True to its mission to support young and emerging designers, last Wednesday saw the 2014 Design Indaba Conference offer its stage to seven recent grads hailing from as many design schools. Day One's Pecha Kucha segment featured a well-rounded cadre of new talent across a variety of disciplines in art and design, with each individual presenting a unique body of work with disparate style and appeal.

The Whiz Kid

Mathieu Rivier kicked things off with a straightforward overview of his work as an interaction design student and researcher. Currently an assistant at his alma mater, ECAL, the University of Art and Design in Lausanne, Rivier explores interactive media such as projection mapping and installation art, among other projects. The Swiss native largely let his work, including "LightForm" and "Caveaux Bulles" ("Bubble Cellar", below), speak for itself.

The website has been updated since it launched last summer

We were certainly curious to hear about the Brooklyn CSA+D when it first launched last summer, based on the community-supported agriculture model in which producers provide goods to local buyers on a subscription basis. Founded by Dianne Debicella and Jill Allyn Petersen, the program is now accepting submissions for its second season. Here, they share some of their learnings and exactly how they're iterating on their inaugural offering.

Submission Deadline Extended for Second Season of Brooklyn Community Supported Art + Design. Accepting proposals from artists and designers through April 3rd, 2014.

As we begin the second season of Brooklyn CSA+D (Community Supported Art + Design), we take a look back on the inaugural season of Brooklyn's first CSA for art and design - an experiment in translating the model of Community Supported Agriculture to the realm of aesthetic and creative production.

Throughout the summer and fall of 2013, the launch of CSA+D was met with loads of enthusiasm from the press as well as the community of artists, designers and collectors here in Brooklyn, who welcomed the possibility of a new marketplace that fosters a direct connection between makers and collectors. We were thrilled to receive hundreds of applications to our very first open call last summer, which yielded a range of offerings for shareholders, including painting, photography, ceramics, sculpture, poster art, wallpaper, installation and printmaking. The jury ranked the submissions and with those selections we then created balanced groups for half-shares and full-shares to ensure an even selection of unique pieces and editions, as well as 2D and 3D works.

Clockwise from top: Hannah June Lueptow, Katerina Usvitsky, Julia Gualtieri

Based on conversations with shareholders and survey results, it's clear they had various reasons for joining. Some were ready to start collecting art but didn't know how to start, while others felt that the mission of supporting emerging artists was an important enough reason on its own to become a shareholder. Some had new apartments to decorate while others wanted to join simply based on the element of surprise and delight. The idea that an expert panel would be selecting the work was reassuring for many shareholders, while others simply liked the artists' previous work and knew that joining would be a safe bet.

The selected artists and designers, on the other hand, were slightly more unified in their reasons for getting involved: Most of them were drawn to CSA+D by the prospect of connecting to the community directly and getting to meet the people who would own their work. While we received some feedback from potential applicants who thought the $3,000 commission for 50 works was too low, the participants expressed satisfaction with the commission, explaining that they worked backward from that number to make decisions about the material costs, size and time commitment to determine their own compensation. This model is certainly not for every artist or designer, especially those creating large-scale or time- and resource-intensive works. But, as we saw with the results of the first season, there is much desirable work being created at the scale where the commission makes sense to the artists and the quality of the work is pleasing to the shareholders.

Clockwise from top: Evan Venegas, Chandra Bocci, Beth Bolgla

In this three-part mini-series, Stefanie Koehler shares her experiences in bringing a sustainability focus into her work.

We all know the plight of the typical industrial designer: make (more) stuff; repeat. But with the nexus of vast technical abilities and support systems to deliver ideas, where does responsibility and "design sensitivity" come into play? How will we be able to design with an understanding that every design decision is connected in some way to everything else (either directly or indirectly) and will inevitably have a social and environmental impact (intended or not)? Is it even our responsibility as designers to think about the impact of our designs? Do we need to worry about what happens up or downstream of our products, or is that someone else's job?

Where I Was

In 2009, armed with a traditional industrial design degree, I entered the workforce and immediately began to struggle with the paradox of wanting to use my newly-honed design skills yet feeling like I needed to make crap to get paid. At the time, I did not grasp my role as a young designer, but I did know that continuing to design harmful, and sometimes pointless, products was not going to fulfill me. I decided I did not want to participate in a cycle that turns everything into a consumable or everyone into a consumer.

