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Urban Recycling realizes a conceptual vision of producing a furniture line for everyday use out of sustainable materials. Its line of tables and chair..

From a Maserati bike to a neighborhood revival project and Yves Klein’s retrospective, the year in color

Color, perhaps the most powerful, immediate and accessible element in a designer or artist’s repertoire, blessed 2010 in abundance from all quarters. With products, fashion, art and social projects all proving that color is a key to unlocking human emotion on a multitude of levels, here are five offerings which had us more than tickled pink this year.

Let’s Colour

One of the most fantastic things about color is its ability to change the feeling of a place or even a viewer—often without anything more than a bucket and paint brush. Dulux’s Let’s Colour project typifies the simple power of a splash of color. Throughout the year volunteers have taken the Let’s Colour project to all corners of the world, helping to brighten up neighborhoods and locations which needed a little lick of paint. Working in collaboration with the locals, Dulux has been able to not only breathe some life into the downtrodden locations but also empower the inhabitants in the process for a truly inspirational venture.

Zweed

Arming the consumer with a little creative power, Zweed produces bespoke furniture which the buyer can spec out themselves, choosing color, shape, material and form. As we enter 2011, Zweed is truly showing how times of economic strife can lead the increased customer satisfaction, product longevity and beautiful pieces of handmade design which carry with them narrative and meaning in their coloring.

Evolving Image

Color can produce a dizzying array of effects and illusions in an architectural space, shown this year in the renovation of the compact CH HQ bathroom. Designed by Evolving Image, two tones of gray, a geometric pattern and a complimentary aqua accent draw the viewer’s attention to the paint job while elongating the small space. The blue-green hue is also a color which will remain fresh and contemporary for a long time, while gray always acts better as a base tone than a purer white if you want to pop an accent.

Montante Maserati 8CTF

This year the cycling world has enthralled and inspired in terms of color use, but it’s hard to find a pursuit which has a better grip on color combinations and selection than the Montante Maserati 8CTF. If you think about the physical constraints of a bicycle, in terms of the actual surface area one has to color, it makes the achievement of creating a mind-blowing color combination—one which is staggering to even the most skilled colorist. Examples of quality coloring on bikes this year are endless but this piece—produced in honor of the Maserati 8CTF winner of the Indy 500—demonstrates a great subtlety of tone played out with gold accents. Deep, luxurious, completely desirable and proof that you don’t have to go chromatic to make a statement.

With the Void, Full Power

No top five of color would be complete without finding some way of mentioning the retrospective of Yves Klein, whose famed International Klein Blue pigment remains the most acute colors seen with the human eye. With the Void, Full Power is still showing and is an absolute must-see. In fact, we recommend everyone at some stage in life gaze in awe at even the smallest pile of the powdery IKB. The glow of this color brings out such a gloriously base emotion that the very thought of it makes me want to weep joyfully in a corner.

IVY is a modular shelving system that grows on your wall according to your lifestyle. It can adapt to your environment and can evolve to live in diffe..

This three-legged wooden chair with adjustable back-rest shaped like an oar is part of a special edition collection designed by Florian Hauswirth of Switzerland.

Above: MWC – Minimal Wood Chair

Called FHNY Collection, the range includes a nutcracker, a set of ceramic vessels with coloured strips at the bases and an oar-shaped wooden scoop.

Hauswirth is part of Swiss design collective Postfossil.

Above: My Wood

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The following information is from Hauswirth:

FHNY Collection: materials, tools and origin

In his work, Swiss Industrial Designer Florian Hauswirth combines traditional forms and crafts with new technologies. The origin and lifecycles of materials as well as the production methods of objects are important to the Wallpaper* Award Winner 2010. The FHNY Collection, a result from Hauswirth’s artist residency from the Bernese Foundation for Applied Arts in New York, contemplates the origin of objects in terms of material, production and place.

Above: Vessel

Through his designs, Hauswirth raises awareness of the materiality and production processes of everyday objects in a time when industrial globalization and modern production/transportation methods have left us with little or no relation to the work and efforts behind a product As an industrial designer and technical model maker Hauswirth knows these processes well and seeks to embody them in his work by creating durable and sustainable objects.

All objects of this limited edition were designed and produced in New York City.

MWC Minimal Wood Chair

A minimalist chair from solid wood, inspired by the experimental “Minimal Chair“ developed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1948. The mechanical-functional finesse of a moveable backrest, implemented in wood only, improves the comfort of this novel small wooden chair. The furniture allows two different seating positions. Another inspiration for the mechanical wooden chair was Shaker furniture. Shakers were ingenious craftspeople who, centuries ago already developed ball joints from solid wood.

Above: Nutool

Nutool

Nutool is an aluminum nutcracker, an accessory with a tool character. Products exist to serve as a tool to ease our everyday life. The cracking of a nut is something essential – the natural transport- and wrapping-shell of a fruit is being opened. Nutool is best used at the end of a day, with a fresh piece of bread and a glass of wine.

My Wood

The wood used for this scoop derives from a plum tree that grew next to the house where the designer was raised. Nutrition and cooking were very important in the bringing up of Florian Hauswirth and still are today. Not only should we strive for local and organic foods, our everyday objects should live up to the same sustainable expectations.

Vessel (three ceramic vessels)

The ceramics collection plays with the physical relation between fluidity and form. As vessels swim in the glaze, they are being marked – an inversion of the inside and the outside. Through this marking, the production process becomes apparent on the product. Through different prototypes, industrially appearing ceramics were created.

See also:

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Doublefacette by Florian Hauswirth	Assemblage 1 by Toogood	Furniture by Postfossil

Something a bit seasonal: designer Rolf Sachs has fused two sledges together to make a coffee table.

Called Inserper-able, the design is made of ash by a Swiss sled-maker in an edition of twelve.

See all our stories about Rolf Sachs »

Here’s some more information from Sachs:

Inserper-able by Rolf Sachs

‘inseper-able’ 2010

Two classic ‘Davoser’ ash hardwood sleds are fused together like an ‘inseparable’ couple to create a surreal and sculptural coffee table/bench, which takes your memory back to playful days in the snow.

The ‘inseparable’ is produced by the renowned Swiss sled and luge-maker, Graf Schlitten in Sulgen, using the traditional wood bending technique.

Sofa table
Material: Ash wood, felt
H26cm x W160cm x D50cm
Edition of 12

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Alone in a Crowd by Rolf Sachs	Fortis IQ watch by Rolf Sachs	Take2 by Rolf Sachs