The British are coming! Tom Dixon continues his global takeover with the launch of London Underground, an independent satellite event staged during NY Design Week/ICFF. Held in the basement of the Bleeker Street Theater, the show will debut the Luminosity lighting collection in the United States as well as host a special off-line Fab.com x Tom Dixon pop-up store. In addition, visitors can grab a cup of Stumptown Coffee or check out Surface Magazine's retro-'60s inspired broadcasting station.

Core77 had an opportunity to chat with the trailblazing designer about being a Brit in New York during Design Week, the future of manufacturing and his opinions on light, love and rock 'n' roll.

London Underground
Bleeker Street Theater Basement
45 Bleeker Street and Lafayette
Through May 22nd

Core77: We're counting down tonight's kickoff of 2012's New York Design Week. A lot of European designers skip over New York after the madness of Milan. As a designer who has had a consistent presence at ICFF and New York Design Week, why is it important for you to be here every year?

Tom Dixon: Well, we've always thought it was an interesting market and we like hanging out in New York anyway. We decided several years ago to invest in the United States properly. We've been taking baby steps to get the infrastructure in place—having a little office there, a partnership with the warehouse and taking it seriously. A lot of people just think that because I speak English they can just go to New York and sell things and people will understand. For anybody who's ever been in, I dunno, rock and roll—you've got to tour. You've got to be there. You've got to invest and spend time.

You've got to be consistent in your presence, otherwise, America just doesn't happen. So, we made a decision and we're pleased we did because people seem to like what we're doing. It feels just like a beginning of something a bit bigger. We also think that the United States has been quite conservative for a long time. We thought it was time to breathe a bit of fresh air.

We're definitely seeing more and more of your work here in the United States. In fact, this week you launched a pop-up store with Fab.com both online and in a physical pop-up at the London Underground exhibition.

America is so good at defining new business models. I think it's the same thing with the furniture industry worldwide—it has been very acting very conventionally. It's only really Ikea that does things in a really different manner. It is really interesting to see how fast and how quickly Fab.com is gaining traction and how it really challenges the way you distribute things. Things just went online this week so we don't know what the results are yet, but it's kind of fascinating to see that there are a million people over there that are interested in design in a slightly different way.

That brings us to your current collection, Luminosity. One of the things that I really enjoyed was the way that you're really playing with transparency and the process of actually creating these pieces. What were some of the design considerations you were thinking about when crafting this new collection?

We tend to think more about the sculpture of the object rather than what it's really doing. It was time to think a bit more about the effects and the functionalities—the effects that these lights were giving and whether we could think a bit more about how you build a character and the lighting in space rather than just thinking about the surface and the shape of the object itself.

It's still a really fantastic field in lighting at the moment because it's something which really is evolving and changing rapidly—through government legislation, technical development and more efficient ways of lighting things. People feel slightly nervous about using these new lighting technologies. I mean, everybody is much more comfortable with the incandescent bulb—you know what 100 watts does and you know that you're going to like the light quality.

Artist: lunchbreath
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Lead Interaction Designer - Touch Interfaces & Applications
Bresslergroup
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Bresslergroup is seeking an experienced (5+ years), full-time interaction designer to join our team of UI designers, researchers and industrial designers. The designer will work on an interesting variety of projects including interfaces within consumer products, medical devices and industrial equipment as well as stand-alone applications.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

Years ago a Frank Lloyd Wright sketch of what appears to be a globe stand (above) surfaced at the Foundation in his name, which holds archives for more than 20,000 of his drawings. A Chicago-based company named Replogle Globe, the world's largest manufacturer of globes, approached the Foundation seeking permission to realize it. Permission granted, they produced the Wright Globe, a walnut pedestal supporting an antique-hued globe and standing at 39 inches.

The drawing is an unidentified concept for one of the Prairie Homes that Mr. Wright designed in the early 1900s. The only marking on the drawing is in his handwriting and says, "Something like this." The proportions, and interpriation, of the drawing were calculated based on the scale of other drawings from this time period.

They apparently met with some success, as they then produced an entire line of Foundation-authorized Frank-Lloyd-Wright-branded globes, the others not drawn from sketches but rather cobbled together from a combination of Wright's design signatures.

