Unique LA started in 2008 and quickly became the largest buy-local shopping event in the country. Attendees got the rare chance to meet and shop directly from hundreds of carefully selected designers and artists all in one space. Community leader and head…
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News: London architecture firm Foster + Partners has redesigned the first-class cabins for Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific.
Created for Cathay Pacific‘s Boeing 777-300ER fleet, the cabin features white leather, reflective dark grey surfaces, handmade wool carpet and walnut finishes. A reading light was custom-designed to cast fewer shadows when working or dining.
The project follows the firm’s refurbishment of The Wing lounges for Cathay Pacific at the airline’s headquarters in Hong Kong International Airport, which was itself designed by Foster + Partners and completed in 1998.
“Our challenge has been to take the design principles of the new lounges into the aircraft, while working within stringent safety requirements and retaining Cathay Pacific’s award-winning seat,” said Foster + Partners’ head of industrial design Mike Holland.
This is Foster + Partners’ first airline cabin, though the firm is famous for its airports and completed the world’s first space terminal for tourists in 2011.
More airline design on Dezeen includes Hella Jongerius’ business-class cabin for Dutch airline KLM, a first-class cabin with sofas and wardrobes by Priestmangoode for Brazilian airline TAM and an aeroplane seat that converts into a 2.2-metre-long bed Pengelly Design for Virgin Atlantic.
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Here’s more information from Foster + Partners:
The Cabin
Following the successful refurbishment of The Wing, Cathay Pacific’s flagship lounge at Hong Kong International Airport, the practice has carried the lounge’s sophisticated design into the first class cabin of the Boeing 777-300ER fleet. The project to refresh the award-winning cabin is the first time that the practice has designed the interior and furnishings for a commercial aircraft.
To create a seamless experience for passengers, the cabin’s design shares the lounge’s palette of warm white leather, reflective dark grey surfaces and walnut finishes to create a calm, understated interior. Every element has been considered and refined, including the stitch of the bespoke covers for Cathay Pacific’s celebrated first class seat, the handmade woollen carpet, the refurbished bathrooms and the new reading light, which has been custom-designed to cast fewer shadows when working or dining.
The Wing, Hong Kong International Airport
Opened earlier this year, The Wing is the second in a series of lounges by Foster + Partners for Cathay Pacific at Hong Kong International Airport and provides business and first class spaces on levels six and seven. Every detail of the interiors, from the Champagne Bar to the bathroom fittings in the luxurious first class ‘cabanas’, has been custom-designed by the practice to create an exceptional experience for guests.
The design reinforces the relationship with the building and with views of the outside world, connecting the interiors to the light-filled space beneath the airport’s soaring roof. To create a dramatic sense of arrival, the double-height reception space for business class passengers at level 6 is open to views of the floor above and roof canopy beyond, and incorporates a black glass lift and grand black marble staircase. The transition from security, to first-class lounge, to gate is equally seamless. The first class reception area, with its specially-commissioned wall of illuminated glass fins, allows guests a glimpse of the large, open balcony, while retaining a sense of exclusivity.
The business class lounge features a morning Coffee Loft and Cathay Pacific’s signature ‘The Long Bar’, a 23-metre long custom-built ‘statuario white’ carrara marble bar overlooking the runway. The redesigned Noodle Bar has been placed beneath the arc of the roof canopy, where it is open to natural light. In addition, first class passengers can enjoy a champagne bar, a reading space stocked with magazines and newspapers and ‘The Haven’, an à la carte and buffet restaurant. A unique highlight of the first class lounge is a series of five individual ‘Cabanas’ – inspired by hotel suites, these private spa rooms incorporate a day bed and bathroom to provide the ultimate space to relax while travelling. Business class passengers also have access to 24 luxurious travertine-lined shower suites at level 6.
