Hasta La Ideas

Product news: London architect Zaha Hadid has designed a curvaceous wine bottle for Austrian winemaker Leo Hillinger.

Zaha Hadid created the limited-edition design for Leo Hillinger‘s Icon Hill 2009 vintage red wine, of which 999 bottles were made.

One side has a concave indentation with the same curve as the back of the bottle so a row of them can interlock. A dimple in the base allows sediment to gather and provides a thumb hold for pouring.

“The elongated volume of the bottle has been derived from the profile of liquid droplets,” said Hadid. “A continuous spatial curve was then projected onto the bottle’s surface, defining areas for the concave indentation and suggesting the waves created when droplets break a liquid’s surface.”

The shape was created using NURB-based software, then the glassware was formed in cast-iron moulds.

It comes in a box with the form of the bottle cut from striations, a common feature of Hadid’s designs. See our feature on striations in architecture and design here.

Other designs for alcohol we’ve featured include packaging for coffee-flavoured beer designed by Nendo and a set of seven wine glasses inspired by the seven deadly sins.

See more architecture and design by Zaha Hadid »
See more design for drinking »

Icon Hill is an exceptional red wine cuvee of 2009 vintage, produced by the renowned Austrian winemaker Leo Hillinger in a limited edition of 999 bottles that have been designed by Zaha Hadid Architects to reflect the wine’s bold and distinctive character.

The elongated volume of the bottle has been derived from the profile of liquid droplets. A continuous spatial curve was then projected onto the bottle’s surface, defining areas for the concave indentation and suggesting the waves created when droplets break a liquid’s surface.

The concave indentation and the bottle’s surface have the same curvature, enabling a set of bottles to interlock and be perceived as singular whole. A smaller indent and volume has been created at the base of the bottle for correct handling and to accommodate any tartrates.

To achieve the precision and accuracy required for production, the shape of the bottle was created using NURB-based CAD software. The bottle manufacturer directly implemented this 3D master geometry to produce the cast iron moulds for the glass forming process.

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for Leo Hillinger appeared first on Dezeen.

Apple’s Jonathan Ive and Australian designer Marc Newson have created this one-off Leica camera to be auctioned for charity.

Apple senior vice president of industrial design Jonathan Ive and Marc Newson based their design on German brand Leica‘s M camera.

The camera will be auctioned along with a selection of other unique designs by the duo to raise money to help combat tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS for U2 frontman Bono’s charity (RED).

On this model buttons and dials sit in recessions on the top of the camera so they lie flush with the surface, and the shell is perforated to create a fine mesh.

“Leica represents the confluence of precision engineering, world-class lens technology and design principles which elevate both function and form,” said Ive. “Designing this very special camera for the (RED) Auction has been a privilege for myself and Marc, and its sale on 23 November will generate funds so critical to the fight to end AIDS.”

“With nearly 1000 prototype parts and more than 725 hours of manufacturing time, the winning bidder will own a piece of exquisite imaging history,” added Newson. “The attention to each and every detail of this camera – from its outer shell to the magnificent optics – will delight a collector who appreciates the absolute pinnacle of craftsmanship.”

It was first announced that Ive would design the camera in 2012. The design will go to the highest bidder during a special event at auction house Sotheby‘s in New York on 23 November 2013.

Marc Newson previously designed a camera for Pentax, and we’ve also featured a device that’s controlled by blinking and squinting.

See more camera designs »
See more design by Jonathan Ive »
See more design by Marc Newson »

Here’s some more information sent to us by Sotheby’s:

Leica Digital Rangefinder Camera Designed by Jony Ive and Marc Newson to Join More than 40 Rare and Exceptional Objects in (RED) Auction at Sotheby’s New York

Money raised through the (Red) Auction will go Towards the fight against Aids in Africa.

A truly unique Leica Digital Rangefinder Camera designed by Jony Ive and Marc Newson will join more than 40 other rare and diverse items in the (RED) Auction on November 23rd 2013. Based on the Leica M, the camera will be auctioned to raise money for The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Hundreds of models and prototypes were made in the development of The Leica M for (RED). The body and lens ultimately being machined from a custom engineered alloy. Presented with a perfectly textured anodised aluminium outer shell, the traditional leather waist, synonymous with Leica, has been replaced with a laser machined aluminium body. More than 21,000 hemispheres create a new and extraordinary aesthetic, while a total of 561 models and nearly 1000 prototype parts were made during the 85 days it took to create of this incredibly special camera.

