Video Sells it: Folditure’s Crazy Fold-Flat Leaf Chair

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At what point are you willing to sacrifice aesthetics for functionality? It’s a question all of us need to answer for ourselves, as that intersection point between pure desire and pure need is too individual for any designer to map universally.

As a personal example, I find the aesthetics of Folditure’s Leaf Chair, which we got a glimpse of back in June, a bit jarring. But as soon as I saw the video of how it worked, I got turned around on it:

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He Mu and Zhang Qian’s Sunflower Chair

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Ergonomic? No. Easy to scan for books? No. Comfortable to sit in? Doesn’t look it. Yet there’s something about the Sunflower Chair, where I know I should write it off but I can’t help feel there’s something to it, maybe in a 2.0 or 3.0 version down the line.

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The chair was part of the “Design for Sitting” Grand Prix competition and exhibition held in Guangzhou, China earlier this year.

Designed by designer He Mu and Zhang Qian from Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Sunflower Chair has won “Redtory Design Award” for the 5th “Design for Sitting” Grand Prix. Experts in the jury all agreed that the chair satisfied the very thing intention of sitting—reading, which meets the theme “sitting and other behaviors” quite well.

Many of us outside of China may never have heard of Redtory nor their award, so here’s a little background: Based in both Guangzhou and Beijing, Redtory is an organization promoting homegrown art and design that backs galleries, shops and exhibitions. They also hold seminars with titles like “The Future of China Design”, aiming “to recollect the achievements of [Chinese] design, encourage creativity and more possibilities of design, explore the development of a new decade, as well as give an impetus to a long-term development of [original Chinese] design.”

We like the idea that organizations like this are popping up in China, and you can keep abreast of what Redtory’s up to here (though the English translations on their site are occasionally challenging to decipher). And you can see several dozen other chairs from the Grand Prix here. I gotta say the Sunflower is the standout.

See also: Nobody&Co.’s Bibliochaise; Ifsodoso’s infamous Long Form Library

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The Roulade, KiBiSi’s New Couch-Chair

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KiBiSi has been KiBusy—I feel like they just wrapped on AIAIAI’s Capital headphones, but now they’re back in the design news with a fresh piece of furniture. Remember their sandbag-like Brick couch for Versus, below?

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The Scandinavian trio has now followed up with a new family member called Roulade:

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Andrew Thomson’s Geodesic Pendant Lamp 2.0 and More

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A CNC machine, a thin sheet of what looks like birch ply and “100 or so rivets later” Andrew Thomson had the geodesic pendant lamp you see above. Thomson’s an avowed Bucky Fuller fan; when last we looked in on him, he was turning old Coroplast electioneering signs into a geodesic precursor for the lamp you see above.

Thomson, by the way, is one of my favorite types of ID’ers: the unsung workaday guys who aren’t looking to be the toast of Milan but are instead steadily developing their books and their skills in local applications. On his blog, Alabama-based Thomson documents projects he and his buddy Jared* have pulled, like turning wood from a local barn into a bed that looks better’n what you’d find in West Elm, and producing tables, benches and counters for local restaurants.

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Modular Stacking Shelves: Examples of Designers Doing the Same Thing, Differently

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It drives me nuts when laypeople do not understand the variability possible in industrial design—for example, those folks who feeel the iPhone is the only possible form factor for a smartphone and that therefore Samsung is in the clear. Apple reduced the shape to a minimalist rectangle, but the thing designers understand—that laypeople don’t—is that even within those boundaries, there is a world of room for design and design innovation.

Until a competing smartphone designer comes along to demonstrate this, here’s a somewhat broader example. Lately we’ve seen a multitude of variations on the idea of modular shelving. Up top you see takes on this by Ismail Ozalbayrak, Juan Pablo Quintero and Antxon Salvador. If I showed a layperson, say, Salvador’s version, which is probably the most basic in the way the iPhone is, they’d probably have a hard time imagining any other way to do modular stacking shelves. But as you can see, up above are three different ways.

