Hasta La Ideas

Milan 2013: pulses of electricity change the colour of this workstation unveiled by designer Ron Arad at Salone in Milan this week (+ movie).

No Bad Colours by Ron Arad is presented as part of Jean Nouvel’s Project: Office for Living installation in the SaloneUfficio space, which sets out the architect’s vision for offices of the future.

The workstation is a simple black box with a desk and shelves against a colour-changing wall, which uses a patented technology developed by UK materials firm Versatile Technologies.

The colour of the wall changes instantly or fades slowly as pulses of electricity are applied to a layer of fluid held between transparent sheets.

The user can change or programme the colours with Bluetooth technology using their desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone application.

The wall doesn’t require artificial lighting and once a colour has been selected it needs no extra power to be maintained.

“We are talking about reflecting rather than transmitting colours, so we don’t require backlit panels and the surfaces enjoy rather than suffer from external light,” said Arad.

Yesterday we reported on Arad’s new range of 3D-printed spectacles and sunglasses for eyewear brand pq and Dezeen editor Rose Etherington posted a round-up of highlights from the Salone, including an aluminium sideboard by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec and monochrome pendant lamps by Zaha Hadid.

See our snaps from each day on Facebook »
See all our stories about design at Milan 2013 »
See our map of the best things to see at Milan 2013 »

Here’s some more information from Versatile Technologies:

In a blink, a beautiful block of green-veined marble is transformed into a rich shade of gold. At the touch of a button, a spectacular restaurant transitions from its winter theme to spring. The walls of a corporate office brighten to lift the spirits and productivity of employees near the end of the workday. And as caterers prepare for the arrival of guests, a family kitchen becomes the backdrop for a high-class cocktail party.

Introducing Active True Colour from Versatile Technologies, Ltd. — a dynamic surface material technology that enables infinite and instant changes in colour, design and pattern. Active True Colour is being introduced in Milan at Salone Internazionale del Mobile 2013. The revolutionary, patented Active True Colour technology enriches living spaces, workspaces and public spaces by dramatically expanding and enriching the way people experience colour and design. Using Active True Colour, surfaces are no longer static; they become adaptive and vital expressions of mood, tone, season and environment.

Ron Arad is presenting the first Active True Colour piece, an integrated colour-changing workstation containing a desk, shelves and wall, within his new project, No Bad Colours, as part of a Jean Nouvel-curated exhibition, Office For Living, taking place inside the Salone Ufficio Pavilion during the Salone del Mobile. This is the first outing of Arad’s ongoing development of products and projects incorporating Active True Colour in his role as lead designer and art director of the product.

“I was very excited to join this project as it offered a genuine new possibility to alter colours at will in both architectural spaces and small products,” said Mr. Arad. “The main ‘news’ here is that we are talking about reflecting rather than transmitting colours, so we don’t require backlit panels and the surfaces enjoy rather than suffer from external light. We immediately started work in a variety of scales and contexts. This is just the beginning.”

Active True Colour delivers a nearly endless spectrum of yet-to-be imagined original designs, natural colours, patterns, and architectural finishes that can be applied to virtually any surface (interior and exterior walls, floors, table/counter tops, furniture, etc.). Active True Colour delivers vivid and beautiful colours, reflecting the ambient light, just like natural colour. The technology is nothing like the harsh, intrusive and more energy intensive light-emitting design solutions offered through LED, LCD or Plasma.

“Active True Colour is the foundation of a game-changing surface material and there is no better place to introduce it to the design and architecture community than the Saloni 2013,” said Ran Poliakine, chairman, Versatile, Ltd. “The potential for incorporating Active True Colour into the design of all the places we live is as infinite as the boundaries of your imagination.”

“As Active True Colour becomes a new standard for innovative, adaptive surface materials, we’re no longer going to ask what colour an object is without adding the word ‘now,'” said Eyal Cohen, CEO, Versatile, Ltd. “We’re not going to choose colour when we buy, we’ll choose colour as we go. Active True Colour opens up a colourful new world of design possibilities that can evolve based on life’s ever-changing moments in time.”

Initially, Versatile Technologies, Ltd. will partner with a select group of the world’s top designers, architects and real estate developers. Subsequently, Versatile plans to offer an electronic catalogue of stock and original colourful designs and patterns to all architects and designers seeking to work and design with this new medium. Versatile will deliver an array of architectural finishes: stone (marble, granite, etc.), wood, fabric, metals, glass, leather, sand, stucco; plus original surfaces that spring from the imaginations of designers.

