Dezeen Screen: this movie shows an installation by designer Bobby Petersen at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where chairs were programmed to play music when visitors sat on them. Watch the movie »
Dezeen Space: Florian Schmid presents his Stitching Concrete Project at our micro-exhibition Dezeen Platform in Dezeen Space today.
The Munich-based industrial designer’s chairs were published on Dezeen in August.
The project uses the material Concrete Canvas, which was featured on Dezeen in 2009.
Schmid folds the Concrete Canvas and stitches the edges together with brightly coloured thread, then supports it on a wooden mould while it’s drenched in water and allowed to harden.
The stools can be used indoors or outdoors. The material is durable against UV, fireproofed and water resistant.
Schmid developed the project while studying at the Hochschule München in Germany.
For more information about the design, testing and construction process see our published story about Florian’s chairs.
Each day, for 30 days, a different designer will use a one metre by one metre space to exhibit their work at Dezeen Space. See the full lineup for Dezeen Platform here.
There’s more about Dezeen Space here.
Dezeen Space
17 September – 16 October
Monday-Saturday 11am-7pm
Sunday 11am-5pm
54 Rivington Street,
London EC2A 3QN
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| Hanil Visitors Center and Guest House by BCHO | FattyShell (v.01) by Sturgeon, Holzwartand Raczkowski | Concrete Cloth by Concrete Canvas |
Beijing Design Week 2011: Vienna architect Dejana Kabiljo has installed a giant sofa made of bagged flour topped with fake chocolate icing at the 751-D Park for Beijing Design Week.
Viennese cakes and pastries were the inspiration for the recyclable temporary sofas, named LetThemSitCake!
The squishy icing is made from a polyol sponge that, unlike real chocolate, does not melt when touched.
Also at Beijing Design Week is a tricycle that writes temporary messages on the road with water – see our earlier story here.
Here’s some more information from the festival organisers:
LetThemSitCake!
Beijing Design Week has invited Vienna- based architect Dejana Kabiljo to contribute to the 751-D PARK DesignHop with her quirky installation “LetThemSitCake!” at 751-D PARK Power Square. Stacked bags of wheat, topped off with an oozing ‘chocolate icing’ resemble an inviting multi- layered sponge cake but are in fact soft and rather comfortable sofas inviting visitors to take a seat.
Art curator and artistic director of Vienna Art Week Robert Punkenhofer said, “’LetThemSitCake!’ Dejana Kabiljo’s installation title, paraphrases a quote commonly attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette.
Instead of cynically ignoring the human condition by invoking the phrase, Kabiljo rather takes a very optimistic approach and associates her work with mouth-watering pastry that reflects the Viennese spirit in its finest tradition.
Using nearly four and half tons of flour as well as 120 litres of fake chocolate icing Kabiljo invites visitors to take a rest on an oversized cake in the shape of a most comfortable sofa. In times of uncertainty and crisis, ‘LetThemSitCake!’ offers a moment of sweetness, indulgence and joy.”
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| La Cantine de la Ménagerie de Verre by Matali Crasset | Godiva Chocoiste by Wonderwall | Edible tableware by Rice-Design |
Seven anthropomorphic designs from Spain’s biggest design fair
Other than sunshine, Spain has an abundance of laughter. Blame it on the jamón, verdejo wine or siestas, the good humor of the country’s people shows up in design too. At this year’s Habitat Valencia, we spotted several examples of one of our favorite ways to add wit to furniture and objects—anthropomorphic design.
From concepts that add function (like a light that doubles as a butler) to those that are just plain cute, the below represent some of the newest and best ways to add Spanish levity to your life.
Originally produced in 2009 for Lladró, Jaime Hayon‘s porcelain clown lamp is still an elegantly cheeky way to jazz up a room. That it turns off and on by a touch to its golden nose seals the deal.
Triangulo‘s new series of modular furniture called Crezko grows with kids, giving them appropriately-styled bedrooms for whichever age they are. The winking chair, produced by the new brand Kimoo, will rock infants to sleep and humor them when they’re old enough to laugh.
Javier Ares Armero lights up the room with his Sisyphean Humallum lamps, which incorporates cord storage into the design.
Part of Estudio Marsical‘s Me Too kids furniture collection, the humorous Ladrillos (Spanish for cinder block) creates shelving through power of adorable little plastic creatures.
Bringing tons of personality to furniture for kids, bm showed off their Facebox in Valencia this year. The uber-cute rolling cabinet’s drawer-pulls give it the appearance of having a face. Guaranteed to get a rise out of any fun-loving tyke, these cabinets (which come in multiple color combos and with different, funny-sized eyes) are a must-have in the design-forward children’s bedroom.
