Hasta La Ideas

In the throes of a massive renovation, the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is a hive of design news. Today the institution announced that it has raised the $54 million required for the overhaul, a collaboration between design architect Gluckman Mayner Architects and executive architect Beyer Blinder Belle that will increase Cooper-Hewitt’s exhibition space by 60 percent (to approximately 16,000 square feet), as well as reconfigure conservation and collection-storage facilities. Meanwhile, much progress has already been made: renovation is complete on the museum’s two townhouses, which house the—new and improved!—National Design Library, the master’s program in the history of decorative arts and design, and administrative offices. Now comes the main event: renovating the Carnegie Mansion, a task that entails historic preservation (including restoring the exterior masonry and freshening up the wrought-iron fence) and is aiming for LEED certification. When the museum reopens in 2013, visitors will discover a spectacular, new third-floor gallery where the library used to be, as well as expanded and restored galleries on first and second floors.

“It is thrilling to see our vision for Cooper-Hewitt’s redesign becoming a reality,” said Bill Moggridge, director of the museum, in a statement issued today. “Restoring and transforming the Carnegie Mansion and elevating and expanding the museum’s online user experience will broadly increase access to the museum’s rich resources, scholarship, and collections.” Renovation on the digital front will be masterminded by Aussie tech guru Seb Chan, the newly appointed director of digital and emerging media. He comes to Cooper-Hewitt from the the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, where he brought the museum’s collection online, integrated digital content production into everyday practices, and pioneered the use of mobile devices, QR codes, and iPads to deliver gallery experiences. Chan names “increasing public access while communicating the important role of design in building a better world” as among his top priorities for Cooper-Hewitt. Tonight mediabistro.com founder and hostess with the mostest Laurel Touby opens her home for a party to welcome Chan and toast to successful expansion in the physical and virtual worlds.

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Engineer/entrepreneur Saul Griffith never seems to lack for both ideas and, more importantly, the means to execute them. With Otherlab, he and co-founder Jonathan Bachrach have put together an impressive team ranging from comic book artists to toy designers to applied mathematicians, and that’s just one of seven companies he’s founded or co-founded.

In this Part 2 of our interview with Griffith, shot at Autodesk University 2011, we focus on the business behind invention and ask him about two inventor tropes: The one who quickly moves from invention to invention, and the one who sticks around to turn that invention into a business. His answer will be of interest to anyone who creates something and wants to see it go out into the world.

See Part 1: Pneubotics Yields Soft Robots
» Part 3: How to Make Stuff Other People Cannot Make

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Just because we’ve now passed Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and whatever nonsense names Saturday and Sunday have been given, doesn’t mean that your window to shop has been closed forever. Sure Best Buy and Wal-Mart will still happily take your hard earned scratch, but why not purchase from somewhere a bit more worthwhile. This year, the foundation behind Philip Johnson‘s Glass House will be opening not only a pop-up shop in its native Connecticut on a handful of dates, but has also embraced the internet, now offering a whole slew of great, often Glass House-specific gifts. For the budget shopper, there are things like bookmarks and this great puzzle version of the house’s appearance on a New Yorker cover from 1967. And for those of you shopping for, say, design bloggers whose value you perceive to be unparalleled and should be rewarded as such, there’s items like this signed Julius Shulman photo of the house, or Paula Scher‘s print, Modernism USA, which blends the Glass House with the Farnsworth House (just let us know if you need our addresses). Best thing about shopping there is that proceeds support general operations, educational programs and preservation of the entire property. Here are the details:

To kick off the New Canaan Holiday Stroll weekend, The Glass House Visitor Center + Design Store, located at 199 Elm Street, will open its doors on Thursday, December 1 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Additional shopping hours will also be held on the following days: December 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16 and 17. The Glass House Design Store offers a well-edited selection of products for men, women, children and the home, featuring items that are inspired by the Glass House site and highlight the latest in eco-friendly materials, production techniques, and design concepts from around the world. Holiday shoppers can book advance tour tickets on select dates in 2012 before they are officially released to the public next February – available dates include May 4 – 6; July 4 – 6; and September 1 – 3. Ticket purchases must be made in-person.

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A year ago Nathan Bestwick was an industrial design student at the UK’s Sheffield Hallam University. Now, after receiving guidance and support from UK-based business incubator Incub, the recent ID grad is preparing to launch his own company and self-designed product, the MillMii.

The MillMii is a manual pepper grinder embracing the principles of universal design. For those with arthritis, the difficulty of working a manual pepper grinder means they’re relegated to using battery-operated ones, which of course leave behind a larger carbon footprint. Bestwick’s innovation was to design a manual grinder that can be operated without the user needing to form a grip: They hold the device between two palms and perform a hand-rubbing motion to create the action.

Bestwick will be launching his kitchenwares company, Yormii, in February of 2012 with plans to produce more items already in the works. And in an era when designing a new product for mass production means you’ll shortly be getting on a plane to China, Bestwick is keeping things local, relying instead on a Sheffield-based manufacturing facility called The Hog Works.

“It’s generally understood that in order to manufacture products you have to source them from the Far East to be able to compete on price,” Bestwick told Housewares Live. “I put this myth to the test and have found that Yormii is able to match Far Eastern production prices, whilst having the added benefits of greater control over the manufacturing process, the quality of the products we produce, and vastly lower shipping costs with a smaller carbon footprint.”

Here’s a news clip of Bestwick from earlier this year (sharing airtime with local artisan and jewelry designer Jessica Flinn) describing his plans:

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It’s already been a red letter year for the world’s favorite (and only) architecture-themed ice cream company Coolhaus, but 2011 isn’t quite over just yet. Back in May, when we’d told you that the popular truck-based company was branching out to open a new New York branch (after moving into Austin the year before), there was also news that their very first storefront shop would be opening in LA sometime over the summer. Unfortunately, like nearly any construction project, things got delayed. Fortunately, the shop finally opened just this past Friday in Culver City, a locale where ice cream can be served without it being absurd (like it would be here in Chicago). Eater LA has a first look at the shop, as well as a handful of great photos of the new digs. If you’re in the area, it certainly looks worth stopping by. And if you happen to be in Miami, they’ve also rolled out new truck service there as well. What’s next for 2012, given how they’ve quickly they’ve grown over just these past couple of years? We’d be fools to rule out global domination, that’s for sure. And we, for one, welcome our new architecture-themed-ice-cream overlords.

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