Delivering an uncompromised photography experience, the camera features a full-format CMOS sensor, high performance processor and new Leica APO-Summicron –M 50mm f/2 ASPH lens.

Jony Ive said, “Leica represents the confluence of precision engineering, world-class lens technology and design principles which elevate both function and form. Designing this very special camera for the (RED) Auction has been a privilege for myself and Marc, and its sale on November 23rd will generate funds so critical to the fight to end AIDS.”

“With nearly 1000 prototype parts and more than 725 hours of manufacturing time, the winning bidder will own a piece of exquisite imaging history. The attention to each and every detail of this camera – from its outer shell to the magnificent optics – will delight a collector who appreciates the absolute pinnacle of craftsmanship,” said Marc Newson.

Dr. Andreas Kaufman, Chairman, Leica, said: “We loved the collaboration with Jony and Marc. Their design sets a new and unprecedented standard in modern photography. As the only one ever to be produced, and boasting their unrivalled aesthetic, this Leica camera will truly create its own historic category when it goes under the hammer this winter.”

The fundraising auction comes as the war against AIDS faces a critical battle: to deliver the first AIDS Free Generation since HIV was diagnosed 32 years ago. In 2003, new childhood HIV infections peaked with more than 1,500 babies born with HIV every day. For only 40 cents a day, mothers can be treated to prevent transmission to their unborn children, and just over 900 babies are now born daily with the virus. By 2015, that number can be almost zero.

Highlights from the sale will travel to London in advance of the sale before the entire collection goes on public exhibition in New York beginning 18 November. Learn more about the second (RED) Auction through our Twitter hashtag #REDatSothebys. Additional highlights and details to be revealed over the next several months.

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and Marc Newson appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: this ping pong table by Barcelona studio Antoni Pallejà Office has been pared down to look at home in a domestic interior (+ movie).

Shunning the usual blue surface and black metal supports found on a standard table tennis setup, Antoni Pallejà Office paired a white top with wooden legs so the Bola Service Table wouldn’t look out of place in a home.

“This table conveys the warmth required of a piece for the home but without losing the sporty look,” said the designers.

The net is made from a fine mesh and has white edging on the top and sides, with a pink line along the bottom.

Iroko wood legs slot into a steel frame at angles, supporting the playing surface that is marked lengthways down its centre with a thin black line to distinguish service areas.

Paddles, balls and the net can be tucked into a hidden pocket denoted by a pink strip under this surface when not in use, so the table can be used for other purposes.

Produced by design brand RS Barcelona, the table can be used both indoors and outdoors.

If you like sport-related design you might also be interested in a chair made of a tennis net or a countdown clock to speed up daily tasks.

The movie featured was made by Commission.

See more architecture and design for sport »
See more table designs »

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Antoni Pallejà Office appeared first on Dezeen.

A collection of 1950s and 1960s products by designers including Dieter Rams, Arne Jacobsen and Dietrich Lubs for German electricals brand Braun are on display at the new Paul Smith store in London (+ slideshow).

Collectors of Braun Design products das programm curated a selection of vintage Braun products in fashion designer Paul Smith‘s recently extended store on Albemarle Street in London’s Mayfair district.

The emphasis of the small exhibition, titled White, is mainly on audio products such as radios, turntables and speaker units.

“We’re showing 45 pieces, mostly 60s audio but also including some classic household designs,” said das programm director Peter Kapos.

Dieter Rams was appointed director of Braun’s in-house design department in 1960 and began applying the standards established by the Ulm School of Design a year earlier.

Under his direction the company became renowned for producing rational and functionalist designs, which are widely credited as Apple creative director Jonathan Ive’s aesthetic reference for the computer company’s products.

“The influence of Braun Design on Apple design is well documented,” Kapos told Dezeen. “From the 2001 iPod onwards, Apple has been helping itself to all kinds of bits and bobs, producing a curiously accelerated collage of Braun Design.”

Other Braun Design members are also represented in the collection. The oldest piece in the store is Hans Guglelot’s combined record player and radio from 1955, and homeware designs by Reinhold Weiss and Gerd Alfred Müller are also on show.

The items will be displayed in the recently opened store until 7 October and Kapos will be giving tours of the exhibition in its final week – more details here.

Earlier this month, Dieter Rams was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Medal from the London Design Festival, honouring “an individual who has made significant and fundamental contributions to the design industry over their career.”

A few months ago furniture brand Vitsœ reissued Rams’ classic 620 Chair Programme and earlier in the year a private collector put his 1000-piece archive of the designer’s Braun products up for auction on eBay.