I have mixed feelings about this. But I think it would be awesome if a missing next page in the sketchbook surfaced, and it turns out that the scale was all wrong, and that Mr. Wright actually intended to venture into outer space to encase the Earth in a really big walnut pedestal space station.

In my wildest dreams, it comes to light that the sketch had been doctored to remove the following annotation:

The Northern Oddities showing at Ivana Helsinki Concept Store features "eight curious Finnish design brands on their crusade to New York City." This is the first time any of these designers have sent their work "beyond the borders of the Old Continent," and their colorful, graphic patterns and fun, approachable products are a safe bet for a warm reception during NY Design Week.

If you make your way past Ivana Helsinki's dresses and blouses you'll see a table set with Northern Oddities' wares: kitchen accessories, lamps, toys and paper goods, like the plywood notebooks by Private Case. The notebooks come in two sizes and are made from birch wood, a material indigenous to Finland, where they use it for everything from "hand tools and furnishing to bridges and churches." The wood is thin enough not to be bulky and hard enough to provide a sturdy surface to write on. There's even a handy little pencil holder on the side.

Sanna Pelliccioni made the boldest statement with Bombo, her line of colorful kitchen accessories (above) with bright blue and yellow graphics of families printed on hand towels, serving trays and plates.

It's no surprise that people were flocking to the affordable and approachable pieces at the massive Blu Dot space at ICFF. This time around, Blu Dot got a little luxe with a few of their classic designs, like the ubiquitous Real Good Chair. Formerly the chair has only been offered in red, black, white and aqua, but now it comes in glorious copper. Sturdier and heavier than its thin, powder coated steel counterpart, the copper version will patina with age, like a fine leather chair. No word yet on what the price will be, but even if it's twice as much as the current $139 version, it'd still fit in with Blu Dot's modest price point.

The second piece worth noting is the Stamp table, a low lying coffee table that works indoors or out. Like the Real Good Chair, the Stamp's base comes in a few bright powder coated varieties with a glass table top, but it was the shiny copper model with a white marble top that caught my eye. This one's so new there aren't even any decent pictures of it yet, but Blu Dot is working on getting it up on their site, so stay tuned. BONUS: Check out more pics from Blu Dot's new collection after the jump.

I'd need to see fact sheets or read usage reviews before committing, but the idea of the Ray solar-powered charger sounds great. It's these first two photos that really caught my eye, as the idea of being able to juice up your phone by sticking the Ray on an airplane or car window is immensely appealing, inner skeptic aside.

If there's no window handy, or if the sun's position doesn't jive with vertical mounting, there's also an onboard "kickstand" that lets you set the Ray on a flat surface.

As you can see in the shot below, the device needs a bit of industrial design help; I disagree with the word "neatly" being used to describe the cord solution.

We finally had a chance to check out a few new designs from Design House Stockholm, which have been making tradeshow rounds as of earlier this year, at their booth at the ICFF. (It doesn't get much more Scandinavian than this... not that that's a bad thing by any means.)

The new "Form" pendant lamp (at top and above) is the namesake of up-and-coming Swedish design trio Form Us with Love.

Lamps are like people, they are happiest in families. The Form Pendants from design group Form Us With Love are a bunch of glass lamps that are stronger as a group. The basis consists of three blown glass forms borrowed from the timeless world of the light bulb with industrial shades and globes but refined to a beautiful abstraction in white with a spatial sensation. The idea is that we should find our own combinations of lamps at work, or at home above the dinner table... [from] Three lamps together or 25 of them in an illuminated sculptural mobile.

The blown-glass fixtures take halogen bulbs.

From left: The Cord lamp and Work Lamp Gold are also by FUWL, shown alongside iconic block lamps.

The "Rock" chair by Fredrik Färg is essentially a rocking chair that has been reduced to its simplest possible form, developed by the designer "during an exchange term in Australia where I was given an assignment to created a chair using only MDF board and a jig saw." He relates that "It was a challenge to produce something personal and coherent using the simplest means."

Rock Chair is a knock-down design sold in a flat pack. The five pieces are easy to fit together. When the chair has been assembled, the construction is its expressive feature. Nothing is hidden and one can see how the chair holds together. There is a toy-like charm to its simplicity. As a model, Rock Chair is like a drawing that one can sit on, as beautiful as it is cleverly functional.