Following my undergrad, I initially tried to get my foot in the door, only to question why I was trying to get in the door in the first place. I ended up not taking the prescribed path of working for a conventional design firm, taking on freelance projects instead, ranging from corporate product design and branding to gritty consulting for start-ups and training dogs on the side. I wondered if could I turn my (perceived) inability to get a "real job" into an opportunity to engage in a career path that makes me happy? Luckily, I found that the answer was "yes," and that sustainability-focused design has filled this void for me, both personally and professionally.

Here's some exciting news: The U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory is currently working on a 3D printer "that is 200 to 500 times faster and capable of printing polymer components 10 times larger than today's common additive machines—in sizes greater than one cubic meter." To do it they're partnering with Cincinnati Inc., an Ohio-based company that produces manufacturing machines. Details are sketchy, but it seems the Oak Ridge boys are adapting a gantry-based Cincinnati laser cutter (above) for the prototype, so we're assuming it'll be SLS rather than FDM.

The move is a welcome one for American jobs, and points the way towards a possible return of U.S. manufacturing might. Said Cincinnati CEO Andrew Jamison in a press statement, "As one of the oldest U.S. machine tool manufacturers, with continuous operation since 1898, we view this exciting opportunity as starting a new chapter in our history of serving U.S. manufacturing. Out of this developmental partnership with ORNL, CINCINNATI intends to lead the world in big area additive manufacturing machinery for both prototyping and production." It is not clear whether he was shouting the word "CINCINNATI" or whether they just printed it in all caps for that one paragraph.

The Oak Ridge Boys could not be reached for comment, and when pressed for a quote, their uncooperative manager hung up on me.

In this series, Matthew Sullivan (AQQ Design) highlights some designers that you should know, but might not. Previously, he looked at the work of François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne.

Donald Judd: Born in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, 1928. Died in New York City, 1994.

Donald Judd had three main yields: sculpture, writing and furniture. Of course, it is well known that he delved a bit into architecture and was a formidable collector of all manner of things (books, real estate, tartan plaids, etc.), but it is his own texts, designs and dimensional forms that received the full brunt of his passion. It is very hard to simultaneously describe these three aspects, for though each sprang from the same ideological fount, each combination (particular medium with fundamental idea) created quite different results. If we were talking about the sculpture only or the writing only, I don't think it would be imperative to say much about the remaining two, but the understanding of Judd's furniture is a more contingent affair; it occupies an almost uncomfortable position between the dogmatic, untenable propositions of his writing and the absolutely transcendent, mind-bending power of his sculpture.

Between the three, the sculptures are most able to bear the load of Judd's heavy inquiries. They work incredibly well at displaying his fascination with the nature of perception. They're almost autonomous tools—sculptures independent of the artist, where Judd has set the stage for a deep viewing but left the circuit open, so that it is the viewer and the cosmos that complete it. His writing is a wholly different situation—a primarily closed circuit. The essays are fanatically assertive, all maxim and no poetry; one either gets on board or is quickly ejected. In a very real sense, the furniture is the sculpture with the art removed; it is made of the same materials and employs the same techniques of fabrication, but instead of being finely tuned to challenge the confidence of our senses, a Judd chair is engaged in the physical activity of seated positions. Even though the furniture is actively involved in these physical and practical activities, it has an assertive allegiance to the "right angle" that pushes it a touch closer to the bold tenets of the essays, as both seem to fetishize extremely defined silhouettes—something that the sculptures play with but simultaneously destroy.

Inside Judd's loft on Spring Street in New York City

Above: an adodized-aluminum desk and chair (left) and bookshelf. Top image: Judd's high-walled bed

Turkeys strut, peacocks preen, and bowerbirds design. Of all the strange things that male birds do to attract a mate, the bowerbird's ritual is the only one that could make it into the MoMA. They use two distinct types of "architecture" and have a keen eye for color as well.

Image via The Wilderness Alternative

Once mating season rolls around, these Oceanican birds start gathering sticks and using them to erect structures called bowers. Amusingly, the bowerbirds pick one of two architectural styles, depending on their subspecies. One type is a "maypole" bower, where the sticks are arranged around a sapling to form a kind of teepee or cave:

Image via The Wilderness Alternative

The second is an "avenue" bower, where the sticks are arranged vertically to make a path down the middle, like something you'd see a bride and groom walk through at a wedding venue.

The first thing I thought of when I saw this trio of tables was of that one terrible Dixie Chicks song, "Wide Open Spaces." But that pretty much nails it when it comes to this series, titled "TOP Tables," from Olze & Wilkens. The Berlin & Freiburg-based duo deftly translates the scale of the lightly stained woodgrain to create the winsome scenes. From swimsuit-clad sunbathers on a sparsely populated beach to cabins against a backdrop of fresh snow, it takes just a couple well-placed elements, digitally printed on plywood, to suggest an aerial image on the otherwise unassuming tabletop.

