Hasta La Ideas

Milan 2012: the 400 wooden slats of this table top by Mauricio Affonso allow it to expand, contract and fan out into a full circle.

It has a birch base with gate legs that fold out or tuck away as it changes shape.

The Fan Table is on show at Ventura Lambrate as part of Paradise, a show of work from the Royal College of Art in London.

The Ventura Lambrate design district is open from 17 to 22 April. Download the free map and guide here and see all our stories about Ventura Lambrate 2012 here.

Here are some more details from Affonso:

Mauricio Affonso’s Fan Table will be exhibited during the Milan Furniture Fair in Ventura Lambrate as part of the Paradise exhibition organised by the Royal College of Art, 17-22 of April, 2012.

The Fan Table explores the role of tables as the infrastructure for social interaction. The surface can freely expand, contract and revolve in an effortless fan like movement of the hand.

Mauricio Affonso is interested in designing with a deep understanding of the situations in which furniture find themselves in the world. In this case, he was driven by the idea of investigating the reciprocity between table and context.“Furniture can be quite limited sometimes,” explains Affonso, “I wanted to move away from the table as an static object and create a self-transforming table that can spontaneously adapt itself to play a new role in the fabric of a situation.”

Hence, the Fan Table can be quickly transformed into an array of different shapes and sizes to suit its context or use.

The table surface is created from over 400 slats that rests on a geometric base both in which are constructed out of birch wood.

Paradise features the work of Royal College of Art students selected by Professor and Head of Design Products Programe Tord Boontje and tutor Onkar Kular.

“PARADISE contemplates the discovery of something or somewhere more wondrous. Rallied by the desire for change and compelled by a dissatisfaction with the present, RCA students author their own atlases of Paradise, landscaped by different paths in the quest for a better future.”

Brazilian-born Canadian designer Mauricio Affonso began his career after earning a degree in Industrial Design from OCAD University. While based in Toronto he also worked as Creative Lead for home accessories company Umbra.

Mauricio has shown his work internationally and has been featured in many major design publications worldwide. He has also participated in numerous design workshops led by acclaimed designers such the Campana Brothers and Patricia Urquiola to name a few.

Mauricio has recently relocated to London where he is pursuing a Master of Arts degree from the renowned Design Products program at the Royal College of Art.

Dezeen Wire: architect and structural engineer Charles Walker has been appointed head of architecture at the Royal College of Art in London, while designer Ab Rogers will become head of interior design.

Walker, who also consults for Zaha Hadid Architects, replaces architect Nigel Coates, who retired in the summer – read about that here.

See more stories about Ab Rogers here.

Here’s the full press release from the Royal College of Art:

AB ROGERS AND CHARLES WALKER TO JOIN THE RCA SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

The Royal College of Art has announced that two new Heads of Programme are to be appointed to its newly formed School of Architecture. Charles Walker and Ab Rogers will take up their posts in the summer term 2012 in Architecture and Interior Design respectively.

Ab Rogers is a London-based designer known for a wide-ranging international practice. A former cabinet-maker, Rogers earned his MA in design from the Royal College of Art. He has lectured widely and held various teaching roles, including in the RCA Design Products department, where he ran Platform 9 with Tord Boontje. In 1997 he cofounded Kitchen Rogers Design (KRD) with Shona Kitchen. Kitchen and Rogers’ projects included the Comme des Garçons store in Paris, the Al-Ostoura luxury department store in Kuwait City, and the Michel Guillon flagship store in London. In 2004, he founded Ab Rogers Design (ARD), now an established studio that plays with colour, materials and function to inject a sense of poetry, magic and wonder into the everyday world.

ARD’s multifaceted work includes designing for hotels, restaurants, retail environments, domestic interiors, museum exhibitions, websites and brands; past clients include the Pompidou Centre, Tate Modern, Science Museum, the Australian Centre for Moving Image, Conde Nast, Pizza Express, Price Waterhouse Cooper and Parc1, a mixed-use development in Seoul.