Rocking chairs encourage one to sit for a long time. While working on the Rock Chair Fredrik also had the idea of producing soft cushions for it. The round cushions are a graphically elegant addition to the generous forms of the rocking chair and make it comfortable. Rock Seat comes in two variants, one in leather and one in cotton canvas. The idea is that the cushions should last for a long time and gain a more beautiful patina with the passing of the years.

We're well aware that the majority of our U.S. design coverage focuses on certain urban areas known for their highly concentrated creative capital... which might be why stories on the likes of, say, 2nd Shift Studio are so well-received.

Misewell is an independent furniture studio that hails from the heartland, predating the Cleveland upstarts by a couple years—the Georgeson brothers made their ICFF debut back in 2009. The Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based duo prides itself on local production, and they were pleased to make a triumphant return to the furniture fair with several new products.

The Tokyo lamp comes in two sizes

Fun fact, via Paul: "Misewell comes from the slang for 'might as well' or 'may as well,' so it's pronounced like myze-well."

This morning I passed the Bulthaup showroom near Core77's offices, and saw something bizarre in the windows. It looked like a butcher-block table, except the top was not level; it was carved into precisely angled troughs. Nested within the troughs were randomly-located triangular blocks of steel. While I couldn't get a good cameraphone photo through the glass (the showroom was closed) I pulled the press image, above, when I got home. That's exactly what I saw.

So what the heck is it? Bulthaup, the premium kitchen manufacturer whose work we previously drooled over here, has released a redesigned drawer system based on those troughs and dividers.

I've tried to winnow their florid description of the system, which reads like a term paper, down to a more manageable description of how it works and what the design thinking was:

Systems Administrator - Products of Design
The School of Visual Arts
New York, New York

The School of Visual Arts is seeking a Systems Administrator for the new Products of Design program. He or she will be responsible for overseeing the planning, coordinating, integrating and monitoring of all technical aspects for the department and contributing to the digital making aspects of the new Visible Futures Lab.

The administrator will provide full technical support to the department and chair's office. Daily activities include, but are not limited to: email, computer, printing, network, and server support for students, faculty, and staff; troubleshoot technical issues in the classrooms and studio; and assist in special events.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

Reporting by Temenouzhka Zaharieva. Images by Mihail Novakov.

Sofia Design Week, the international design festival of Bulgaria, is organized by the cultural platform EDNO and takes place in Sofia every June since 2009. Its fourth edition entitled In Context will include over 100 events—exhibitions, workshops, lectures, screenings and parties.

This year, events kick off today, June 1st, but the preliminary program has already begun. The first exhibition opened on April 28 at the Sofia City Art Gallery—100 miniatures of classical chairs in scale 1: 6. from the collection of Vitra Design Museum (Germany). Since the history of design assigns the chair a central role, the exhibition of these coveted collector's items—with the help of photographs, original sketches and chronological tables—aims to tell the story of contemporary design.

Image courtesy of Ada Nikolova

On May 24th—the Bulgarian Education and Culture, and Slavonic Literature Day—the exhibition Alfapretation Bulgaria opened. In 2007, the year Bulgaria joined the European Union, the Cyrillic alphabet became the third official alphabet in the EU. Alfapretation Bulgaria is a project that tries to interprete the Cyrillic alphabet as a unifying code of cultural symbols of identity. For the project all 30 letters were (quite subjectively) associated with 30 symbols of Bulgaria's daily life, values and mentality—like banitsa, roses, tobacco, no, Sofia, bread, etc. These letter/word combinations were distributed as an inspiration among fifteen Bulgarian designers and Alphapretation presents their interpretations.

But the most interesting is yet to come—there will be more than 50 exhibitions, many workshops and lectures. What we are looking forward to see this year:

Francois Schuiten is a Belgian comics artist born in 1956 to two architects. Buildings are in his blood, as is artistic talent, but Schuiten's chosen career path enabled him to pull off something every architect dreams of but none can do: By working in the comics world, Schuiten can create entire cities without limit.

There is no budget-minded client, no structural engineer, no combative contractor, no urban planning quagmire, no pesky laws of physics to arrest the beautiful urban explosions that flow directly from Schuiten's mind to the pen.

Barcelona-based graphic design studio LoSiento has been exploring 'four dimensional' lettering for at least a year now, honing their craft alongside client projects. As in the iconic cover of Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, the 3D object is an ambigram—i.e. it reads from multiple perspectives.