They've been around for 30 years, bringing delightful programming, recreation, books, feature films and consumer products to kids all over the world. Nickelodeon has built a diverse, global business by putting kids first in everything it does. Now they want you to join their New York, NY team as a Package Art Director to support their award winning internal creative team.

The packaging AD will report to the VP of property design as a key member of their team overseeing the creation of packaging guidelines, and directing their licensees to create compelling statements at retail. This requires Senior level experience and a desire to uphold Nickelodeon's aesthetic for bold, innovative design as it applies to consumer facing packaging at retail. Apply Now.

The fact that Jake Barton's work has been woefully absent from these pages—just a couple of mentions in 2008 and a 2011 Core77 Design Awards Notable (and the BIG Heart)—simply means that his presentation at the 2014 Design Indaba Conference is a felicitous occasion to cover the latest from his media design practice, Local Projects.

Barton is a natural presenter—no surprise, given his background in theater—who speaks with a confident, clear cadence on and off the stage. He worked as an exhibition designer prior to attending NYU ITP, where he has taught since he graduated in 2003, and has spent the past decade or so establishing Local Projects (which he founded in 2002) as the premier shop of its kind. While they're billed as a "media design firm for museums and public spaces, Local Projects makes cutting-edge technology accessible and meaningful to a broad audience. Specifically, Barton and his team of designers, technologists, filmmakers and developers create media-enabled experiences at the intersection of design and storytelling—from rich oral histories to simple, intuitive interactions.

The site- and exhibition-specific multimedia elements that the National Design Award-winning firm has designed go far beyond the ho-hum audio guide, offering glimpses of the potential of augmented reality, where the content is seamlessly integrated into the (largely screen-based) media. Most of us have witnessed (or at least heard an account of) a young child attempting to 'swipe' or otherwise manipulate a television as though it is a touchscreen; with Local Projects' displays for the Cleveland Museum of Art, you actually can.

With a little under three weeks left until the March 20th Core77 Design Awards deadline, we know you might need a little kick of motivation to enter, which you can do right here. Last week, we caught up with 2011 program winner Load Carrier for Labor to see how life was going post-Awards. This time around, we talked with 2013 Service Winners Museum In Our Street (MIOS). Make sure to submit your design before March 20!

In this three-part mini-series, Stefanie Koehler shares her experiences in bringing a sustainability focus into her work. See Part 1 here.

Practicing sustainability-focused design, like any art form, is a skill that requires craft and sensitivity. As designers, we are tasked to skillfully create consumable goods, services and systems that inevitably make an impact on many levels, many of which are not well understood or even measurable. By learning and then practicing various approaches, I have begun to understand design from a whole-systems perspective, considering both the micro and macro scale. This way of thinking has led me to consider the trade-offs—from materials to process to business strategy—that I make with every design decision.

Doing is Believing

Many people think that sustainability-focused design is a burden—futile, depressing and difficult. Some don't even believe it is possible. Designing with sustainable outcomes in mind may have these pitfalls but I have been able to debunk these negative opinions by studying sustainability theory and putting it into practice.

To become efficient and ultimately more effective at anything, one needs to practice—a lot—and sustainability-focused design is no exception. By applying comprehensive sustainability approaches to different design challenges, I have not only learned that sustainable outcomes are achievable but also that it is rewarding, both personally and professionally.

In Jeremy Faludi's Collaborative Product Design course, offered by the fully online Sustainable Design graduate program at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), I was able to practice sustainability-focused approaches such as energy effectiveness, design for appropriate lifetime, biomimicry and responsible materials, to name a few. We directly applied these solutions to new solutions for existing products with real companies; I had the pleasure of practicing a collaborative redesign for Steelcase's Circa Chair.

This is the latest installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. Previously, we talked to Misha Kahn.

Name:Mathieu Lehanneur

Occupation: Designer

Location: Paris

Current projects: I just launched a radio for Lexon named Hybrid, and I'm working on new meeting spaces for Pullman Hotels. I recently won a competition for the interior design of the Grand Palais in Paris; that will be a project of maybe ten years in the works. I'm also working on new spaces for the luxury watch brand Audemars Piguet during Miami Art Basel. And I'm working on a project that will be launched next July in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It will be a place named Le Laboratoire that includes a cafe, a restaurant, a store, an auditorium and an art gallery. It will be just between Harvard University and MIT.

