Hasta La Ideas

Russian designer Anna Lotova slotted two layers of foam beneath the surface of this wooden desk to create squishy spaces for storing stationery and other objects.

Named Oxymoron Desk, the piece combines two contrasting materials for its tabletop;  two thick layers of upholstered foam are sandwiched between a pair of plywood sheets with curved edges.

A sliced opening along the top plywood sheet exposes the soft layer underneath, creating a place where documents and stationery can be inserted.

“As an architect and designer I know how important it is to have a comfortable and enjoyable work table,” said Lotova. “Oxymoron Desk is a result of interaction between two contradictory materials that enhance each other and gain a new meaning.”

A side table can also be added by slipping an extra piece of plywood between the two cushioned layers on either side of the desk.

An accompanying lamp can also be inserted between the layers, or can be slotted into the top and positioned at different angles.

Here’s some more information from the designer:

Oxymoron Desk

In my projects I look for the lighthearted, hidden humour in every material that I work with.

As an architect and designer I know how important it is to have a comfortable and enjoyable work table. I was always interested in small details that make one like or dislike his own workplace.

We have to change our behaviour, plan and think of work with a different mindset: no matter where an office is situated, it has to have a space it can call its own, identifiable, alterable, on a human scale, with its own history and objects, an enjoyable environment. That’s why for my thesis project in master of product design I decided to choose this topic.

Oxymoron Desk is a result of interaction between two contradictory materials that enhance each other and gain a new meaning. Two layers of foam with an alcantara cloth are placed between plywood sheets to form a toolbox to store documents, objects and technical devices.

This work table includes a lamp and a side desk. Both of them can be inserted from different sides and positions, what gives freedom to the user.

Oxymoron workplace creates pleasant, fresh surroundings that hover between work and home environments.

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stationery between cushioned layers appeared first on Dezeen.

Rotterdam designer David Derksen has decorated a set of plates by employing the oscillations of a pendulum to drip patterns of paint (+ movie).

The patterns on Derksen‘s prototype Oscillation Plates were created using both the mathematical shapes of the pendulum’s swing and the human element of positioning and initiating the movement.

“A beautiful pattern that is formed under the influence of gravity, which is normally hidden, is now literally shown,” Derksen told Dezeen. “On one hand it follows the mathematical laws of gravity, on the other hand it is very playful.”

The designer created the brass pendulum so it could hold and drip the right amount of paint. “We had to adjust the size of the hole to the viscosity of the paint, to create a nice thin, constant paint flow,” he said. “It also needs to have enough mass for making a constant oscillation.”

The pendulum contained enough acrylic paint to decorate one set of plates. After the first push, the pendulum released a constant flow of black paint onto the surface of the plates in overlapping oval shapes.

Every rotation added to the pattern, creating criss-crossing lines and darker areas where the pendulum changed direction. The position and swing orientation was then changed for a second round, then the plates were left to dry.

The plates are to be developed by a ceramic specialist and made available for the VIVID Gallery in Rotterdam.

Here is some more information from the designer:

Oscillation Plates

With gravity as the acting force, these plates are decorated by a pendulum. The patterns are a graphic representation of the oscillation of a pendulum, revealing a hidden pattern that exist in nature.

The result is a play between the mathematical rules of the natural oscillation and the randomness of the human that initiates the swing of the pendulum. This combination makes each plate unique.

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using a pendulum appeared first on Dezeen.

Opinion: in this week’s Opinion column, Lucas Verweij argues that as the design field expands to encompass all creative activities and designers try to solve all the world’s problems, the discipline cannot possibly live up to expectations.

Design can no longer keep up with the promises it makes. Twenty-five years ago, nobody knew what design was or what purpose it served. The word was scarcely used on the European mainland, because back then we referred to the profession as vormgeving, which literally means “form-giving”. The word “design” appears nowhere on the diploma I received when I graduated, but the same school I graduated from is now called the Design Academy.

The word “design” previously denoted a position on style. Alessi produced “design” coffee pots and Dieter Rams created “designed” electrical appliances for Braun. The term was reserved for intensive and often Modernist-looking products that you bought in museum shops. Back then design was still an adjective, not a verb.

In the Anglo-Saxon world, by contrast, design was a container term for all sorts of creative disciplines. That definition has since gained in popularity and all creative professions are now grouped under the umbrella of design. Everything has become design, and design is everywhere.

Apart from that semantic victory, the popularity of the profession is such that it is now absorbing and assimilating other professions. No longer is its scope confined to interior, graphic or product design. Now it also encompasses social, interaction and food design. Then we have design thinking and service design, the end products of which can be a service, a mentality or a procedure. That widens the scope of design further to include process, distribution, retail and organisation. Nothing remains untouched. Discussions within the profession suddenly emphasise similarities more than differences, but up until a short time ago we could not agree on what was and was not designed.