See more design by Dieter Rams »

Das programm sent us the text below:

White: overview

Amidst the architectural and cultural ruins of post-war Germany, industrial designers considered their role in the task of reconstruction. In 1953 the Ulm school of design opened. It taught that rationally organised objects of daily use might serve as models for a more rational social form and thereby guide the maelstrom of productive forces to a more acceptable result. They called this utopian project ‘systems design’. The following year, the Braun Company approached the Ulm school with a brief to modernise their audio line. Designers Otl Aicher and Hans Guglelot, lecturers at the school, established the Braun style and produced the blueprint for a comprehensively integrated programm of household electronics.

The Ulm school is represented in the exhibition by two pieces: Gugelot’s G 11 / G 12 record player and radio combination, issued in the 1955 the inaugural year of Braun Design, and Gugelot and Rams’ SK 4 phonosuper of the following year. This pair of foundational objects are the first encountered by the visitor.

An in-house design department was established at Braun in 1960; Dieter Rams was appointed its director in 1961. You can see from the pieces on the bridge shelf how the Ulm style was both retained and transformed in the products issued after the services of Ulm freelancers had been dispensed with. Post-1960 Braun designs remain orderly and rational, according to functionalist principles. But the first designs’ rather Scandinavian-modern references to nature are replaced by a more severe and emphatically industrial material vocabulary.

Just as important was the transformation in the interrelation of individual designs. The Braun audio designs of the 1960s were no longer conceived as single items related to others in the programm by a more or less common aesthetic. Now, the program was thought of as a single integrated system consisting of functionally compatible elements under a fully unified aesthetic regime. In this way the entire Braun programm of the 1960s unfolded as a unitary modular system.

The examples presented in the main space have been selected to express the formal and functional unity and systematicity of the 60s Braun program. The audio designs of this period, all by Dieter Rams, may be divided into two groups: light weight turntables, small radios and speaker units, and larger more substantial system elements. The largest of these at the far end of the room is the Audio 1 integrated system sitting on the ‘kangaroo’ modular stand. Despite the formal variety, the distinctive characteristic of 1960s Braun Design is its overarching coherence. It all ‘locks’ together.

It’s interesting to think that at this time Dieter Rams was also drawing furniture designs on the same principles for production and sale by Vitsoe, then Vitsoe+Zapf. The idea was that audio design, furniture design (and toaster design for that matter) should fuse into a single interlocked whole – a total rational environment that we might imagine extending outwards to the design of buildings, districts and cities…

Because space is limited the emphasis of the exhibition is placed on audio products. However, the Braun program of the 1960s also encompassed extensive kitchen, misc. household, lighter, dry shaving and photography ranges. The pair of ‘Das Braun Programm’ posters by the till presents something of this scope.

As in the audio segment, these products related to every other as parts of a rational, aesthetically unified whole. Indeed, the graphic design of these posters itself, in its systematic arrangement on a grid, contributes to this unity, as did the design of every other piece of Braun printed material from packaging down to guarantee cards and instructions for use – see as examples the KF 1000 headphone and MX 1 111 child’s toy.

Presented on the bay of shelves are a few iconic examples of Braun household products. Of these, Reinhold Weiss’ HL 1 multiwind desk fan and KMM 1 coffee grinder are particularly important. Weiss joined the Braun Company as a graduate of the Ulm School in 1960 and continued to practice systems design according to its original idea. Ram’s designs tended to be simple cubular forms. A tension between rational rigour and idiosyncrasy in the arrangement of control elements provides ‘interest’. Weiss’ designs, on the other hand, are both more fully abstract and three dimensional. The device is broken down into functionally discrete units – base, stem, motor block, fan head, cowl – that are then articulated as sculptural elements, a series of volumes, densities, textures and masses. The result is at once functionally and constructionally concrete, and highly abstract.

It’s interesting to compare Weiss’ functionalism with that of his colleague Gerd Alfred Müller, whose iconic KM 3 food processor sits on the top shelf. Müller articulates the functional elements of the device – motorblock/gearing/tool – with great clarity as distinct strata imposed upon a flowing organic form, a horizontally ordered series of cuts. This form encloses the bowl; notice how its lip aligns with the top edge of the gearing block. A distinctive feature of 1960s Braun Design is the fine balance struck between difference and identity. Rams, Weiss and Müller drew up designs with very distinct characters that nevertheless belonged unambiguously to a single programm.