Echoing the materials used in the Cabin, the Wing business class areas combines a luxurious palette of white carrara marble, black honed granite, caramelised bamboo and travertine stone; while the first class areas are set apart by the use of ‘nero marquina’ black polished marble, gloss-lacquered eucalyptus and reflective black glass. The attention to detail and quality extends to the selection of materials – every piece of stone used in the lounges was carefully chosen at source in Italy and China by the design team.
The lounges are furnished with a number of unique pieces designed by Foster + Partners, including a marble reception desk, food counter and a free-standing champagne bar with integrated trays – everything has been designed, down to the detail of porcelain plates. The Solus Chair, which was developed specifically for the lounges, has been specially customised for the first class lounge in soft burgundy upholstery and a black lacquered shell. For the business class lounge, it has been produced in grey or tan leather with a white surround. Alongside the bespoke products and one-off furniture pieces, The Wing also features the Ilium cylindrical table light, developed with Nemo and the Foster 503 armchair by Walter Knoll.
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cabin for Cathay Pacific appeared first on Dezeen.
Dutch designers Iris van Herpen and Jólan van der Wiel collaborated to grow these dresses with magnets.
Product designer Jólan van der Wiel approached fashion designer Iris van Herpen with the idea to grow clothing using magnetic forces. To do this they manipulated a material made from iron filings mixed into resin.
This composite material was added to fabric in small sections then pulled by magnets, creating a spiky texture and patterns in a similar to the way van der Wiel shaped stools at Dezeen Platform in 2011.
“The technique still uses magnetism but with a new material that’s much more flexible and tactile, like a hairy skin that’s soft to touch,” van der Wiel told Dezeen. “The material moves with the body much better than what we’ve used previously.”
Before creating the dresses, van der Wiel experimented with the material to achieve the optimal flexible structure and dark pearlescent colour. Van Herpen then sketched out the shapes of the designs and made the cloth bases.
“The first dress we made was shaped like the moon,” said van Herpen. “With the second, I wanted the material to grow around the body more organically.” Each of the two garments took three weeks to construct.
The dresses were shown as part of Iris van Herpen’s Autumn Winter 2013 fashion show in Paris earlier this month, where outfits were accompanied by 3D-printed shoes that look like tree roots.
“The original idea was to have a dress growing live during the show through magnetism… so people could see the birth of the dress, how the dress would grow,” van Herpen said, though this proved too complex and potentially unsafe for the models.
We interviewed van Herpen for our print-on-demand magazine Print Shift, during which she told us about how 3D printing could transform the fashion industry.
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and Jólan van der Wiel appeared first on Dezeen.
News: a research team in Zürich has created a flock of helicopter robots that can detect each others’ positions and join together to create a larger flying machine.
The Distributed Flight Array (DFA) has been developed by a team of researchers at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control (IDSC) at ETH Zürich university in Switzerland.
Each robot has a 3D-printed hexagonal plastic chassis with magnets fixed to the sides of the frame and a single propeller fitted in the middle.
Independently, the honeycomb-shaped robots fly in an erratic and uncontrolled way. However, the robots are able to detect each other, link to form a bigger craft and then fly in a controlled manner as a single unit. The task of keeping the multi-propeller system in flight is distributed across the network of vehicles.
Each independent module exchanges information with the others and uses sensors to determine how much thrust it needs for the array to take off and maintain flight.
“The Distributed Flight Array is a flying platform consisting of multiple autonomous single propeller vehicles that are able to drive, dock with their peers and fly in a coordinated fashion,” explains the IDSC. “Once in flight the array hovers for a few minutes, then falls back to the ground, only to repeat the cycle again.”
Watch a video of the DFA system in action here:
“If the array’s levelled flight is disturbed, each vehicle individually determines the amount of thrust required to correct for the disturbance based on its position in the array and the array’s motion,” IDSC said.
The project has been developed for two reasons, Maximilian Kriegleder from the IDSC told Dezeen: as a research platform for distributed control and estimation, and as an artistic installation that could illustrate such control of robots to members of the public.
