Hasta La Ideas

Designer Roger Arquer explains why emotion is the guiding force behind his practice, which includes lampshades that work with condensation and experimental fish tanks, in this next movie filmed at our Designed in Hackney Day.

Above: Birdland birdhouses

In the movie, Roger Arquer introduces his studio, which he set up after completing his Design Products MA at the Royal College of Art.

Above: Non-lethal Mousetraps

The three pillars of his practice are function, beauty and emotion, he explains. “Emotion is probably the most important; something that moves you inside and tickles your soul. I would like to think that in the future, design thinking is going to be called emotionalism.”

Above: Fishtanks

He introduces his trilogy of work about animals, which included a collection of bird houses based around one simple shape and a series of non-lethal mousetraps, which catch the animal inside everyday objects like pint glasses.

Above: the painting that Arquer says “triggered” his work on variations

Arquer also made a collection of fish tanks that ask questions about the relationships between animals. “This one talks about two different fish living in the same space but still separately,” he explains with reference to one of the tanks (pictured in this post). “The small one can go into the big place, but the big fish can’t go into the small place.”

Above: Dramprom condensation lampshade

He also mentions a painting done by a friend of his depicting variations on a circle, which he describes as a “trigger” for his own projects.

Above: Sputnik stool

One example of emotion in Arquer’s work is the Dramprom glass lamp, where a light bulb rests in an indentation in a glass jar, inside which is a small amount of water. “The heat of the light bulb creates condensation inside, so it makes its own lampshade, and it makes this emotional factor that I always look for in every project,” the designer explains.

Above: Funnel Friends kitchen equipment

He then introduces a stool that uses just one metal rod to clamp its legs together and a family of funnels for use in the kitchen, which won him a Red Dot Award.

Above: Funnel Friends kitchen equipment

Next is a ceramic lamp that doubles as a flower vase and switches on and off when the flowers are touched.

Above: Touch ceramic lamp and vase

Finally he introduces a stool and chair made for his daughter’s first birthday, which he describes as “half readymade”. “I used cooking spoons for the spindles and rolling pins for the legs, and a pastry brush for the little stool. I wanted to bring this emotional bit into the furniture,” he says.

Above: prototypes of the Touch vase

Last year Roger Arquer contributed a wooden bench to the Dezeen-curated Stepney Green Design Collection – see all our stories about Roger Arquer.

Above: the stool and chair Arquer made for his daughter

Dezeen launched its Designed in Hackney initiative to highlight the best architecture and design made in the borough, which was one of the five host boroughs for the London 2012 Olympic Games as well as being home to Dezeen’s offices.

Watch more movies from our Designed in Hackney Day or see more stories about design and architecture from Hackney.

The post “In the future, design thinking is going to be
called emotionalism” – Roger Arquer appeared first on Dezeen.

A wall of digital animals that distract children on their way to surgery is one of the interactive installations presented by designer Jason Bruges in this movie we filmed at our Designed in Hackney Day.

Above: digital wallpaper at Great Ormond Street Hospital

In the movie, Jason Bruges shows 20 short movie clips of his studio’s installations and experiments as part of the Pecha Kucha event during our Designed in Hackney Day last summer.

Above: a hotel lobby with colour-changing walls

Among them is a project for Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, which saw the studio install a digital wallpaper along a corridor.

“The whole rationale behind the piece is to distract children on their way to surgery,” explains Bruges. “We’ve created this sort of half-tone forest in which digital animals appear and disappear as you’re wheeled through en route to surgery.”

Above: light installation at Tate Britain

“We’re a studio that crosses the boundaries of art, architecture and interaction design,” he adds.

Above: kinetic installation for More4 ident

He then introduces a hotel lobby in Madrid with interactive walls of dots that change colour with every visit, and an installation of thin, wobbly lights in the Tate Britain art gallery in London.

The studio has also worked on projects with television companies, creating imaginary radio studios for a BBC ident and installations of flapping squares for TV channel More4.

Above: micro wind turbines on London’s South Bank

A project about “energy-scavenging” on the roof of Queen Elizabeth Hall saw hundreds of tiny turbines converting wind energy into a field of light.

The studio installed a track in the Olympic Park where visitors can race 100 metres against a light representing sprinter Usain Bolt, while elsewhere in the park the studio created mechatronic bubbles for Coca-Cola.

Above: mechatronic bubbles for Coca-Cola

There’s also a piece for a Richard Rogers-designed building in Soho. “It’s a lift that remembers all the movements it’s made during the day and plays them back at night as a performance,” explains Bruges, “so it fills the time from dusk to midnight with this symphony of light, which is hacked into the lift’s control system.”

