Aurland Viewing Bridge est un pont magnifique imaginé par Todd Saunders et Tommie Wilhelmsen de Saunders Architecture. Ce projet, faisant parti d’un programme national pour le tourisme en Norvège, propose une vue incroyable avec une structure se mariant parfaitement avec l’environnement.
The history of Volvo is a storied one. Various ownership changes over the past decades and an arguable dearth in design innovation—the very quality that made the brand a beloved staple of intelligence in the industry—coupled with a few poor financial years has…
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Movie: in our second video interview with Job Smeets of Studio Job, the artist discusses the recent economic crisis but claims that, unlike many in the “design art” world, his studio’s work has not been negatively affected by it.
“I sometimes talk with young designers who are starting their careers; I would not like to be in their shoes,”says Smeets, who was speaking at Moooi’s Unexpected Welcome exhibition in Milan.
“Having said that, when I started Studio Job, I didn’t care a thing about the economy. I was involved in trying to make a statement in design or art.”
He continues: “But being in a crisis when you’re already ten years old is quite exciting. We had the big advantage of not having to slow down our business. There is still a lot of interest in our pieces.”
Studio Job has been at the forefront of the “design art” world, where limited edition and one-off design pieces are sold to collectors as pieces of art, for over ten years. Smeets says that the marketplace has become much less crowded since the crisis.
“A lot of our colleagues in the art or design business have disappeared,” he explains. “They came up very quickly because they saw there was a market and they went away very quickly because they saw there wasn’t a market anymore. But Studio Job already had a body of work by then.”
Being a small company with a worldwide reputation helped Studio Job steer through the crisis and take advantage of emerging markets in the east, Smeets claims.
“The market changed because, all of a sudden, the USA wasn’t the biggest market anymore. But we are a very small ship; we are lean and mean. A completely new market appeared in the Middle East, in Asian countries and in Russia.”
He concludes: “I don’t think our work changed [because of the economy], so that’s good.”
All the designs featured in the movie are by Studio Job. Photography by R. Kot, D. Stier, L. Blonk, A. Blommers / N. Schumm, A. Meewis, Moooi, Lensvelt.
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is quite exciting” – Job Smeets appeared first on Dezeen.
Projet du designer ukrainien Andrey Privalov, Lightball est un luminaire aux allures minimalistes : une boule incrustée dans un panier de Basketball, dont la structure contient les fils électriques. Une composition fine, intelligente et très esthétique à découvrir en images dans la suite de l’article.
Gothenburg designer Charlie Styrbjörn will present a ladder with curving linked rungs during the London Design Festival next month.
Working under Charlie Styrbjörn Design, the designer steam-bent sections of solid wood to maintain the direction of the grain along the shaped sections.
“I wanted to create a unique ladder for interior use with a high decorative value but still functioning as a good ladder should,” said Styrbjörn.
Treads are flat at the centre, but curve up on alternate sides as they rise to create a continuous line between the two long poles either side.
Stained black or left natural, the ladders are not currently in production but will be exhibited at the Tent London exhibition as part of next month’s London Design Festival. Photos are by Jonas Lindstedt.
We’ve also featured a step ladder that can both rest flat against the wall and fit into a corner, plus a slimline coat rack formed from two ladders joined together.
Popular homeware designs we’ve published recently include a collection of utensils that contains an elasticated egg cup and a dustpan that funnels sweepings into the bin through its handle.
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Charlie Styrbjörn Design appeared first on Dezeen.
Product news: German designers Till Grosch and Björn Meier have created a modular office furniture system that can be arranged in a variety of groups and islands (+ slideshow).
Interior designers Ophelis asked Till Grosch and Björn Meier to develop pieces of furniture to occupy areas between workstations in an office.
The Docks collection includes chairs, tables, shelves and cabinets that can fit together to form open-plan meeting spaces, small pods for individual work and areas for rest and relaxation.
The pieces are made from aluminium with an oak veneer and high-pressure laminate, while seating is upholstered in a range of pastel-coloured fabrics.
The Berlin-based designers said with an unlimited amount of possible combinations, they focused on designing the individual parts so that each configuration is perceived as self contained furniture.
“We see Docks as a flexible ingredient in the constantly changing world of work and due to its modular nature it is designed to continuously keep evolving in line with the needs of a transforming work culture,” they said.
“Lamps and side tables can also be docked by slotted panels and by simple indentation they become an integral part of the furniture islands,” they added.
Other modular furniture collections on Dezeen include a series of angular lounge chairs and ottomans and a range of office furniture with tall backrests.
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by Grosch + Meier appeared first on Dezeen.
News: glow-in-the-dark roads, a childbirth training kit in a back pack and spicy paper that keeps food fresh have been announced among the winners of the world’s biggest design prize, the INDEX: Award (+ slideshow).
Earlier this evening in Elsinore, Denmark, design organisation INDEX: Design to Improve Life announced five winners of the annual award, that showcases international design projects that address world challenges such as climate change and poverty.