“The platform currently flies with either joystick input from an user or input from an external sensor system such as GPS. We are trying to close this gap and make the system completely self-contained and autonomous so that no external input is needed,” Kriegleder told Dezeen.
Although the project was not designed for a specific purpose, Kriegleder suggests that the technology could be used for transportation systems. “The developed algorithms apply to any real systems that needs to be scalable and distributed,” Kriegleder told Dezeen. “One specific example could be a scalable mass transportation system, where one only adds so many modules that a certain payload could be lifted.”
The DFA project was launched in 2008 as a postgraduate class at ETH Zürich university and is being continued by Dr. Raymond Oung as his PhD project.
Here’s a film showing the concept behind the flying system:
Photographs are by Dr. Raymond Oung.
Other flying machines we’re featured on Dezeen include a tiny robotic insect the size of a small coin that hovers in the air like a fly and a human-powered helicopter that won a 33-year-old aviation prize, after hovering for 64 seconds and reaching an altitude of 3.3 metres.
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drones capable of self-assembly appeared first on Dezeen.
This expanding shelving unit by Austrian designer Stephanie Hornig can bunch up or stretch out depending on how much space you have.
The Set shelving comprises a beech-wood frame with scissor-like pivots plus folded steel shelves. These sit over rails between each joint and stop the structure stretching any further.
“Strategic cut-outs form shelves that can be fastened on the axes of the flexible structure in order to fix it in position,” said Stephanie Hornig.
She explained how the positions of the notches allow the unit to rest in three different positions and small bookends can be slotted against the diagonals in a similar way.
Other adaptable bookshelves on Dezeen include interlocking shelves that slide out to make space for more books as required – one of our most popular stories ever – and hinged boxes that can be spun round to create a neat grid or a scattered circle.
Here’s some more information from the designer:
Inspired by braided structures I aimed to design objects that could create a two- or threedimensional pattern that is stretchable. The resulting shelving system is based on the principle of a scissors grid with extended axes to make room for shelves.
This creates a superimposed image of diagonals, which is adjustable and can be fixed in three different positions. Bended, powder-coated steel sheets with strategic cut-outs form shelves that can be fastened on the axes of the flexible structure in order to fix it in position.
Additionally, simple bookends can be inserted that lean directly against the wooden struts.
Materials: beech wood, steel
Dimensions: variable
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Stephanie Hornig appeared first on Dezeen.
Today was the international debut of the all-new BMW i3 electric car. We attended the event in NYC and spoke with the BMW Group’s lead designer, Adrian van Hooydonk….
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In our second movie filmed at the opening of the new Camper store in New York, Japanese designer and Nendo founder Oki Sato admits to Dezeen that he is not very good at drawing, but that his sketches are an important first step in all of his designs.
“I’m not a good sketcher,” Sato says. “But it’s really the story that’s the most important thing for myself. When I meet a new client, if I can’t come up with a nice story for them then it’s really difficult for me to proceed with that project.”
Despite his limitations as a draughtsman, Sato says he still starts every project with a sketch, because he believes it helps him to convey the story behind the design in the most simple way.
“The process is fairly basic,” he says. “I start from rough sketches, stupid sketches, and then we move to renderings and models. I have a feeling that when you’re a good sketcher, when you draw pictures and sketches in a very beautiful way, it makes the story a bit blurry.”
He continues: “Since I’m not good at [sketching], it helps me. [They’re] really awful sketches, but it has to be something that everyone can understand and I think that’s important. The simpler the sketches, the better the story is I think.”
Once he has sketched out his initial ideas, Sato says that it is also very important for him to make models of his designs.
“We make a lot of models,” he says. “We have three rapid prototyping machines in the studio which work 24 hours a day. We’re considering buying one or two more because it’s really important to see the form physically.”
