Hasta La Ideas

Illustrations celebrate cycling in an East London cafe

Teaming up with Hackney GT, architect-turned-illustrator Eliza Southwood has outfitted Wilton Way Café with a host of bicycle-inspired drawings, prints and ephemera for a new exhibition celebrating cycle culture and sport. The London-based artist’s vibrant retro aesthetic sets the tone for a quick look at the history of cycling, which includes old-school posters and an original “Opperman” BSA racing fixie suspended from the ceiling, a model used during the pivotal 1931 race from John O’Groats to Land’s End.

Fascinated with Major Taylor, an early pioneer of American cycling, Southwood recently created a series depicting the Civil War-era champion in various racing moments, including a notorious one-mile championship in 1899 where he competed against rival Tom Butler.

Southwood’s cheerful color palette smartly balances such historically intense moments in cycling, but her trained eye for technical drawing keeps each portrait from feeling inappropriately animated.

Home to London Fields Radio and the maker of one of Hackney’s meanest coffees around (with beans from local roasters like Climpson & Sons), Wilton Way Cafe is an ideal spot take in Southwood’s cycle-inspired illustrations, which will be on view throughout August 2012.

Images by Karen Day and Andrea DiCenzo

Dezeen Wire: Venetian designer Luca Nichetto is to create an installation representing his ideal home for the Das Haus installation at trade fair imm cologne in January.

The first Das Haus was created by London designers Doshi Levien for this year’s event and you can see what they came up with in our earlier story.

The next imm cologne takes place from 14 to 20 January 2013.

See all our stories about Luca Nichetto »
See all our coverage of this year’s imm cologne »

Here’s some more information from the organisers:

After its successful premiere in 2012, “Das Haus – Interiors on Stage” is set to continue at the imm cologne 2013. In Luca Nichetto’s “Haus”, everything revolves around a centrally located living room that is intended to become the centre of a sustainable way of living that integrates nature.

The premiere of the new design installation format at the imm cologne was a huge success for both the trade fair and the designers. As guests of honour, designer couple Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien had the unique opportunity to blaze a trail for the future development of the series with their interpretation of this innovative new assignment. And that is precisely what they did: in their hands, “Das Haus – Interiors on Stage” became a crowd-puller that fully justified its location in the midst of Pure Village, the trade fair’s lively forum for interior design. In particular, the new conceptual approach of adopting a less abstract stance than previous formats and instead aiming to furnish the artificial architectural framework in lifelike fashion was welcomed across the board.

“Of course ‘Das Haus’ is about tendencies in current product and interior design as well,” says the imm cologne’s Creative Director Dick Spierenburg, summing up the public interest in a nutshell, “but what really makes this format so interesting for visitors and the public is that it is filtered through the personality of the guest designer.”

This time round, the guest designer is from Venice: Luca Nichetto, who comes from the famous island of Murano and has been strongly influenced by the glasswork of its craftsmen, sees himself as an autodidact. He is famous for doing things his own way. And so he has remained loyal to Veneto and the region’s infrastructure of design producers and subcontractors, a network that is rapidly gaining international significance. In 2006 he founded his own design studio in Venice’s Mestre Harbour, opening a second studio in Stockholm in 2011. His company develops designs for everything from sofas, chairs, office furniture, lamps and carpets all the way to glasses, vases and kitchen accessories. He is widely regarded as one of the most sought-after young designers in Italy and collaborates with a multitude of international brands, including Bosa, Casamania, Cassina, De Padova, Established & Sons, Foscarini, Fratelli Guzzini, Glass, Globo, Italesse, Kristalia, La Chance, MG Lab, Moroso, Offecct, Salviati, Skitsch and Tacchini. It is, he says, his experiences with the design culture that permeates everyday life in Sweden that motivate him to combine the modern, functional and democratic design philosophy of Scandinavia with the emotional, flamboyant tradition of Italy, which is geared towards craftsmanship just as much as it is towards speed. As in 2012, the imm cologne has thus selected a representative of the younger generation of designers who nevertheless has sufficient experience to largely furnish even an extensive living space installation like “Das Haus” with his own products.