Once a patchwork of disciplines, the professional field has been transformed into one vast and pleasant entity. Things will remain like that as long as design is doing well, which is precisely the case now. Books and magazines on design sell well. Most design products and services also sell well, and the economic crisis hit the design sector substantially less than the architecture sector.

Design is expanding into the field of innovative techniques and methods for production, and it is exploring new ways of working and insights. Design is closely connected to the growing internet economy. The startup scene maintains close links with the design world and forms part of it through interface and interaction design. Design is closely connected to the changing world and now finds itself right at the heart of it.

In addition, the public puts a lot of faith in designers, comparable to the faith once accorded to architects. In the past, architects were seen as people who could solve problems; they were creative and progressive visionaries and set the tone in questions of taste. Architecture shaped the post-war discourse. Architects provided the forms that expressed how power was distributed, how life was lived and how society was organized.

A comparison with design obviously presents itself. Many social questions are now asked of design and many tools of individualisation and globalisation now fall within the design domain. That is why many positive connotations about architecture have now transferred to design. Designers are now the ones who can solve problems, who can be visionary and creative, who take the lead in matters of taste.

An important cornerstone of design is creativity. Never before has creativity been such a positively charged term. When I was young it was considered nice if someone was creative, but nothing more than that. Creativity was not in itself a positive quality. For what purpose could it serve in an era that placed much more emphasis on efficiency, organisation and quantity than on quality, creation and recreation?

The very opposite is now the case. We think that problems cannot be solved without creative input. Creativity and innovation are the new key concepts for growth. In Europe, innovation receives a lot of subsidy because it is thought that our creative and innovative powers are our only genuinely distinctive qualities in a global economy. China can produce more cheaply, India can engineer more cheaply, but for the time being our creativity is irreplaceable. All hope is suddenly put on a quality that was previously deemed superfluous.

I think that expectations and promises are now far too unrealistic when it comes to design. Practically all design disciplines are unprotected professions. People are free to call themselves “design thinkers” or “social designers” whenever they want. Every year there are three new educational programmes starting. Design is growing in such an unbridled manner that the quality can no longer be guaranteed.

Meanwhile the expectations and the promises keep on growing: design can solve the smog problem in Beijing, the landmine problems in Afghanistan and huge social problems in poor parts of Western cities. The ever-growing expectations of design can no longer be met. We are in a design bubble; it’s a matter of time before it will burst.

Lucas Verweij is a Berlin-based writer, curator and initiator in the field of design. He is a guest professor of product design at Kunsthochschule Weißensee in Berlin and co-initiator of the Pruys-Bekaert Programme for design critical writing. He blogs under the name Lucas_Berlin.

The post “It’s only a matter of time before
the design bubble bursts” appeared first on Dezeen.

L’artiste Marco Cianfanelli a imaginé l’année dernière cette sculpture en l’honneur de Nelson Mandela. Une superbe installation composée de 50 colonnes d’acier découpées au laser, dessinant au loin le visage de Madiba installé à KwaZulu-Natal, là où il a été arrêté en 1963. Plus de détails dans la suite.

This movie shows shoppers walking under and sitting beneath the Christmas lights installed above public crossings and squares in central Berlin by German studio Brut Deluxe.

Brut Deluxe created a series of three festive light installations to hang along the shopping avenue of Kurfürstendamm.

“Rather than typical decorations that represent Christmas through objects or symbols contemplated from the outside, we wanted to create a space that can be entered and experienced,” said the design studio.

One of the installations features five illuminated cubes hanging at different angles in the middle of a traffic crossing.

A patterned dome comprising segments of wavy lights and spanning 7.5 metres appears to hover over Joachimstaler Platz.

At the traffic crossing at Knesebeckstrasse, a dense collection of 50 wavy light strings are suspended vertically above pedestrians.

The installations will be in place until 6 January. Photography and movie are by Miguel de Guzmán.

Here is some information from the designer:

Weihnachtsbeleuchtung Kurfürstendamm, Berlin 2013
christmas lights, Berlin 2013

Three light installations were realised on Kurfürstendamm: the first, a huge light dome with a diameter of 7.5m, at Joachimstaler Platz, the second consisting of five big three-dimensional light cubes at the crossing with Uhlandstrasse, and the third, an artificial landscape build of 50 light shrubs, at the crossing with Knesebeckstrasse.

What all three installations have in common is that we want to achieve an atmospheric effect with them. Rather than typical decorations that represent Christmas through objects or symbols that are contemplated from the outside, we want to create a space that can be entered and experienced.

We imagine this artificial space in the city as a place of retreat, similar to an imaginary clearance in a forest.

The atmosphere surrounding the spectator is produced only with light that alters its density and intensity constantly through the visitor’s movement and changing perspective.

The realised landscapes of light are inspired by images and situations recalled from our memory that we associate with Christmas and abstractly convert to light.

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by Brut Deluxe appeared first on Dezeen.