Hasta La Ideas

Product news: Swedish design consultancy Veryday picked up a Gold Award at the iF Design Awards last week for this wooden chair created for an art and design centre in Stockholm.

Veryday designed the November chair to reflect the surroundings of the Artipelag centre, which opened last June and is situated on an island in the Stockholm Archipelago, enveloped by woodland.

The chair comes in ash or walnut and is available to buy at Artipelag.

The designers picked up their prize at the iF Design Awards in Munich on 22 February.

Other wooden chairs we’ve featured lately include a bent wood design that looks like it’s wearing a cape and a plywood design inspired by beams used in the construction industry – see all stories about chair design.

Here’s some more information from the designers:

This year Veryday (previously known as Ergonomidesign) has been credited with four iF Design Awards and are happy to announce that despite over 4500 entries, the jury honored the chair November with a Gold Award, which signifies the very best designs and is a confirmation of Veryday’s position internationally as one of the world’s leading design consultancies.

The chair November, designed for Artipelag, the highly acclaimed new art and design center in Stockholm’s Archipelago, is a beautifully crafted chair made entirely out of wood. Björn Jakobson, the founder of BabyBjörn and the man behind Artipelag approached Veryday designers Peter Ejvinsson and Emmy Larsson only eight months prior to the opening of the center. The request was to design a chair specifically for the Artipelag with the potential of becoming a furniture classic. The requirements were that the chair should be comfortable, beautiful and durable. The architecture and interior design of the Artipelag is all about the interplay between art and nature; this as well as the muted light and long shadows of the low November sun inspired the design team in their design work. The soft shapes and surfaces creates lines that builds the character.

Most of the design work was done using scale models, carefully sculpturing each part of the chair by hand. This allowed the designers to dictate the smooth transition between the shapes and angles of the chair with full control, making sure the chair was beautiful from every angle. Not the least the back, which actually is the front when placed at a table.

“We wanted to create an extremely rigid and durable design, with a soft touch and feel and therefore I am so glad to hear that many visitors stop and want to touch the chair and sit in it,” says Peter Ejvinson, industrial designer at Veryday.

Apart from the aesthetically pleasing and sophisticated form, the design team has also considered the ergonomic aspects. In short November is ergonomically designed for comfort. Of interest is also that this wooden artefact is manufactured at a carpentry with almost 100 years of experience of chair production, whilst using the latest technology to guarantee superb quality and longevity.

“This chair has a great ergonomic shape while still retaining all of its sculptural look and feel. It perfectly sums up excellent Scandinavian design and the Nordic tradition of handmade chairs, yet November is a dining room chair made by a machine. A round of applause and an iF gold award!” – the official Gold Statement from the iF jury.

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by Veryday appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: architect Zaha Hadid has designed a system of twisting auditorium seats for Italian brand Poltrona Frau Contract.

Called Array, each chair features a seat that flips diagonally upwards when not in use, forming a triangle with the back and a single armrest.

Poltrona Frau Contract will launch the design in Milan this April as part of an exhibition of work by Zaha Hadid called Multiplicities at Fonderia Napoleonica, Via Thaon di Revel 21, from 9 to 14 April.

Rem Koolhaas’ firm OMA will also show a new collection of furniture in Milan, this time for American brand Knoll.

Hadid was recently appointed to develop plans for a new airport near London and also spoke out against the UK’s attitude towards female architects.

See all our stories about designs by Zaha Hadid »
See all our stories about seating design »

Here’s some more information from Poltrona Frau Contract:

An Array is a matrix in the language of science and is perfectly apt to describe the new auditorium seating system designed by Zaha Hadid for Poltrona Frau Contract as it creates a network of visual and geometrical effects in each seating area. This system forms the basis of a new, prestigious collaboration between the famous designer and the Contract Division of Poltrona Frau.

Array will be introduced as part of the Multiplicities exhibition by Zaha Hadid for the 2013 design week in Milan. Two other projects by the designer will also be shown: the Zephyr sofa and the Liquid Glacial table collection.

Zaha Hadid, winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, has attained worldwide renown for her dynamic, visionary architecture and continuous exploration of new relations between urban design, architecture and design with a special focus on technology.