Mission: To be as close as I can to the human beings I work for, and not to consider them as "targets" or "consumers" or "clients" but as very complex machines—as human beings are—and try to find the best way to serve them.

Above and top right image: Lehanneur's Business Playground for Pullman Hotels. Portrait by Jean-Luc Luyssen / Madame Figaro

Wiser, a collection of devices that measure and manage household energy consumption

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? When I was probably 15 or 16. Basically, I wanted to be an artist, and my father was an engineer, so I decided to combine both visions.

Education: I went to design school in Paris, at École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle (ENSCI Les Ateliers). I was supposed to stay for five years but I ended up spending seven years there.

First design job: Actually, the day after I graduated, I decided to work without any boss, because it's not easy to share vision. So my first job was as a freelancer for the Palais de la Découverte, a science museum in Paris. I was commissioned to design all of the interactive devices for explaining astrophysical phenomena to the public.

Who is your design hero? Probably Buckminster Fuller. He was a thinker, a scientist, an architect, an engineer—a designer, basically.

One of Lehanneur's employees in the designer's Paris studio

As cool as it is to see birds using manmade objects to decorate their lovenests, it's a little heartbreaking. But the reality is that the wilderness is strewn with refuse, hence bottlecaps and Bics go onto the B.O.M.

Well, turns out it's not just bowerbirds, but also bees that make use of human garbage—specifically, plastic—to spruce up their digs. The Ecological Society of America has released a paper entitled "Bees collect polyurethane and polethylene plastics as novel nest materials," detailing York University researcher J. Scott MacIvor's discoveries on the subject.

[While building nests, the bee species] Megachile rotundata was discovered using pieces of polyethylene-based plastic shopping bags and M. campanulae used a polyurethane-based exterior house sealant...

...Furthermore, since plastic pieces were found in combination with leaves in brood cells, and found only near the end of the cell series, bee naivete does not appear to be the cause for the use of plastic... It is interesting to note that in both bee species, the type of plastic used structurally reflects the native nesting material, suggesting that nesting material structure is more important than chemical or other innate traits of the material.

Interestingly enough, the usage of plastic as a nest component has both positive and negative effects on the hatching of brood. The parts of the nest made up of plastic tend to store moisture, and mold building up in those areas killed up to 90% of the brood; but on the plus side, the plastic kept parasites away from the brood, as the pests "were unable to sting through the plastic wall."

MacIvor points out a similar finding to that latter part, concerning house finches. When these birds use discarded cigarette butts to build their nests—gross, I know—the nicotine inside them tends to keep parasites away.

I can't decide if it's sad or exciting that animals and insects are finding ways to repurpose human garbage. But it will presumably continue, and at the very least, this puts quite a different spin on parents teaching their kids about the birds and the bees.

Via Modern Farmer

HeliGraphix is the name of a Germany-based collective of RC helicopter enthusiasts who document their stunts online. The group's latest project, H.U.L.C.—that's "Heavy Ultra-Lifter Crane"F—sought to achieve what no one yet had: The ability to lift and carry a human being around using two small RC copters. I am so deathly afraid of heights that just watching this video made me want to get off of my office chair and lie down on the floor to feel safe.

While they make it look simple, it's hard to overstate how complicated it is to pull something like this off. The 'copters have to be strong enough to carry the woman (not to mention those crazy boots), and it's not like they're just lifting straight up; since there's two of them, they've got to pull sideways as well. Not to mention the pilots have to be precise enough to avoid dropping or jerking their payload. You'd think they'd try this over a body of water or something soft, so it's a testament to their skills and preparation that they did this over a concrete patio.

The group isn't shy about their accomplishment, having spent four months and "several thousand Euros" in preparation: They're touting it as "Clearly a world-record and one of the most monumental actions in the history of R/C model aviation: THE WORLD'S FIRST MANNED R/C FLIGHT!"

For tech geeks who are interested in the hardware, it's all documented in painstaking detail right here; for those with a passing interest in how they pulled this off, hit the jump to see the explanatory video.

The mission of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University is to transform human healthcare and the environment by emulating the way nature builds. They are currently seeking a talented and creative individual to contribute to the design and construction of structured, functional textiles for wearable robotic applications.

That's right. Wearable robotic applications.

If you land this role, you'll be in charge of taking functional and technical requirements from an engineering and biomechanics team and interpret these into a broad range of prototyped garments. This requires a minimum of 2 years of experience with technically sophisticated apparel projects, so if you got it, Apply Now.

