Hasta La Ideas

TATE THE CAKE. The guy with the glasses schemes for a prime piece of turbine hall.

We’re not sure if Wenlock and Mandeville were on hand for the festivities, but London’s Tate Modern recently celebrated its tenth birthday. A gala celebration at the museum included the above giant sheet cake, a frosted tribute to the Herzog and de Meuron-led conversion of the former Bankside Power Station. More than 45 million people have visited Tate Modern since it opened in May 2000, and the museum recently announced the expansion of its collection to areas outside Europe and North America. Recent acquisitions include 13 contemporary works of art by artists (all new to the collection) from the Middle East and North Africa, including Kader Attia and Mahmoud Bakhshi Moakhar. Tate Modern also recently acquired 28 works from South Africa, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific region. These include Do Ho Suh‘s “Staircase III” (2009), Subodh Gupta‘s “Everyday” (2009), and Felix Gonzalez-Torres‘s “Untitled (Double Portrait)” (1991). Many of the recent acquisitions were gifts or purchased through Tate’s regionally focused acquisitions committees. “Tate Modern has provided the spur for a vigorous policy at Tate of collecting more widely internationally which has deepened the collection for future generations,” said Tate director Nicholas Serota in a press release, while Frances Morris, Tate’s head of collections, described the expansion efforts as “a response to the emergence of interesting and dymamic art centers across the world and an ever more complex and interconnected international art scene.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

pA lot of people think of power tools in terms of German, Japanese or American; you’ve got your Boschs and Festools, your Makitas and Hitachis, your DeWalts and Milwaukees. Lichtenstein is probably not the first country that comes to mind./p

pIt’d be a mistake to overlook them, though, particularly since Lichtensteinian (do I have that right?) power tool manufacturer Hilti A HREF=”http://en.red-dot.org/3535.html” has been awarded the Red Dot Design Team of the Year/A for 2010. (Power tool afficionados will point out that Hilti tools are actually designed in Germany and Austria, but the parent company itself is from Lichtenstein.) This puts them in the vaunted company of previous award winners Apple, Audi, Bose, BMW, and Sony./p

pimg alt=”0hiltiaward.jpg” src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/images/0hiltiaward.jpg” width=”468″ height=”642″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”” //p

pWhen buying a power tool I tend to do a lot of research, weeding through reviews on Amazon and elsewhere, generally taking a few weeks to make up my mind. But Hilti chief designer Stephan Niehaus reveals an interesting statistic:/p

blockquote”Seven seconds – that’s how long it takes professional tradespeople to make an initial judgement when using a new device,” explains Stephan Niehaus, chief-designer of the Hilti Corporation. That is seven seconds to instantly get a client enthusiastic about a new product. “We do everything possible to literally make the quality, performance, and reliability of our devices tangible. The aim is that customers perceive the passion that is in our machines and tools with different senses.” Today, design is the means of choice to express this added value without words./blockquote

pHit the jump to read more about Hilti’s story vis-a-vis design./p

pvia A HREF=”http://www.dexigner.com/product/news-g20761.html” dexigner/A/p

blockquoteWhen Stephan Niehaus joins Hilti as chief-designer in 2003, product design is still strongly driven by technology. At this point solely the engineers and project managers determine the design of products. Niehaus starts working on a holistically oriented Hilti design line and defines processes that allow its implementation. He combines technical knowledge with design to emotionalise the brand. The goal is to create complete solutions with added value for the customer. In contrast to its competitors, Stephan Niehaus and his design team have thus managed to emotionalise products so that they not only inspire new customers, but also appeal to traditional buyers.

p”Hilti design is so good because it promises exactly what the device ultimately delivers. Thus Hilti has managed with its excellent products to establish high design strength as well as continuity, while at the same time keeping a perfect balance between the differentiation from the competition and the establishment and strengthening of its own identity,” said Professor Dr. Peter Zec, initiator of the red dot design award and Senator of the international umbrella organisation of design, Icsid, explaining the selection of the design team of the year./p

p”We are delighted that our consistent, clear and expressive design language has also been recognised by an external expert jury. Receiving the title ‘red dot: design team of the year’ is a great honour and appreciation for everyone involved in the design of our products,” said Bo Risberg, Hilti CEO./blockquotebr /
/pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/hilti_wins_red_dots_design_team_of_the_year_16616.asp”(more…)/a
pa href=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/7cLzIroqq_RA4yUYHrbogNAL2q0/0/da”img src=”http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/7cLzIroqq_RA4yUYHrbogNAL2q0/0/di” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/abr/
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pimg alt=”0ptclotsp.jpg” src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/images/0ptclotsp.jpg” width=”468″ height=”373″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”” //p

p”Most of my designs are problem led,” writes a designer who only goes by the name Product Tank, “and come about because friends of friends and family of family mention that they struggle to do this or that, they say ‘Why hasn’t some bright spark managed to solve the problem of…?'”/p

pTo that end, Mr. Tank A HREF=”http://producttank.squarespace.com/clothes-peg/” has redesigned the clothes pin/A, seen above./p

blockquoteInspired by watching a neighbour struggle to hang out her washing using traditional pegs because she suffers from arthritis, I have redesigned the clothes peg. My design features a locking mechanism and a flexible rubber grip that rests against the clothes. If clothes try to slip off the line, the rubber grip is displaced, increasing the pressure on the clothes. This allows a very light spring (the same type used in push top pens) to be used, so that anyone with weak/painful grip can more easily open and close the peg./blockquote

pCheck out the vid:/p

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pTo see more by Product Tank, A HREF=”http://producttank.squarespace.com/” click here/A.br /
/pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/product_tanks_updated_clothes_pin_addresses_arthritis_16615.asp”(more…)/a
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