Hasta La Ideas

Movie: in our final movie from garden trade show Spoga+Gafa, French designer Thibault Penven demonstrates his folding boat, which won first prize in the Unique Youngstar competition for outdoor products by young designers.

Called Ar Vag, which means “boat” in Penven’s native Brittany, the vessel is made of rigid fibreglass panels sewn into a foldable PVC skin.

The structure is stiffened by a wooden bench across the middle of the boat and two collapsible rods, which slide into loops along the rim like tent poles.

“This foldable boat is easier to use than an inflatable boat,” says Penven, who demonstrates in the movie how quick it is to put together and take apart.

“When you have a rigid boat it is so expensive to keep it on the shore, so I decided to design a boat that you can carry from home to the lake or the river.”

Penven developed Ar Vag as part of his course at Ecole Cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL) in Switzerland and admits that he was nervous when testing out his first prototype.

“At the beginning I was a little bit afraid,” he says. “But with this one, the yellow one, its very rigid and very stable. So you go straight and you are very [relaxed] inside.”

He adds: “It’s very strong. The weight of the boat is around 20-25 kilograms but it is still in development, so I’m trying to make it less heavy.”

See all our stories about boats »
See all our stories about ECAL »

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but this boat is very stable” appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: London designer Roger Arquer has created a salt and pepper mill with removable silicone lids for mixing and serving seasoning (+ slideshow).

Arquer‘s Pinch&Grind product range, designed for Dutch brand Royal VKB, also includes mixing jars with the same square silicone lids for blending and storing herbs and spices.

“Taking salt or herbs between your fingers and adding them to your food has become common practice,” said Arquer. “The silicone lids of the mill and jars allow users to open them easily, and pinch directly from them. Also, by turning the lid upside down it can be used as a pinch dish.”

The transparent mixing jars are available with a range of red, white, green and yellow coloured lids. The taller mills are available with black lids and have a transparent section to reveal the seasoning inside.

Arquer has also designed a triangular-shaped jug with a different sized pouring spout at each point. A large spout is designed for pouring thick batter, a medium one for vinaigrette, and a thin one for filtering fruits and ice or to drizzle salad dressing. “It is perfectly capable for pouring anything you mix, in any consistency,” said Arquer.

See all our coverage of Roger Arquer »
See more features on Royal VKB »
See more kitchenware »

Photographs are courtesy of Roger Arquer.

Here are two project descriptions from the designer:

Pinch&Grind

Pinch&Grind takes a new inside into spices. There is the traditional salt and pepper mill, with the addition of mixing jars for preparing your own blends.

Taking salt or herbs between your fingers and adding them to your food is nowadays a common practice known as “pinching”. We are often extracting some salt or peppercorns from the mill itself to add to a spice mix.

The silicon lid of the mill or jars, allows to open them easily, and pinch directly from them. Also by turning the lid upside down it can be used as a pinch dish.

The transparent jars with coloured lids (red-chilly based, white-salt based, green-herb based and yellow-curry based) so that you can easily identify a particular spice mix you have created. The contents of the jars can then be simply transferred into the mill followed by switching the coloured lid to the mill so then you know which spice mix is in the mill.

The main body and the top have a square profile for a better handling. The top lid is made of silicon, which gives an excellent grip, even if the hands are oily (when cooking).

Spouts

Spouts is a multifunctional jug with three different pouring ends. Its soft triangular shape holds a different spout on each corner. 

A wide and raised spout for pouring thick batter, a medium one for vinaigrette, and a thin one for filtering (fruit, mint, ice…) or drizzle salad dressing. It is perfectly capable for pouring anything you mix, in any consistency.

Spouts have a big enough base so it is ideal to use with a hand blender to prepare your favourite smoothies or shakes.

Spouts have the international measuring indicator (cups, ml and fl.oz) discreetly engraved one each of the three different sides walls. So it is possible to accurately measure the ingredients desired to create your mixes. As the indicators are so discrete, they can be used for preparing and serving directly onto the table.

Incase of any leftovers, then simply close the Jug with our airtight silicon lid to keep the ingredients fresh for longer, in or out of the fridge.

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for Royal VKB appeared first on Dezeen.

Extra travel items can be stowed in the giant pockets of this wearable luggage to get around strict hand baggage restrictions on low-cost airlines.

Engineer John Power came up with the Jaktogo after he was forced to check-in overweight hand baggage on multiple business trips, wasting valuable time. “Having to deal with this situation gave birth to the idea of Jaktogo,” said Power’s team. “It is a coat and it is a bag at the same time.”

Items that don’t fit into a small case with other travel essentials can be stored in the pockets when the bag size and weight are checked at the desk and before boarding.

The original long-sleeved polyester jacket has fourteen pockets in various sizes, which the designers claim can hold up to 15 kilograms of luggage.

The jacket folds down into a bag to put through airport security and store away while on board the plane.

Different straps allow the bag to be worn over the shoulder or carried by hand. Demin and leather versions are also available.