Of course, no one said it was easy: check out the video below:

Kyle Fleet's "Private Rocker" for Rest and Concentration

Herman Miller's annual showcase of student work at this year's ICFF looked to define a healthier and brighter future where well-defined personal spaces bridged the experience between office and home.

Cranbrook Academy of Art's Department of 3D Design tackled the question of Rest and Concentration in the workplace. "If new work cultures require an integration of living and working, then what is the new vision of physical rest in a professional setting?" Kyle Fleet's "Private Rocker" project creats visual and acoustic privacy perfect for working on a tablet or laptop (above).

Matthew Plumstead's "Integrated Workstation" allows for a flexible workflow from standing-sitting-reclining by including a daybed in its design.

Douglas Leckie's "Tri-fold Bench" employs upholstered panels to transform group seating to personal daybed.

Designers! This is your last chance to enter the Core77 Redesign Challenge for the DESIGNED IN USA Logomark! After much discussion, you asked and we delivered a challenge to let you flex your communication design muscles to redesign the USA brand certification logomark for Designed in USA.

Current design for the Designed in USA Logomark

Between now and midnight PDT Sunday, June 3rd, 2012 designers are invited to submit your redesign of the DESIGNED IN USA Logomark. Entries will be judged by the editorial department of Core77 and the Creative Team of RKS, and the three best will be determined and revealed. Winning designs will then be added to the website for download and use by the design and business community. Designs will be judged on the basis of creativity, appropriateness, applicability, and iconic potential. Good luck!

PRIZES

• Winner: $150 from RKS and $100 Gift Certificate to Hand-Eye Supply and opportunity to work with Lance Hussey to refine the final design.
  
• 1st Runner-Up: $100 cash prize from RKS
  
• 2nd Runner-Up $50 cash prize from RKS

Enter after the jump or go to our standalone entry form.

We were delighted to see Core77 friend François Chambard of UM Project at the opening of WantedDesign 2012, but were even more delighted to see the debut of his Craft System collection. In our NY Design Week studio visit previews, we got a line on the new collection at UM Project HQ in Brooklyn when Chambard mentioned that he'd be debuting a piece at ICFF with three market-ready variations. For Wanted he planned to "take this same piece and doing a series of totally unexpected, whimsical, playful and serious versions."

The Craft System, "takes a system approach to craft, blurring the line between the mass-produced and the handmade." A single Corian base serves as a foundation for an LED Grid or small incandescent light bulbs—an oversized dial on the face of the base invites users to "dial-in" to the fun and interact with the light. Varying tops and bottoms combine to create an infinite number of playful lighting options.

Two variations of the Atum Lamp

We love Chambard's approach to the market—the Craft System highlights the strengths of an independent designer that can turn their limited and specialized production capabilities, "into an advantage by enabling the manufacturing of market-ready series and one-off pieces at the same time." This philosophy of "serious play" opened the door to the wonderfully whimsical Theremin, Greenhouse and robot shapes.

Core77 had an opportunity to chat with François about his unique project to get some insight into Sci-Fi inspirations, the development of his "silver bullet" base and his plan to add a new piece to the Craft System each month.

Core77: Where did the inspiration come from for the Craft System Project?

François Chambard: As a member of the New York design community, it is important to show some work during Design Week. But somehow I have always struggled with the dual format ICFF vs. off-site shows. One is too corporate and business-driven. The other ones are too artsy. I am neither a business person nor an artist, but I am somewhere in the middle, immersed in the marketplace with a point-of-view and a story to share. I was looking for a format to show what UM Project does—a combination of unique, one-of-a-kind projects and production work sold at retail—in a novel and engaging way. Like so much of our other work, mixing cues from industry and craft was the obvious answer and Craft System does it quite literally. A central part speaks the language of industry: standardized, repeated, manufactured. Attachments speak the language of craft: unique, unexpected, handmade. The formula was established, providing the key to multiple variations. Hence the name, Craft System.

This year provided a unique opportunity to show new work in a different way during New York Design Week. We knew that Wanted Design would make a great comeback for its second year. Very early, we decided to use it to our advantage by sharing a story and a process at Wanted Design, while still being visible at ICFF, showcasing products for the trade. Craft System was our message. Wanted Design provided us the medium and it has worked just wonderfully.

