Hasta La Ideas

Now that you’ve had your morning coffee, what to do with the leftover grounds? Winner of the 15th edition of SaloneSatellite, Spanish designer Raúl Laurí debuted his DECAFÉ collection last week in Milan. Created entirely of heat-and-pressure treated coffee grounds, DECAFÉ hopes to “give a second life to coffee ground as a biodegradable and renewable material while taking advantage of its emotional aspects.”

Laurí’s collection includes table, pendant, and floor lamps as well as decorative tableware.

(more…)

Design Facility is a conceptual “design research facility” composed of 3 instructors and 8 students from Singapore Polytechnic’s Experience and Product Design program. At this year’s SaloneSatellite show, the group presented a collection of thoroughly considered products under the title basic luxury.

In our explorations within the theme of ‘basic luxury’ it became clear that the notions of ‘basic’ and ‘luxury’ are never valid premises within our everyday. Instead, their meanings and definitions are in constant flux, occasionally complimenatry and at other times, perversely contradictory…our pursuit of ‘basic luxury’ today will be dictated beyond rationality and expectations, driven by eccentricities, hyper-reality and questions that provoke the most fundamental aspect of our inetraction with the everyday.

This provocation resulted in an interesting if understated show: paint(s), table lamp, chair and decorative objects have an element of surprise embedded in the seemingly mundane. The work of the group is summarized in a similarly understated publication sprinkled with interviews, construction diagrams, quotes and research notes to accompany and contextualize the work.

“Can wall painting depart from mere cosmetic and surface protection?” These three paint concepts explore a new functionality for wall paint, creating unexpected spaces for our daily needs. I especially love the custom paint-brushes for applying the paint.

Texture paint includes “dodecahedron granules” to create small hooks on the surface of the wall:

(more…)

In addition to “Objet Préféré” at the Triennale, Fabrica × Benetton presented a similarly geometric collection at Tom Dixon’s MOST:

How do people sit? There are those who flop down on a staircase or on a sawn-off tree trunk, those who prefer a stool with turned legs or a classic straw-bottomed chair. Then there are those who use a chair as a tool, to get hold of something that otherwise would be out of reach.

“Searching for Cassiopeia” is a collection of 12 chairs conceived by the young designers at Fabrica and manufactured by the Italian Chair District, the exhibition is inspired by the constellation, in which “the five brightest stars of Cassiopeia resemble the shape of a chair. (A quick refresher, for those of you who don’t know the tale by heart: “A vain Egyptian queen is tied to this chair, condemned to circle the pole star for all eternity.”)

To those who have always thought that sitting is a banal and ultimately repetitive gesture, the project shows that a throne is very different from a step, a chaise longue very different from a bench, a stool entirely the opposite of a small armchair. It shows that to relax after a day’s hard work, you need the right backrest, and that there is nothing better than falling into a soft padded mat with your loved one.

As for the Italian Chair District?

Located in the heart of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, this manufacturing cluster includes small, sub-contracting artisan firms and big industrial companies highly specialized in the wood/furniture sector and in each individual stage in the manufacturing process…

The Italian Chair District is synonymous with a collective, flexible and efficient system that absorbs contemporary sources of inspiration without betraying its roots, creates a dialogue with international trends, features cultural input by designers from a wide range of backgrounds and training, and grafts them onto well-established techniques and knowledge.

More after the jump…

(more…)

Architects Pascale Wakim and Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte originally founded Carwan Gallery as a pop-up space in Beirut just two years ago. Insofar as the Salone is an excellent opportunity for Carwan Gallery to further its mission to “encourage students, artisans, designers, and the public at large to connect with each other and the world of design in the Middle East,” they’re presenting “Contemporary Perspectives in Middle Eastern Crafts” at Milan’s Ventura Lambrate district.

With a concept that seeks to expand the vocabulary of traditional crafts, Carwan has commissioned a selection of international designers to create a series of new, limited-edition objects in partnership with local artisans in the Middle East. Each designer’s project encapsulates the re-imagining of a distinct, time-honored craft, where the specialized technique of each artisan has formed the basis for the creation of a new object by the designer. The designers are Karen Chekerdjian (Lebanon), Khalid Shafar (UAE), Lindsey Adelman (USA), Studio mischer’traxler (Austria), Nada Debs (Lebanon), Oeuffice (Canada), Paul Loebach (USA), Philippe Malouin (Canada) and Tamer Nakisci (Turkey).

Milan’s own Oeuffice created “Ziggurat” containers for the show, tapping the expertise of Lebanese craftsmen for the wood inlay of the architectural sculpture (Carwan’s Bellavance-Lecompte and Jakub Zak are behind the collaborative effort). According to the designers, “the form evokes a simplification of traditional Muquarnas found in Middle Eastern architecture, and the inlaid ornamentation renders a new study of scale and an unexpected shift in direction of traditional pattern standards.” The set of eight boxes comes in two color options (shown open below).

Khalid Shafar’s “ARABI” chandelier is a modern pendant lamp composed from “circular handmade wool Egaals, the black headband[s] worn by men in the Arab region to hold the head cover.”

Philippe Malouin’s “Extrusion” series includes bowls, a stool, a tray and a table. The distinctive pattern of each of the gorgeous objects comes from the intarsia process of assembling wood slats; the form is shaped with a lathe. Both techniques are “ancient crafts that originated in the Middle East around 1200 BC.”

(more…)

Architect Sally Mackereth certainly isn’t the first established architect to try her hand at furniture design, but she’s made a strong foray into that world of medium-sized design objects—material innovation and all—with CAST001, her first series of furniture, which recently debuted at Tom Dixon’s MOST on the occasion of the Salone.

Mackereth has opted to forgo the easy stepping stone of the living room or kitchen and start with two matching articles of patio furniture, with future pieces to follow. CAST001 is an exploration of the aesthetic possibilities of reconstructed stone that has been ‘infused’ with a small percentage of metal—bronze, silver or gold—which imparts a muted sheen to the highly tactile surfaces. The designer has called on “traditional molding and casting specialists Stevensons of Norwich” to cast the pieces with distinctive textures.

(more…)