Hasta La Ideas

Despite some difficult hurdles late last year, the UK’s Design Council seems on the mend and eager to get back to what it does best: improving British life through better design. The project they launched back in December, the Residential Bicycle Theft Challenge, which was created, as it sounds, to help curb bike thefts, has now come to an end, with four design teams given £10,000 each to help develop the ideas they prototyped for the Council. The winning teams are The Front Yard Company, Rodd (who created this blog to help follow their progress), Submarine Product Design, and Cyclehoop (who had a story written about them just days ago by the London Evening Standard) — you can take a look at all their proposed projects within their associated links (Submarine doesn’t appear to have put anything online yet). According to the Council, with this new cash injection, the teams will spend the next month “working on solutions to bike theft from inside the home, immediately outside the home and outside in a shed” and unveiling the finished, or near-finished work, sometime shortly thereafter.

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This bench is bent for two direction. I stack 17 wood layers and widen only two parts requested to bench. As if spaces we only need are stretched, onl..

While other high-profile design contests might milk their shortlist for months, one can never accuse London’s Design Museum for doing the same. Just under two short month since announcing their finalists, the annual Brit Insurance Designs of the Year Awards have named their top pick: Samuel Wilkinson and the product design company Hulger, for their creation of the Plumen light bulb. Essentially, it’s a compact fluorescent bulb, twisted into more fluid shapes to set them apart from those standard, boring CFLs you find in packs at Home Depot, thus hopefully making it more appealing to consumers who have been reluctant to make the energy-saving switch. Here’s a portion of the description of the big winner from the Design Museum:

Low-energy light bulbs have never been regarded as a stylish product, the Plumen addresses this by creating an aesthetic bulb which works just like any low-energy bulb. By bending the glass tubes of a light bulb, Plumen have designed a product that uses 80% less energy and lasts eight times longer than an incandescent bulb. Compared with the standard fluorescent light, Plumen 001 is a beautiful light bulb designed to be seen.

You can get a look at the winning bulb in all its bulbous glory, along with the rest of the shortlisted picks, from now until August 7th, at the Design Museum.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Spanish firm Hoz Fontan Arquitectos have completed a new Faculty of Business Studies at Mondragon University in Oñati, Spain.

The glazed building comprises classrooms, administrative offices, a hall and library.

The library and hall are raised up to afford views over the surrounding area, cantilevering out from the main building.

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Photographs are by José Hevia.

Here are some more details from the architects:

The university required a space in which to impart regulated and continuous education, lodge the administration’s office, a library and the assembly room.

The building meets all these requirements divided in four volumes.

The first three volumes are destined to hold the educational and administration sections, and are formed with specific characteristics for the development of its activities; it is in contact with the ground and organized in such way that can function autonomously.

Nevertheless, the fourth volume is the one that best represents the building’s identity.

The library, the assembly hall and the teaching staff’s offices are arranged in a lifted volume that allows having view-points on the trees that surround the building, capturing a general view of Oñati.

This lifting creates a great porch entry to the building and at the same time a generous hall, constituting both of them the building’s main relational areas. Areas that, seen as public squares and watchtowers from which admire the scenery, will allow the connection between students and surrounding environment, acting the university not only as knowledge media, but also as a mediation support between local culture, natural landscape and university life.

Click above for larger image

Credits:

Location: Ibarra, Oñati
Architecture: Hoz Fontan Arquitectos
Project directors: Angel de la Hoz, Cristina Fontán, Pablo de la Hoz
Executive project and construction management: LKS, Hoz Fontán Arquitectos
Collaborators: Marta Porroy

See also:

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Haifa University Centre by Chyutin Architects	PKU University of Law by Kokaistudios	Biotechnological Park Building by Tatiana Bilbao

Graphic artist Delphine Perrot has designed a logo to encourage people to donate money to help humanitarian relief in Japan.

Perrot is encouraging people to use her Heart for Japan logo (top) and social network button (above) to direct people to a fundraising campaign at www.justgiving.com/itsnotmuch which is raising money for Shelterbox.

See our earlier stories on Tokujin Yoshioka’s call for help Architecture for Humanity’s After the Quake: Support Sendai appeal; and Wieden + Kennedy’s Help Japan Poster.

Here’s the message Perrot emailed to us:

I am a freelance globe trotter Designer & Artist. I would like to share with you a picture I designed. I reacted very quickly to the terrible situation in Japan.

I was in the Pacific and we got a red alert early in the morning. When I got back home, I came up with the idea and drew this sign spontaneously. Then I started to spread it to friends via internet and crossed my fingers this universal sign for love and support for Japan would find its way. It was like putting a bottle in the sea. I am very happy to have offered my picture to this emergency situation.

So feel free to use, share and spread my Heart for Japan logo for social network picture (pics attached little ‘badge’ for the digital communication) + Copyright me 🙂 © Design by Delphine Perrot.

Make a donation to help support the people of Japan recover from the devastation of the Tsunami by making a donation here:
http://www.justgiving.com/itsnotmuch. Fundraising campaign set up by Darren Leighfield.

I want to spread this universal heart as much as I can, and if you could hep it would be great in order to keep on spreading.

We are oping to raised £3000 pounds tomorrow > Target £10000 asap!

Some of you might have already do a donation to help the cause, if you didn’t yet: if all of our friends+friends of friends make only £2 each > we would get our target end of this week! Please spread actively the word and the link. Thanks a lot!

I would be happy if you could send my big drawn heart on your website and an help to link my others.