Always a go-to for smart, accessible Danish design, Normann Copenhagen holds a spot on our must-see list each spring during Salone del Mobile, and their showing last week in Milan only further inflated our confidence…
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Le couple d’artistes Adam Eckstrom et Lauren Was ont décidé de donner une 2ème vie à tous ces tickets de loterie perdants laissés à l’abandon, dans une série de visuels réunis sous le nom de Ghost of a Dream. Des créations nécessitant des milliers de tickets pour former des imitations de Lamborghini ou de Hummer.
Milan 2013: this silver serving set for tea and cake was designed by Dutch studio Scholten & Baijings for Danish silverware and jewellery company Georg Jensen and launched at Spazio Rossana Orlandi last week.
Scholten & Baijings’ Tea with Georg collection for Georg Jensen is based on items used in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, but with added pieces to incorporate the Dutch designers’ love of coffee.
The collection includes a teapot with a sieve, a teapot warmer, a creamer and a sugar bowl, all made from stainless steel.
There is also a porcelain cup and saucer and a double-walled stainless steel espresso cup and saucer.
The set is completed with light blue porcelain dessert plates, a glossy porcelain cake platter and a cake stand that combines a matt porcelain platter with a stainless steel stand.
The tea set was shown at Spazio Rossana Orlandi, where Slovenian designer Nika Zupanc also presented folding lamps powered by wind-up keys – see all news and products from Milan.
Scholten & Baijings recently designed a range of coloured glassware for Danish brand Hay and last year in Milan the studio launched tableware based on the archives of a Japanese porcelain company.
Last year Danish private equity group Axcel sold the Georg Jensen brand to a Bahrain-based investment bank for $140m.
Photographs are by Scheltens & Abbenes.
Here’s some more information from the designer:
At the invitation of Georg Jensen, Scholten & Baijings designed a Tea & Cake collection entitled ‘Tea with Georg’. The title is a nod to the company’s Danish founder, Georg Jensen.
The collection consists of a stainless steel teapot, tea warmer, porcelain cup and saucer, stainless steel espresso cup and saucer, creamer, sugar bowl, cake stand, cake platter and individual porcelain dessert plates.
The design for this everyday tableware is based on a study conducted into the Japanese tea ceremony, freely interpreted for Western use by Scholten & Baijings. Starting point for the design process is the symbolic value the Japanese attach to the tea ceremony, as well as their love of aesthetics, the appreciation of traditional handicraft and the beauty of the material in general.
The teapot with tea sieve and warmer, executed in stainless steel, form the basis of this collection. The design reflects all the qualities of the Georg Jensen brand: the skilful metalwork, the high degree of precision and the meticulous surface finish.
Aside from being tea enthusiasts, Scholten & Baijings are also passionate about high-quality espresso and cappuccino. That’s why in addition to the porcelain cup and saucer they also designed a special double-walled stainless steel espresso cup with accompanying saucer. The saucer features an exclusive detail: an etched line that runs till the centre of the saucer.
In the case of the porcelain teacup with saucer, the line has been executed in silver and runs through the centre of the saucer. This is a reference to the original ‘Silversmithy’, the workplace of Georg Jensen, renowned for his silver products. By also making use of other materials, such as porcelain and coloured synthetics, and by applying different textures, patterns and colours that are recognizable features of Scholten & Baijings’ signature, ‘Tea with Georg’ forms a perfect family. The pieces also combine attractively with existing services.
In addition to cups and saucers, the collection comprises plates and platters for cakes, savoury titbits, fruit and delicacies. The porcelain plates have been hand decorated with light-blue colour gradients. This makes every plate unique. There are two variations: one version with gradients from inside to outside, and vice versa.
There is a large, matching, high-gloss porcelain cake platter with soft blue colour gradients running from inside to outside. The cake stand, conversely, has a stainless steel foot holding a mat porcelain platter decorated with a fine black grid. For the true tea lover, there is a porcelain teacup that, of course, can also be used for cappuccino. The handle grows thicker as it extends over the cup in a flowing motion.