Designed by Nacho Timon, Mr. Light is a well-considered lamp. Not only does the light illuminate for you, it also—by way of interchangeable arms—can act as a towel rack, butler or sitting companion. The cute, functional lamp is a great take on harnessing modular parts to offer dynamic functionality.
Fitting on a desk or fastened to a wall, the Handy by Vandidoo is more than a key hanger, it’s a place to dump the entire contents of all your pockets. Holding keys, a wallet, mail, change, sunglasses or just about anything else that can fit on the steel-toothed tray, the Vandidoo borrows from one of the body’s most useful designs for a high-functioning home accessory.
Young designer Rami Tareef creates chairs with geometric patterns by wrapping and weaving cords around spare, steel frames.
The chairs are the product of Tareef’s COD Project (Crafts Oriented Design), in which the designer aims to update and preserve traditional weaving techniques.
He applies skills learned from a wicker craftsman in the Old City of Jerusalem to contemporary forms and materials.
The chairs are composed of only two materials; 500 meters of polypropylene cord are threaded around 10 meters of steel rod.
Alternating colours of cord create a secondary pattern in the weave that accentuates the chair’s structure.
Tareef is a recent graduate of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design .
See all our stories on chairs »
Photographs are by Oded Antman.
Here’s some more information from the designer:
The COD (crafts oriented design) project 2011
By Rami Tareef
What really happens in the encounter between craft and design, what fundamental differences in thought, planning and execution characterize the objects produced by the craftsman and the designer?
This past year I have been preoccupied by a fascinating endeavor that is, essentially, a hybridization of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary design. The project was born of my desire to create by embracing the truth of the material. A designer’s desire to explore, to engage in trial and error, to learn, to know and to produce something new − via the sole agency of his thinking hands.
The project tries to illuminate the differences and similarities between craft and design; it tests and stretches the limits of their hybridization, and tries to end up with something identifiable from that past world. The COD project deals with wicker/woven furniture − a traditional craft product − and preserves its production values while incorporating innovative design features from the world of mass production.
This One-Off stool try to make a new approach to the idea of “One of a kind” product by combination between traditional craft technique an high technology of cutting laser. It’s came to raise question about status of products with hand made values in our saturated mass production world. Is there any soul in these products?
The rest (other 5 chairs) of the project deals in the hybridization between traditional craft technique and contemporary design attempt to create something new while keeping the truth of the old tradition.
Some chairs examine the technique and stretching the boundaries of it. The angular structure of the chair came up to keep the technique possible to apply.
On the other hand, part of the design trying to touch in textile design, it comes through the use of colors and multi-variable relationship between the cord and the chair structure that create many surfaces and three-dimensional spaces.
Further, the project came from my faith, as a young designer, that we should preserve traditional crafts by upgrade them through design and place them in the contemporary context in our world and culture.
I learned the basic technique from a wicker furniture craft man in the old city of Jerusalem and from there began a long development process that included dozens of models to upgrade technique.
Bezalel, Academy of art and design, Jerusalem – final project, B.Des of industrial design department
Furniture Craftsman: Abo Ahmad Nazir
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| Serpentine by Eléonore Nalet | New Amsterdam Chair by UNStudio | Flux by Jerszy Seymour |
A luxury denim brand partners with Swiss furniture pros for a fresh update of mid-century classics
Prouvé RAW, G-Star’s latest collaboration in promoting its creative approach to other fields outside of clothing, links the denim brand with modernist Jean Prouvé’s furniture designs. Two years ago, the Amsterdam-based company approached Swiss contemporary furniture manufacturer Vitra and proposed a makeover of 14 pieces by Prouvé. Creative teams from both sides worked via email, video conferencing and in-person meetings to realize the project, the fruition of which is on display at the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein, Germany until 31 July 2011. Between October and November this year, nine of the pieces, ranging from $1,210 to $7,225, will be available to buy through Vitra. Here, G-Star’s Global Brand Director Shubhankar Ray gives us more insight into the partnership.
Over the years [we’ve] collected, bought and appreciated Prouvé’s furniture pieces. We ended up meeting Vitra and found that they also shared our maniacal dedication to design innovation, technology, craftsmanship and quality. So we decided to work together on a unique design experiment fusing our design DNA with Vitra and Prouvé. We jointly wanted to re-launch Prouvé’s classic pieces… to make Prouvé available and accessible to more people and not only the happy few who can afford, collect or find Prouvé’s furniture.
Both creative teams visited and were immersed in each other’s world. We even tested Prouvé RAW prototypes as the set built for one of our fashion shows last summer where we had the audience sitting on Fauteuil Direction chairs. About 20 people were involved from both sides, along with Catherine Prouvé, Jean’s granddaughter.