Nendo works in a wide range of disciplines, designing large interiors like the new Camper Store in New York as well as tiny products such as Data Clip, a USB drive shaped like a paperclip. Sato says that he approaches all projects in the same way.
“I enjoy designing anything,” he says. “Whether it’s a paperclip or a big interior, it’s basically the same for me. I’m just addicted to design and I just enjoy whatever it is I’m doing.”
The key to good design, Sato believes, is simplicity.
“A good idea has to be something that you can tell your mother or a small child who knows nothing about design,” he says. “If she thinks it’s interesting, I think that’s good design.”
Watch our interview with Oki Sato on Camper’s New York store »
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– Nendo’s Oki Sato appeared first on Dezeen.
LA-based streetwear brand Black Scale was started in 2008 by Michael “Mega” Yabut and Alfred De Tagle, and in just five short years they have opened stores in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. They’ve…
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Car brand MINI has previewed design ideas ahead of the launch of its new model later this year, including Union Jack door pockets and a disco floor (+ movie).
Presented at the brand’s headquarters in Munich last week, MINI‘s Vision concept design incorporates a Driving Experience Control switch would allow the driver to change the lighting, colours and atmosphere inside the car from calm to energetic with the touch of a button.
Coloured lights in the footwells could be activated to flash in a series of patterns to create a “MINI Disco”.
Criss-crossing stretchy straps in the shape of the British flag would form pockets inside the doors.
Smartphone holders, a storage box, cup holder or small safe could be clicked onto the floating centre console and removed when required.
Dark blue fabric would cover the lounge seats and the same colour is used throughout the interior, accented with orange.
References to the classic Mini that would be visible externally include the rounded forms of the chassis and a hexagonal grille, which integrates the bumper and auxiliary lights.
The bodywork would be built from a lightweight composite material made from pressed fibres and finished in a new gold-tinted orange paint.
Elements of this concept design will be incorporated in the new MINI to be unveiled towards the end of the year.
MINI head of design Anders Warming spoke to Dezeen about the future of car design and the possibility of driverless vehicles at the launch of the brand’s Paceman model last year.
We’re currently on a year-long expedition with MINI, visiting the best international design events as part of our Dezeen and MINI World Tour – see all our coverage so far from Design Indaba, Milan design week, New York design week and DMY Berlin. Next stop: London!
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Read on for more information from MINI:
MINI Vision. An exclusive look at MINI design of tomorrow.
At today’s MINI Design@Home event Anders Warming, Head of MINI Design, previews a sampling of visionary design and innovative ideas. The MINI Vision, for example, showcases various elements of future MINI design. Here, MINI has developed a vehicle design laced with new creative impulses that advance the cause of premium quality in the compact class.
In customary MINI fashion, the MINI Vision seizes the limelight with creativity, individuality and a generous helping of versatility. Interactive gadgets such as the Driving Experience Control switch offer a glimpse of the future. This particular feature allows the whole of the car’s interior to be transformed into a variety of different colour and experience worlds in the blink of an eye.
The presentation of the MINI Vision is based around a virtual 3D hologram. This form of expression provides a window into how the MINI designers go about their business. Complementing their familiar toolset of sketches and 1:1 clay models, virtual reality allows them to test and fine-tune creative ideas quickly and under realistic conditions.
The exterior: a perfect balance between old and new.
The design of the MINI Vision reaches pointedly into the brand’s past and combines the underlying features and values of MINI with future-focused aesthetic and technical innovations. The hexagonal radiator grille is inspired by the classic Mini, for example, and the MINI Vision integrates both the bumper and auxiliary lights into the grille.
The traditional and unmistakable rounded MINI forms are reflected in the exterior through elements such as the elliptical full-LED headlights. Their outer ring emits a consistent light and fulfils a daytime driving light function.
Among the stand-out signature features of the MINI brand are the clear separation of the roof, glasshouse and body. The chrome strip wrapped around the top of the body, the distinctive side indicator element and the black band framing the lower edge of the car are all hallmark MINI styling elements.