How Active True Colour Works: For the layman, the foundation of the revolutionary, patented Active True Colour technology is organic chemistry. Versatile, Ltd. has pioneered and developed a proprietary, very low power technology that can be used to indefinitely change surface colours. The coloured layer of Active True Colour consists of a fluid held between transparent sheets that can selectively reflect a range of colours. The colours can be easily changed – either instantly or by fading – by applying pulses of electricity to the fluid film, which reorients the molecules of the fluid to create other colours. Active True Colour does not require any artificial, projected backlighting. Once the colour is generated, no further power is required to maintain the natural colour. Dr. David Coates, chief technology officer and the creator of Active True Colour, has
published more than 80 articles and eight scientific textbook chapters, and is named as an inventor on over 200 patents.

The post No Bad Colours
by Ron Arad appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2013: British designers Industrial Facility will unveil these three-legged stools for Italian design brand Mattiazzi in Milan this week (+ movie).

Named Radice, the stools combine the front-half of a traditional four-legged stool with an unusual single leg in the middle of the back.

“Radice has some tension in its form and it is a slight surprise that the third leg works as well as it does to resolve the overall structure,” says Industrial Facility’s Sam Hecht. “It is in some ways structurally diagrammatic, yet is made comfortable visually and physically because of how this third leg supports the seat.”

A low backrest branches upwards from the back leg. Its t-bar shape provides a practical place to hang coats and handbags and is reflected in the bracing at the top and bottom of the legs.

The Radice stools have no visible fixings or screws and the seat appears to merely rest on the leg frame.

Manufactured by Mattiazzi, the stools will be available in red, yellow, black or natural wood, with additional cushion options. There is also a choice of two heights.

This is Industrial Facility’s second product for Mattiazzi: in 2010 they presented a chair called Branca, inspired by the growth of tree branches. See all our stories about design by Industrial Facility.

Mattiazzi will show the project at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile from 9 to 14 April, alongside chairs based on camping equipment by Jasper Morrison. See all our stories about Mattiazzi.

See all our stories about Milan 2013 »
See our Milan 2013 map »

The post Radice Stools by Industrial Facility
for Mattiazzi appeared first on Dezeen.

This movie tours the interior of New York penthouse apartment Skyhouse, which contains a quadruple-height living room, columns with climbing treads and a tubular steel slide that plunges down from the attic.

Architect David Hotson and interior designer Ghislaine Viñas collaborated on the renovation, which involved restructuring the uppermost storeys of a late nineteenth century tower in lower Manhattan to accommodate a family residence.

The movie shows how the rooms of the apartment are connected to one another with indoor balconies and a faceted stairwell, but that residents can also climb up one of the existing steel columns or glide down using the two-stage slide.

The apartment was completed earlier this year – see more images of Skyhouse in our earlier story or see more buildings with indoor slides.

The movie was produced by Build Pictures. Still photography is by David Hotson.

The post Movie: Skyhouse by David Hotson
and Ghislaine Viñas appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: London designer Paul Cocksedge has launched a gadget on Kickstarter that plays music wirelessly through vintage speakers (+ movie).

Paul Cocksedge created the small portable device to give old and unused speakers a new lease of life.

The Vamp connects to the back of any speaker via a two-way jack or red and black speaker wires, and can stream music from bluetooth devices within a ten metre range.

Shaped like a cube with a corner sliced off, it can be attached anywhere on the speaker using a foam pad or a magnet that pairs with one inside.

The battery inside the device that powers the speaker can be kept on constant charge while hooked up using a USB port or power adapter and has a rechargeable life of over ten hours when not plugged in.

The Vamp is available in a choice of red, white or black for £35 through the Kickstarter campaign, which runs until the 28 April.

Cocksedge suspended a mysterious neon phone number above a London street for our Seven Designers for Seven Dials installations, and contributed a lamp made from heat-shrunk polystyrene cups to the Stepney Green Design Collection we curated.

Photography is by Mark Cocksedge.

Paul Cocksedge sent us the following information:

Paul Cocksedge launches The Vamp on Kickstarter

Thanks to modern technology, we’re now able to carry our entire music libraries in a range of portable devices, from laptops to mobiles and tablets. For sheer sound quality, however, the devices have not matched the superior audio quality of the conventional speaker. And portable Bluetooth speakers, which give consumers the freedom to link devices wirelessly and play music at any location, are expensive. Now, however, an established British designer, already renowned in international design circles for his innovation and creativity, has come up with a way to bring life back to the millions of speakers which still exist in our homes.

London-based designer Paul Cocksedge has created The Vamp which will launch on Kickstarter, a crowd-funding platform for creative projects. The Vamp is a gadget which allows traditional hi fi speakers to communicate with today’s world of portable digital devices, allowing them to be used in the house, the garden or the park – in fact, anywhere. Old speakers can now be transformed into a portable Bluetooth speaker –for as little as £35. New technology can quickly make our gadgets and appliances obsolete, The Vamp makes a real contribution to allowing us to retain the craftsmanship and quality of well-made speakers and use them to embrace the newest wireless technology.