The Array project breaks the mould of traditional auditorium and theatre seating systems. A seat-sculpture. A single, compact, dynamic unit. A self-rotating structure built on the principles of Euclidean geometry with the back, arms and seat appearing to form a single flower bud ready to burst open. A true challenge to the idea of form, disrupting the traditional visual monotony of rows after row of seats. The Array design incorporates dynamic angles to create a range of unique visual effects that change according to the viewer’s vantage point and transform the theatre into a welcoming self-contained place. A new concept in seating that combines unconventional shape with ergonomic design and extremely high levels of comfort.

The Array seating system also presented the Poltrona Frau Contract engineers and artisans with a stimulating challenge, but they proved up to the task, and were able to interpret the philosophy behind the project and capture its sartorial essence with the designer’s intentions reflected in every detail. The final product is an expression of the consolidated artisanal competence gained in one hundred years of tradition in engineering and technological expertise that is constantly evolving in terms of acoustics, visibility and safety. This has led to collaborations between Poltrona Frau Contract and the most prestigious names in international architecture and design such as Santiago Calatrava, Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano and Jean Nouvel. Poltrona Frau Contract’s most recent projects include the Bahrain National Theatre with As Architecture, the Archives Nationales in Paris with Massimiliano Fuksas, the headquarters of Italcementi designed by Richard Meier and the SEA business lounge at Malpensa airport in Milan.

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for Poltrona Frau Contract appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: Japanese design studio Nendo has come up with a modular office furniture system with tall backrests for extra privacy (+ movie).

Above: movie shows various configurations of the modules

Created for Japanese office furniture and supplies brand Kokuyo, the Brackets sofa and table units by Nendo are intended to surround their users “like parentheses.”

The seven sofa types and four table types can be combined into numerous combinations, from rows of alternately facing single seats to compact meeting booths.

At 140 centimetres tall, the backrests screen the occupants and provide privacy as well as dampening surrounding noise.

Other products launched by Nendo recently include bent wood chairs that flick out as if they’re wearing capes and a series of 30 lamps made from a modular set of parts – see all design by Nendo.

Earlier this month we reported on the studio’s mountain range of laser-cut foamboard installed at Stockholm Design Week, where Nendo was guest of honour – see all news and products from Stockholm 2013.

Photographs by Akihiro Yoshida.

Here’s some more information from the designers:

Brackets

An office-use unit sofa designed to create a communication space by ‘bracketing’ its inhabitants like parentheses.

Users can freely combine the seven sofa types and four table types into a variety of spaces with a finely tuned balance of openness and privacy, concentration and relaxation and individuals and groups.

The sofas are composed of sharp outer lines and softer inner curves, so that they respect the mood of the office environment while providing for user comfort.

The height of the backrests, relatively tall at 1400mm, provides visual privacy and dampens the surrounding noise, allowing for focussed conversations.

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for Kokuyo appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: the circular sections of this console by French designer Philippine Lemaire for Ligne Roset can be curled round to make a dining table.

Philippine Lemaire incorporated metal ball joints underneath each sawn-oak circular top so the sections can be realigned.

Segments cut out of three of the four tops allow them to fit together and rotate around each other easily.

Each suface balances on two solid oak legs, which branch from a single stem coated in grey laquer at the joint.

The console was displayed at imm cologne last month, where a paperclip-like lamp and an asymmetric desk were also on show.

Other products launched by Ligne Roset this year include a footstool nipped-in with lengths of cord and a glass table with three circular tops.

See more products from Ligne Roset »
See all our stories about table design »
See all our coverage of Cologne 2013 »

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for Ligne Roset appeared first on Dezeen.

Stockholm 2013: Swedish studio Note has designed a domed table lamp that is dimmed by rotating a wing at its base.

Created for Swedish brand Örsjö Belysning, the translucent blown glass shade gradually becomes fully illuminated as the small handle is swept 180 degrees around a central axis.

The light comes with either a brass wing and black conical steel stand, or the whole base in white or red.

The Vinge table lamps were shown at Note Design Studio‘s exhibition space during Stockholm Design Week earlier this month.

They also displayed their porcelain and wood pendant lamps and lights shaped like grain silos by Zero during the event.

See all our stories about lamp design »
See more products by Note Design Studio »
See all our coverage of Stockholm 2013 »

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for Örsjö Belysning appeared first on Dezeen.