Hasta La Ideas

Rising Moon est le nom de cette installation réalisée par DayDreamers Design dans le cadre du « Lantern Wonderland 2013 Festival » au Victoria Park, à Hong Kong. Cette création, sous la forme d’une hémisphère, est composée de bouteilles en plastique éclairées par des LEDs. Un rendu à découvrir dans la suite.

Sometimes a simple tweak to the classic wine bottle is all it takes to turn a chilled glass of white into an all-out warm weather celebration. Dressing up all kinds of leisure activities—from watching the playoffs on TV to attending baby or wedding showers—elements like fluid shapes, storied inspiration, and…

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The winning design looks to the future while representing Heineken’s 140-year history

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Selected from a pool of six finalists among more than 30,000 entries from 100 countries, design student Rodolfo Kusulas of Monterrey, Mexico and freelance designer Lee Dunford of Sydney took top honors in the Heineken Limited Edition Design Contest, and their winning design will be featured on the brand’s 140th anniversary bottle. The judging panel was comprised of CH’s own Evan Orensten, Mark Dytham of PechaKucha and Heineken’s Head of Design Mark van Iterson.

To commemorate their 140th year, Heineken issued an open call for collaborative bottle designs on Facebook. There, Kusulas and Dunford connected to kick off their collaboration on a clean, energetic bottle design inspired by Heineken’s rich history and incorporating the star logo. By representing the iconic red star as a Pangea-like conglomeration of land masses, Kusulas describes the idea of a shrinking world where “the continents are becoming compressed together. Long distance travel is achievable in shorter and shorter times, and our lives are lived out online. The future sees our planet condensed—just like the red star here.”

Though launched as a way to honor 140 years of history, Heineken took a decidedly modern approach to the milestone, bringing together perfect strangers like Kusulas and Dunford—not to mention the thousands of other entrants, and fans from across the globe tasked to vote on their favorites—through social media. “Open innovation and crowd-sourcing are hot topics, but there are only a few examples in which it delivered really successful concepts,” says van Iterson. “This is a beautiful case to show that it can be very valuable to open up the opportunity for creative input from consumers all around the world.”

“The standard of all three of the finalist designs was incredibly high—each of them could have been winners,” says Dytham. But Orensten, in particular, was drawn to Kusulas and Dunford’s scheme—”It’s striking if you glance at it,” he notes, “but if you take the time to really look at it to see what’s going on it’s a really considered and impressive design.” The judges also felt Kusulas and Dunford best captured the spirit and heritage of the venerable beer with a design that also looks to the future. In that vein, their work will be featured as part of Heineken’s 140 anniversary bottle pack to be sold worldwide from December 2012.

Three finalists chosen for the iconic bottle’s redesign

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Gathering at a loft in New York CIty, CH’s very own Evan Orensten joined Mark Dytham of PechaKucha and Heineken’s Global Head of Design Mark van Iterson to sort through the 100 finalists from the Heineken Limited Edition Design Contest. Narrowing down the worthy competitors from 30,000 entries, they selected the three design pair finalists. Each pair represents a mix of designs that two individual designers created and came together to create one bottle that marries the two designs. The finalists represent six nationalities and professional backgrounds. The designs themselves reflect an interpretation of how people will connect in the next 140 years—a nod to Heineken’s 140 year history.

The shortlisted design pairs include Ray Muniz of Puerto Rico and Gusztav Tomcsanyi of Hungary, Stefan Pilipović of Serbia and Fabio Cianciola of Italy, as well as Rodolfo Kusulas of Mexico and Lee Dunford of Australia. The winning partnership will be announced the week of 26 March 2012, and their design will be launched worldwide in December 2012 as part of Heineken’s 140th anniversary limited-edition gift pack.

Check out this video to learn more about the selection process and the final three design pairs.

The long-lasting engineering behind the Fourth Plinth project

For centuries model-makers and artists have played with the challenge of building a ship in a bottle, and in May 2010, British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE erected the largest to date for the Fourth Plinth commission in Trafalgar Square. On view for the past 18 months, the five-meter-long bottle is not only a historical tribute to the location it serves, but it is also a significant engineering feat, packing 37 large sails inside and featuring a beautifully robust glass exterior that has held up to the blustery London weather.

Looking back on the amount of time in which the 1:30-scale model spent on resting on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, David Segall, an engineer at Max Fordham LLP in London, explained some of the project’s challenges. The engineering firm, which usually works on large building projects like the expansion of the Tate Modern, treated Shonibare’s work no differently. Segall explained that engineering is about problem-solving, and the Shonibare project had some unique conditions to overcome. The team had to make sure that condensation wouldn’t form inside the bottle, the cork wouldn’t shout out, pressure wouldn’t break the bottle and that wood on the ship wouldn’t crack or grow mold. Plus, they had to design a special lighting system for proper nighttime viewing.

Segall showed us the mathematical equation that determined the “cork pressure” and a whole set of drawings outlining the mechanical systems managing the air temperature inside the bottle. The scaled-down sales on the HMS Victory appear to be flapping in the ocean breeze, but it’s actually from fans circulating air, and the portholes in the base of the structure serve as functional air vents.

A preprogrammed SIM card inside the base of the statue sends a message to a slew of mechanics and project managers if something does malfunction, but Segall said he didn’t think any problems had actually arisen over the last year and a half. When repairs or maintenance do have to be performed, the base opens to access the mechanics of the system, so you probably won’t ever see someone inside the bottle.

A trademark of Shonibare’s work has been his exploration of the colonial relationship between Europe and Africa, especially through the use of “African” fabric, which was introduced to Europe by Dutch sailors. Shonibare placed the batik fabric on his miniature version of the naval ship, perhaps the most important vehicle of Britain’s imperial expansion.

The Max Fordham team will relocate the structure to a permanent location in January—if the funds can be raised, it will go to the National Maritime Museum in London. “The whole brief changes,” says Segall. “We have more freedoms because we are working on locating the structure in a permanent location, but every location has its own problems that we’ll have to solve.” When asked if Shonibare knew about all of the engineering considerations that went into the project, Segall laughed. “He must have some idea of the challenges of his ideas, but he never worked directly with our team.” After all, why bother an artist with technicalities of the real world?

Photos by Aaron Kohn