We re-interpreted Prouvés originals by using new production techniques and adjusting the ergonomic aspects, such as size correction in the chairs to make them more suitable for today’s man and woman versus the 1951 original. We also used new materials for the Fateuil Direction chair, like square-weave canvas, which ages with character – it’s too obvious and expected for us to use denim. We used natural leather for the armrests of the Cite chair, like [with our] belts. For some of the tables, like the Tropique, we changed the top from solid wood to a more modern steel. The other element was the colors; for example, with the Direction chairs, we finally settled on neutral dark gray – close to G-Star’s DNA.
The challenge was to add as little design as possible, to just underline the usefulness of the product.
A focus on democratic functionality and the use of raw and high-quality materials to incorporate into our store designs, showrooms and brand architecture. A good learning [point] is also of our democratic purpose and the usefulness of modernist furniture and particularly Prouvés designs that match denim. When Prouvé’s furniture gets old, it ages with character just like worn-in or damaged denim.
Swiss designers Big-Game launched an armchair that looks like a quilt-covered deckchair at the Villa Noailles design festival in France this weekend.
Designed for French brand Moustache, the Bold armchair joins the fabric-covered Bold chair (below), which was part of Moustache’s inaugural collection when the brand launched in Milan in 2009.
The armchair (below) is upholstered in quilted fabric. Above: the Bold chair from 2009.
See all our stories about Big-Game | See all our stories about Moustache
Here’s a (very) little bit of text from Big-Game:
BOLD armchair
The BOLD armchair is a one seater upholstered armchair developed for the French brand Moustache (www.moustache.fr).
The thick proportions make this comfortable seat a part of the BOLD family.
The upholstered structure is entirely covered with thick quilted fabric.
Picture by Martin Haldimann
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| Flat Mirrors by Big-Game | Blur by Big-Game | Big-Game Overview |
Show RCA 2011: here’s another project by Royal College of Art graduate Ki Hyun Kim: a balsa wood dining chair that weights just 1.3 kilograms, making it even lighter than Gio Ponti’s famous 1.7 kilogram Superleggera chair.
The chair is made of compressed balsa wood protected by hardwood veneer to give it structural stability and a tough outer shell, while keeping it much lighter than Gio Ponti’s 1957 effort.
The chair, and a ladder made using the same technique (see image below) can be seen at Show RCA 2011 in London until 3 July.
See also: Alternative Alarm Clock by Ki Hyun Kim
See all our stories about Show RCA 2011 »
The text below is from Ki Hyun Kim:
1.3 Chair
In starting to design a wooden chair, I looked at the properties of woods.
What intrigued me most, was balsa wood.
Balsa is a hardwood; but very unique. It grows fast, is light in colour, with a very soft, warm texture. Most surprising is its weight, as the lightest of all woods.
Exploring this material, my process is based on reinterpreting craft techniques combined with developing alternatives to industrial methods.
Although seemingly disparate, the combination retains a commitment to experiment, challenge and innovate.
The chair intends to reflect practical considerations, in terms of production, use and everyday beauty, as well.
I wanted to hatch ideas on my own, experiment with forms, materials and techniques.
Material.
Balsa wood + Veneer + Lime wood
Dimension.
390 x 420 x 780 mm
Weight.
1.28 kg
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| Corian chair by Jon Harrison | Tenon by Yota Kakuda | If Only Gio Knew… by Martino Gamper |
When viewed from outside an Issey Miyake store in Tokyo, these chairs backs by Japanese architect Yoichi Yamamoto appear to have legs and seats.
Although the wooden backs of the blue chairs are fixed directly to the floor, the legs are painted onto the ground so that from a fixed angle they appear in the correct perspective.
The installation, named 2D/3D Chairs, displays a selection of hats by milliner Akio Hirata.
More stories about Issey Miyake on Dezeen »
Here is some text from the architect:
2D/3D Chairs Installation by Yoichi Yamamoto Architects
The back of the chairs stand up from the stage, while the legs of the chairs are drawings on the floor of the stage.
If you look at the installation from one point in front of the shop window, the back of the chairs, which are three-dimensional objects, and the legs of the chairs, which are two-dimensional drawings, meet and create a single figure.
We expressed Issey Miyake’s “from 2D cloth to 3D dress” philosophy in our installation.
stage area: 11.25m2
floor: printing on removable media
chair: cuttted readymade chair painted by 2066-40 rocky mountain sky (Benjamin Moore)
Click above for larger image
Click above for larger image
Click above for larger image
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| 24 Issey Miyake Shop at Shibuya Parco by Nendo | Sticks for Issey Miyake by Emmanuelle Moureaux | Pleats Please by Tokujin Yoshioka |
In this movie filmed by Dezeen at Ventura Lambrate in Milan, San Francisco designer Yves Behar talks about Sayl, an office chair inspired by suspension bridges that he designed for furniture brand Herman Miller. Watch the movie »
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