure of the roof above, and from there, the exhibition spreads out on all sides in a dotted landscape of colorful saucers.

In keeping with the idea of the eccentric—meaning away from the middle, existing on the fringe of the mainstream—the experience was designed to keep the center from swallowing up the rest of the space. Visitors enter on the north side of the nave and exit through the south wing, an intentional course that forces the visitor to cross the length of the expanse while avoiding the center. As Buren explains, the center tends to draw all the attention and leave the rest of the space empty.

Buren touches on the idea of the eccentric by diverging quite far from his typically austere and minimalist black and white vertical stripes which established his name. Though still highly recognizable, Buren’s new work hasn’t been seen before from him, all circles, transparencies, light and color.

Having now established himself as a master of color, Buren uses his basic figures—black and white vertical flagstaffs—along with the new round shapes of the saucers and mirrors. The circle is the key figure of the installation—the high, round saucers as sunshades, the round mirrors on the floor in the center. Buren started considering the circle after he realized that the whole architecture of the Grand Palais building was based on the pattern of this figure.

Continuing the 40-year pursuit of his work, Buren plays on forms with a mathematical approach. The game here consists in assembling tangent discs, all in contact with one another, filling the empty space as much as possible. Employing only four basic colors (blue, yellow, red and green) Buren displayed them after an alphabetical order, with blue appearing 95 times and the others, 94 times each. The installation is completed by a soundtrack comprising the repetition of the names of the colors in 40 different languages.

“Excentrique(s), travail in situ” is on display at Grand Palais through 21 June 2012.

French architect Serge Salat has designed an infinite labyrinth of shapes and colours for a touring exhibition in China.

Visitors to Beyond the Infinity amble though a series of enclosed rooms, each lined with mirrors and illuminated by an assortment of brightly coloured lights.

Three-dimensional timber grids spread across the walls and ceilings of the spaces and are endlessly reflected in the mirrors.

Perforated panels of anodized aluminium wrap some timber frames to create a square honeycomb of boxes, which glow beneath ultraviolet lighting.

The exhibition began in Shanghai and will be exhibited in 10 different Chinese cities for 3 days at a time.

Another interior recently featured on Dezeen also uses mirrors to create the illusion of an infinite room – see the project here and see all our stories about mirrors here.

Here are some more details from Salat:

Serge Salat – “Beyond the Infinity”

French artist Serge Salat’s multi sensory installation “Beyond the Infinity” reveals new and astounding cosmic visions to the audience. The artwork will travel 10 cities of China, including Shanghai and Beijing, from September to November 2011. General Motors China sponsors the tour exhibition.

Inspiration

Since 1988, Serge Salat has built multi-sensory art spaces interweaving virtual reality and fractal art.
The installations are full-scale rooms, closed private cosmos in which the audience penetrates and participates to a mystical journey through its physical and emotional stimulations.

Serge Salat’s work blends Eastern Chinese philosophy and cosmic visions with advanced contemporary techniques. His inspiration has deep roots in Chinese Taoist philosophy, Western Renaissance, Neo Platonism and in the most advanced art thinking of the XXth century about the fourth dimension such as Duchamp, Malevich and Klee’s.

The installations bring in a single whole electronic art, music, sculpture and architecture. The manipulations of space and time go beyond traditional manipulations, with a skilful use of fourth dimensional cubic geometries. It confronts the audience with a media world in a moving pattern of change.

The Journey – Beyond the Infinity

The journey into the art space evolves in deep layers of dreams endlessly nested in each other, in which the visitor progresses into reflected layers.

The work layout uses spatial techniques of Suzhou gardens in order to create a mystical journey in an abstract version of the world of Chinese courtyards, interconnected by infinite galleries: still visions and vision in movement, borrowed sceneries, framing. But also and in particular, the collapse of a whole cosmos in an enclosed space is explored through manipulations of the space and time of the audience’s experience.

Constant transformation and mutation is one of the strong themes of the work: in this perspective the objects are two yin/yang faces of the same concept but shapes and colors are reversed.
The main pattern is the trigram of the Yi King that is framed in three dimensions and organizes the whole space.

Salat said: “Entering the work is also entering the world of the dream of the red mansion transposed to the 21st century”.

Beyond the Infinity constitutes an encounter between creativity and a world in the middle of its mutation. It mixes past and future and it creates a dialogue between real and virtual worlds.

This is probably a strong message of hope: the possibility in the contemporary world to create new beauty and dream through a fusion of classical culture and innovation.

The exhibition was launched in Jinan, China, by August 28, 2011 and it will travel 10 Chinese cities in three months:
Jinan (08/28) – Suzhou (09/09) – Shanghai (09/16) – Beijing (09/23) – Chengdu (10/01) – Dalian (10/14) – Xi’An (10/21) – Zhengzhou (10/28) – Shenzhen (11/04) – Hangzhou (TBC).

The artwork will be exhibited 3 days in each city.

See also:

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Zuo Corp by Super Super and Inside/Outside	LN-CC by Gary Card	Master Designer’s Garden by Martha Schwartz Partners