Hasta La Ideas

Self-production versus royalties was the hot topic at this year’s Blickfang designworkshop, held at Boisbuchet in France and led by designer Sebastian Wrong (+ movie).

Around a dozen young designers attended the workshop, which was established to help young designers develop the skills they need to turn their creativity into successful businesses.

“We thought it would be a good idea to bring together the professional design scene with independent, young designers and create a platform where they can discuss the business part of design,” said Blickfang CEO Jennifer Reaves.

The annual workshop compliments the Blickfang design markets that are held in various cities around Europe each year, where young designers sell their products direct to the public.

“[The workshop is] about exchanging ideas and experiences on how this job, this passion, can bring a monthly income,” said Reaves. “It’s basically about the business prospects of being a designer; getting a reality check about how this business really works.”

The workshop was held between 11 and 13 June at Domaine de Boisbuchet, a country estate in southwestern France that hosts design workshops every summer.

Over the three days of the workshop, designers presented their ideas and explained the issues they were facing to a group of curators including former Established & Sons creative director Sebastian Wrong (who now heads new design venture Wrong for Hay), Authentics founder Hansjerg Maier-Aichen, journalist and Magazin curator Eva Steidl, and Dezeen founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs.

“It brought to the surface a real current issue in the design world, which is about whether designers should actually look after the production themselves, or go down the more conventional route of selling a design to a company that will distribute and sell it,” said Wrong. “It’s all too easy to pursue your dreams and forget about the really important factor, which is: what is it going to cost?”

“We were very excited when we got the invitation to come to Boisbuchet, because of the thrilling curators,” said workshop attendee Nina Wolf of German designers Nju Studio. “We discussed our products and we discussed the price, which is one of the biggest problems for start-ups.”

She added: “The workshop was great, like a brainwash but in a very positive way.”

“I really wanted to hear the opinions of other people, and hear how they bring their products to market,” said another attendee, Dutch designer Charley Reijnders. “It was really good that we had to put our feet on the ground and really start thinking about money and about business. Because at the end of the day, this is my job.”

Other attendees featured in the movie include Jonas Schroeder of Joval, and Phillip Beisheim.

Last year’s Blickfang designworkshop was held in Copenhagen and was headed by Jaime Hayon. In 2011, the workshop took place in Vienna under chief curators Stefan Diez.

Blickfang designworkshop is supported by MINI. The soundtrack to the movie is Getting Funky by Wave Crushers, via Dezeen Music Project.

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themselves – or sell their ideas?” appeared first on Dezeen.

Un antico tavolo da carpentiere trasformato in piano per cucinare. Se per caso non riuscite ad usarlo come ispirazione o a trovarne uno simile, quello in foto lo trovate qui.

Graduate designer Katharina Unger has designed a table-top insect breeding farm that allows people to produce edible fly larvae in their homes (+ slideshow).

“Farm 432 enables people to turn against the dysfunctional system of current meat production by growing their own protein source,” said Unger.

As part of the project, she bred and ate black soldier fly larvae in a prototype system, then designed a machine to replicate the process on a domestic scale. “I ordered larvae and built up my own fly colony to see if the process works,” she told Dezeen. It was very exciting to watch the larvae migrating up the ramp, new flies emerging, mating and laying eggs.”

In her design for the farm, soldier fly larvae are dropped into a chamber at the top of the appliance, where they develop into adult flies and move to a larger chamber. Here they mate and produce larvae, which fall down into a “kindergarten” area, mature and become trapped in a harvesting pot, ready for consumption. A few of the harvested larvae are selected to be dropped back into the top of the machine and start the cycle again.

“Black soldier fly larvae are one of the most efficient protein converters in insects, containing up to 42% of protein, a lot of calcium and amino acids,” the designer adds. After 432 hours, 1 gram of black soldier fly eggs turns into 2.4 kilograms of larvae protein, so Unger predicts that people could harvest approximately 500 grams of larvae a week, producing two meals.

“The larvae I bred have a very distinctive taste,” she told us. When you cook them, they smell a bit like cooked potatoes. The consistency is a bit harder on the outside and like soft meat on the inside. The taste is nutty and a bit meaty.”

Her favourite recipe with the insects so far is larvae and tomato risotto: “I like to mix parboiled rice with wild rice together with the larvae, put a lot of tomato sauce in it and a bit of parmesan cheese. A bit of parsley or basil on top and you have a perfect meal.”

Above movie shows breeding of fly larvae in the prototype system

“With my design I am proposing a new lifestyle,” the designer told Dezeen. “It’s about a potential new western culture of insect eating and breeding… It is really about making people see that there is a great variety of food on our planet that we rarely consider.”

Unger explained that by 2050 meat production will need to increase by 50 percent to meet population increase, predicting that because we already use one third of croplands for the production of animal feed, it will be necessary to develop alternative food sources and production methods.

Above movie shows cooking and eating insects

She added that her system so far uses just one out of 1000 edible insects in the world and she wants to develop the idea further in collaborations with manufacturers and researchers.

Above movie shows how the proposed appliance would work

Unger completed the project whilst studying Industrial Design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and was taught by Hartmut Esslinger of Frog and Fiona Raby of Dunne & Raby.

See more stories about food and design on Dezeen »

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by Katharina Unger appeared first on Dezeen.

by Stefano Caggiano Designs by Aldo Bakker look quite different from designs by his father Gijs Bakker who, in 1993 founded—with Renny…

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News: police in Germany plan to 3D print a gun to test whether the weapon can pass through security checks undetected.

According to a report on GigaOM, police officers have bought a 3D printer and will also explore whether printed weapons could be used by the police themselves.

The news emerged in response to a question posed in parliament by Die Linke (The Left Party), the technology website reported.

“The government said the police wanted to see whether ne’er-do-wells could actually make plastic guns that could be smuggled onto planes, and also whether the police might find a use for such technology themselves,” GigaOM said.

The news follows reports that Australian police downloaded and 3D printed their own handgun earlier this year, using materials worth $35. Officers in the Australian state of New South Wales found that the gun fired a bullet 17 centimetres into a standard firing block, but it exploded when it was discharged.

New South Wales police commissioner Andrew Scipione made the announcement at a press conference on 24 May and warned the public about the threat posed by 3D printed weaponry.

“Make no mistake, not only are these things undetectable, untraceable, cheap and easy to make, but they will kill,” said Scipione at the time. Here’s the full speech:

3D printed guns have been making headlines since May 2013, when Cody Wilson, founder of Texas-based Defence Distributed made the CAD designs of a 3D printable handgun available online. The blueprints for the gun, called Liberator, were downloaded over 100,000 times in the two days after they were uploaded to the organisation’s website.

Two days after the first 3D printed plastic gun was successfully fired in Texas, the US Department of Defense Trade Controls removed the files from online public access.

In October last year, open-source design expert Ronen Kadushin warned Dezeen that affordable 3D printers could one day “print ammunition for an army”. He added: “This is a very, very dangerous situation.”

Dezeen has reported on the rise of 3D-printed weaponry in our print-on-demand publication Print Shift, which also looks at how the technology is being adapted to architecture, design, food, fashion and other fields.

See all our stories about 3D printing »

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3D-printed gun appeared first on Dezeen.