Hasta La Ideas

Berlin-based Danish architect Sigurd Larsen has designed a collection of tables and benches with surfaces made from materials chosen to age well (+ slideshow).

Sigurd Larsen based the furniture on a standard square section steel frame, with oak, leather, copper and concrete used for the surfaces that the body comes into contact with.

“The furniture appears thin and light in order to put the horizontal surfaces with their special attributes into focus,” Larsen told Dezeen.

“I have always been very excited about materials that gain a higher quality the more you use them,” he added. “I hope that this ‘positive development’ over time will inspire people to keep and maintain their possessions longer instead of replacing them time after time.”

The Melbourne Project bench is available with a copper or steel table adjoining the leather surface, as a daybed or with an oak back rest. Tables come in dining and coffee table dimensions.

The furniture will be exhibited for four weeks from 1 September at the MINI Paceman store in Melbourne, Australia.

We recently published a coffee table with a narrow mouth that swallows books and magazines and another table made using similar techniques to surfboard manufacture.

Photography is by Georg Roske.

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Sigurd Larsen appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: this wooden sideboard by Mexican designer Hector Esrawe is intended to reference the way raw materials are stored in piles.

Stack Buffet by Hector Esrawe is a long black-lacquered sideboard that can be built from either walnut or ash.

Two drawers are contained at one end, inside what appears to be an irregular stack of wooden panels. The other end is an open space for displaying larger objects.

Two criss-crossing pieces of wood are fixed to the base to provide the feet.

Hector Esrawe, who leads Esrawe Studio, previously collaborated with Mexican studio Rojkind Arquitectos to design a Japanese restaurant in Mexico City.

Other sideboards we’ve featured include a television cabinet with perforated doors and a collection of sideboards carved with geometric patterns.

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Hector Esrawe appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: this wooden coffee table by Canadian designer Loïc Bard has a gaping mouth for swallowing narrow books and magazines.

Tokyo Table features a distorted circular tabletop that houses the magazine compartment within one end. It is built from bleached maple and it stands on three rounded legs.

Designer Loïc Bard said he created the table during a winter in Montreal and was inspired by childhood memories of a trip to Japan: “I designed this coffee table while remembering the sober atmosphere, the simplicity of the utensils and the rustic environment of the tea ceremony.”

“It focuses on a simple aesthetic and the discreet compartment is ideal for hiding books, laptops, magazines and newspapers entirely out of sight,” he added.

Other tables featured on Dezeen include one shaped like a surfboard, a set with noughts and crosses between their legs and another designed to let you eat your dinner directly off the tabletop. See more tables »

Photography is by Andy Long Hoang.

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by Loïc Bard appeared first on Dezeen.

These wooden shelving units and tables have been designed by South Korean designer Lee Sanghyeok to look like scaffolding (+ slideshow).

The Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) furniture range by Lee Sanghyeok includes two shelving units and two tables of different sizes.

The lightweight wooden furniture features a similar criss-crossing structure as building scaffolding and is fixed together with polished brass joints.

Sanghyeok claims that scaffolding can be seen as a metaphor for a designer who, like himself, lives and who works in a foreign country. “Scaffolding is is always passed by, constructed and moved away without much attention, but is still a necessary element in construction sites,” he said.

The Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) project was first exhibited at Nomadismi at Gallery Altai, Milan earlier this year.

Sanghyeok Lee studied at Design Academy Eindhoven and now runs his own studio in Berlin, Germany. His past projects include a table where closing one drawer causes another to shoot out at random, which won second prize at the [D3] Contest at imm cologne in 2012.

Other furniture we’ve featured on Dezeen recently includes an expanding shelving unit by Stephanie Hornig that can bunch up or stretch out depending on available space, storage units made with textile skins by Meike Harde and furniture by Emiel Remmelts that require concrete blocks, bricks and magazine file boxes to prop up one end.

See more shelving on Dezeen »
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Photography by Jaeuk Lee, courtesy of Lee Sanghyeok.

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by Lee Sanghyeok appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: Danish furniture brand Howe has relaunched Arne Jacobsen’s classic Tongue chair, which was designed in 1955.

Howe has replicated the exact appearance of the original design and reproduced it using contemporary manufacturing techniques to address stability and durability concerns.

Jacobsen designed the chair for the Munkegård School in his native Denmark, but it was not produced commercially until the late 1980s and was withdrawn after just a few years.

Tongue was the second chair designed by Jacobsen, shortly after his famous Ant chair, but it never achieved the same widespread distribution as many of his other furniture designs.

It was used in the rooms of Jacobsen’s famous SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, for which a modified bar stool version was also produced.

The relaunched Tongue chair is available in several veneers or with fabric or leather upholstery. Legs are chrome or powder-coated steel.

Last summer, Arne Jacobsen’s iconic Ant chair was reinterpreted by designers and artists including Paul Smith, Quentin Blake, Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen and Tracey Emin and the results auctioned to raise money for Jamie Oliver’s Better Food Foundation. Paul Smith has also reworked Jacobsen’s Cylinda Line coffee pots, adding signature brightly-coloured handles.

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Here’s some more information from Howe:

We fell truly, madly in love with the Tongue chair

The company struck by love is HOWE a/s, who relaunched the cutely named chair at this year’s fair in Milan. The Tongue was designed in 1955 by the renowned Arne Jacobsen, but it has not been in production for several years. Now HOWE a/s can proudly say that a Danish design classic has returned.

Arne Jacobsen is one of the most famous and most loveable Danish architects and designers. Known for marvellous architectural works, legendary furniture designs, and versatile industrial designs, Arne Jacobsen has truly left his mark on the international world of design and architecture.

The Tongue chair is a classic Arne Jacobsen design. It has the immediately recognisable characteristics of the organic wave-form in the seat; complemented with highly sculptural, splayed legs. And with the addition of modern construction techniques for additional strength, HOWE has ensured that the chair keeps its lovely curved, sculptural form perfectly in place.

The Tongue chair is available in beech, oak and walnut veneers as well as in stained veneer in black, white and teak. The Tongue is also available in full upholstery in both fabrics and leather – the colour palette ranges from light pink to cognac. The legs come in chrome or in black or white powder coating. The price begins at €486.

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relaunched by Howe appeared first on Dezeen.