Hasta La Ideas

The Plan Desk, by London-based industrial designer James Tattersall, provides something most desks don’t: A super-large drawer, nearly the width of the entire desk, capable of holding A1-sized prints. (That’s roughly equivalent to the 22×34-inch size for us Yanks.)

The desk is designed to sit on trestles on either side, meaning you could conceivably swap them out with sawhorses or stands of your own; to get around the lack of side support for the two smaller drawers, Tattersall has them hanging directly from the larger drawer above.

Tattersall, who has a background in cabinetmaking, has s Tumblr that provides some neat (if sparing) shop shots where you can see the Plan Desk in various states of construction.

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The ubiquitous plastic boxes collected by MoMA and preferred by Andy Warhol have made a giant leap—from your desk to your living room. AMAC Plastics recently introduced their first venture into furniture, the AMAC Slot Table. The acrylic side table is inspired by the classic M Series boxes. The Slot Table is designed by Eric Pfeiffer, who also created AMAC’s Rhombins. Pfeiffer’s furniture work ranges from a collection of outdoor furniture for Council to the 2000 MAG Table for DWR. For more history and fun facts about AMAC Plastics, check out the great interview we got at 2011’s International Home and Housewares Show!

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You’ve got your Form Follows Function, but there’s also the more interesting (if less alliterative) Designer Follows Tool. London-based furniture designer Max Lamb discovered a tool set for tapping and threading wood, then set about figuring out what he could use it to make. The result is his Round and Round Table:

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Tesler-Mendelovitch is an emerging “textile design team [who] research and experiment a wide range of materials to create entirely new end stage products for industry and art.” Their latest project, “Diamond Wood,” is a series of tables and stools that are made from a new flexible wood surface. The layered veneer material is “lightweight and sustainable and composed of a thin, flexible, yet strong wood surface component that can be widely adapted to furniture and interior design.”

The result looks something like a magically magnified bangle or jewelry box, thanks partly to their veneers. “By combining natural fibers with traditional craftsmanship and new technology, the team manipulates and blends familiar materials to create the aesthetic of this new series.”

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One of my first tasks as an industrial design intern, nearly twenty years ago, was to archive the draftings coming off of a plotter machine the size of two refrigerators. I’d bring the fresh prints to the File Room, which was filled with flat-file drawers holding draftings that traveled back in time; by rifling through the lower right corners of each page, where the title blocks were, I could drill down and get to decades-old, hand-drafted sheets of old product designs scrawled onto mylar and vellum. As a wide-eyed student I found it fascinating that all of these things were saved, and that in theory, I could take one of these older drawers to a current-day modelmaker or tool-cutter and have them reproduce the object.

Carl Hansen & Son is a Danish furniture outfit that’s over a century old, and they’ve recently done their own version of diggin’ in the crates. In the section of their file room filled with work by Hans J. Wegner, the Danish Modern designer, they found blueprints for a sofe he designed in the mid-’60s. And now, nearly fifty years later, Wegner’s mid-century modern piece is once again rolling off of the assembly line, in two- and three-seat versions named CH162 and CH163.

What’s interesting about this particular sofa is what it’s stuffed with; Wegner chose, of all things, feathers for the original design.

…In 1965 when the original was introduced, feather filled cushions were revolutionary. “The sofa series was originally known as the ‘Down Cushion Sets’, because cushions filled with feathers were an innovation at the time. Wegner chose feather cushions to create a soft and inviting look – a style that broke with the standard practice of using cushions of fixed upholstery.” says Knud Erik Hansen, CEO of Carl Hansen & Son.

The announcement is so new that the sofas are not yet on Carl Hansen & Son’s website, but you can see other Wegner pieces they produce here.

via 3 rings

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