Hasta La Ideas

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Fun to see these come to New York, but the miniature set pieces are the best. For those keeners out there who are so inspired, fire up your a href=”http://www.tiltshiftphotography.net/”tilt-shift/a photography tricks and go to town.a href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/events/marcel_wanders_baccarat_display_embellishments_16577.asp”(more…)/a
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The only thing more overwhelming than
ICFF itself is trying to decide which of the many offsite happenings to hit up throughout the city. To help navigate through it all over the coming days, we pared our picks down to 10 must-sees.

If you need a break from all the design, we also recommend making a few detours to some of our new favorite destinations for drinking, eating and shopping.

Opened in February,
Opening Ceremony’s second NYC store, designed by up-and-coming architecture firm Leong Leong, houses an edited selection of their inventory in a thoroughly modern space mixing touches of surrealism, functional vertical storage solutions, cork flooring, and fixtures made by set designers for an elegant concept that “divides the store into two distinct environments: masculine vs. feminine, raw vs. finished, warm vs. cool.”

Head to Williamsburg to experience the unparalleled coffee that
Blue Bottle makes at their first location outside of SF.

If you’re checking out events on Sunday in Noho, Double Crown recently introduced their Nonya dinners, a delicious $35 prix fixe that’s well worth the price.

Straightforward: New Finnish Design

The Finns show what they’ve got in
this content-rich show celebrating the best and brightest design from their country. Spanning a range of disciplines—from fashion to a new Aalto University—the exhibit, pop-up shop and lounge has a lot to sink your teeth into. Of the many objects, we love Pentagon Design’s 22-77° lamp, which unfurls and retracts according to the temperature of its LED lights. Paspas’ Boxbox rug also wins innovation points, stitching together and re-working Anatolian vintage rugs based on customers’ specs. Through 17 May; Chelsea Market 410 West 16th Street

Public: Design Ride Manhattan

The
new Dutch-inspired bike brand by Design Within Reach founder Rob Forbes marries classic good looks with urban-oriented design for two accessible models that we’re currently sweating. Join them on a ride through from Javits to a reception at
Tretorn‘s downtown store, where you can test drive one to see what all the fuss is about. 16 May at 5:30 pm; Javits Center

New Useless Machines

The suspended “useless machines” of Italian futurist and graphic artist Bruno Munari are reimagined in an exhibit of hanging mobiles organized by Sight Unseen. Works by the likes of Tobias Wong, Mary Meyer and Confetti System dangle above shoppers at Noho boutiques Oak and Rogan. Through 18 May; 330 Bowery

Sculpted: Exploring the Nature of the Artful Object

The building blocks of human-made objects—stone, wood, clay and glass—are spotlighted in Designlush‘s “Sculpted: Exploring the Nature of the Artful Object.” For its first year, the show features the organically shaped, hand-blown glassworks of Esque Studio. Through 21 May; 200 Lexington Avenue

Areaware

Known for its evocatively simple, American approach to design, Noho’s Areaware celebrates five years producing housewares and everyday objects. To commemorate, Areaware presents favorite and new pieces by David Weeks, Ross Menuez and other design luminaries. While you’re there, don’t miss Roll & Hill as it debuts its catalog of modern lighting fixtures. Through 18 May; 45 Great Jones Street

NoHo Next

StyleFactory and Wabnitz Editions team up for “Noho Next,” which showcases nine of the who’s who in emerging design. Talents include Uruhu, whose Coney Island line of furnishings reclaims wood from the amusement park itself. Spaniards Xavier Manosa of Apparatu and Alex Trochut create puffy jacket-inspired vases, and Washington, DC’s Johah Takagi ups the ante in flat-pack furniture with elegant birch shelving. Through 18 May; 350 Bowery

Secret Garden

The Future Perfect‘s Manhattan location hosts Secret Garden, a new mushroom-inspired collaboration between ICFF veteran Lindsey Adelman and glass artist Nancy Callan. Through 14 June; 55 Great Jones Street

Sounds Like

Designer Joey Roth ‘s Ceramic Speakers take the stage at Sounds Like , an exhibit at DDCLab showcasing the nine designers and five musicians tasked with reinterpreting porcelain amps. Through 18 May; 427 W 14th Street

MatterMade Collection Number One

Contemporary design store Matter celebrates MatterMade Collection Number One, a 20-plus collection of works from designers Paul Loebach, Jonathan Nesci, Stephen Burks and more. Through 18 May; 405 Broome Street

Think Before You Write

Riverkeeper and The Standard Hotel launch the DBA 98, the world’s first 98% biodegradable, alongside Think Before You Write—a project featuring creative contributions from a cavalcade of 98 artists, designers, writers and other notable figures. From downtown art darling Dan Colen to controversy-baiting literary legend Salman Rushdie and actress Lorraine Bracco, DBA’s seemingly uncoordinated selection of contributors speaks to the universal need for a pen that doesn’t pollute. Pick it up from the shop at the Cooper-Hewitt; 2 East 91st Street

With all the ups, downs, and re-locations going on with Design Miami recently, it was easy to forget that other art fairs were making noise too. Such is the case with the Venice Biennale, who Art Info reports has just selected their curator for the 2011 event: the journalist and curator Bice Curiger. She joins a long list of hot shot former curators and it’s well deserved, with Curiger having served as publishing director of the Tate‘s magazine and co-founded the arts journal Parkett. Here’s a bit:

“I am very much looking forward to the great challenge,” Curiger stated of her appointment appointment. “This offers the opportunity to reflect on the highly communicative aspect of today’s art, which strongly engages and commits viewers — draughting a contemporary image of the individual in the broad collective and social context.” Biennale president Paolo Baratta praised the curator, saying that she “can boast great experience in research into contemporary art, in its criticism and exhibition, and has matured a profound knowledge and esteem of the world of artists.”