“None of these pieces would be anything without the people who actually interact with them,” he concludes.

Above: lights on a Soho building show the movements of the lift inside

We’ve featured a few projects by Jason Bruges on Dezeen, including a lighting mobile that moves around to map its surroundings and an installation of light panels that open and close like flowers – see all our stories about Jason Bruges Studio.

Designed in Hackney is a project by Dezeen to highlight the best architecture and design made in the borough, which was one of the five host boroughs for the London 2012 Olympic Games as well as being home to Dezeen’s offices.

Watch more movies from our Designed in Hackney Day or see more stories about design and architecture from Hackney.

The post “The pieces wouldn’t be anything without the
people who interact with them” – Jason Bruges appeared first on Dezeen.

In this movie we filmed at our Designed in Hackney Day, design duo Something & Son talk about keeping chickens in east London buildings and making tea with heat from compost heaps.

Above: the CAR:park project took the roof off a car and filled it with plants

In the movie, Something & Son present a selection of their projects at the Pecha Kucha event at our Designed in Hackney Day in August, telling the audience about their ongoing investigation into urban agriculture and the relationship between nature and cities.

Above: homes for migrating swifts

Designer Andrew Merritt begins by introducing CAR:park, a project that explored “how the city would be if cars no longer existed” by rescuing a car that was due to be scrapped, removing its roof and filling it with plants and a pond.

Above: the FARM:shop project to grow fish, chickens and vegetables in the city

The pair also created homes for migrating swifts inside a huge raised circle designed to look like the setting sun. “The colour layout helps them find their homes, because they’ve got high spectrum vision,” Merritt explains.

Above: FARM:shop

The FARM:shop project saw them take over an empty building in east London to create an urban farm, with vegetables and plants growing indoors alongside tanks of fish, while chickens were kept on the roof. “We’re going through a big learning journey around how you can grow food in the city and how can you create a sustainable business model to sell that food,” says Paul Smyth, the other half of the duo.

Above: FARM:shop project

“Through that we met loads of people who are also passionate about growing food, and we got into a geeky zone of really trying to understand it and work on it,” he added.

Above: the Rotten Compost Tea Bar serving tea brewed with heat from compost

They also set up the Rotten Compost Tea Bar at the V&A museum in London, brewing tea with heat from a compost heap and serving it in test tubes. “By wrapping a heat exchange through the compost heap you can get temperatures up to 40, 50 or 60 degrees even, if you get it just right,” says Smyth.

Above: the Rotten Compost Tea Bar

In Korea they learned about aeroponics, a cultivation system that feeds plants by misting them from underneath. “We designed a building, or structure, that you walk into from underneath, and you come into this cave-like structure with the roots hanging above your head,” Merritt explains.

Above: a 3D printed lamp homemade with glue guns and sand

They also attempted their own homemade version of 3D printing, using glue guns and sand to painstakingly create a lamp from separate layers of glue. “There’s a certain amount of trial and error,” Merritt admits.

Above: a community project representing local people with trees

A project in north London saw the pair working with local people to create a diagram of social capital, in which one tree represents each participant. Trees with many branches indicate those who have the most connections with their neighbours, while tall trees show the people who’ve lived in the area the longest.

Above: drawings for Barking Bathhouse

Finally they introduce Barking Bathhouse, a temporary spa in east London which contains a series of treatment rooms, including a sauna and a cool room filled with dry ice. “It’s our first bit of actual architecture,” says Merritt.

Above: Barking Bathhouse

Designed in Hackney is a Dezeen initiative to show off the best architecture and design created in the borough, which was one of the five host boroughs for the London 2012 Olympic Games as well as being home to Dezeen’s offices.

Above: Barking Bathhouse

Watch more movies from our Designed in Hackney Day or see more stories about design and architecture from Hackney.

The post “We got into a geeky zone trying to understand urban agriculture” – Something & Son appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: different modular elements stack up to make these pendant lamps by Croatian design studio Grupa (+ movie).

The mix and match lamps by Grupa are called ILI-ILI, which means “either-or”.

There are six modular elements to be combined in various ways.

Each module, made from powder-coated aluminium, is available in blue, green, yellow or grey,& in three shades of each colour.

Grupa was founded in Zagreb in 2006 by Filip Despot, Tihana Taraba and Ivana Pavic.

Similar products we’ve featured recently include stackable vessels made from marble, cut glass and 3D printed resin and a set of stackable lamps made from wood and recycled glass.