This year there are two winners from the award’s community category and three winners from the body, home and play categories. The five projects will share €500,000 – the largest design prize in the world.
Scroll on for more details of the winners:
Copenhagen Climate Adaptation Plan – community category
The Danish capital city of Copenhagen has won the community category award for it’s Climate Adaptation Plan. The environmental strategy is intended to be a framework for sustainable design solutions. The plan includes creating designated green roofs and water boulevards in the streets to direct rainwater into designated spaces.
Here’s a short film about the strategy:
FreshPaper – home category
A simple sheet of paper called FreshPaper by Fenugreen has won the home category award. The paper product is infused with a mixture of spices that keeps fruits and vegetables riper for 2-4 times longer.
“The design is a remarkable way of re-thinking, re-purposing and re-combining an old tradition with industrial knowledge into an easy-to-use everyday consumer product for everyone,” said jury member Patrick Frick.
Raspberry Pi – play category
A tiny computer that intends to teach young people about computer programming has picked up the play category award. The micro computer, called Rasberry Pi, was designed in 2006 by a computer scientists from University of Cambridge.
Jury member and founder of Design Indaba conference, Ravi Naidoo said: “We must prepare our kids better for an even more digitalised world, and not just envelope them in ready-made tech as we have been doing so far. Let’s take it to the next level and live creative lives instead of leading edited lives.”
Smart Highway – community category
The second winner in the community category was Smart Highway – an interactive road designed by Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde in collaboration with Dutch firm Heijmans Infrastructure.
The project proposes to place interactive, glow in the dark visual tools that would inform drivers when roads are slippery and charge an electric car whilst driving.
The Natalie Collection – body category
A birth simulation learning kit in a ruck sack by Laerdal Global Health has won this years body category award. The Natalie Collection is made up of three devices for training birthing assistants in essential child birth care.
The three tools are a low-cost reusable suction device to clear airways of newborn babies, a baby mannequin for training in newborn care and resuscitation methods and a wearable bag for simulating essential care during child birth.
“A pilot would not fly a plane without proper training and flight-simulation. So why should a midwife be any different?” said Naidoo.
This year the organisation received over 1000 competition nominations from 73 countries. A jury that included Ravi Nandoo and Paola Antonelli, curator of design and architecture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMa), selected 59 finalists earlier this year, from which the five winners were selected.
All five have been awarded €100,000 and an exhibition of the nominees and winners will be open in Copenhagen’s King’s Gardens through to 29 September 2013.
Previous INDEX: Award winners include an inflatable bicycle helmet and a free eyeglasses program for Mexican children designed by Yves Behar’s fuseproject.
Here’s a film featuring CEO Kigge Hvid discussing the project:
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Images courtesy of INDEX: Design to Improve Life.
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winners announced appeared first on Dezeen.
Studio Job founder Job Smeets looks back over his career to date and explains why sculpture is so important to his studio’s work in this movie Dezeen filmed at Moooi’s Unexpected Welcome exhibition in Milan.
“When we started [Studio Job], it was very simple: we wanted creative freedom,” Smeets says.
“The only way to reach creative freedom was to design sculptures, because when you do a sculpture, each sculpture can be a unique piece. That’s perfect. Not for economical reasons, but it’s perfect for creation because every time you can start to design a new piece.”
Smeets continues: “We started to sculpt pieces and cast them in bronze. As with plastic, with bronze you can make any shape you like. Plastic is for the industry and bronze is for the art world, but I thought: ‘let’s turn that issue into something beautiful and introduce sculpture into design’.”
Studio Job’s work straddles both the art and design worlds, but Smeets says he does not distinguish between the two.
“I really don’t care,” he says. “When you are trying to separate art from design, you are creating a ghetto, which is always a bad thing. Let’s not have borders in creation.”
Studio Job has designed collections for Moooi since its range of paper furniture launched in 2007.
“The first thing you learn in Kindergarten is to work with paper,” Smeets says of the collection. “So it’s a very authentic approach.”
Subsequent collections include a gothic chair made from plastic and a series of hand-painted furniture inspired by antique German designs, while Studio Job’s latest pieces for Moooi’s Unexpected Welcome collection include lamps shaped like upturned buckets.
“Now we’re sitting here in a total design environment, we have 35 or 40 products we did for Moooi on show here,” Smeets says. “I’m a happy artist and a happy designer.”
However, Smeets believes that the influence of sculpture is still apparent in these industrial pieces.
“In a way, the Moooi pieces are becoming a little bit more sculptural,” he says. “If you look at the bucket lamp series, for instance, it’s a mixture of wood, of paper, of brass. It’s quite interesting.”
He continues. “[Today], we are allowed to do s*** like that. Five years ago, if I came up with a bucket upside down on a wooden pedestal they would say, ‘do it on your own, don’t do it here’.”
“I think that has to do with trust. We are getting old and people tend to trust you when you’re over forty, no?”
