Hasta La Ideas

Milan 2013: industrial designer Konstantin Grcic is showing angular wooden stools and tables for Italian brand Mattiazzi at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile.

Grcic‘s stools and side tables are held up by an angled support that is stabilised by two more legs jutting out on either side, with all three tapering towards the ground. Two wings form the seats of the stools, while the slightly taller tables are topped with disks.

Both items have been developed to follow the design of Grcic’s Medici chair, which was first released last year and has been shortlisted for the Design Museum’s 2013 Design of the Year prize. The wooden pieces are painted in red or yellow, or stained dark brown to enhance the grain.

Along with the Medici collection, Mattiazzi is debuting seats inspired by camping furniture by Jasper Morrison and stools with T-shaped backs by Industrial Facility at their stand at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile – E23, Hall 20. Grcic will also be exhibiting his bench system based on Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair at the trade fair.

See all our stories about design by Konstantin Grcic »
See all our coverage of Milan 2013 »
See our Milan 2013 map »

The post Medici collection by Konstantin Grcic
for Mattiazzi appeared first on Dezeen.

Chairs, carpets and blinds cleared from homes in the wake of deaths, divorces and bankruptcies form the raw material for these stools by Dutch designer Joost Gehem (+ slideshow).

The hundreds of thousands of deaths, divorces, bankruptcies and hospitalisations each year leave many household inventories without a home, says Joost Gehem of the inspiration behind his Transformation and Distribution Centre for Abandoned Household Items.

“You cannot imagine how cheap a complete interior can be and how much of it you can get,” he told Dezeen. “I began to see it as a material and I saw a little factory in my mind.”

Gehem found an advertisement for the clearance of a house owned by an elderly couple – the wife had passed away and the husband was about to go into a nursing home.

He bought up the whole interior and ground up carpets, window blinds, foam, textiles and a rattan chair.

The chipped remnants were then placed in a mould and pressed into stools.

Gehem is currently working on improving the process and a new line of products is planned for later this year.

Last week we featured a project to transform waste plastic picked up by fishing trawlers into chairs, while in 2008, architect Greg Lynn won a Golden Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale for a series of furniture made from recycled children’s toys.

We’ve also published lots of stools, including one inspired by glass beakers used in science experiments and a set of narrow A-shaped stools that fit together to make a bench.

See all designs for stools »

Here’s some more information from Gehem:

As a consequence of the approximately 135,000 deaths, 32,236 divorces, 10,000 bankruptcies and thousands of cases of hospitalisation that occur each year, many household inventories are left without a home. If heirs and dealers have no interest in the household goods, they usually end up in the local dump. Joost Gehem views these leftover house inventories as raw materials. His Transformation and Distribution Centre for Abandoned Household Items grinds down furniture and turns them into new products. Your old inventory gets a fresh new start, in a new shape: the Centre infuses new life into the cycle of collecting and throwing away.

The post Transformation and Distribution Centre for
Abandoned Household Items by Joost Gehem appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: these A-shaped stools by Japanese studio Torafu Architects slot together to make a bench.

Torafu Architects used basic 2×4 planks of red cedar to make the AA Stools, cutting them at an angle to form trestle-like structures.

Each narrow stool can be paired with another to make a wider seat, or joined in sequence to make a bench of any length.

The stools also pack flat for storage and transportation.

They were made in collaboration with Ishinomaki Laboratory, a community centre established by designers in the wake of the 2011 tsunami.

An auto repair shop in Tokyo, a concrete house designed for a resident in a wheelchair and a shelf with a secret drawer that opens with magnets are among the other projects by the architects we’ve featured – see all our stories about Torafu Architects.

Other stools we’ve featured on Dezeen lately include a three-legged design inspired by a Russian satellite and one with interlocking legs like a puzzle.

See all our stories about stools »
See all our stories about furniture »

Photographs are by Fuminari Yoshitsugu.

Here’s some more information from Torafu:

AA Stool

Following “skydeck”, this product is the second item made in collaboration with Ishinomaki Laboratory, which is ‘a place of creating something new’ for the community, established by designers and others in Ishinomaki City of Miyagi Prefecture.

AA Stool is a simple stool made of 2×4 wood modules where the legs are cut at a slightly diagonal angle at both ends. Combining these leg pieces together allows the stool to stand, and at the same time provides support for the seat of the stool.

 A set is composed of two stools, which can be integrated together into one unit. It can be separated into individual stools as required for visitors’ use or for within small spaces.

Stacking and lining up the stools lets the seat gradually become wider, yet it remains as compact as it can possibly be.

 At a height of 560mm, the seat is a little higher than usual chairs, which allows for a comfortable upright sitting position. It is also convenient for those who work sitting on a stool. 

From the side, the stool looks like the letter ‘A’. Whether you are stacking or separating the stools, you can find a new use each time as your imagination lets you.

