Hasta La Ideas

Stockholm 2013: Swedish designer Alexander Lervik unveiled a chair made of wooden rods like a bed of nails in Stockholm last week.

Lervik says Spike Chair was inspired by shafts of heavy rain in the Phillipines: “One day it poured with rain. Raining stair rods, as they say, and that’s exactly how it was. The shafts of rain resembled slanted lines and in that rain I suddenly saw the outlines of Spike in front of me.”

The user’s weight is spread over 60 turned ash rods, supported by tubular steel welded to a three-millimetre-thick base. There are 30 different lengths of rod to accommodate the curve of the body.

Lervik made the chair in an edition of ten and presented them at Gallerie Pascale as part of Stockholm Design Week, which also included delicate glass pieces exhibited among robots and an installation of lamps by Nendo in a former skating pavilion. See all our stories about Stockholm 2013.

Other stories we’ve featured inspired by weather include a weather forecasting lamp and a facade revealing invisible patterns of the wind. See all our stories about weather and design.

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Alexander Lervik appeared first on Dezeen.

This movie by designers Studio Swine demonstrates how waste plastic picked up by fishing trawlers can be transformed into chairs on board the boats.

Studio Swine first presented the idea in collaboration with Kieren Jones at the Royal College of Art show in 2011 and have since simplified the process to build the chairs using a small factory onboard vessels. They have released a manual so others can build the chairs too.

Plastic caught in fishing nets or found washed up on the shore is sorted according to colour and chopped into small bits, then melted at 130 degrees centigrade in a DIY furnace.

Some is then squashed between two flat slabs of heavy metal or stone to create the seat, while more is scraped into a mould formed from bent scraps of aluminium.

Cooled and solidified by the sea water, the seat and three legs are then scraped with a knife to tidy the edges and screwed together to create the Sea Chair.

Studio Swine have also designed a mobile food stall for cooking and selling pig heads and glasses made from human hair.

Scroll on for instructions for creating a Sea Chair from the studio:

Open Source Sea Chair by Studio Swine

Studio Swine has created an open source design based on ‘Sea Chair’ by Studio Swine & Kieren Jones, accompanied by a film of the process where a chair is made on a fishing boat at sea.

The United Nations estimates some 100 million tons of plastic waste to be contaminating in the worlds oceans, a proportion of which washes up on coastlines across the globe, last year Japan had over 200 thousand tons of plastic debris wash up along it’s shores. This abundance of plastic presents an opportunity where the material is delivered by the sea to coasts where it can be processed to make new products with the intention of removing the plastic from the marine environment for good. The open source design uses readily available materials and basic DIY skills to enable the the creation of a sea chair.

You can download the Sea Chair manual here.

Things you need:

Furnace: a camping stove, a food tin, a steel kitchen pan with lid, a cooking thermometer, thick tin foil, glass fibre roofing insulation, crushed charcoal (for best results use perforated charcoal from an old water filter)

Moulds: a scrap aluminium L section (6cm x 6cm x 40cm approx.), two steel sheets (for best results polished stone off cuts from kitchen worktops, sink cut-outs or leftover floor tiles), Wax for mould release (beeswax or car polish)

Tools: a metal scraper, hacksaw, drill + metal bits, screw driver, three long screws, one or two small bolts & nuts

For Collecting: two buckets, kitchen or fine garden sieve, dustpan and brush, big bag, rubber gloves

The steps:

1. Collecting

Collecting plastic on the beach is the easiest way to get sea plastic; it prevents the washed up plastic returning to the sea to harm marine life.

Look at beaches during low tides where materials have been deposited, these are generally sandy beaches with debris along the strand line.

A dustpan and brush is effective for collecting small plastic pellets known as nurdles. These are often found deposited in lines below the main strand line of heavier materials such as seaweed. If the sand is flat and damp, then they can be swept off the surface without collecting the sand. Where sand is collected, they can easily be separated by sinking in a bucket of water and scooping out the floating plastic with a sieve.

Try to sort the plastic at this stage using the plastic chart, separate PET from LDPE, HDPE & PP which share similar melting points. Dispose of any PVC or Polystyrene collected. Small plastic pieces and nurdles are not possible to identify easily but if your averages are correct with the large items, the mix will work.

The plastic should all be broken up into pieces around 1cm x 1cm, this can be done by hand or a kitchen food processor. Add some water to the mix when using the processor to avoid the plastic from melting around the blades.

Remember: Dry the plastic before melting.