The MINI Vision presents these three defining design elements as a flowing, interconnected unit – conjured from innovative and lightweight “organo metal”.
This extremely mouldable but also very strong material is produced by pressing various fibres into a composite. Organo sheets have a unique texture comparable to that of fabrics.
Alongside lightweight construction techniques, aerodynamics also play a frontline role in the conceptual ideas behind the MINI Vision. The car’s body includes an aerodynamic air intake and outlet around each front wheel arch, airflow-optimised wheel rims and exterior mirrors, and an integral, air-channelling roof spoiler.
At the rear, muscular shoulders lend the MINI Vision extremely sporty and compact proportions. The finely drawn and clearly defined edging in the car’s bodywork is central to the exterior design language of the MINI Vision and underlines the concept’s precision and sporting intent.
The interior: originality and creativity packed into a very small space.
The interior of the MINI Vision stands out with its individual style, variability, functionality and aesthetic appeal. The fundamental idea behind the MINI brand – of providing maximum comfort within minimal exterior dimensions – filters through every detail of the interior.
A transparent and open cockpit, sweeping doors and a “floating” centre console allow the driver and passengers to experience the sensation of a wide open space coupled with the benefits of a space-saving small car. Lounge seats featuring dynamic piping add the finishing touch to the unique interior ambience.
The creative design solutions have been brought together with established pillars of MINI design. For example, the elastic fabric straps on the insides of the doors – arranged like the stripes of the Union Jack flag – are a nod to the brand’s British heritage. However, the stretchable straps have a functional as well as stylistic role: these flexible retaining devices are designed to hold a magazine, mobile phone or drinks bottle within easy reach.
The fresh layer of variability added by the MINI click system offers additional scope for customising the interior. Smartphone holders, a storage box, cup holder or small safe can be attached and removed in a single movement as and when required.
The interior of the MINI Vision as a whole can also be adapted to a variety of interaction requirements with similar flexibility and immediacy. The Driving Experience Control switch allows the driver to choose between a pure and focused or fully-interconnected mode. The two modes are expressed in different colours using calm, clear light and dynamic, energy-charged shades. Another highlight of the fully-interconnected mode is the “MINI Disco” floor. Here, an expressive interplay of colours, light and forms transforms the footwells as the MINI Vision appears to come vibrantly to life. As well as turning the ambient colour scheme of the interior on its head, the Driving Experience Control switch also changes the face of the familiar MINI circular central display. Depending on their selection, drivers will be met by either a classic, analogue-style view or an impressive 3D look, which gives the full suite of display elements an unaccustomed depth.
Colours and materials: structures form characters.
The Glamorous Gold paint finish – a shimmering gold-tinged orange tone – has never been seen before in the history of MINI design. And the use of organo metal creates an intriguing contrast to this gleaming metallic shade. The organo metal adds highlights not only to the outside of the car, but also to the interior, its unique structure lending the MINI Vision a cutting-edge character.
A tough, dark-blue fabric recalling the properties of a high-quality suit is employed for the seats and sections of interior trim. The seamless transitions of the various materials between the interior and exterior bring consistency to the MINI Vision despite the use of different materials and textures.
Its unbeatable scope for personalisation and an extremely sporty and precise design make the MINI Vision the perfect partner for the road, tailored to the needs and preferences of the individual driver. This design vision demonstrates that MINI will continue to use intelligent variability, imagination-capturing technology and a compact sporting presence to deliver unrivalled driving fun over the years to come.
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MINI appeared first on Dezeen.
AISIDI, principal revendeur de produit et service mobile en Chine, s’associe avec Coordination Asia, un cabinet de design et d’architecture, pour le lancement d’une nouvelle série de magasins, AER. Slogan publicitaire inscrit sur le chemin noir au sol, comptoir Lego, jeu sur les typographies, le résultat est très réussi.
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.