All the designs featured in the movie are by Studio Job. Photography by J.B. Mondino, R. Kot, K. Vrancken, A. Meewis, Groninger Museum, Moooi, Z33.
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you create a ghetto” – Job Smeets appeared first on Dezeen.
Architectural drawings of a small workers’ shack that featured in an exhibition in Shanghai, China, have been enlarged and used to create a full-scale replica in Auckland, New Zealand.
Tokyo architects Atelier Bow-Wow collaborated with Japanese artist Michael Lin on the design of the original structure, which was based on the workers’ shacks found throughout China. It housed the painters who produced Lin’s large-scale artworks for an exhibition last year at Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum.
Whereas the building in Shanghai was made from welded steel and structural insulated panels, the installation held as part of the Auckland Triennial required a rethink of the materials in order to reduce costs and waste after the event.
Professor Andrew Barrie from the University of Auckland was asked to help develop a more appropriate and efficient solution. “We proposed this idea of making the building out of paper and so a really literal document of what had happened in Shanghai,” he explained in a video published on the event’s website.
“We used some paper modelling techniques that I’d been developing over the last little while to make little models and just blew those back up to the full scale of the building,” Professor Barrie added.
Barrie enlarged Atelier Bow-Wow’s original construction drawings and fixed them to a prefabricated timber frame built by architecture students from the university, using a full scale version of the Japanese paper modelling technique known as okoshi-ezu.
The paper surfaces retain the original dimensions and annotations, while additions including an outline of a person, furniture, flowers and a bird perched on a doorframe recall its original inhabited state.
Other paper architecture projects on Dezeen include a stage set for an opera designed by Frank Gehry and a canopy of patterned paper sheets installed at this year’s Stockholm Furniture Fair – see more paper design and architecture.
Atelier Bow-Wow previously designed a mobile studio and event space made from carbon fibre and turned a townhouse in Amsterdam into a showroom for Dutch design brand, Droog – see more Atelier Bow-Wow.
Photography is by Nick Hayes, except where stated otherwise.
Here’s some more information about Model Home 2013:
Model Home 2013
Michael Lin and Atelier Bow-Wow with Andrew Barrie
The Model Home 2012 exhibition was held at the Rockbound Museum in Shanghai. The work of Shanghai-based artist Michael Lin and Tokyo-based architects Atelier Bow-Wow, it’s major elements were a series of huge wall paintings that filled the entire building, and building units that had temporarily housed the workers who had carried out the painting.
Model Home 2013 involved the reworking of the Shanghai project for installation in Auckland Art Gallery’s Lower Grey Gallery for the 5th Auckland Triennial.
The specific design challenge was how to recreate the building, which in Shanghai had been made of welded steel frames clad in structural insulated panels – in the Chinese context, these are very low cost and easily worked materials.
However, recreating this steel design in Auckland presented a design dilemma – it would have been expensive, created a lot of waste when the building was disposed of after the Triennial, and would have been conceptually inconsistent (in Auckland, no one would live in the house).
One possibility explored by the design was to translate the house into the Kiwi timber-and-plywood construction idiom. This would have reduced the cost somewhat, but not solved the dilemmas of waste and conceptual inconsistency.
The solution proposed by Prof. Andrew Barrie was to create a paper version of the house. This was inexpensive, could almost all be recycled after the exhibition, and solved the conceptual inconsistency – rather than being a building, it served as a literal document of the original construction.
This use of construction drawings to represent the building adapted techniques previously developed by Barrie when making contemporary versions of okoshi-ezu, an ancient Japanese architectural drawing technique of making fold-up paper models that served as records and construction documents, particularly for teahouses.
Every aspect of the design and construction sought to minimize costs and test the limits of readily available materials. The construction drawings for the Shanghai building were refined and amplified by Barrie’s team.
The structure was built by a group of architecture students who prefabricated timber frames that could quickly be assembled in the gallery. The roof structure was built only just strong enough to support its own weight, and was carefully lifted into place by riggers.
The walls and roof were made of drawings printed on standard 80gsm printer paper, hand folded, and joined with double-sided tape.
The lighting was simple bayonet fixtures on cables with supermarket light bulbs. A series of paper accessories, including painting tools, household items, super-thin furniture, a human figure and even a sparrow perched in the roof, add charm and recall occupation by the original worker occupants.
After the exhibition, the paper elements will be recycled and the timber frames broken down for re-use in future student projects.
Paper House Design: Andrew Barrie
Project Management: Melanie Pau
Construction Team: Melanie Pau, Howie Kang, Wade Southgate, Nick Hayes, Rita Mouchi, Patrick Loo, Yusef Patel, Sam Wood.
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Atelier Bow-Wow with Andrew Barrie appeared first on Dezeen.
Ideal for the handyman on the move, Tuls is a series of credit card-sized tools housing everything from metric wrenches and a bicycle wheel spoke wrench, to a bottle opener and iPhone stand. Developed by
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