It is thanks to nearly 400 years of Japanese experience in the manufacture of porcelain and the use of innovative production techniques that this ingenious detail can be produced in series. Scholten & Baijings take pride in this unique collaboration. East literally meets West in this unique project that brings Japan and Denmark together.
The post Tea with Georg by Scholten & Baijings
for Georg Jensen appeared first on Dezeen.
La réalisatrice Emily Kai Bock a signé pour Majical Cloudz, le clip du morceau « Childhood’s End ». Dans ce morceau issu du projet du québécois Devon Welsh, son père, l’acteur Kenneth Welsh ayant joué dans la série Twin Peaks illustre avec beauté et tristesse la solitude. Une magnifique création en noir et blanc.
News: the UK government’s redesigned website has been named the Design of the Year in a ceremony at the Design Museum in London this evening (+ movie).
Gov.uk was designed by Government Digital Service, a team within the Cabinet Office led by designer Ben Terrett (see our movie above), to fold the government’s thousands of existing websites into just one.
Deyan Sudjic, director of the award-giving Design Museum, said the new website “makes life better for millions of people”.
“Gov.uk looks elegant, and subtly British thanks to a revised version of a classic typeface designed by Margaret Calvert back in the 1960s. It is the Paul Smith of websites,” said Sudjic.
“The rest of the world is deeply impressed, and because it has rationalised multiple official websites, it saves the taxpayer millions – what’s not to like?”
Prime minister David Cameron also said he was “delighted” about the win, adding: “For the first time, people can find out what’s happening inside government, all in one place, and in a clear and consistent format.”
The core idea behind Gov.uk is to make it as simple and intuitive as possible for the user, Terrett told Dezeen in a movie filmed at Design Indaba in Cape Town as part of our Dezeen and MINI World Tour.
“People only go onto government websites once or twice a year to find out a particular thing,” he said. “So people shouldn’t spend time relearning how to use it. The core of all our work is focusing on user need.”
Terrett’s team devised 10 principles of good design to guide their work and chose to make them public in the hope they would be useful to other designers, as he explained at the Global Design Forum in London last September. “We believe that if you share work it makes it better,” explained Terrett.
The principles are:
1. Start with needs
2. Do less
3. Design with data
4. Do the hard work to make it simple
5. Iterate. Then iterate again
6. Build for inclusion
7. Understand context
8. Build digital services, not websites
9. Be consistent, not uniform
10. Make things open: it makes things better
Terrett also won the graphics category of the 2010 awards with his print-on-demand publishing service Newspaper Club.
The other category winners included the Morph folding wheel in the transport category, the Kit Yamoyo medicine kit in the product category and the brand identity of the Venice Architecture Biennale in the graphics category.
The architecture category was won by a refurbished 1960s tower block in Paris, fashion was won by a film about writer and editor Diana Vreeland and industrial designer Konstantin Grcic won the furniture category for his Medici Chair, after launching a complementary stool and table in Milan last week.
Gov.uk and the other shortlisted designs are on show at the Designs of the Year exhibition at the Design Museum until 7 July.
Last year the award was won by east London designers BarberOsgerby for their London 2012 Olympic Torch – see all news about Designs of the Year.
The post UK government website wins
Designs of the Year 2013 appeared first on Dezeen.
Milan 2013: Venetian designer Luca Nichetto presented a lamp with the height, size and luminosity of a TV in Milan last week.
Luca Nichetto describes the lamp for Italian brand Foscarini as “a new light typology which emits oblique light,” explaining how it throws light sideways to create a focal point in a room.
He called his creation Stewie after the cartoon baby in American television show Family Guy, referencing its “enormous egghead and spindly body.” He says: “This extremely friendly shape… becomes a kind of little person about the house.”
The piece is made of expanded polyethylene, covered with fabric normally used in the sportswear industry to reflect light around the cavity and create a soft glow.