The period of Braun Design is defined as 1955 – 1995, beginning with the first of the modernist designs and ending when Dieter Rams stepped down as Director of the Design Department. However, our exhibition focuses almost entirely on designs issued before 1968. In 1968 the Gillette Company acquired a controlling share in Braun and thereafter stopped the economically irrational practice of cross-subsiding product lines. In particular, profits from the dry shaving sector, which made up the largest part of company earnings were no longer permitted to offset losses incurred by the grandiose design folly that was the Braun audio program.

Interesting as it was, outside a small group of German middle class intellectuals there just wasn’t the demand for it. Post-68 Braun Design was increasingly led by market research, which very quickly brought about the demise of the functionalist adventure in systems design. To be sure, great designs still continued to be produced at Braun after 1968. See for example the astonishing KF 21 coffee filter on the plinth opposite the shelves. But these tend to stand out as singular designs. Shaped by marketing requirements, what remained of the programm increasingly found itself reflecting existing conditions. Perhaps, the expansive ‘kangaroo’ system stand (of which only a small part is shown here) represents the last attempt at designing in a truly utopian mode, that is, one that reaches beyond what presently exists to something qualitatively new…

Under the present stewardship of Proctor and Gamble, owners of the Gillette Company, Braun continues to extend the company tradition of offering products of the highest quality in terms of design and manufacture. Its offering is now almost entirely restricted to personal grooming. Recently, a number of interesting discontinued products of the Braun Design period have been re-issued. Amongst these are Rams’ DW 30 digital watch of 1979, Dietrich Lubs’ AB 30 vs alarm clock and Rams and Lubs’ superb ET 66 calculator. These are displayed for sale in the till area.

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by das programm appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: London designer Roger Arquer has created a salt and pepper mill with removable silicone lids for mixing and serving seasoning (+ slideshow).

Arquer‘s Pinch&Grind product range, designed for Dutch brand Royal VKB, also includes mixing jars with the same square silicone lids for blending and storing herbs and spices.

“Taking salt or herbs between your fingers and adding them to your food has become common practice,” said Arquer. “The silicone lids of the mill and jars allow users to open them easily, and pinch directly from them. Also, by turning the lid upside down it can be used as a pinch dish.”

The transparent mixing jars are available with a range of red, white, green and yellow coloured lids. The taller mills are available with black lids and have a transparent section to reveal the seasoning inside.

Arquer has also designed a triangular-shaped jug with a different sized pouring spout at each point. A large spout is designed for pouring thick batter, a medium one for vinaigrette, and a thin one for filtering fruits and ice or to drizzle salad dressing. “It is perfectly capable for pouring anything you mix, in any consistency,” said Arquer.

See all our coverage of Roger Arquer »
See more features on Royal VKB »
See more kitchenware »

Photographs are courtesy of Roger Arquer.

Here are two project descriptions from the designer:

Pinch&Grind

Pinch&Grind takes a new inside into spices. There is the traditional salt and pepper mill, with the addition of mixing jars for preparing your own blends.

Taking salt or herbs between your fingers and adding them to your food is nowadays a common practice known as “pinching”. We are often extracting some salt or peppercorns from the mill itself to add to a spice mix.

The silicon lid of the mill or jars, allows to open them easily, and pinch directly from them. Also by turning the lid upside down it can be used as a pinch dish.

The transparent jars with coloured lids (red-chilly based, white-salt based, green-herb based and yellow-curry based) so that you can easily identify a particular spice mix you have created. The contents of the jars can then be simply transferred into the mill followed by switching the coloured lid to the mill so then you know which spice mix is in the mill.

The main body and the top have a square profile for a better handling. The top lid is made of silicon, which gives an excellent grip, even if the hands are oily (when cooking).

Spouts

Spouts is a multifunctional jug with three different pouring ends. Its soft triangular shape holds a different spout on each corner. 

A wide and raised spout for pouring thick batter, a medium one for vinaigrette, and a thin one for filtering (fruit, mint, ice…) or drizzle salad dressing. It is perfectly capable for pouring anything you mix, in any consistency.

Spouts have a big enough base so it is ideal to use with a hand blender to prepare your favourite smoothies or shakes.

Spouts have the international measuring indicator (cups, ml and fl.oz) discreetly engraved one each of the three different sides walls. So it is possible to accurately measure the ingredients desired to create your mixes. As the indicators are so discrete, they can be used for preparing and serving directly onto the table.

Incase of any leftovers, then simply close the Jug with our airtight silicon lid to keep the ingredients fresh for longer, in or out of the fridge.

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for Royal VKB appeared first on Dezeen.