2. Melting

*Precautions*
Some essential precautions should be taken when melting plastic. Some plastics emit toxic fumes when melted. The lid and filter will help minimalise exposure to these, but also do any melting in a very well ventilated place away from others, outside if possible. Use a good mask and goggles to protect your eyes from smoke. Hot plastic will stick to the skin, so always wear thick gloves and long sleeves, leather gardening gloves are fine.

In the manual, there is a chart to identify plastics. However, chances are you won’t be able to easily identify a lot of the plastics you’ve collected. The key is to collect a sizeable amount of plastics of the same type so that they will mix well together when melted. It’s common to find large amounts of the same type of nurdles on a particular beach near where a spill once occurred, after you’ve identified the melting point they can form the majority of the mix that glues the rest together. Other beaches may contain mostly PET due to large amounts of discarded drinks bottles whilst some beaches contain a mix.

The majority of plastic waste is made of type1, 2, and 4 plastics. Wherever possible, avoid polystyrene and PVC, as they emit toxic fumes. The plastic pellets, or “nurdles”, are all thermoplastics, which means they can me re-melted. Small plastic fragments found in the top layer of the ocean are most often HDPE, LDPE, and PP, as they are less dense than sea water and float, but, even if the plastic you find are thermosetting (which do not melt) they will still form an aggregate within the melted mass.

Once you have sorted your plastic and prepared it for use you can add them to the furnace.

Check the pan when the temperature reaches around 180ºC. If the mix is still hard, turn the heat up to 250ºC, checking at intervals to see when the mix is molten. As soon as the mix is molten enough to form a doughy ball in the pan when stirred, it is ready to use. Don’t worry if some of the plastic pieces aren’t fully melted, as long as the majority are, they will form a colourful aggregate within the material. Be careful not to leave the mixture too long, or the plastic will begin to burn and create more toxic smoke.

You need to decide whether your plastic mix is mostly Type 2, 4 & 5 or Type 1. In most cases it’s best to make a mix that mostly consists of Type 2, 4 & 5 which melt in the range of 110 – 170°C and use the Type 2 (melts at 250°C) as a aggregate.

If melting mainly Type 1 (PET) the plastics with a lower melting temperature can be added when the mix is molten and the stove turned off just before filling the moulds.

To make a stool, it’s recommended you heat around 3 batches of plastic separately, filling the pan each time about 1/3 full. Adding too much in one go will make it difficult to achieve an even temperature through the mix. An improvised windshield may be required for your furnace to reach higher temperatures.

3. Casting

Polish the leg mould with a cloth, and preheat the mould over the gas stove.

Use a metal scraper to scoop the plastic into the leg mould, overfilling them slightly. Press the full leg mould upside down against the flat surface used for seat mould. Press down on the mould until the metal sides are flat against the surface and the excess plastic squeezes out from either end. The excess should be cut off with the metal scraper and added back into the pot to be reused. Submerge the mould in cold water, this speeds up the curing process and makes the plastic contract away from the mould making it easy to remove.

When three legs are complete, a large blob can be melted to form the seat. Polished granite or marble kitchen worktop off cuts are the most effective surface for casting against, a sheet of smooth metal can be used as well, but it should be lubricated with oil or wax to avoid sticking to the plastic. Preheat the surface of the mould so the plastic stays in a molten state for pouring which will result in a smoother finish.

4. Assembling

Mark out an equilateral triangle on the base of the stool where the legs are positioned. Drill holes and screw in legs with screws approximately 3 inches long. If required, use some of the leftover melted plastic to weld the legs to the base of the seat to add strength and prevent them twisting.

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by Studio Swine appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: this footstool by French designer Benjamin Graindorge for Ligne Roset is nipped-in with lengths of cord.

Called Lace, the foam upholstery has a cord wrapped around it horizontally two further cords that wrap underneath and puncture the sides. The cords come in ecru or black and the cover is removable.

Lace was presented at Maison&Objet in Paris last month, where other releases from Ligne Roset included an asymmetric desk and chair inspired by spaghetti.

Benjamin Graindorge also presented a series of vases with hoods for Paris firm Moustache at the fair and we’ve previously featured his design for a garden that floats on the surface of a fishtank and uses fish waste as fertiliser.

See more products from Ligne Roset »
See more design by Benjamin Graindorge »
See more launches at Maison&Objet »

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for Ligne Roset appeared first on Dezeen.

This dressing table by London designer Florian Schmid comprises a circular mirror with a two-legged table slicing halfway across it.

The C58 Dressing Table leaves the left-hand side of the mirror free to show the user’s full profile, while the flat surface extending to the right provides storage and display space for bottles and trinkets.