Speaking of Venice, at the “other” biennale in town, the architecture one, the German site Architektureclips scored an on-camera interview with recent Pritzker-winner Kazuyo Sejima about what she has planned for that event (beyond the theme, which we’d reported on a while back).

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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emPhoto courtesy of Jason Cooper, a href=”http://kaboom.org/”www.kaboom.org/a/em/p

pemNext month, a href=”http://www.designinquiry.net/”DesignInquiry/a convenes on the Maine island of Vinalhaven to investigate the topic of JOY. Alex Gilliam reflects on the joys of winter weather as a catalyst for better learning, civic engagement and the design of our cities./em/p

pbr /
‘When it snows, children take over the city: they sleigh, throw snowballs, make snowmen and are more visible than ever. But what a city needs for its children has to be more durable than snow.’/p

pIt is hard not to adore this quote by the architect and playground designer Aldo Van Eyck. Of course there is the simple beauty and wonderment that we all feel when we first poke our head from under the covers, and gaze out the frosty window. But more than this, the first major snowstorms are so utterly magical because they completely reset what was true just a few hours before. Hard becomes soft, what was formerly loud is now a mere murmur, boundaries are erased, wide shrinks to narrow and decades of layered infrastructure, and regulation disappear in just a few short hours. These are some of the few days each year that are universally filled with possibility; where without hesitation you can play in the streets, you can easily reshape the world around you without permission and deeply satisfying challenges abound everywhere./p

pNow that the weather is finally turning pleasant (in Chicago at least), it’s a rather painful proposition to even mention the word, ‘snow’ but consider for a moment how much micro-experimentation, learning and innovation occur on these days; the jury rigged sled, the simple lever you devised for extricating your car from the ditch, the surprisingly tasty meal you were forced to cobble together from all that was left in the cupboard./p

pDon’t forget the collaboration that occurred when crafting that snow fort or digging out the block with neighbors when city services fell by the wayside. With the roads made a little narrower and a degree more uncertain by piles of snow, surely you noticed how much more carefully and, at times, considerately people were driving even when the roads themselves were quite clear. Heck, the driver of a passing car may have even waved./p

pRemember how extra-attuned your muscles and senses were when walking down those icy steps?/p

pPlease tell me you haven’t forgotten your whooping and hollering as you slid down the hill your children dragged you up or the deep contentment you felt while carving out a path to and from your house, despite the cold biting against your face. How about the empowerment and satisfaction you found while carving the shortest path to the store?/p

pNow, consider how very different this experience is from how we typically engage with and participate in making the places we live; how completely opposite this is from the design of our educational system; and how our cities are designed./p

p When surveys, scantron test sheets and powerpoint presentations are the tools of the trade, it’s little wonder that our schools are suffering, public participation in planning processes is minimal at best and the great white hopes of innovation are not big corporations but the garage start-ups that are being fueled by the rise of open source movement, and low-cost rapid prototyping tools (both, virtual snowstorms). When our streets are designed to be as safe and efficient as possible for cars is it really that surprising that their ease of use and the resulting boredom encourages such bad behavior as text messaging or that drivers are surprised by such aberrations as a cyclist?/p

p’Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.’ William Shakespeare/p

pIt should come as no surprise that one of the most difficult, yet compelling lessons from Van Eyck’s snowstorm is the value of making things a little harder, a bit more complicated, a hair more messy and a lot more wondrous……for our own good./pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/events/learn_from_snowstorms_by_alex_gilliam_16554.asp”(more…)/a
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pemGuest post by Zachary Weiss./em/p

pIf there is one thing that should be said for this year’s a href=”http://www.bklyndesigns.com/”BKLYN Designs/a, it’s that the level of craftsmanship, creativity and attention to detail seen throughout was consistently inspiring. Many of the exhibitors showed pieces with unique functional details that underlined the ingenuity that defines American design. /p

pHere are just a few of Core77’s favorite details from BKLYN Designs 2010:/p

pa href=”http://kwhfurniture.com”KWH/a (top) showed a selection of smart furniture from their “Vice” series. The turned brass, single-cigarette ashtray on top of the Cigarette Table tied the collection together by adding a bit of film noir-esque narrative to the set. /p

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pa href=”http://furthurdesign.com”Furthur Design/a, the only exclusively glass exhibitor at the event, demonstrated the skill of their craft with the intricate and delicate lattices seen on their “Hexagon Vases” and “Grid Pendant”. /pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/events/bklyn_designs_its_in_the_details__16539.asp”(more…)/a
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