We’ve also featured lots of hanging lamps on Dezeen, such as a lamp made from ten metres of coiled electrical cord and another made from concrete and wood.

See all our stories about lamps »
See all our stories about design »

Here’s some more information from the designers:

The Studio Grupa is well-known Croatian design trio consisting of Tihana Taraba, Ivana Pavic and Filip Despot. They have presented several products over the last few years, presenting exceptionally good design with reasonable prices, thus creating original yet affordable designer products.

Grupa has a new product, series of lamps named ILI-ILI (EITHER-OR) which brings a completely new concept of the DIY approach to the Croatian lighting-fixtures market, i.e. design hanging fixtures, considering that their project enables the buyer to mix and match both shapes and colors. The designers created a concept based on six fundamental modular elements, different dimensions and diameters that can be mutually paired and combined, thus providing unlimited possibilities.

As the designers explain in their own words: “It’s possible to assemble six different elements through the simple act of linking them together, hence creating various lighting fixtures. The forms are adjusted according to dimensions, so they fit each other, while the elements are mutually connected with carrying clasps.”

In addition to matching and pairing various elements it’s also possible to combine several colour modules. The designers selected a spectrum of blue, green, yellow, and grey, through three shades of each. As the very photos illustrate, the color shades and their mutual combinations, with the six abovementioned forms, offer solutions that can be applied and used in various situations. The final choice of the product’s elements can lean towards either one colour or be complemented in a multi-coloured combination, always varying in form and shape.

This innovative approach towards the flexibility of the product and one’s own choice, along with the constant possibility of upgrading or changing, already known to the international market, conceptually aims at a wide spectrum of application and provides the user with a product that’s all but run-of-the-mill and boring.

“With the help of a recognisable manufacturing technique of metallurgy grinding and the traditional manufacturing art, the product is handmade from aluminium and powder coated in twelve different matte shades. Combining the traditional production technique with contemporary design opens up the possibility for users to design their own ideal combination, the choices are extensive, and as the name of the product states, it’s possible to mix and match them EITHER this way OR that.”

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by Grupa appeared first on Dezeen.

We’ve now published all the movies from our Dezeen Live series of talks with designers and critics, including Li Edelkoort, Asif Khan and Sam Jacob, that we filmed at 100% Design during the London Design Festival last September. Here’s a recap in case you missed any.

Wednesday 19 September

Tom Hulme, Katrin Olina and Sam Jacob joined Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs for the first of four sessions of talks at 100% Design, and Dezeen Music Project provided music by east London band Strong Asian Mothers.

Above: IDEO UK design director Tom Hulme advocates that “designers should be more entrepreneurial”.

Above: architect and writer Sam Jacob takes the audience on a rapid-fire journey from a prehistoric standing stone to the Argos catalogue and USB cigarettes.

Above: Icelandic designer Katrin Olina describes how she translates characters from her imagination into drawings, animations, products and interiors.

Thursday 20 September

Thursday’s speakers included designers Asif Khan and Dominic Wilcox, curator Daniel Charny and music by Reset Robot.

Above: designer Asif Khan explains how soap bubbles, rubbish bins and a neighbour’s flower bed have all provided inspiration for his work.

Above: curator and writer Daniel Charny explains why making, hacking and fixing represent the future of design.

Above: designer Dominic Wilcox shares his thoughts on 3D printing and presents some of his “fun, crazy” projects.

Friday 21 September

Designers Philippe Malouin and Benjamin Hubert and critic Beatrice Galilee were Friday’s speakers, accompanied by three tracks from American designer and producer Glen Lib.

Above: designer Philippe Malouin describes how the Olympics has changed Hackney.

Above: industrial designer Benjamin Hubert argues that designers should focus on building their own name as a brand.

Above: curator and writer Beatrice Galilee proposes that architecture and design exhibitions need to be about more than just “sticking furniture on plinths”.

Saturday 22 September

On the final day of Dezeen Live guests included restaurant founder Shamil Thakrar, designer Clemens Weisshaar and trend forecaster Li Edelkoort, with music from Indian record label EarthSync.

Above: Shamil Thakrar, owner and founder of London restaurant Dishoom, laments the disappearance of traditional Irani cafes in Bombay and explains why he’s setting them up in London.

Above: German designer Clemens Weisshaar argues that cutting edge software from race car engineering and hypersonic aircraft will underpin design in the future.

Above: interiors and products will need more tactile designs as the use of computers and screens makes us crave a sense of touch, trend forecaster Li Edelkoort predicts.

The post Dezeen Live
movie series appeared first on Dezeen.