Eindhoven grad Sophie Mensen runs an eponymous design studio out of the Netherlands, and we love her Column project. While it’s not exactly practical for those of us who can’t drill into a ceiling joist, it’s pretty freaking cool:
Remember “American Look,” the short film we blogged about a couple of years ago (see Part 1 after the jump, the others at the link above) showing the best of American design circa 1958? Alexis Madrigal over at The Atlantic has been watching it and is attempting to identify 49 of the objects shown in the film. He’s screen-shotted the ones in question—some examples are above, and at the very least you should recognize the Noguchi if you were paying attention in ID History class—and as of press time, 18 of the 49 had been identified by sharp-eyed readers.
Ready to get in there and flex your knowledge? Peep Madrigal’s slideshow here and fill in the blanks.
After yesterday’s series of kickoff events, Internet Week 2011 is well underway, with events throughout New York City until Monday, June 13th. We’ve already mentioned that we’ve partnered with Design Within Reach to furnish the IAC Design Lounge, and Core readers can look forward to Sketchnotes from our own Craighton Berman (aka fueledbycoffee) in the near future.
In the meantime, we invite Internet Week attendees to try their hand at Sketchnotes of their own… especially since we’re providing the notebooks. Email us your sketchnotes and we’ll post some of our favorites: sketchnotes[at]core77.com! Get ’em while the going’s good—the lounge at Internet Week HQ closes on Thursday!
Internet Week HQ
125 W 18th Street
New York, NY 10011
Through Thursday, June 9
9:30AM – 6:00PM daily
It’s easy to be skeptical when you hear someone’s made a piece of furniture called the iTable, based on the iPhone. But at least stick around until 0:20 of this video to check it out:
Designed and produced by Kyle Buckner Designs, the iTable features an integrated subwoofer in the base and of course, those pop-up speakers that appear and disappear with a swipe when you want a plain ol’ coffee table.
Kyle, if you’re reading this—get these into an Apple Store! Sneak in at night and install it yourself if you have to. If you convince them to carry it and sell even one per Apple Store in the U.S., you’re basically set for retirement.
Blase Mathern calls himself the Wood Maestro, and it’s easy to see why. His one-off pieces reflect the combination of wood fetishism and craftsmanship that only someone deeply engaged with the material could create. Pieces like his Satin Cirque, above, and Quilted Chamber, below, seem as if they clearly had their genesis in a workshop rather than a CAD environment.
I’m loving the Riveli modular shelving system, which adds functionality to wall-hanging art. It’s a simple grid of flip-down panels with an option to slide your own images into each frame, or any material up to about 3/16″ thick.
Do you know how plastic bottles are actually recycled? The amount of energy that goes into it is pretty insane, as you’ll see in this video below of the Ecostar recycling facility in Wisconsin. The amount of steps—not to mention electricity, water and manpower—that need to be taken to go from a bale of plastic bottles into safe, useable material is pretty staggering.
What’s even more staggering is that as energy-intensive as recycling is, it still gives off only half the carbon that’s produced when creating virgin materials. It makes you wonder why we don’t spend more time looking at more efficient ways to convey fluids, or if our current system of plastic bottles is really the best thing mankind can come up with.
Two years ago we reviewed Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams, the thus-far definitive work on the influential Braun designer’s work. Now a new book on Rams is coming out, this one delving much further into the nitty-gritty of the industrial design process.
Sophie Lovell’s and Klaus Kemp’s As Little Design As Possible: The Work of Dieter Rams will not be released until Friday, but the Times’ Alice Rawsthorn scored an advanced copy and has written a review indicating that the book casts a detailed eye on our largely unsung processes:
Ms. Lovell’s book shines by painting a refreshingly realistic picture of the design process. Books like this often depict designers as omnipotent heroes, but hers stresses the complex web of relationships they must navigate inside the design team and with other factions within a company. There are also gripping descriptions of the microscopic details that must be addressed to create products as accomplished as Mr. Rams’ for Braun. Anyone who reads it probably won’t look at a switch, edge or corner in quite the same way again.
Something many of us will also be dying to read is the foreword written by none other than Jonathan Ive. Ive details his first childhood encounter with a Rams-designed object, recognizing it as something special and gaining an appreciation for design that has manifested into many of the objects we own today. As soon as the eBook version of As Little Design As Possible is released, I’ll be reading it on an iPad.
[ED CORRECTION: Sophie Lovell collaborated with Rams for over 3+ years to produce As Little Design As Possible. Klaus Kemp is the author of another great book on Rams Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams which Core77 reviewed in 2009.]
Earlier this year Peter Hall of DesignInquiry wrote up a fantastic case study and origin story of Humanair’s Air Purifier, now re-branded the Zon Air Purifier. After six months with the unit, we now bring you the “Living With” product review.
If you work in an open-plan office, there are certain things that belong to everyone and certain things that belong just to you. That light coming in from the windows and the overhead lamps is for everyone; the task lamp on your desk provides light just for you. The electricity piped in is for everyone, but the outlets under your desk are just for you to plug into. But one thing that you typically cannot get is your own air supply.
This is an area that Humanscale is addressing with their Zon Air Purifier. Their goal was to provide a desktop source of clean air, qualitatively different than the air piped into the larger space around you, that would essentially encase the user in a sort of bubble of freshness.
Earlier this year Peter Hall of DesignInquiry wrote up a fantastic case study and origin story of Humanair’s Air Purifier, now re-branded the Personal Zone Air Purifier. After six months with the unit, we now bring you the “Living With” product review.
If you work in an open-plan office, there are certain things that belong to everyone and certain things that belong just to you. That light coming in from the windows and the overhead lamps is for everyone; the task lamp on your desk provides light just for you. The electricity piped in is for everyone, but the outlets under your desk are just for you to plug into. But one thing that you typically cannot get is your own air supply.
This is an area that Humanscale is addressing with their Personal Zone Air Purifier. Their goal was to provide a desktop source of clean air, qualitatively different than the air piped into the larger space around you, that would essentially encase the user in a sort of bubble of freshness.
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