Charles Walker is an architect, structural engineer and industry leader on the effects of digital technology on modern architectural design and construction. Having first studied architecture at the University of Waterloo in Canada he then received an MSc in structural engineering from Imperial College London. Charles has been teaching at the Architectural Association’s School of Architecture since 2003 where his students design and build the annual AA summer pavilion.

Walker has worked at the forefront of the current international architectural discourse with many of the worlds leading architects including: Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Oscar Niemeyer and Renzo Piano. Early in his career Walker worked in a number of architectural offices including Richard Horden Associates, Michael Hopkins and Partners and Ron Arad Associates. He has also worked in design based engineering offices Whitby and Bird where he designed the Merchants Bridge in Manchester winning an Institution of Structural Engineers Special Award and Ove Arup + Partners where he co-founded in 2000 the Advanced Geometry Unit. In early 2007 Charles left Arup to found from-work projects and to join Zaha Hadid Architects where he currently consults.

The two new Heads of Programme join the Royal College of Art during a period of expansion as the College completes its new campus development. The College’s strategic plan aims to widen the Masters’ programme to advance new developments in design and art, ensuring 21st century relevance; consolidate research excellence; and strengthen the culture of design innovation and entrepreneurialism with closer links to industry. The new MA in Interior Design will receive its first intake of students in September 2012.

Professor Alex de Rijke, Dean of the School of Architecture said: “I am excited about these two appointments to the School of Architecture. Both are internationally recognised practitioners as well as skilled teachers. Charles combines wide ranging experience in architecture with an equally strong background in structural engineering and Ab’s impressive track record in embracing new materials and technologies will be especially valuable in framing and launching our new Interior Design programme.”

Ab Rogers said: “I’m delighted to have the opportunity to head up the new Interior Design programme. I plan to create an inspiring and purposeful course that deals with space and the object – abstract and concrete – on a human scale, and this is why I particularly look forward to contributing to a multidisciplinary School of Architecture along with Alex and Charles.”

Charles Walker said: “It’s a privilege and an honour to be taking this post at the RCA, which is unique among architectural programmes in being positioned within such a rich and diverse art and design context and tradition. I am very much looking forward to working with Alex and Ab.”

Professor Susannah Hagan completes the team, having been appointed as School Research Leader. Prior to joining the College, Susannah was Director of R/E/D (Research into Environment + Design), and Professor of Urban Studies and Director of the Office for Spatial Research at the University of Brighton. She has written and lectured extensively on the theory and practice of environmental design in relation to contemporary architecture and urban design. Susannah is a Fellow of the Institute for Urban Design, New York, and a member of the Royal Society of Arts, the International Development Network, Royal Town Planning Institute, the Newham Borough Design Review Panel, and the Urban Buzz Programme Committee. She was a finalist in the James Stirling Memorial Lecture Competition 2008/09.

Show RCA 2011: here’s another project by Royal College of Art graduate Ki Hyun Kim: a balsa wood dining chair that weights just 1.3 kilograms, making it even lighter than Gio Ponti’s famous 1.7 kilogram Superleggera chair.

The chair is made of compressed balsa wood protected by hardwood veneer to give it structural stability and a tough outer shell, while keeping it much lighter than Gio Ponti’s 1957 effort.

The chair, and a ladder made using the same technique (see image below) can be seen at Show RCA 2011 in London until 3 July.

See also: Alternative Alarm Clock by Ki Hyun Kim

See all our stories about Show RCA 2011 »

The text below is from Ki Hyun Kim:

1.3 Chair

In starting to design a wooden chair, I looked at the properties of woods.

What intrigued me most, was balsa wood.

Balsa is a hardwood; but very unique. It grows fast, is light in colour, with a very soft, warm texture. Most surprising is its weight, as the lightest of all woods.

Exploring this material, my process is based on reinterpreting craft techniques combined with developing alternatives to industrial methods.

