Hasta La Ideas

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Check out more great gift ideas in Core77’s Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide 2010.

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Designer Ignacio Canales Aracil created these sculptures by pressing and drying wild flowers.

Called The Fragility of Time, the project involves collecting plants from gardens and nurseries then pressing them to for fragile sculptures.

The two shown here were made at Wild About Flowers Nursery in Devon and Pembroke-Lodge in Richmond Park, UK.

More about plants on Dezeen »

The information below is from Ignacio Canales Aracil:

The sculptures are made with flowers and plants from different gardens and nurseries that work in collaboration with me. They allowed me to cut their flowers and work in their premisses while choosing, pressing and drying the flowers.

The sculpture number 1 in the picture has been made with flowers from Wild About Flowers Nursery in Devon. The number 2 from Pembroke-Lodge in Richmond Park (Royal Parks). I have collaborate also with The London Garden Museum.

The Charity Foundation of each Garden that collaborates with me gets a percentage of the sales (in case that happens) and the Gardens are mention as a patron when the sculptures are shown in order to thank the aid recieved. One of the ideas of this collaborations is to show the plants and flowers which represent the better the spirit of the garden in a different place where you wouldnt expect to find it.

Making the journey and the experience of working outside the studio part of the final piece. The flowers are held together without any structure or glue, they stand and stick together as the straw in a hat after being dried and pressed all at once. The roughness of the process which requires lots of physical effort contrast with the delicacy and fragility of the finished sculpture.

Which although its fragile it is made to last, as some ancient collections of dried pressed flowers are dated 500 years ago. Tradition is a very important value in my work. The sculptures are varnished with a matt spray in order to prevent them from moisture. Except from the first sculpture in which I used a glossy varnish.

Working with flowers trying to preserve their beauty, faces directly the fears that we share in the society about time. Life and dead are confronted in a piece which celebrates beauty, sexuality and time. Fighting with and against nature.

Recovering the time and the crafts of the process, helps me to understand in the search of a complete work of art and the seed of my practice. Working with flowers makes me deal with its many implications, starting to work when is in fullness and aiming to preserve its beauty through death.

Size: 30cmx40cm.

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Rainforest by Patrick Nadeau for Boffi	Harvest by Asif Khan	More design on stories on Dezeen

It’s both wicked and simple, the kind of thing you can’t believe no one’s thought of before. Check out the Manifold Clock, by designers Shay Carmon and Ben Klinger (collectively known as Studio Ve). The two hands are connected by a piece of Tyvek, drawing a random-but-not-random 3D form that literally changes by the minute. It’s best seen in video:

Manifold Clock from Studio Ve on Vimeo.

Dig it? They’re for sale.

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What a dream gig–after being hired to do the designs for Tron: Legacy, concept artist David Levy had his inspiration delivered to him: A stack of original sketches by Syd Mead and French comics artist Jean Giraud, a/k/a Moebius, from the first Tron flick.

Den of Geek’s posted an interview with Levy, and another thing we found interesting besides inheriting the Mead/Moebius stack is Levy’s design process. We’re now spoiled for choice in the amount of ways we can blend technology and analog media for creative projects, so Levy likes to mix it up:

Q: How do you work? Do you use traditional techniques, or work straight onto a computer?

A: It’s a very strange process. Because very often, when we do the same thing on the time, we always repeat the same shapes, so it’s good to vary. On many occasions on Tron, I’d switch back to pencils, just so I could break away from the habits I have with a computer. But honestly, it’s whatever works.

So one day I can just sketch on paper with a pencil, and then I can scan that image and turn it into a 3D model, maybe, and sometimes the opposite – I’ll create a 3D model, make a print of it, and have Joe sketch on it directly, or sometimes Darren Gilford, the production designer, would just sketch on it directly. It’s very organic.

I think it’s bad to always have the same habit, because you tend to re-do the same things, so it’s very important to change mediums.

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London firm Studio 54 Architecture have completed a glazed entrance with grey brick steps connecting the ground floor and garden of this London terraced house.

The project involved removing a conservatory from the rear of the property and excavating the site to create wide steps made from long grey bricks.

New doors above this lead from the kitchen to a red cedar balcony while a small flight of steps links the garden to a smaller new entrance on the landing.

Garden storage under this smaller flight of steps is accessed from the wider staircase.

The information below is from Studio 54 Architecture:

Belsize Crescent NW3

Our Clients wanted to reconfigure the rear of their house at the upper and lower ground floor levels to provide a better relationship to the garden.

A recently built conservatory simply added to the sense of dislocation from the outdoors.

Above: before

The conservatory was demolished and a large volume of earth was excavated.

Above: before

We designed a wide and generous access from the lower ground floor up to the garden, linked to the lower ground floor by new glazed doors.

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A new balcony at the Upper Ground floor level links the kitchen to the garden via a shallow line of steps over a garden store.

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A new entrance is provided from the stair landing.

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The pallet of materials we used was deliberately simple: for the walls and paving the Petersen Kolumbia long brick with a horizontal raked joint in the vertical plane and for the balcony and doors: western red cedar.

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Project completed: September 2010

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Stairs-House by y+M Design Office	Bar Guru Bar by KLab Architecture	More architecture stories on Dezeen