Hasta La Ideas

Product news: despite its name, this chair by Dutch designer Reinier de Jong is made from old wooden broom handles.

STEEL, which Reinier de Jong will launch at trade fair imm cologne next week, is made from the reclaimed handles of brooms, rakes, shovels and other tools.

The handles have acquired a darkened patina from years of use, but clean wood is visible where they’ve been cut.

The designer is also asking people to donate their old brooms to be made into chairs, and for each usable metre of wood donated he’ll give one euro to charity.

A second version of the chair has also been produced from new white handles.

We’ve featured a few projects by the same designer, including a yellow table with angular legs and a chair that can be used any way up.

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Photographs are by Peter van Dijk.

Here’s some more information from the designer:

Dutch designer Reinier de Jong presents a new chair named STEEL, surprisingly made of… wooden handles.

The chair will be on show together with a new version of the acclaimed REK bookcase and REK coffee table from January 14 to 20, 2013 in the stand of Reinier de Jong at the IMM Cologne.

Soil, rain, hands, air, sunlight. Used broom handles show traces of their former use by their patina. STEEL chair is made from handles of brooms, rakes, shovels etc. The chair gives the wood a third life after it has been taken from its original tree and turned into a tool handle. Another version of the chair is made from new, white handles.

The patina has formed itself around the handle like a new bark, as it were. Colour and texture depend on how and where the tool was used. Craftsmen in the Netherlands work the collected handles to turn them into a folding chair. New, clean wood becomes visible at the places where the wood is cut.

The cut-outs form a natural, concave shape where one gets in contact with the chair: the seat and the back rest. The chair has a simple and modest yet refined shape which reflects the everyday nature of its original components.

The STEEL chair is made of different types of wood (ramin, beech, ash), depending on the supply. You can also contribute to this chair. Donate your old wooden handles from brooms, rakes, shovels, flagpoles, banisters etc, as long as they are 28 or 29 mm in diameter.

For each usable metre of old handles, 1 euro will be donated to charity. Or you can donate your handles to have them turned into a chair for yourself. One chair contains approximately 10 metres of handles.

Along with the new STEEL chair, Reinier de Jong will also present both REK bookcase and REK coffee table at the IMM furniture fair in Cologne from January 14 to 20, 2013. A brand new version of the bookcase with recycled HPL will be on show. The Dewar Glassware and the Copper Lights by designer David Derksen will also be exhibited in the stand.

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Reinier de Jong appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: the first piece to be produced by Barcelona studio Lagranja Design is an armchair inspired by classic Danish design.

The Basic Armchair is described by Lagranja Design as a “gentle interpretation of the Danish archetype”, with a “Mediterranean touch” seen in its upward-flicking armrests.

It was originally made for the lobby of the Chic & Basic Hotel that the studio designed just off La Ramblas in Barcelona.

The armchair is made of solid beech, with a seat and back upholstered in fabric or leather selected by the client.

We recently featured a collection of colourful mix and match furniture created by Lagranja for Spanish brand Sistema Midi.

Other armchairs we’ve published on Dezeen include a curvy seat designed to look like an app and a pleated leather seat inspired by the puffed shoulders of Renaissance costumes.

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Photographs are by Meritxell Arjalaguer and Fotodisenny.

Here’s some more information from Lagranja:

Basic Armchair

It is basic twice. Once because is been expressly designed for the Chic & Basic Hotel lobby, one of our latest interior design projects. Twice because it is the minimal yet acceptable image of an armchair. A gentle interpretation of the Danish archetype… of course with a Mediterranean touch.

The Basic Armchair is the very first object produced by lagranja. How did we get there? It is the purest expression of a need. While furnishing the hotel lobby we were fighting with a very tight budget, and we couldn’t find any armchair that fit the budget and that we liked, so we decided to design and produce the best piece we could within our budget constraint.

It is a solid beech wood structure armchair with matte water varnish finishing. The seat and back are upholstered in fabric or leather, with possibility of using fabric indicated by the client. The fabrics for this armchair have been selected among the best collections of the most exclusive firms.

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Lagranja Design appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch designer Frederik Roijé has designed a piece of furniture for children combining a chair, table and lamp.

Frederik Roijé‘s Little Triple Chair is intended for daycare centres and libraries and expands on his Triple Objects collection for adults.

“Children nowadays are growing up with iPads,” Roijé told Dezeen. “I would like to stimulate the basic creative activities of reading, drawing, playing and writing.”

Manufactured in the Netherlands, the chair is made from wood and has a polyamide fibre coating, typically used on the back of children’s puzzles. 

Described by as Roijé “huggable”, the material is chosen to be soft and durable.

Frederik Roijé started his studio in Amsterdam in 2003 and specializes in interior and product design. We have also recently featured his collection of candle holders that look like bent pipes poking through the wall. See all our stories about design by Frederik Roijé »

We have featured lots of children’s furniture on Dezeen too, such as a Stacking Throne, a herd of benches and alphabet chairs. See all of our stories about children’s furniture »

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by Frederik Roijé appeared first on Dezeen.