Foscarini presented Stewie at Euroluce lighting trade fair alongside the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan, where other lamp launches included pendant lamps by Zaha Hadid for Slamp and Konstantin Grcic’s reworking of Achille Castiglioni’s iconic Parentesi lamp.
Meanwhile in the city centre, Luca Nichetto unveiled a collection of furniture created in collaboration with Japanese designer Nendo.
See all our stories about Luca Nichetto »
See all our stories about design at Milan 2013 »
Here’s some more information from Foscarini:
An original take on the floor lamp, which develops horizontally and has stolen its name from a cartoon character.
Stewie, a Luca Nichetto design, is the new element for the house of today, brand-new, unconventional and friendly. It breaks the mould, choosing a light source that skims the ground, large sizes and a light, soft and flexible material.
To get the desired result, we selected a heat-shaped, expanded polyethylene covered by a particular fabric with the properties of a prism, adopting the same technology as used in the sporting world or for travel accessories. This particular combination of materials conveys a warm, soft aspect and lends itself perfectly to the idea, which gave birth to Stewie. Being heat-shaped, gives in fact maximum freedom to obtain the good-sized concave shape planned to reflect the light with a certain soft effect.
Stewie stands out for the visual impact of its shape, its size and the unusual light it emits. Even when off, it retains its theatrical characteristics and the distinctive personality which it brings to each environment: cutting across boundaries in use and unmistakable in shape, it is perfectly at ease, whether in the bedroom or the living areas as well as in communal spaces: use it in compositions to create comfortable lounge areas.
The post Stewie by Luca Nichetto
for Foscarini appeared first on Dezeen.
Le réalisateur français Vincent Laforet a dirigé ce court-métrage pour illustrer les possibilités du « MoVI », un système de soutien de caméra à 3 axes qui stabilise et permet d’effectuer des mouvements de caméras aisément. Une belle création tournée au Canon 1DC, à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.
Sinuosa lampada in neon disegnata da Miguel Soeiro per Own.
In 1959, having skipped the popular band format to play music on a record player, a local dancehall owner in Aachen, Germany asked a young journalist in the crowd to take over and announce and comment on songs as they were played to…
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Milan 2013: German designer Stefan Diez unveiled a trio of chairs for German furniture brand e15 at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile last week.
Stefan Diez‘s This That Other collection for e15 comprises a dining chair called This, a low lounge chair called That and a high stool called Other.
The chairs combine a curved plywood shell with a solid frame and are available in a palette of colours assembled by designer Farah Ebrahimi: natural wood, neon pink, navy, white, light grey and dark grey.
Named after a card trick, the collection is a development of the processes used in Diez’s earlier Houdini chair for e15, launched in Milan in 2009 and updated in 2011 in an upholstered version.
Dezeen interviewed Diez as part of the Dezeentalks series at the immcologne trade fair in 2011, where he talked about working conditions, mittens for motorcycles and sex tourism – see all design by Stefan Diez.
Earlier this year e15 launched re-editions of furniture designed by German modernist Ferdinand Kramer in the first half of the twentieth century – see all design by e15.
Our round-up of highlights from the Salone included a lamp with a glass base by Industrial Facility and chairs with wavy backs by Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola, while French architect Jean Nouvel presented a huge installation imagining office environments of the future – see all news and products from Milan this year.
Photographs are by Ingmar Kurth.
Here’s some more information from e15:
Named after the famous card trick, Stefan Diez applies the same plywood material as for the iconic Houdini seating series to craft the robust and versatile side chair This, lounge chair That and stool Other. The progressive and deceptively simple This That Other seating series by Munich based designer Stefan Diez illustrates e15’s key philosophy in exposing and featuring elements essential to the construction of a product. Simplifying the construction, this family represents a very economical offering for the contract market.
Providing ultimate comfort, the rounded shapes of the THIS THAT OTHER seating series give way to modern spirit and rational details in distinct quality. Forthright colours developed by Farah Ebrahimi signify the unique spirit of the seating series in a palette of neon pink, navy and shades of grey.
The post This That Other by Stefan Diez
for e15 appeared first on Dezeen.
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