Hasta La Ideas

Dezeen Watch Store: new to our collection this week is Evo Giant by Mondaine, a classic timepiece inspired by iconic Swiss railway clocks.

Evo Giant features a large 42-millimetre polished stainless-steel case with a black leather strap that attaches directly to the face without lugs. The size of the face allows the focus to be on the markings and famous red ticker, which resembles the shape of a railways guard’s signalling disc.

Evo Giant is the fourth timepiece in our range of Mondaine watches. The Swiss railway clocks that inspired the collection were designed in 1944 by Zurich-born engineer Hans Hilfiker and have since become a design classic that represent the legendary punctuality of the Swiss rail network.

You can buy all of our watches online and over the phone on +44 (0)20 7503 7319. You can also visit our watch shop in Stoke Newington, north London – contact us to book an appointment.

www.dezeenwatchstore.com

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at Dezeen Watch Store appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in our next movie from Milan, architect and designer Fabio Novembre takes us to a converted farm near the city centre and explains why he sees the project as an important response to Italy’s ongoing economic crisis.

“Milano used to be a place full of farms,” Novembre explains. “Most of them were in the city centre, very close to the Duomo, and this was one of them.”

Called Cascina Cuccagna, the farm is pressed-up against apartment buildings in the Porta Romana district of Milan, to the south-east of the city centre.

Novembre explains that the eighteenth-century buildings had been derelict for many years, until they were restored and converted into a cultural centre in 2008 by a consortium of local companies and residents.

He believes this bottom-up approach to redevelopment is a “very interesting example of how Milan can evolve” in the face of a lack of government investment.

“A group of citizens asked the city government, that is now without any money, to rent the place for 20 years,” he says. “It’s really a new way that we can approach the [economic] crisis as Italians. There is no public money any more, so we have to really organise ourselves on a smaller scale to have different solutions for evolution.”

Novembre shows us round the new facilities, which include a restaurant and bar, organic grocery store, gallery and a community garden where the fruit and vegetables for the restaurant are grown.

All these facilities are available to the public and Novembre believes it is this local community spirit that makes the farm special: “The restaurant here is called Un Posto a Milano, which means ‘a place in Milan’ – that’s the essences of this place, that’s the spirit of this place.”

Cascina Cuccagna also has a special place in Novembre’s heart for another reason. “Fourteen years ago, exactly in this place, I met my wife,” he reveals. “There used to be a very small, tiny restaurant here [where we met]. Now we are able to come here with our daughters and enjoy it all day long.”

Watch all our video reports from Milan here.

We drove out to Cascina Cuccagna in our MINI Cooper S Paceman.

The music featured is a track called Where are Your People? by We Have Band. You can listen to the full track on Dezeen Music Project.

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full of farms” appeared first on Dezeen.

Slot machines—games of purely random chance—are often seen as mechanical gambling devices and not much more. During a visit to Las Vegas we had the opportunity to dig a little deeper with Bally Technologies’ Director…

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Eindhoven designer Paul Heijnen presented an articulated lamp like a huge wooden insect at Rossana Orlandi’s Bagatti Valsecchi 2.0 exhibition in Milan (+ movie).

Called Hyperion Spotlight, the piece is assembled from many components of CNC-cut oak. Joints allow it to be posed in various positions ranging from a low crouch to stretching up on tip-toes, as seen in the stop-motion animation by Niels Hoebers.

“Hyperion is finding a way of putting the world around us together in a unconventional but stimulating way,” says Paul Heijnen. “Instead of concealing and hiding a product’s constructional and mechanical functions, this three-legged spotlight celebrates them.”

The piece is the first in a series of installations at different scales and Heijnen hopes to create a six-metre-high one in steel to sit atop Piet Hein Eek‘s Eindhoven headquarters, in a former ceramic factory, for Dutch Design Week in October.

“This is merely in the planning stage but I would like to put a super-strong laser inside it that beams over the city,” says the designer. The project is named Hyperion after the Titan god of light, whose name means “watcher from above”.

Curator Rossana Orlandi presented the piece as part of her exhibition at the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum in Milan, a 19th century family house converted into a museum to preserve its interiors and display the family’s decorative arts collection. Other pieces on show included a solid marble chair by Tomáš Gabzdil Libertíny.

See all our stories about Milan 2013 »
See all our stories about lighting »

Movie credits

Concept and set design by Paul Heijnen and Niels Hoebers
Hyperion by Paul Heijnen
Stop-motion animation by Niels Hoebers
Music and sound design by Fab Martini

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by Paul Heijnen appeared first on Dezeen.

Furniture adorned with an intricate collage of gold and bronze motifs by the Campana Brothers is on show at the David Gill St James’s gallery in London (+ slideshow).

Referencing ornate baroque decoration from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Brazilian designers Fernando and Humberto Campana created a series of items from jumbles of metal emblems and figures.

Gold and bronze keys, leaves, animals and figurines were all welded together to create elements such as the legs of stone tables and furry chairs.

Shades for floor and pendant lights were constructed in the same way, while small gold crocodiles pile up to form one of the candle holders.

Crafted in a Roman workshop specialising in bronze work, the detailed pieces were first shown at The Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris last year, though the small tables are now on show for the first time.

The Brazilian Baroque collection will be on show at David Gill St James’s, 2-4 King Street, London, until 15 June.

The duo recently exhibited five beds including one surrounded by hairy curtains in Milan and a series of items for Louis Vuitton in Miami.

See more design by the Campana Brothers »
See more architecture and design exhibitions »

Read on for the full press release:

Campana Brothers to show new ‘Brazilian Baroque’ collection in first show at David Gill St James’s, 1 May – 15 June 2013

Bernini meets Brazil as David Gill Galleries prepares to host a major exhibition of works by the internationally renowned designers, the Campana Brothers. Entitled Brazilian Baroque, the exhibition opens at David Gill St James’s, 2-4 King Street, London SW1Y 6QP from 1 May to 15 June 2013.

This Brazilian Baroque collection takes its inspiration from the intensively decorative and sumptuous Baroque style of the 17th and 18th centuries, combined with the Campana Brothers’ own take on Brazilian art and culture. The collection includes new coffee tables, to be shown for the first time at David Gill Galleries, as well as a selection of works first shown at The Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris last autumn.

The Brazilian Baroque collection introduces a strongly theatrical, gothic and sensual element to the Campana Brothers’ distinctive style. The pieces on show revel in a sense of luxury, channelling the glories of the Rococo period and its sumptuous gold and bronze decoration.

Each piece is made by craftsmen in a Roman workshop, specialising in bronze work, demonstrating magnificent skill in welding together a jumble of decorative motifs – keys, leaves, cupids and crocodiles – to create organic and playful shapes which are combined with other materials. The Campana Brothers’ fascination with the natural world and their sense of humour can be clearly seen, for example, in the tiny, detailed crocodiles, which can be seen clambering up the stem of the Candelabro Coccodrilli

David Gill says: ‘The work of the Campana Brothers never fails to surprise us. Their choice of material, research and use of found and created objects makes their work new and contemporary.’

Using the purest traditions of craft techniques, the Brazilian Baroque limited edition series is a personal allegory celebrating the riches of the Campana Brothers’ style.

This exhibition of Brazilian Baroque by the Campana Brothers will be on show at David Gill St James’s, 2-4 King Street, London SW1Y 6QP until 15 June.

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Campana Brothers appeared first on Dezeen.