Design Miami: design duo Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram have used technology from the car-racing industry to develop a chair made by robots that weighs just 2.2 kilograms (+ movie).

Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram worked with experts at Audi’s Lightweight Design Centre to produce the R18 Ultra, a chair named after and inspired by Audi’s ultra lightweight prototype race car.

“We started using technology that you find in [the R18 Ultra] car and translated it into a piece of furniture, which is quite exciting because we got access to technology the furniture industry can’t even dream of,” Weisshaar told Dezeen at Design Miami.

Earlier this year Dezeen reported on the public beta testing for the R18 Ultra, where hundreds of visitors to the Milan furniture fair sat on the chair while it was hooked up to advanced stress-analysis sensors.

“It’s a process somewhat borrowed from the testing and development of a racecar,” said Kram. “Sitting is a very dynamic activity, weirdly, and everybody uses the chair differently,” added Weisshaar. “So simply putting weight on it and doing static load tests doesn’t get you anywhere. You actually need people to engage with it.”

Using data from the public beta testing, the designers worked out where they could trim off unnecessary weight from the carbon-fibre shell. “The nature of composite is it’s always a layering process,” said Weisshaar.”That also allows you to just take off layers where you don’t need the material.

“It’s completely different from any subtractive manufacturing or moulding, where you have a continuous wall thickness and continuous materiality. Here, not only can you manipulate the wall thickness, you can also manipulate the materiality.”

The legs of the chair are cut out from flat sheets of aluminium and then put together using the same cold metal transfer technology that Audi uses to make cars.

“They’re mass production techniques,” said Weisshaar, “but there are even more exciting mass production techniques in the making in the labs, which we couldn’t use because they’re totally locked away and top secret. So what we’re showing here is what’s happening tomorrow – but what’s happening the day after tomorrow is even more exciting.”

In 2010 Kram and Weisshaar worked with Audi to install eight robotic arms in London’s Trafalgar Square, where they spelled out messages in mid-air.

Dezeen was in Miami last week reporting on all the highlights of the Design Miami collectors fair, including the sausage-shaped inflatables around the fair’s entrance, an “ice halo” of Swarovski crystals and an installation of perfect natural curves inspired by the art nouveau history of a champagne maker – see all our stories about Design Miami.

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Here’s some more information from the designer:

R18 Ultra Chair
designed by by Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram
for Audi

December 5-9, 2012
Design Miami/
Miami Beach, FL, USA

Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram have developed a chair using methods borrowed from the future of automotive manufacturing in collaboration with Audi’s Lightweight Design Center. The chair’s multi-material space frame is made from carbon composites, carbon micro-sandwich and high strength aluminum and weighs only 2.2 kg or 77 ounces. The chair embodies Audi’s ultra lightweight design credo completely by following strict guidelines to shave off every ounce of excess weight.

The R18 Ultra Chair’s genesis incorporates crowd-sourced data acquired through thousands of testing sessions held in Milan during the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in April 2012. Using advanced physics simulation software, the big data set enabled designers and engineers to analyze a wide variety of load scenarios and carefully adjust and optimize the carbon fiber lay up, geometry and dimensions of the final object accordingly.

At Design Miami/ the chair’s designers and engineers are giving visitors an intimate insight into their studios and labs, displaying drawings, samples, models, mock-ups, moulds and prototypes from the various stages of the development process. This includes an industrial welding robot and the chair’s namesake and inspiration, the R18 Ultra – the pace car for an entire technology: Audi ultra.

Audi ultra stands for state of the art lightweight construction, technology and design aimed at streamlining and optimizing efficiency across the board. This begins with the raw materials sourced for production all the way through various manufacturing stages, the operation of the vehicle, its fuel consumption and its deconstruction and recyclability at the end of its life cycle.

Aluminum is a key material in Audi’s repertoire of lightweight design technologies: The chair’s legs are made of folded sheet aluminum, welded by an industrial robot using a cold metal transfer process. The chair’s seat shell is fabricated from the latest carbon composite materials: a combination of carbon micro-sandwich and carbon rubber composites extrapolated directly from components of the racecar. The R18 Ultra Chair manifests Audi’s ultra lightweight design credo in a 2.2 kg (77oz) piece of furniture that is ultra light and extremely durable.

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and Reed Kram appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: tapered legs support the curved seat and backrest of this wooden chair by Bangkok designers Slap Studio for Thai design brand Curio.

The Bunny chair by Slap Studio for Curio is available in natural beech, oak or walnut. The beech version is also available in three colour finishes: red, grey or black.

There’s also an option to add an upholstered black or grey seat.

Recently on Dezeen we’ve featured a chair that’s a cross between traditional alpine furniture and Danish modernism, and a pine and aluminium chair designed by Konstantin Grcic for the new Parrish Art Museum in New York by Herzog & de Meuron.

We also recently published an update on the classic bentwood bistro chair by Thonet and a chair inspired by the use of forced perspective in Renaissance paintings.

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for Curio appeared first on Dezeen.