The Vamp is a cute cube shaped object with an inner magnet that allows it to stick to the side of the speaker. The internal battery can power any size speaker and means all the wires and clutter we are used to seeing are gone. It can receive sound via Bluetooth from any Bluetooth device within 10m.

Paul Cocksedge says: “For me, reusing perfectly good technology makes sense. Hearing the rich sound coming out of these older speakers in a new way is a delight. They are a part of our music history.”

The post The Vamp by
Paul Cocksedge appeared first on Dezeen.

Italian car company Pininfarina unveiled a two-seater concept vehicle without a windshield at the Geneva Motor Show last week (+ slideshow + movie).

Named after Sergio Pininfarina, the designer who led the company for 40 years and died last year aged 85, the car has no side windows either, but does come with a pair of crash helmets.

A Ferrari 458 Spider provides the structural base for the car, while its body is inspired by one of Pininfarina’s early designs, the 1965 Dino Berlinetta Speciale.

A vintage Dino is on display alongside the Sergio at the Geneva Motor Show, which continues until 17 March.

“My father would be proud of this concept car because it expresses the aesthetic values that always inspired him – the purity of the lines, the harmony of form, and balance,” said company chairman Paolo Pininfarina, adding that the car could feasibly be produced in limited numbers.

We’ve recently reported on a tiny two-seater with wings that shoot out to form brake lights and plans to get a fuel-efficient 3D-printed car on the road – see all car design.

Here’s some more information from Pininfarina:

At the Motor Show world debut for the Sergio, a modern interpretation of the 2-seater barchetta. As a tribute to the Senator, the stand is also displaying one of his most beloved masterpieces, the Dino Berlinetta Speciale, 1965.

It is named Sergio after the man who led Pininfarina for 40 years and conceived some of the greatest car legends. It is the new, amazing concept car created to celebrate the Life Senator Sergio Pininfarina. At its world debut today at the Geneva Motor Show, the Sergio joins the brand that has so marked the history of Pininfarina: Ferrari.

Universally known as Master of Italian style, the signature of Sergio Pininfarina left its imprint on the whole history of design with his creative genius, from the age of the great bodyworks to modern industry, often anticipating trends. The concept car dedicated to him renews the spirit of the extraordinary achievements under his leadership, translating it into a modern vision in the name of exclusivity, innovation and passion.

The Sergio, in fact, is a two-seater barchetta that looks to the future, very compact, very sporty, racy, pure and sensual. An exercise that Pininfarina decided to undertake on Ferrari 458 Spider mechanicals. Its formal interpretation is absolutely free, in the best tradition of the Pininfarina research which has produced so many Ferrari-based concept cars or unique models now recognised as masterpieces. Its exclusivity and development on the basis of a production car, in fact, sets the Sergio in the tradition of the great Pininfarina custom-made cars specifically designed for “special” clients. It is therefore a real car that can easily be produced in limited series of a few units.

“My father would be proud of this concept car,” said Chairman Paolo Pininfarina, “because it expresses the aesthetic values that always inspired him: the purity of the lines, the harmony of form, and balance. Furthermore, he would be happy with this latest concept on Ferrari base, a brand to which we are related by a history that has helped define the most beautiful cars of all time in an evolution that has lasted 60 years and shows no sign of ending.”

On its stand in Geneva, Pininfarina has placed the new Sergio next to one of the Senator’s most beloved Ferraris: the Dino Berlinetta Speciale, a unique model presented at the 1965 Paris Motor Show, which led to the lines of subsequent Dino production cars. Since 1967, the Dino has been part of the Automobile Club de l’Ouest Collection and is exhibited along with other historic prestige cars in the Musée de l’Automobile of Mans.

With the new Sergio, Pininfarina confirms its excellence in design, the cutting edge of a Company deeply involved in engineering services, research applied to sustainable mobility and brand enhancement activities.

“This concept,” says the CEO Silvio Pietro Angori, “is the best way to confirm the role of Pininfarina as a bearer of the aesthetic values of Italian design in the world and to strengthen the brand name, the Company’s real distinguishing feature. Together with design, Pininfarina is highly focused on all the traditional activities aimed at providing vehicle manufacturers with an all-round service: engineering: product development, testing, prototype construction. The enhancement of production assets and know-how is expressed in the creation of unique pieces like the Sergio or limited edition cars realised thanks to unique craft skills gained in over 80 years of activity”.

The post Sergio concept car
by Pininfarina appeared first on Dezeen.