“Through the reflection of the object itself arises the illusion of a bigger and a three-legged table, which also looks like an artificial window,” adds Florian Schmid.

The proportions and composition are echoed in a matching European ash stool and trays for organising small items like jewellery.

Schmid moved to London in August 2012 and is now based at Okay Studio, close to the Dezeen offices in Stoke Newington. We hosted his stools made of fabric impregnated with concrete at Dezeen Platform in 2011.

He presented the C58 Dressing Table and C64 Tray as part of the [D3] Contest for young designers at imm cologne last month. Other pieces on show included fold-out furniture that looks like line drawings and tiles that help a stove disperse heat more rapidly. See all our coverage of design at imm cologne.

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by Florian Schmid appeared first on Dezeen.

Opinion: in a special Valentine’s column, Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs explains why designers have dumped dowdy green design in favour of glamorous robots.

Tech has killed green. Until recently the design world was on a mission to save the planet; now it seems enthralled by gadgets. Adjectives like “sustainable” and “eco” have been usurped by upstarts such as “smart” and “hacked”. The cardboard furniture glut of recent years has disintegrated; recycling has gone to landfill.

It’s not long since design-school grad shows were dominated by the hand-made, the low-tech and the organic; now it’s all embedded sensors and connected devices. Design fairs have ditched the obligatory maker or two turning discarded pop bottles into chandeliers – or knitting seaweed into cushions – for 3D printers and robots. Collaborations with Vietnamese basket weavers are out; Raspberry Pi mashups are in. In Milan this year the young Dutch contingent will no doubt have stopped serving wholesome hyper-local snacks and will instead be touting lab meat and printed biscuits.

Green design felt right at the start of the economic crisis: it sought to replace over-indulgence with frugality, served with a side order of punishment for our wickedness. Penal minimalism was all the rage: spartan furniture made of ethically sourced timber that was so good for you, it hurt.

Natural was good, artificial was bad. Soon we’d all be growing our own organic food on our city balconies and installing complex plumbing to irrigate it with our bathwater. We’d be going off-grid, hooking up to domestic wind turbines and pondering the plausibility of upcycling under our solar-powered lamps.

It was a romantic vision, but a pessimistic one. It demanded we atone for resource scarcity by making do with less. It suggested we undo the damage caused by rampant consumerism by engaging in a paradoxical and ill-defined un-consumption. We would buy our products only once, and they would last us forever, whether we liked it or not.

But sustainability turned out to be unsustainable. We just didn’t have the time; we couldn’t afford to be green. We thought the products looked ugly. We didn’t enjoy the preachiness or the guilt.

But most of all we got seduced by tech. iPads! Plasma TVs! Replicator 2s! Drones! Anything, as long as we can plug it in or put batteries in it. Anything, as long as it has a touchscreen or makes a reassuring beeping sound.

Even green design blogs such as Inhabitat and Treehugger have experienced technophiliac mission creep and now cover smartphone-powered satellites and 3D-printing on the moon as well as passive ventilation.

Design movements come in regular waves, of course. In my fifteen years as a design journalist I’ve witnessed the tail end of the Dutch conceptual boom around the millennium; the return of decoration in the early noughties, spearheaded by Marcel Wanders and Tord Boontje; and the design-art bubble of the mid-noughties. These are just a few of the fads that have swept through design.

But green design felt different as it sought to both comment on, and provide solutions to, a more profound set of questions than designers usually address. It felt too important to be a passing phase.

In truth, green didn’t completely die. Some aspects of it became so ubiquitous that they vanished from view. Many products today use less packaging, less embodied energy and fewer nasty chemicals than they did a decade ago. They just don’t shout about it so much. Green became normal.

But green’s message did not adapt and it ran out of steam. It fell foul of the law of diminishing returns: it’s easy to make the first cut in your carbon footprint, but every subsequent one gets more difficult. And because the back-to-nature, made-do-and-mend doctrine supped from a limited gene pool of visual stimulus, it became an aesthetic trap. Once you’ve hewn furniture from raw timber, there’s not much further you can go.

Technology however is intrinsically optimistic: each new development, each new device brings the promise of a new future. Each new way of arranging atoms or bits opens the door to a new solution cloaked in a new form. And since these elements are infinitely configurable, technological development is more sustainable than sustainability, since it will never run out of ideas.

It’s harsh to break the news on Valentine’s Day but here it is: sorry green design, it’s over. It wasn’t really going anywhere. And we’ve fallen in love with a robot.

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