Hasta La Ideas

News: the organisers of Beijing Design Week plan to emphasise problems with copyright in China by exhibiting an original version of Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman’s giant Rubber Duck, which was duplicated around the country when it recently appeared in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour.

At a press conference announcing that Florentijn Hofman‘s ten-metre-high inflatable duck will appear at Beijing Design Week 2013, the event’s organising committee highlighted the proliferation of unsolicited copies that emerged in several Chinese cities including Tianjin and Wuhan last month, as well as unauthorised T-shirts and merchandise.

“We want to use the Rubber Duck case to drive an awareness programme raising the sensibility towards intellectual property rights around China,” said Wang Jun, a senior consultant to Beijing Design Week’s IP Protection Office.

Beijing Design Week will instead work with Hofman to produce and license official associated products and promises to take legal action against lookalikes.

“The Rubber Duck knows no frontiers, it doesn’t discriminate people and doesn’t have a political connotation,” says a statement on Hofman’s website.

A 16.5 metre tall version of the sculpture was shown in Hong Kong from 2 May until 9 June, attracting a reported 8,000,000 people to the area.

Hofman’s duck has appeared in over a dozen cities since it was first exhibited in 2007, including Sao Paulo, Sydney and Amsterdam. Its installation at Beijing Design Week, which takes place from 26 September to 3 October, will be its second in China.

Copying in design is a hot topic at the moment, with Thomas Heatherwick recently being accused of copying the design for the Olympic cauldron from a New York agency, which has since said it never accused Heatherwick of plagiarism.

This issue is particularly prevalent in China, where a Zaha Hadid development in Beijing has been pirated by a Chinese developer in Chongqing. Earlier this year, Dutch design collective Droog made a series of products copied from traditional Chinese objects.

See all our stories about copying in design »

Top image is by YY Yeung.

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It might look like these people are scaling the walls of a London townhouse but they’re actually lying on the ground, reflected in a huge mirror as part of an installation by Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich (+ slideshow).

Located in Hackney, Dalston House by Leandro Erlich is a temporary installation comprising a reconstructed house facade lying face-up and a mirror positioned over it at a 45-degree angle.

As a person walks over the surface of the house, the mirror reflects their image and creates the illusion that they are walking up the walls. Similarly, visitors can make it look like they are balancing over the cornices or dangling from the windows.

The brick walls and decorative window mouldings of the three-storey facade are designed to mimic the nineteenth-century Victorian terraces that line many of London’s streets, particularly a row of houses that once occupied this site on Ashwin Street.

Commissioned by the Barbican gallery, the installation opened to the public yesterday as part of the London Festival of Architecture 2013 and will remain on show until 4 August.

Leandro Erlich is well-known for using visual illusions in his artworks. Past projects include a seemingly floating remnant of a house created in Nantes and a fake pool of water in Toulouse. He also created a similar house reconstruction in Paris in 2004.

Last year Dezeen ran a special feature celebrating world-class architecture and design created in the London Borough of Hackney and also hosted a event of talks and discussions, shown in a series of movies we published.

See more installations on Dezeen, including an arched foam screen with hundreds of building-shaped holes and a topographical landscape of stone and water.

Photography is by Gar Powell-Evans.

Here’s some extra information from the Barbican:

Leandro Erlich: Dalston House

Internationally known for captivating, three-dimensional visual illusions, Argentine artist Leandro Erlich has been commissioned by the Barbican to create Dalston House, an installation in Hackney. The work resembles a movie set, featuring the façade of a late nineteenth-century Victorian terraced house. The life-size façade lies on the ground with a mirrored surface positioned overhead at a 45-degree angle. By sitting, standing or lying on the horizontal surface, visitors appear to be scaling or hanging off the side of the building. Sited at 1–7 Ashwin Street, near Dalston Junction, Erlich has designed and decorated the façade – complete with a door, windows, mouldings and other architectural details – to evoke the houses that previously stood on the block. Leandro Erlich: Dalston House opens on 26 June 2013 and is presented on Ashwin Street in association with OTO Projects. It is also part of the 2013 London Festival of Architecture.

