Hasta La Ideas

Alchemist Lauren Bowker applied heat-sensitive ink to a sculptural leather garment and used fire to alter its colour during a presentation for her company The Unseen (+ movie).

Coinciding with London Fashion Week earlier this month, Bowker’s design house The Unseen debuted a series of garments embedded with her colour-changing ink at an event in the Dead House – a series of vaulted passages beneath Somerset House where her studio is located.

She created a giant black headdress made from overlapping layers of hand-stitched leather that engulfed the wearer like a shell, completely covering the head and extending down past the hips.

During the presentation, a figure wearing this headdress was lead down a tunnel and positioned beneath a spotlight. Large flames erupted around the garment as wicks that protruded from the body were lit in unison.

As the heat from the fire lapped the material, peacock-tail colours began to emerge and disperse across the surface. When the flames died down, the green and purple tones remained on the material as the model was lead back into the depths of the underground vaults.

The collection also included garments worn over the torso that react to the movement of air, changing colour as environmental conditions shift in varying climates and when people come close or walk past.

“Seasonally each piece exhibits different tones of colour,” Bowker told Dezeen. “The summer environment will create a brightly coloured jacket that will dull in the wind to become black again, whereas in the winter the pieces are black until the wind hits them then revealing the colour shift.”

Made in a similar layered style to the larger heat-responsive piece, these designs were displayed on models in alcoves along the subterranean tunnels.

“The fins in each jacket are shaped and designed to create turbulence trips within the wind – triggering the colour-change response,” said Bowker.

She has previously applied different versions of her reactive inks to feathered garments that are sensitive to light.

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headdress by Lauren Bowker appeared first on Dezeen.

Boston engineering firm Spike Aerospace is building a windowless supersonic jet that will be able to fly from London to New York in under four hours, and will offer passengers digital views of their surroundings (+ slideshow).

The S-512 eschews the small porthole style windows typically found on planes in favour of full-length curved digital screens that run the length of the fuselage. An array of cameras installed on the outside of the cabin will feed images through to the displays, which will then be stitched together to create panoramic views.

“Passengers will be able to dim the screens to catch some sleep or change it to one of the many scenic images stored in the system,” Spike Aerospace said in a press release.

Unlike standard commercial airliners, which fly at approximately 567 mph, the S-512 will achieve speeds of between 1,060-1,200mph thanks to advanced airframe and engine technology, and the absence of windows.

“It has long been known that the windows cause significant challenges in designing and constructing an aircraft fuselage. They require additional structural support, add to the parts count and add weight to the aircraft,” said the company.

The reduced weight and lack of drag caused by removing the windows will also mean the S-512 will use considerably less fuel compared to other private jets. Spike projects that this means the plane could carry 18 passengers at up to 1370 mph.

The result is a plane that will shave flight times in half, meaning traveling from Los Angeles to Tokyo would take eight instead of 16 hours.

The S-512 is still in development, but Spike Aerospace hopes to begin shipping in December 2018, with a price tag of £48million.

“We expect the first customers for the jet will be businesses and their management teams that need to manage global operations more efficiently. They will be able to reach destinations faster, evaluate more opportunities and have a bigger impact on their enterprises,” said the company.

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windows with live-streaming screens appeared first on Dezeen.

Disegnata dal duo Ronan e Erwan Bouroullec per l’università di Copenhagen nell’aprile 2013. Alla collezione appartengono anche una serie di sedie, sgabelli e tavoli. La trovate in posti come Danishdesignstore e Fancy.

Le Scotch J&B est né à Londres pendant la seconde moitié du XIXème et c’est à la même période que le tatouage a commencé à se répandre dans Londres. Pour célébrer ses origines, J&B a décidé de tatouer 25 bouteilles par le studio Le Sphinx à Paris. Toutes les images et la vidéo avec l’aimable autorisation de Button Button. Résultat : 25 bouteilles au design unique.

These hanging plant pots by Dutch designer Roderick Vos incorporate overhead lighting and plug sockets for a space-saving approach to adding greenery to the office.

The Bucketlight features two LED lights situated and sealed at the bottom of two plant pots joined together. A reinforced electrical cable is then used to hang the Bucketlight from the ceiling.

“Because we did not have enough floor space at our office and showroom, and were in desperate need of light, the Bucketlight was born,” explained Vos.

The combination of light and plant life then gave rise to a novel way of distributing electricity throughout the designer’s office and showroom in s’-Hertogenbosch, 30 kilometres outside Eindhoven.

“We created sockets in the objects, enabling us to connect our computers and our workstations, avoiding heaps of tangled cords,” the designer said.

The result is the Powercube. This variant of the Bucketlight features a multi-plug adaptor attached to the pot via a 1.5-metre-long electrical cord.

Each Bucketlight is made from cast aluminium and covered in a textured green powder-coating. They are in use at the designer’s own studio and available through their website.

Photography is by Rene van der Hulst.

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lighting and power sockets appeared first on Dezeen.