The sleeveless Ponchotogo and women’s Dresstogo that has storage in the skirt were recently introduced into the collection, both with ten pockets.

The Jaktogo team recommend the garments should used in bag form when possible. “We don’t recommend that you sit while wearing the Jaktogo because of comfort,” the team said.

Other similar products on Dezeen include Benjamin Hubert’s laptop bag that expands to become an overnight bag and Tom Dixon’s fashion collection for Adidas that packs away into integrated rucksacks.

We’ve also featured a sofa covered in rucksack pockets and another settee made of suitcases. See more luggage design »

More details from Jaktogo follow:

Jaktogo is on the market since 2010, making it the pioneer in wearable luggage technology. The inventor of Jaktogo, John Power, is an engineer who had to travel on a weekly basis because of his work and thus was trying to optimise his time at the airport. As low cost airlines started to take over the industry the many luggage restrictions they brought started to augment the transit times at airports. Power was always confronted with having to check-in his hand luggage because one or two extra kilos causing not only extra costs but also extra time having to wait for his luggage. It was also a common situation people to be stopped from boarding for the same reason. Having to deal with this situation gave birth to the idea of Jaktogo. It is a coat and it is a bag at the same time. The original Jaktogo is a long sleeve coat with 14 various sized pockets that can accommodate up to 15 kilograms of luggage.

Currently the Jaktogo has two new members – Ponchotogo and Dresstogo. The Ponchotogo is a sleeveless version of the Jaktogo with ten various sized pockets suitable for warm climates. The Dresstogo is a lady version of the Jaktogo with a balloon shaped skirt, again benefitting from ten various sized pockets. Both are made of the same light and durable polyester material and carry the same characteristics as the Jaktogo itself.

All our products are transformed to bag in three easy steps, giving you a choice between a shoulder bag and a short handles bag.

We advise our clients to wear the Jaktogo products as much as possible in a tote/bag form. We don’t recommend that you sit while wearing the Jaktogo because of comfort. It’s preferable that you put all hard items such as shoes, computers etc in your carry on, if however this is not possible the Jaktogo could accommodate that as well. We’d also advise when passing through security to present the Jaktogo in a bag form, as it should be during the flight.

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John Power appeared first on Dezeen.

Movie: jury member Tobias Lutz reveals the winners of the Unique Youngstar outdoor product design competition in our second movie from garden trade show Spoga+Gafa. 

Students and young designers were invited to submit prototypes of garden or outdoor products for the Unique Youngstar competition, 15 of which were shortlisted and displayed at the Garden Unique area of Spoga+Gafa in Cologne earlier this month.

“The Unique Youngstar competition was started in order to develop new ideas in the garden furnishing and garden products field, which is a growing industry,” explains Lutz, CEO of products database Architonic and a member of the Unique Youngstar jury.

“It took a long time [for the jury] to decide the winner. We decided on three projects for the first three places and one special mention.”

First prize went to French designer Thibault Penven for his foldable boat Ar Vag, which comprises a wooden bench, fibreglass poles and a PVC skin, and is put together like a tent.

“It is one of the projects where we really see tremendous depth of research,” says Lutz. “Shape is one thing, research and material is another thing and this project really shows a passion for an idea. It goes far and the result it surprising. I think that’s really what we call design.”

Dutch designer Francien Hazen was awarded second place for her Watercabinet, which attaches to a downpipe to collect rainwater and houses a water butt, pump, hose, tap and even a small greenhouse.

“We gave the second prize to an extended drainpipe,” says Lutz. “What is beautiful in this idea is the designer decided to use the water to add a functionality to this drainpipe and make it charming in a very Dutch way.”

Swedish designer Matilda Lindblom picked up the third prize for her collection of garden furniture called Contio.

“What we like [about these products] is the different applications of materials, of old technologies with new technologies,” Lutz explains.

Swiss designer Markus Bangerter‘s Polufine chair made of heat-moulded textile straps also got a special mention from the jury.

“This is not for the end result of the product that we saw,” says Lutz. “It’s more the way the designer researched how to develop new ways to stabilise textile plastic straps and heat them and get them to a stable construction.”

See all our stories about garden furniture »
See all our stories about parks and gardens »

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material is another” appeared first on Dezeen.

Opinion: following yesterday’s column on how disruptive technology for emerging markets will affect the high-end tech giants, Justin McGuirk asks why contemporary design critics are obsessed with analysing technology.

That is where this story should probably end, but I feel compelled to say a word about why I wrote it in the first place. As this is being published in web space rather than in meat space, with its finite pages and word quotas, there’s no reason why it can’t go on.

Here’s the question: why are design critics today writing about technology? Why am I, an art historian by training, writing about the Indian tablet computer market? Why are former editors of design magazines jetting off to attend summer school at the Google campus? Why are critics who would once have been satisfied writing about buildings, chairs, Anglepoise lamps, typewriters and other shapely, worldly objects now writing about black-glass oblongs with the same rounded corners and the same greasy finger smears?

