Hasta La Ideas

Join us TONIGHT for a special Core77 Holiday party with three Brooklyn-based designers from our Ultimate Gift Guide! They’ll be discussing the triumphs and challenges of getting products to market:

Chris Kucinski, Critter and Guitari
Ian Collings, Fort Standard
Alex Mustonen, Snarkitecture

Monday, December 17th
6–8PM – Talk begins promptly at 6:30PM

Core77 Pop-Up Shop @ Blu Dot
140 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10012
rsvp [at] core77 [dot] com

About Critter & Guitari
Critter & Guitari create beautiful products for music lovers and tinkerers alike.

Their KALEIDOLOOP, available through our Ultimate Guide Guide, is a social, portable sound collector. It’s designed to be taken anywhere and everywhere to gather and manipulate all kinds of sounds. Record sounds from your kitchen, the recording studio, and campfire jam.

About Fort Standard
Fort Standard is a contemporary design studio founded in 2011 by industrial designers Gregory Buntain and Ian Collings. Their collaborative work is a manifestation of their shared vision and progressive design approach which pairs timeless materials with modern process. Often using traditional methods of production in innovative ways, the designers have developed a unique form langugae rooted in simplicity and functionality. Their attention to detail, connections and materiality generate value through design in what Buntain and Collings describe as a “warm-contemporary” aesthetic.

Fort Standard’s Balancing Blocks for Core77’s Ultimate Gift Guide are oak blocks tumbled in a water-based paint. Arrange these faceted “stone” shapes to create your own sculpture or choreograph a balancing act. Good for all ages.

Balancing Blocks from Part & Parcel on Vimeo.

About Snarkitecture
Fresh off the recent success of their “Drift Pavilion” for Design Miami, Snarkitecture is a collaborative practice operating in territories between the disciplines of art and architecture. Working within existing spaces or in collaboration with other artists and designers, the practice focuses on the investigation of structure, material and program and how these elements can be manipulated to serve new and imaginative purposes. Searching for sites within architecture with the possibility for confusion or misuse, Snarkitecture aims to make architecture perform the unexpected.

Snarkitecture’s Cast Light for Core77’s Ultimate Gift Guide is hand-formed and individually cast using white gypsum cement creating a tabletop geography of light and shadow.

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In addition to sharing an etymological root with the word “salvation,” the notion of “salvage” also connotes wreckage; specifically, an effort to recover that which might be lost in the face of disaster. Brooklyn’s Uhuru, for one, has long sought to revive serviceable materials in furniture form, and we weren’t surprised to see them among the designers who participated in Sawkill Lumber’s 12×12 exhibition during New York Design Week this year.

Photo of Fire Island by Daniel Moyer

Uhuru is just one of the two dozen designers revisiting that theme for an forthcoming fundraiser in response to the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. Organized by writer Jennifer Gorsche, DesignerPages Editor-in-Chief Jean Lin and designer Brad Ascalon, Reclaim NYC is true to the spirit of salvage in every sense of the word.

New York City’s design community is teaming up to raise money for those affected by Superstorm Sandy with an auction of furniture created from materials reclaimed or salvaged after the storm and of pieces inspired by the flooding…

Furniture collectors will have a unique opportunity to take home a piece of the storm while benefitting those most affected by it. More than 20 designers have pledged pieces to the silent auction, the proceeds of which will go to the American Red Cross in Greater New York. Each designer is bringing a unique take on Sandy and its aftermath with pieces ranging from tables and chairs to lighting fixtures to art objects. Some designers have plans to explore themes of the storm in future work as well.

Click to enlarge the invitation

We had a chance to catch up with Gorsche and Ascalon, who gladly provided a sneak preview of some of the work that will be at the auction (full list of participants below):

Core77: Let’s start from the beginning—how did Reclaim NYC come about?

Jennifer Gorsche: I was running in the park and saw how many trees had been damaged. The wood was being hauled away and I wondered if it would be possible for some designers to use it. I called Jean Lin, my good friend and Designer Pages editor and chief, to talk about the idea. We talked with Brad Ascalon about it too, and started reaching out to NY-based designers. The response was really positive and though the timing of the event ultimately didn’t allow for large pieces of downed trees to be used (because of curing time involved) the designers have been very creative in addressing the theme of reclamation.

Brad Ascalon: As Jen mentioned, she and Jean reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in participating. Because I was so into the idea, the discussion ended with me wanting to be involved in the organization of the project alongside Jen and Jean.

Brad Ascalon – “I Lovey NY”

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Please consider this your official invitation to what promises to be the most *Curious* and *Chummy* event of Portland’s holiday design itinerary. Come down and chat-up some of our 59 Curiosity Club Alumni – that eclectic mix of local makers, thinkers and designers who shared their projects and insights at our bi-weekly speaker series since 2010. Intellectual stimulation and creative inspiration will be served alongside drinks and tasty treats from Pacific Pie Co.

This is your chance to meet and mingle with the presenters of the Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club: Our group boasts Designers, Engineers, Tinkerers, Makers, Writers, Theorists, Open Source Manufacturing advocates, Teachers, a Cyborg Anthropologist, a Historian, a Luthier, a Pinhole Camera maker, a Knife maker, a One-Wheeled Motorcycle designer and developer, a Chef, an Upholsterer, an amateur Rocket Scientist, an Improv Comedian, Cargo Bike Builders, Butchers, Programmers, Perfumists, Community Developers, Cryonicists and Artists, Tiny House enthusiasts and the list goes on with each area of expertise being equally fascinating.

RSVP on Facebook here

Curiosity Club “Meet the Alumni Party” at Hand-Eye Supply
Tuesday, December 11
6:00 to 9:00 PM
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR 97209
(503) 575-9769

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Billed as “the gear we like and how it works,” Wired’s month-long pop-up exhibition has been a perennial holiday destination in NYC for as long as we’ve published our own Ultimate Gift Guide. Entitled “What’s Inside,” the curated ‘experience’ is not a direct retail proposition—littleBits starter kits are the only thing that can be purchased on site—but it’s tightly integrated with their online store, featuring nearly double the amount of products in their gift guide (including most of their 85 wishlist picks this year).

OtterBox‘s special ‘exploded view’ display of an iPhone

It also happens to be just up the block from Core HQ this year, and even though lower Broadway can seem like an outdoor shopping mall at times, it’s more manageable than Times Square, where they’d set up shop last year. It’s well worth a visit if you happen to be in the neighborhood, visiting another noteworthy Pop-Up Shop.

The prominently-displayed Faraday Porteur wasn’t available for a test ride when I stopped by, but it’s one of the few items that is visible from the street. Given the openness of the front third of the space, I was surprised to find densely packed shelves and display cases upon walking in; so too is the lower level packed with goodies (I’d overlooked several products my first time around; even Store Manager Noah Norman had trouble keeping track of where each and every item was located).

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Now that’s what I call quick: twenty minutes of design followed by three (leisurely) days of fabrication to create four different tables and more than a half-dozen stools. Core77 fave Because We Can (we covered them last year here) used their extensive design experience and CNC mastery to whip up some tables on short notice for this year’s Autodesk University. On display in the Creative Studio, not far from the ShopBots we’ll get to soon, the tables were in constant use.

Because We Can Co-Founder Jeffrey McGrew breaks the project down:

Because We Can at Autodesk University 2012:
» Super-fast CNC’d Gaming Tables
» Myths of Digital Fabrication
» Gathering CNC Knowledge

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