Hasta La Ideas

(Photos: Prada)

Multi-dimensional event spaces grow up so fast these days. It seems like only yesterday we were welcoming the Prada Transformer into the world, nestled beside a 16th-century palace in Seoul, and now it’s time to bid the Rem Koolhaas/Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)-designed structure a fond farewell. Yesterday, the Transformer made its final flip, rotated by crains onto its circular base to host today’s “Student Takeover.” The program showcases and celebrates the transformation-themed design ideas and artwork of Korean students.

On the luxe leather heels of the fashion exhibition, film festival, and art installation hosted by the Transformer over the past five months, the student program is an effort to engage with the host city by making the structure “a place for debate and open-minded discussion; inviting innovative students to communicate ideas freely and contemplate the future of art, design, and the society in which it exists,” according to a Prada spokesperson. The work exhibited was created by 130 Korean art, design, and architecture students. They spent two weeks in a workshop-style environment led by OMA’s Alexander Reichert, design architect on the Transformer project, hatching the products of their takeover, from redesigned Prada Transformer flyers, pins, and t-shirts to plans for overhauling the architecture. By day’s end, the structure is expected to have been painted on, wallpapered, covered in graffiti, and torn apart—just enough “to create a new spatiality that engages with the students’ content” and serve as the venue for a final, blow-out party.

Previously on UnBeige:

Returning to New York after last year’s success, we caught up with gadget blog Gizmodo editor and tech junkie Brian Lam for a personal tour of the Gizmodo Gallery. Packed with DIY interactive creations, vintage gadgets, weird and expensive devices, a huge tv, and an automatic pancake making machine (awesome), the highlight for us was Austin band ArcAttack and their daily performances with sound producing telsa coils.

Part educational and part nostalgic, the exhibition was mostly about hands-on entertainment and an opportunity to geek out over some seriously cool gadgets. We got to play with o2 creative solutions’ Sketch-3D, a giant Etch-A-Sketch that can draw in 3D using a Wii-like controller to navigate, and amongst some of the guest-curated items lent for the show was Apple’s Original iPhone prototype, 1983, from Hartmut Esslinger, founder of frog design.

Click though for more pics and check Core77’s full photo gallery here.

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Okay Studio and friends showed new work at the Mother London foyer. In the video above are Oscar Narud’s Heal Table, Raw Edges’ Revolting Trees, Ed Swan’s Marmoreus Light and Hiroko Shiratori’s first prototype of a folding chair. Below Tomasalonso’s table light from his Mr. Light series, Ed Swan demonstrating how his Marmoreus Light works and opening guests sitting on Andrew Haythornthwaite’s and Jordi Canudas’ big sausage made from paper waste.

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Push Nokia N900 from Core77 on Vimeo.

During the London Design Festival last week, Nokia and Tinker.it were presenting – as we announced previously – the BriefBot for their PUSH hacking competition for the Nokia N900 device, on the site of Designersblock. Using Arduino the tinker guys have converted a rollodex and a picture viewer into interfaces for the Linux based Nokia handheld. Watch this video to see how it works and get inspired – the deadline for handing in concepts is 12.10. The designers of the chosen entries will be equipped with a brand new N900 to be able to happily “hack away”.

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Moleskine myDetour is an international project that encourages creative thinkers to sketch, write and draw in their Moleskines, sharing their creations with other enthusiasts around the world. In partnership with 826 Valencia, myDetour is currently stopped at 7 locations in San Francisco, where it will remain for one more week. The show has made previous stops in New York, Paris, Berlin, Milan and Istanbul (which we covered here), and will continue on to Tokyo, Japan. Stop by to see 50 one-of-a-kind notebooks from thinkers, writers, photographers, artists and designers from all of these stops.

Until it closes, myDetour will be accepting submissions of Moleskin creations around the theme “District of You,” a tribute to familiar and extraordinary places in the San Francisco Bay area. After October 1st, all submitted notebooks will be juried and the top 10 notebooks will be selected for the International myDetour archive, traveling to all additional locations around the globe. In addition, the jury will choose one outstanding notebook to be featured, along with its author, at the next installation of myDetour in 2010.

The judges are Michael Carbatta, Creative Director, Chronicle Books; Marco Beghin, President, Moleskine America; Yves Behar, founder, fuseproject; and Leigh Lehman, co-founder and Executive Director, 826 Valencia.

Find myDetour San Francisco at:
Blick Art Materials: 1414 Van Ness Avenue
Borders Bookstore: 400 Powell St.
Chronicle Books: 680 Second St.
Flax Art & Design: 1699 Market St.
S.F. State University Bookstore: 1650 Holloway Ave.
Utrecht Art Supplies: 1930 Van Ness Ave.
Stanford University Bookstore: 519 Lausen Mall, Stanford, CA.

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