Here’s an unusual take on how we might build things in the future: The subversive Danish creative collective known as N55’s Spaceplates. The idea is that we would have the proverbial shit-ton of sheet goods delivered to our home, and we’d break out a domestic CNC, download some plans and have it start carving up modular units that we’d then put together.
Known for their Vacuum Jug and line of products for discerning coffee connoisseurs, Scandinavian design house Stelton debuted their Pure Black collection of knives at this year’s NYIGF. Forged from a single piece of stainless steel, the knives have a beautiful soft black coating that ensures ease of handling. The 16.5 inch mounted knife magnet that complements the Pure Black collection is called Pure White. The glossy white magnet gives the illusion that the black knives are floating on its surface.
As physical objects, I always thought books and magazines were pretty much the same thing; nothing changed my mind on that more than using the iPad. I use the tablet device religiously to read books at bedtime and to refer to sewing machine adjuster’s manuals during the day when doing repairwork. It’s perfect for books and manuals: All of the info with none of the bulk, with the occasional image that can be easily zoomed in on for clarity.
But magazines, man, different animal. Every mag app I’ve played around with on the tablet–Popular Mechanics, Wired, that horrible Zinio app–gives me a feeling of cognitive dissonance as soon as I open them. I easily lose track of “where” I am in the magazines, and although I’m not sure why that matters, it just feels wrong. With books and manuals the tablet disappears and I feel I’m absorbing pure information; with magazines I feel like I’m trying to drive a car with a cardboard box over my head.
Grafting magazines onto tablets provides a significant interface-design challenge, and I’ll shortly be testing out Apple’s much-ballyhooed The Daily publication. In the meantime, here’s Macworld’s look at it from the launch:
It bothers regular people when they think of a song or TV show and can’t remember the title; it drives an ID’er nuts when they can’t remember who did a particular piece of furniture. Yesterday I wrote about the chair made from an extreme amount of plywood sheets. After posting it I realized I’d seen something similar before, as often happens with ID, but I couldn’t find it with last night’s web searching, and I went to bed late.
This morning I finally rediscovered it: Danish designer Mathias Bengtsson’s Slice Chair, which he did in both plywood and aluminum, way back in 1999:
This year’s A+ Young Designers’ Platform winners represented a broad spectrum of products highlighting innovative ideas from emerging designers. Showing on the floor of Accent on Design, these four young designers were curated with the help of the American Design Club.
danacannamdesign was launched in 2009 after Cannam received his design degree from the Design Academy in Eindhoven, Netherlands. His first project, the clamplamp explored how to, “maximize the functionality of a solid unfinished material rather than adding unwanted components.” The lamp utilizes an energy-efficient LED strip, is compression-fit with no glue or screws holding the lamp together. The lamp head can rotate 360 degrees on its pivot and is manufactured with minimal environmental impact.
I’m not sure how you justify using 110 pieces of plywood to make a single-seat piece of furniture, but I guess design is subjective. Emma Selzer of Australia’s Plus Architecture has designed the Egg Chair, a pod-like chair and integrated table that pivots on its center, for a local business center.
The Egg Chair’s laser-cut sheets are glued and screwed, meaning this thing ain’t coming apart at recycling time; then again I think sustainability is not exactly the point here.
This may or may not surprise you non-Americans, but if you look at a drinks bottle from this country you’ll see abbreviations printed on the label denoting which states will pay for that bottle to be recycled. Yep, it’s different from state to state, meaning the same bottle may not be recycled as readily in Rhode Island as in New York.
BottleHood is a San-Diego-based organization made up of unnamed creatives (a jeweler, a weaver and a graphic designer) who “rescue” glass bottles that have no monetary recycling value under California regulations. Rather than see these hit landfill, BottleHood gives them a second life by turning them into drinking glasses and vases. Liquor bottles in particular seem to serve these purposes well from a graphic design standpoint.
To the BottleHood folks, if you’re reading this and looking for ideas, there used to be a Belgian beer bar on St. Mark’s Place in New York (now defunct, sadly) that had cool pendant lamps done by graphic designer Darren Amellio, the guy behind the original bOb bar. Amellio made them by chopping the bottom off of big-ass cider jugs and sandblasting the tops and damn were they pretty.
Perennial favorites, London-based black+blum unveiled their newest Spring products at this year’s NYIGF targeted at those who love to cook…and eat! The hot-pot bbq is the perfect accessory for the urban dweller/fire escape griller. A seemingly-innocent planter conceals a charcoal grill underneath encouraging grillers to grow herbs they can later use in their cooking. The terracotta-like finish is actually a heat resistant ceramic-coated stainless steel. The hot-pot comes with specially-designed tongs that slip under and lift the cooking grate to access the charcoals underneath. And it comes in an awesome, compact cardboard package too.
So you’ve picked up one of InCase’s iPhone ping pong covers and you need a home to match? You can always do like Daniel Arsham, the Snarkitecture partner who built a tiny pied-a-terre inside a larger workspace and lined the thing with ping pong balls.
Contrary to recent blog buzz it’s not a proper apartment as far as we can tell, but rather a 90-square-foot loft containing a bedroom and dressing room, carving out a modicum of space in a 2,500-square-foot loft. Practical? Probably not, as anyone who’s ever accidentally crushed a ping pong ball can tell you, but probably more practical than if Arsham was a football fan.
You’ll work for years, accomplish things, then retire. When you look back on all that labor and schoolwork, what will it look like, what conclusions will you draw?
Retired mechanical engineer Seth Goldstein, who has turned to creating expressive robotic sculptures, offers some witty but grim summations:
“Why Knot?” is a kinetically complex contraption that ties a necktie. Then unties it. Then ties it again, and so on. All it needs to do is make monthly deposits to a 401k to make the message any clearer.
“Cram Guy,” on the other hand, is still a student. He crams for a test (using “Over the Cliff Notes,”) falls asleep, dreams, then wakes up and starts studying again.
Time to re-think my life….
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