Why are we writing about operating systems, user interfaces and “disruptive innovation”? Why, for that matter, is the V&A museum – with its medieval silverware and plaster casts of the Laocoön Group – hosting a talk by the founder of a technology company producing cheap tablet computers?

There are at least three reasons that I can think of:

1. Design is not furniture

Furniture was interesting in the early twentieth century when it was imbued with ideology and notions of progress. It was still interesting in the mid-century when it gave vent to a burgeoning middle class’ sense of taste. Now that those same manufacturers have abandoned the middle class to become a luxury industry, Ikea is left to cater to the majority and there is nothing in between. This makes furniture a microcosm of the economy at large, where the rich get richer and the rest get by. That ought to be interesting, except that good taste prevailed where it counts: at the bottom of the market.

Meanwhile, “consumer products” is a dirty word. In the 1950s and 1960s, washing machines and blenders were socially liberating – they saved us time and drudgery in the kitchen that we could spend in leisure. That has long-since stopped being the case, to the point where even consumers are painfully aware of their own disposable culture, built-in obsolescence and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. One cannot endorse such products without either being a stooge or a whore, and so one is left to marvel ironically at their functional overkill.

We make an exception for a certain kind of technology product because we recognise its massive potential for social transformation – for good or ill – and we succumb to (or are terrified by) that promise. We are addicted to one form of social media or another, and so is everyone we know, and thus we suddenly get that image in The Matrix where humanity is collectively plugged into the machine while supine in the goo. Still, the Arab Spring et cetera.

The truth is that technology feels more alive to us than it did in the days when we dreamed of flying cars because we’re witnessing mind-boggling advances on an annual basis now, in our very hands and not in the pages of some pulp comic. The pace of change dazzles us and so critics court geekdom for insights into the new commodity fetishism because, frankly, commodity fetishism allows us to put you on the couch while we play Dr Freud. So we scan the horizon for signs that technology will liberate us even as it enslaves us.

2. The real innovation is happening at the level of code

We don’t understand code and we have no desire to, we just know it’s happening there, somewhere behind our blackened reflections. Technology, in other words, is where it’s at. Critics are desperate to be where it’s at. The tangible things are dematerialising. The clocks, calculators and calendars, the maps, books and cameras have been swallowed up by the black mirror. As the artist Michael Craig-Martin said to me recently, “I spent 50 years painting everyday objects, now I just paint the iPhone – and it’s not a very interesting object.”

He’s right. It’s a cipher, the black monolith that film director Stanley Kubrick foresaw. It is a design critic’s nightmare – the object that is forever evolving and growing more intelligent, more powerful, without appearing to change at all. It is disempowering to those trained in aesthetics and connoisseurship, yet it is empowering in opening up new worlds of human experience beyond what can be appreciated “in the round”.

Our interaction with the device and our experience of new forms of communication are there for the analysis, even though that’s not really what appeals to us. The attraction is the sightline they offer to a higher stratum of power, which leads me to my next point.

3. Tech is where the money is

The financial clout of the tech giants like Apple and Samsung makes Olivetti – let alone Cassina, Knoll, Braun, Vitra and the other industrial leaders of design’s mid-century heyday – seem like minnows. That means technology is too important to leave to the technology journalists.

Reading the tech press is like watching rabbits caught in the headlights. They may have bought into Silicon Valley’s technological determinism, but that doesn’t mean we have to. In fact, the Californian Ideology – whereby network technologies drive libertarianism, roll back the power of government and allow a handful of entrepreneurs to amass untold fortunes – is hardly a suitable replacement for the crumbling welfare state.

The design critic’s traditional role is to reveal how objects express the spirit of the age. This depends on understanding technological change, naturally, but it cannot be done without recourse to the question of taste and that slippery customer, beauty. The reason tech journalists fail to present the whole picture is because they invoke Apple’s success in relation to innovation, market share and profit, when really the answer is beauty.

The problem here is that beauty is what tech journalists call “design”, whereas design critics are constantly trying to redeem the discipline from such skin-deep designations. Design, we keep insisting, is not style, it is not the shell, it is the totality, the performance, the very thing itself. Beauty is too easily undermined from within, and thus an Apple computer’s beauty must be both internal and external.

So Apple’s success is in “design”, not just in taste. If Apple’s success lies anywhere, it might be in overcoming taste altogether. It has imposed such a universal aesthetic that you would have to be a prude, a radical or a programmer to reject it. Real programmers, you see, don’t buy Apple because they know the guts are indistinguishable from other computers’ and because anyway they prefer a more open software “architecture”. Only true initiates, it seems, can exercise their own taste.

Read part one »

Justin McGuirk is a writer, critic and curator based in London. He is the director of Strelka Press, the publishing arm of the Strelka Institute in Moscow. He has been the design columnist for The Guardian, the editor of Icon magazine and the design consultant to Domus. In 2012 he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture for an exhibition he curated with Urban Think Tank.

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for certain technology products” appeared first on Dezeen.