From a formal point-of-view, inspirations for Craft System comes from the imaginary and the real worlds with designs inspired by comics and appliances, toys and tools, sci-fi movies and science labs. Design-wise, Craft System mixes multiple influences including Memphis through the stacking of simple geometric shapes, and mid-century modern design, especially Jean Prouvé, through the mix of the tech-y and the beautifully functional.

Art Center College of Design will be launching their first TEDx event on Saturday, June 9, 2012.

The one-day event will be held on their Hillside Campus in Pasadena, California. The event's theme? "Design a _______ for Social Impact." The blank in the title is a call to action designed to inspire TEDx attendees to find their own way to effect positive change.

An impressive lineup of speakers, including Doug Powell, national president of the AIGA, and the individual spearheading the association's Design for Good initiative; Dr. Cameron Tonkinwise, chair of Design Thinking and Sustainability at Parsons The New School, whose current research is exploring design-enabled sharing of resources; and let's not forget Core77 Editor in Chief, Allan Chochinov—who will be filling in the blank, with the word "blank."

Photos by June Korea

Two Art Center students, Erik Molano and Mariana Prieto, have spent the last year growing their partnership into a team of more than 25 students. With the help of Art Center administration, they were able to pitch the idea of a TEDx college studio course. Within 3 months, the class became a reality. Applications for the transdisciplinary TEDx Studio came pouring in, and the course received entries from 6 different undergraduate and graduate departments.

"Our challenge, in one semester, was to curate a memorable and unique experience," said Molano. "As a class, we asked ourselves: What does it look like when Art Center takes on a TEDx event? And the bigger question was, Why do the topics of social impact and sustainability have a place at a design school?" Molano and Prieto point to the groundbreaking work that Art Center's Designmatters department has achieved over the past decade. They also believe the speakers and the attendees will answer that question themselves through their participation.

"TED believes in spreading ideas, and Art Center teaches us how to implement them," said Prieto. "It seemed natural for us to put these two organizations together and to create the first TEDx event at our school."

Want to attend? The event takes place on June 9th.

Check out TEDxArtCenterCollegeOfDesign at: www.artcenter.edu/tedx.

New York City-based industrial designer Lindsey Adelman is best known for her wonderfully crafted lights that incorporate hand-blown glass shades and brass armatures. Besides debuting new lighting and interior objects, Adelman showcased her manufacturing process in a live workshop staged for ICFF. Highlighting the intersection of craft and made-to-order practices, Adelman's team busied themselves wiring sockets and assembling handblown-globes to brass tubing.

It was great to see the evolution of Adelman's explorations in interior objects. As we reported last year, Adelman first played in the space with collaborative items and even did a small jewelry collection for the Sight Unseen pop-up shop. This year's collection expands the vocabulary of her lighting and tabletop objects taking cues from the unexpected beauty found in nature.

The Stalactite Candleabra was originally inspired by "icicles melting off an aging barn"—translucent glass structures hang from a coral-like brass armature.

We can't believe it's already June 1st! In New York City that means we're entering the full-swing of the summer season—backyard BBQs, concerts in the park and the sweet arrival of Italian Ice pushcarts on street corners around the City.

This Sunday, the Lower East Side hosts the first street festival of the season with DayLife. Promising to transform three blocks of the LES into an "urban backyard," the event features neighborhood food vendors and retailers hawking treats, DJs, live music and activities for your whole hipster crew (ping pong, skate ramp, DJ lessons).

For the occassion, Dub Studio Architects created a prototype for a new kind of pushcart. The modular carts are made of components that are easily assembled, moved, stacked and positioned. When closed, the carts are occupy 12 sq ft. When opened, the carts expand out to 120 square feet (the equivalent of a parking spot.) The pushcarts offer a smart, cost-effective solution for city street fairs, and will be reused in the fall for subsequent events.

The event is the lovechild of LES BID and DUB Studios Architects brought together through the great work of desigNYC. designNYC connects designers interested in civic engagement with extraordinary nonprofits to improve the lives of New Yorkers through the power of design.

See the push carts in action this Sunday!

LES BID and DUB Studios present...
DayLife
Sunday, June 3rd
Noon - 5PM
Orchard Street between Houston and Delancey