And here’s a fourth, called the Unit Library and designed by Tel Aviv/Paris-based Itamar Burstein:

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Studio Gorm’s Wood Peg System: Furniture that Hangs Around

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Somewhat ironic given their name, but the Shakers never had to deal with subways rattling their walls, and their system of hanging chairs on wall-mounted pegs served them well. Netherlands-founded, Eugene, OR-based Studio Gorm (remember their Flow Kitchen?) takes that idea further with their Wood Peg furniture line, a series of benches, stools and tables that all break down flat and can be stored on a rail on the wall.

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The components are interchangeable, and we know this will scandalize you Ikea fans but there’s no Allen keys required; everything goes together and comes apart by hand.

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Diogo Frias – "Andy" for WeWood

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Looks cool, but what does it actually do?

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London Design Week 2012 Preview: "Holdfast" by Sam Weller

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Although design students are often encouraged to seek inspiration in unlikely places, designers are just as likely to find a muse in everyday experience. For example, we’ve seen several examples of how, say, the lowly clamp can be elevated beyond its prescribed utility into a one-size-fits-all set of table legs, a clever shelf or even a backlit homage.

In fact, it turns out that one of the designers behind one of these variations on the theme just can’t get enough of the humble hardware: as with a previous project, Sam Weller‘s latest project starts with the clamp, arriving at a very different result. Where “Public Resonance” was a highly conceptual public art piece, “Holdfast” (not to be confused with these) is an investigation into minimalist furniture design.

Holdfast began with the exploration of clamps and their infinite possibilities as both a tool as well as joining device.

The clamp elements that hold this range of furniture together are very simple in form and were based on the holdfast clamping system typically used for holding material to the surface of a workbench. The components are manufactured using a computer controlled wire bending device. The components are then inserted into a through hole and wedged under the material they are supporting, creating tension in the vertical leg and in turn creating a strong stiff supporting structure for shelves as well as side tables, stools and other occasional home furnishings.

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Although the legs vaguely resemble Linie58’s bent-wire clamp legs, “Holdfast” struts are fixed to the surfaces. Yet they’re semi-modular in that the legs take only one V-shaped form, which is arranged to support a shelf or triangular side table.

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As always, Weller’s got a beautifully-produced video to accompany the images:

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Barkschat, Blumel and Arnold’s 63 Grad Fold-Flat Bench

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63 Grad (“63 Degrees”) is the name of this folding bench done by Angelina Barkschat, Finn Blumel and Severin Arnold, all students at Germany’s Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design.

It’s not clear if it’s meant to be used indoors or out; that many feet would probably present a problem on grass or dirt, but placing the bench on a finished surface would probably de-lam the plywood on the angled feet. In any case I’m intrigued by the fabric hinges, and I love the fold-flat design.

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Information on the project is light, and any web presence of the design students responsible appears to be nonexistent. Barkschat, Blumel, and/or Arnold, drop us a line (at mail [at] core77.com) if you’re reading this! We’d love to hear more.

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Knowhow Shop’s Mutant Hammock

knowhowshop-hammock2.jpgClosing the gap. Photo by: Dru Korab

Last May, Los Angeles-based co-op fabrication shop, Knowhow Shop, revved up my summer dreaming by creating a six-sided hammock at Bergamot Station’s People’s Park, a small patch of green space surrounded by concrete parking in Santa Monica. Now, they were kind enough to clue me in on how their fun, experimental workshop all turned out.

Produced by the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMoA), the community workshop attracted about fifty people all ready to put their knotting skills to work. Though Knowhow Shop built a smaller model (which you can see in this previous Core77 post), the actual version was larger and took two hours longer than their expected three-hour workshop. “The workshop was from 2-5PM and we stayed until 7PM or so to put the finishing touches on it,” said Kagan Taylor of Knowhow Shop, “but it was done enough for everyone to relax on it by the end.”

Knowhow Shop shared this video of the day’s goings-on and I was struck by the amount of thoughtful preparation team went through. They had prepared extra-large lasercut shuttles that included pictographs of knots to help attendees remember that knots they had just practiced.

Not only did attendees learn about knots, they actually got to create one full-scale project that literally brought them closer together. As the video progresses, you can see the wide maw of the six-sided hammock dwindle into a tiny hole that surrounded all the workshoppers. That’s bonding if ever I saw it. A hot knife purchased from Eagle Rock rope supplier Frank Ferris and Co. finishes off the piece and ensures no loose ends.

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