With his plans for “Das Haus”, Luca Nichetto wants to pursue his growing interest in sustainable design. What particularly appeals to him about the project is the possibility of conducting a holistic experiment that goes far beyond the scope of pure product design. “Nature is often regarded as a combination of different elements located outside. Occasionally nature is there just to accomplish decorative functions, thus losing its vital essence and characteristics. When I think about the development of our contemporary human lifestyle, keeping in mind the objects I’ve designed, I imagine a house with a central ‘living room’ like a beating heart,” reveals Nichetto. He compares “Das Haus” with a small planet where the living room becomes as important as the Amazon Rainforest is for the earth: “A green lung that helps us live”. His “Haus” will thus become a study of the relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm – an idea that draws its inspiration from a short film by Ray and Charles Eames entitled “Powers of 10”. “All the rooms will be linked to this ‘Green Heart’, which will transform my house into a totally eco-friendly container, with natural features incorporated into the high standard of living that ‘Das Haus’ provides for its inhabitants.”

At the next imm cologne in January 2013 Pure Village, where “Das Haus” is located, will be changing floors and moving to Hall 3.1, along with the D3 Design talents exhibition and the lecture forum “The Stage”. Pure Village was launched in 2010 as a conceptual and spatial extension of the Pure segment. With its systematically planned trade fair architecture and extended interior design offering, it has proved an ideal addition to the large-scale brand presentations in Hall 11. Under the title Pure, the imm cologne brings together presentations by brand-name manufacturers from a wide variety of segments who feel a special commitment to design. Anybody who wants to get an idea of the latest original interior design ideas and avant-garde designs from the wide spectrum on offer at the imm cologne will find what he is looking for here. The great demand for premium exhibition space calls for targeted expansion of the Pure format. The imm cologne 2013 will therefore see the addition of a third Pure element: Pure Editions, a platform for creative brands with visionary products and product concepts.
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Interieur Foundation is a non-profit association acting in the field of
design, product development and innovation. In 1967, the founder
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Attendance won’t be spotty for the Yayoi Kusama retrospective, which opens today at the Whitney Museum following a Tuesday evening fete that abounded with polka dots, disembodied tentacles, and enough red mylar balloons to send the diminutive artist herself aloft (alas, she was not in attendance). “She might be a small woman, but she’s one hell of a powerful one,” said Whitney Museum director Adam Weinberg at a press preview for the exhibition, which was organized with Tate Modern and made previous stops in Madrid, Paris, and London. “This historic retrospective brings her back to the city where, as she said, ‘Kusama has become Kusama.’ Some of the most important developments in her life and work happened here.”

The Whitney installation, overseen by curator David Kiehl, unfolds chronologically over a series of rooms devoted to her distinct artistic phases, including early paintings, sculptural installations, and a group of collages from the 1970s that evoke the work of an undersea Joseph Cornell and Max Ernst on the moon. And don’t be put off by the line to spend a minute alone inside Kusama’s “Fireflies on the Water” (2002), a darkened dazzle chamber that is installed on the museum’s lobby level. While you wait, transform your favorite photos into constellations of dots or waves with the Louis Vuitton Kusama Studio app (a free iTunes download). The fashion house, a major sponsor of the Whitney exhibition, is further fueling Kusama-mania with a limited-edition range of accessories and apparel covered in the artist’s signature spots. But do avoid the pieces that mix red-and-white dots with black, lest you resemble another plucky octogenarian. “Reminds me of Minnie Mouse,” commented one shopper at the Louis Vuitton flagship on 57th Street, which earlier this week unveiled windows devoted to the work of Kusama.

(Photo at top courtesy Yayoi Kusama Studio, Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro Gallery, and Gagosian Gallery; inset photo courtesy Louis Vuitton)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Summer Olympics aren’t the only reason to visit London this month: The Barbican is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of James Bond with Designing 007, “a unique exhibition showcasing the inside story of the design and style of the world’s most influential and iconic movie brand.”

In collaboration with EON Productions and with unprecedented access to their archives, Designing 007 will be a multi-sensory experience, immersing audiences in the creation and development of Bond style over its auspicious 50 year history.

It will explore the craft behind the screen icons, the secret service and villains, tailoring and costumes, set and production design, automobiles, gadgets and special effects, graphic design and motion graphics, exotic locations, stunts and props.

Highlights include gadgets and weapons made for Bond and his notorious adversaries by special effects experts John Stears and Chris Corbould, along with artwork for sets and storyboards by production designers Sir Ken Adam, Peter Lamont and Syd Cain, and costume designs by Bumble Dawson, Donfeld, Julie Harris, Lindy Hemming, Ronald Patterson, Emma Porteous, and Jany Temime.

Those of us who can’t make it across the pond might have to settle for this tantalizing promo video:

But wait, there’s more: only half the exhibition is dedicated to design; the other half will focus on fashion, from Savile Row to saving the world:

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