We love it when design students hold their own next to the big guys, and we’re thrilled to report that the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Pratt Institute and the Rhode Island School of Design presented stellar booths at this year’s ICFF, all culminations of classes and workshops that focused on various aspects of contemporary design issues.
Hit the jump for more details on all three groups!
The first batch of photos from the New York Design Week is now online! Check back over the next few days as we fill the photo gallery with more pictures from ICFF and off-site parties and exhibitions.
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We told you about InDisposed last week in the ramp up to New York Design Week. Yesterday we were able to catch up with Jen Renzi and Dan Rubinstein who took us through a tour of some of our favorite items. Lots of nice anecdotes here, so if you enjoyed the show the first time, make sure you check out this backstage pass! Here’s the pitch:
InDisposed asks 15 thinkers to address the theme of disposability, waste and wastefulness through design. The result is 15 mass-produceable pieces made from sustainable materials with disposability in mind. At the end of the show, each object will be ceremoniously and responsibly disposed of in the manner designed for it.
Kohler’s brushed nickel Flipside showerhead, whose shape recalls an old-fashioned radio mic, flips its workings to deliver four different types of sprays. The form is sensual but chunky, designed to be easy to manipulate even with soapy hands.
Their new Reve collection features sleek, geometric lines intended to both please the eye and remain easy to clean. The lavatories come in both pedestal and wall-mounted (shown here), with the latter featuring a hardware-free integrated handle that accesses the pull-out drawer. The one-piece toilet is dual-flush.
Use our Essential Guide to NY Design Week 2009 to find the best stuff (Mobile version for your phone too!)
Though New York Design Week has mostly wrapped up, there is still some nice work to be seen in longer running shows around town. One of these is Lost & Found, curated by Anna Cosentino at Spring Design & Art in DUMBO, running through July 31st.
The show asks 13 artists and designers to interpret the Lost & Found theme through new or existing work. The result is a range of objects that reflect, among other things, humour, narrative, luxury, comfort and usefulness. For example, Peter Cole responded with a collection of sculptures that transform toy horses into distinct characters through a careful accrual of appendages and costuming made from other found objects. Angel Chang, a fashion designer, worked with a thermochromic ink manufacturer to obscure a map of downtown Manhattan with heat-sensitive orange ink. This map is then revealed in small bits and pieces through the actions of the wearer of the garment.
Other pieces include: I Live Here by Steve Butcher, a set of photographs documenting ways that Yucatan locals mark paths in long stretches of jungle using discarded packaging; Made Out of New York by Gregoire Abrial, a series of furniture pieces made from scavenged material from the streets of different New York neighborhoods and marked with a location ratio; and Bread Sole Shoes by Stijn Ossevoort, a pair of shoes that leave a trail of bread crumbs, functioning as an example of what the designer calls “Placebo Design,” an object that is designed to make the user feel psychologically secure over providing a distinct function. Pictured above are Bookscapes by Katya Marritz and L’il Hankie by Peter Cole .
More photos after the jump.
LOST&FOUND
May 16- July 31, Tues-Sat: 12-7pm
Spring Design & Art
126a Front St., Brooklyn NY
QCarl Fredrik Svenstedt’s Infinity Bench is a neat piece of engineering, CNC’d from furniture-grade plywood.
Moorhead & Moorhead’s CNC-milled Modular Screen pieces snap together to create a sort of computer-generated cloud.
Both pieces are pretty, but clearly not meant for high-dust environments–I’d hate to have to clean either of these!
Use our Essential Guide to NY Design Week 2009 to find the best stuff (Mobile version for your phone too!)
Designer Srdjan Simic’s Paket table for Offi goes from cube to table for four, with integrated seating.
Gauthier Poulain’s unusual Hold-V and Hold-H cabinets are meant to evoke travel with leather straps holding the velvet-finished “cargo” to its bent-wood base.
Ken Okuyama’s angular Orizuru chair is made from a single sheet of plywood, molded and capped with maple veneer.
Use our Essential Guide to NY Design Week 2009 to find the best stuff (Mobile version for your phone too!)
From El Salvador comes the design duo of two Carloses (Lopez and Garcia) called 2CC Arquitectura Diseno. Their fiberglass and leather MUKA object, above, defies single-category description; it’s either a bench, a table, a stool, a bookshelf or a magazine rack, depending on which way the user orients it.
Use our Essential Guide to NY Design Week 2009 to find the best stuff (Mobile version for your phone too!)
Philippe Starck’s modular shower system for Axor made its North American debut at the ICFF.
The Axor Starck ShowerCollection offers a designer- and installer-friendly, building-block system for creating a shower from individual elements that can be freely combined, thus allowing complete design flexibility.
The basis of the modular collection is the perfection of the square: All elements of the collection emanate from a simple 5-inch x 5-inch module. Devoid of any curlicues or frills, this basic building block can house any of several functions: thermostat, volume and diverter controls; handshower or showerhead; even lighting, sound and shelving modules.
A shower for the modest this ain’t–one of the overhead components, designed to “deliver an exceptionally luxurious showering experience,” is called the Axor Starck ShowerHeaven and it dumps water on you from a 28-square-inch fixture. Now you can experience what it feels like to be a winning U.S. football coach.
Use our Essential Guide to NY Design Week 2009 to find the best stuff (Mobile version for your phone too!)
Among our discoveries in yesterday’s wanderings through Brooklyn: a small collection of exclusive furniture pieces commissioned by local design incubator/furniture mainstay The Future Perfect, which has been bringing the work of designers from Brooklyn and beyond into the light for the better part of a decade now.
The tiny exhibition, down in the basement beneath the PBR-grasping crowd in FP’s courtyard, included this clever, historically rich piece by Joel Voisard, entitled simply Box Cart. Joel walks us through the (surprisingly functional) operation and construction of the cart in this video. Pay close attention to the hidden internal construction that allows the vintage boxes to be accessed from either side, and the extreme portability afforded by a wheelbarrow-based frame. Lovely stuff, if you’ve got the space.
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