Principle use: PRODUCT
Manufacturer: Ishinomaki laboratory
Material: Canadian red cedar
Size: W280xD410 (320 for each separated stool) x H560
Design period: 2012.09-10
Production period: 2012.09-10

The post AA Stools by
Torafu Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

The next extract chosen by Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs from our Book of Ideas is a pewter stool cast in sand on a Cornish beach. The book makes an ideal Christmas gift and is available for just £12.

“If you search for Max Lamb’s Pewter Stool on Google Images you don’t find the studio-quality product shots you might expect. Instead you get dozens of photos of a beach in Cornwall. That’s where Lamb cast the stool, using the sand as his mould. The beach is a place Lamb remembers from his childhood and the material and casting method were once a proud local industry,” says Fairs.

“The making of the stool and the narrative behind it are what makes this product special and it could be argued that the evocative time-lapse movie Lamb filmed of the casting performance (and uploaded to YouTube) is a more robust cultural artefact than the stool itself.”

“For me this product represents the way the ease with which projects can be digitally documented plus the distributive power of the internet is changing the way designers work, and the way their work is perceived,” he adds.

Pewter Stool by Max Lamb

Rebuffed by sand-casting foundries that laughed at his request to produce a single stool, British designer Max Lamb instead decided to make it himself.

Lamb returned to a favourite childhood beach in Cornwall and sculpted the mould for his stool directly into the wet sand.

The furniture designer melted pewter – a malleable alloy consisting mainly of tin with small amounts of copper and other metals – in a saucepan placed on a camping stove and poured the liquid metal into the mould. Once it had cooled, he dug away the sand to reveal the finished product.

Despite being a comparatively simple object, Pewter Stool is rich in narrative. Tin mining was once the main industry in Cornwall and sand from local beaches was used in the casting foundries. The mould can only be used once, making each piece unique, and the unpredictabil- ity of working on a beach means that imperfections become an inevitable part of each object’s charm.

The manufacturing process is imprecise and labour-intensive, yet practical considerations have driven the stool’s design. The three-legged form ensures that it will not wobble even if, as often happens, the molten metal fails to flow to the bottom of the sand mould. The seat is a grid of tessellating triangles and allows the maximum sitting area from the minimum amount of pewter.

The stool is inseparable from the seaside performance that created it. Lamb produced a time-lapse movie of it being made. While the finished object has become a collectable rarity, the video documentary, disseminated on YouTube and Vimeo, is available to everyone.

Read more about this project on Dezeen | Buy Dezeen Book of Ideas

Dezeen Book of Ideas features over 100 fascinating ideas for buildings, products and interiors from the world’s most creative brains. The book’s A5 format makes it highly accessible and the £12 price tag makes it the ideal impulse purchase or Christmas gift.Buy the Dezeen Book of Ideas now for just £12.

Reviews of Dezeen Book of Ideas

“From flip-flop art to a mirrored retreat in the sky” – Wall Street Journal

“The Sliding House and The Book of Ideas: Radical Thinking Required” – Forbes.com

“Fairs personally guides readers through the wonders of innovations like a balancing barn, a textile-skinned car, and the first aesthetically pleasing CFL — all of which share an ‘I wish I’d thought of that’ awe factor” – Sight Unseen

“Fabulous” – It’s Nice That

“Totally wonderful!” – Naomi Cleaver

“Handsomely repackages Dezeen’s coverage of the best in architectural, interior and design ideas” – Glasgow Herald

“Teeming with innovative projects handpicked by the people behind Dezeen … readers will be hard-pressed not to find something to gawk over in this intriguing new compendium of beautifully articulated concepts” – Dwell Asia

“Beautifully laid-out, to suit the content, and straight-shooting, non-convoluted descriptions make it user-friendly as well as eye-catching” – Lifestyle Magazine

The post Dezeen Book of Ideas: Pewter Stool
by Max Lamb appeared first on Dezeen.

This stool by Norwegian designer Hallgeir Homstvedt is held up by three slim, curved legs inspired by skateboards (+ movie).

For the Pal stool, made for Finland-based design brand One Nordic, Hallgeir Homstvedt thought back to the time as a teenager when he’d tried to make his own skateboard by bending a piece of plywood.

The thin, wide wooden legs are screwed to the outside of the round seat using an x-shaped joint, making the stool stronger and easier to put together and take apart.

One Nordic, which launched during Stockholm Design Week this year, is an online shop dedicated to flat-pack designs requiring simple self-assembly, such as Form Us With Love’s bent wood furniture collection.

Above: Pal stools among the One Nordic collection. Photograph is by Antti Pulli

We’ve featured a few other projects inspired by skateboards, including a house filled with concrete surfaces for the owner to skateboard over and a prototype for a house where the walls, floors and ceiling are all a skate ramp.

See all our stories about stools »
See all our stories about skateboards »

Photographs are by Linus Vuorio except where stated. Movie thumbnail is by Jonas Lindström.

The post Pal stool by Hallgeir Homstvedt
for One Nordic appeared first on Dezeen.