Leandro Erlich: Dalston House is installed on a disused lot that has largely remained vacant since it was bombed during the Second World War. The installation extends the Barbican’s programme of Curve commissions to east London and is part of Beyond Barbican, a summer of events outside the walls of the Centre that includes pop-up performances, commissions and collaborations across east London. Beyond Barbican builds on the Barbican’s long history of programming work in east London that connects communities in the boroughs surrounding the Centre with some of the best art from around the world. The commission follows the success and legacy of Dalston Mill by EXYZT, a temporary installation and participatory project staged by the Barbican in Hackney in 2009, which reopened in 2010 as the Eastern Curve Garden.

Dalston House is presented on Ashwin Street in association with OTO Projects. The Barbican is an official partner of the London Festival of Architecture 2013. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England. Additional support from the Embassy of the Argentine Republic.

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Les Wooden Popsicle de Johnny Hermann sont des créations minimalistes aux couleurs estivales. Clin d’œil au premier popsicle crée à San Francisco (la marque de commerce de pop glacés la plus connue aux États-Unis), ces objets uniques en leur genre sont un rappel aux étés de notre enfance. À découvrir en images.

Eyeboming è un divertente progetto di street art collettivo attivo dal 2011.
Il progetto vuole stimolare la creatività delle persone attraverso un gioco che tanti hanno già fatto da bambini: disegnare un paio di occhi su degli oggetti inanimati per dargli l’aspetto di una creatura vivente.
Le regole sono molto semplici: chiunque può fotografare la sua creazione, e inviarla al blog di Eyebombing o al gruppo dedicato su Flickr, a patto che si tratti di un oggetto inanimato in uno spazio pubblico.

Per dare più coerenza al progetto si devono utilizzare un paio di occhi adesivi con le pupille in movimento, che possono essere acquistati per pochi euro qui.

Rispetto a tanti altri progetti di street art, Eyebombing non trasmette un messaggio provocatorio o di denuncia, l’idea è molto innocente e discreta, ma non per questo va sottovalutata.
Le immagini scaturite dal progetto Eyebombing sono brillanti e originali, e il divertimento è sempre uno dei primi e più forti stimoli della creatività.

Product news: these sofas with exaggerated seams by Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola are now in production with Italian furniture brand Moroso.

Thirteen modular pieces make up Urquiola‘s M.A.S.S.A.S., an acronym for Moroso Asymmetric Sofa System Adorably Stitched.

The solid forms are crossed with raised seams over the arms and backs, plus some modules have discrete pockets that sit on the outer sides of the arms.

Moroso originally debuted the prototypes in Milan last year and the production models were also displayed at ICFF 2013.

In Milan this year Patricia Urquiola presented a family of chairs influenced by the shape of a hood and a seat with a backrest wrapped in rush, both also for Moroso.

The latest sofas we’ve featured include chunky grey seating resembling jagged icebergs and a settee that breaks down into a bed, two armchairs and two footstools.

See more sofa design »
See more design by Patricia Urquiola »
See more products for Moroso »

More information from Moroso follows:

M.A.S.S.A.S., an acronym for Moroso Asymmetric Sofa System Adorably Stitched, is Patricia Urquiola’s delightful new modular sofa system that makes full use of this Italian company’s unique and highly skilled abilities as haute couture producers of soft seating. A compact and controlled shape is well-defined by cuts and lines that map out the asymmetric fabric placement. Visible, raised stitching runs around the perimeter to deconstruct the otherwise solid surface. While the structure is of polyurethane foam, its softness is the result of a bonded combination of fabric and polyester fiberfill.

There are 13 individual pieces, including chairs and sofas that can be formed into corner turning shapes in a range of sizes. Designed to go with this seating group are the Fishbone Tables. Both of these products, introduced in Milan 2012, are now in production.

Urquiola’s partnership with Moroso began in 1998 when she was asked to produce designs under her own name, making Moroso the first manufacturer to produce her work. Since then Urquiola has been working with Moroso, designing not only furniture but also her first US interior project- the New York City Moroso store. Over the years, Patrizia Moroso, creative director and Urquiola have become great friends, as evidenced by Ms. Moroso’s cherished new home in Udine, designed by Urquiola.

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