Although seemingly disparate, the combination retains a commitment to experiment, challenge and innovate.

The chair intends to reflect practical considerations, in terms of production, use and everyday beauty, as well.

I wanted to hatch ideas on my own, experiment with forms, materials and techniques.

Material.
Balsa wood + Veneer + Lime wood

Dimension.
390 x 420 x 780 mm

Weight.
1.28 kg

See also:

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Corian chair by Jon Harrison	Tenon by Yota Kakuda	If Only Gio Knew… by Martino Gamper

Royal College of Art student Dan Watson has designed a trawling net that filters young and endangered fish from the catch.

Called SatetyNet, the design uses a combination of strategically placed holes and lighting to separate fish of different ages and species.

The technique exploits behavioral and psychological differences between species of fish.

Watson created the net to tackle the huge proportion of unmarketable fish caught and thrown back into the sea dead each year.

The project has been nominated for the Victorinox – Time to Care competition for sustainable design.

Here are some more details from Dan Watson:

Created by Dan Watson, a student at the Royal College of Art in London, about to graduate with an MA in Innovation Design Engineering, the SafetyNet is an innovative trawling system that exploits the natural behaviour of different species and ages of fish to ensure that only marketable fish are caught. This negates the increasingly critical issue of ‘unmarketable’ by-catch fish that are thrown back dead into the sea, endangering both the fish themselves and the fishing industry.

Every year, fishermen return over 7 million tonnes of unmarketable fish, dead, to the sea. The problem is that many current fishing techniques are not selective, leading to juvenile and endangered fish being caught along with more marketable ones. The SafetyNet is a new trawling system that cuts down on the catch and subsequent discarding of juvenile and endangered fish. By exploiting fish behavioral habits and physiology the trawl separates different species and ages of fish.

Click above for larger image

Using the SafetyNet system, the fishing industry can become more sustainable. This will give security not only to the 40% of the world’s population who rely on fish as their primary food source, but also to the fishermen within the industry itself.

See also:

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The Catch by Julia Lohmann	Non-lethal mousetraps by Roger Arque	More about animals on Dezeen

London designers Slowscape Collective created this temporary cinema at the Royal College of Art in London from faceted planes of oriented strand board.

Called Shadowboxing, the space was designed to host an exhibition of video work plus performances, lectures and discussions.

Visitors lounged on the sloping surfaces or sat on stools folded from corrugated plastic.

Slowscape Collective is a team of students at the college.

More exhibitions on Dezeen »

The following details are from the designers:

Shadowboxing Exhibition / Slowscape Collective

A team of postgraduate students from the Royal College of Art has designed an event installation for an exhibition at the college in London.

A team of postgraduate architecture and design students from the Royal College of Art has conceived of and built an adaptable 90 sqm event space for an exhibition featuring the work of well-known artists including Mariana Castillo Deball and Sean Dockray.

The installation, entitled Slowscape, considers the speed of visitors’ movement through the gallery and how the subtlety of built form can encourage us to pause and engage with sound and the moving image.

The paneled timber structure gently rises across the rectilinear gallery at a canted angle, folding up to form angled balustrades and a projection tower at the rear.

From this point a platform wraps around the existing columns and walls to form benches that engage otherwise overlooked areas in the open gallery space.

While the slight incline of the ramps encourages visitors to sit or lounge on the surface, 60 lightweight recyclable stools – each folded from a single cut sheet of fluted plastic – were also designed as a comfortable alternative for more formal events and longer film screenings.

The exhibition Shadowboxing finished on April 4 after a two-week period during which Slowscape played host to screenings, performances, lectures and discussions.

Designer: Slowscape Collective

Team: Stuart Franks, Christopher Kennedy, Simon Moxey, Ceri Williams, Thomas Woods

Location:London, England

Project Area: 90 sq m

See also:

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Duplex House in Tokito by Hidehiro Fukuda Architect	The Cubby House by Edwards Moore	Victorian Grandfather Chair by Adam Rowe