There were just a couple of hints that Thomas Heatherwick would be making major headlines with his presentation at Design Indaba last week, but it would prove to be the highlight of the conference. Nevertheless, the scruffy Londoner scarcely betrayed his nerves as he presented a handful of completed projects and works in progress in the lead-up to the reveal.

His work, for the uninitiated, sounds farfetched or fanciful, even Borgesian at times: A corridor-less, corner-less Learning Hub in Singapore. A flaming floriform sculpture that perfectly symbolizes "E pluribus unum" (made of copper no less), which might just be the coolest Olympic cauldron design ever. A fleet of two-story buildings on wheels, from which "you can't get a better view of London"—a.k.a. the double-decker bus. The Seed Cathedral, which looks like a giant sea creature or koosh ball or a universe that's exploding and imploding at the same time... for which Heatherwick revealed his original inspiration.

Can something go viral when you intend it to go viral? Apparently so, particularly as we become more gullible as a society. While Jimmy Kimmel's twerking fire and hotel wolf videos at least had an element of believability to them, this latest makes me despair for people's reality filter: Since its launch yesterday, Facebookers have been eagerly promoting this video purporting that Back to the Future 2's hoverboards now exist.

By roping in Tony Hawk, Christopher Lloyd and others, whomever is behind "HUVrtech" has easily been able to goad the unwitting into posting it with sentences like "Can you believe this is actually here?? This is amazing!! Unbelievable!" and "The Hover Board is here! Welcome to the future!" Never mind that everyone's shirt has peculiar tug marks around the backs of their shoulders, never mind, uh, physics.

The only question is who did this, and why. A Back to the Future re-release, a new Tony Hawk game, Nike's forthcoming "power lace" MAGs and even Kimmel have all been fingered as suspects. But the only thing this video is really promoting, in my mind, is that people's fantasies are becoming increasingly easier to prey upon.

In this three-part mini-series, Stefanie Koehler shares her experiences in bringing a sustainability focus into her work.

Part 1: A New Way of Thinking· Part 2: Putting Theory into Practice· Part 3: Learning from Nature

During the 2012–13 Biomimicry Student Design Challenge (BSDC) competition, I discovered that solving humanity's biggest design challenges requires new skills applied within a comprehensive framework that integrates sustainability. I gained a deeper understanding of the Buckminster Fuller Institute's tenet of what Fuller described as "comprehensive anticipatory design scientists." (Fuller, 1999)

Learning from nature

Biomimicry, the practice of emulating models and strategies found in nature, provides designers with tools for seeing and learning from nature in new ways (Biomimicry 3.8 Institute), serving to both embed an ethos of sustainability and potentially inspire radical thinking.

For the competition, I explored the use of biomimicry as a process for creating a sustainable product as well as a scalable social enterprise idea. Under the inspirational guidance of Denise Deluca, co-founder and director of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation (BCI), this work ultimately grew from my Master's thesis project.

My design concept was a water treatment system called SolDrop. My team went on to become the only US finalists in the global 2013 BSDC and I had the honor of presenting at the Biomimicry Education Summit and Global Conference in Boston that year.

SolDrop Solar Still concept by Stefanie Koehler (competition entry for the Biomimicry Student Design Challenge)

Don't you hate it when the view through your rearview mirror is obscured by the rear seat headrests, or that hitchhiking drifter that you picked up? Back when I still owned a car, I pulled the rear headrests out of my '01 Golf just so I could get a clear view. Then there's this ridiculous design trend we have now for absurdly chunky C-pillars, which completely obscure your view of whatever's behind your car's rear quarters.

Nissan is addressing this with their forthcoming Smart Rearview Mirror, which they're unveiling at the Geneva Motor Show:

It's so simple, and so elegant, that we can't imagine a future where the automakers that aren't already developing their own versions can resist piling on. And I like the way the interface mimics the traditional dimming effect, where you just flick the little angle-changer behind the mirror.

Now that they've got this together, the question is—why not have it be persistent?

You heard it here first: "3D printing is having its 'Macintosh moment.'" So says the team behind a new full-length documentary on the subject, directors Luis Lopez and Clay Tweel and producer Steven Klein. Hollywood Reporter fills in the blank: Pettis is the Steve Jobs of the movement, a shorthand for an upstart who will bring us a product that we never knew we needed through sheer force of will. (Meanwhile, the colossal quarter that he has rendered for the website and poster features his face instead of one of our founding fathers, casting Jobs as none other than God.)

Print the Legend will premiere at SXSW Film Festival this weekend with a handful of screenings in Austin, and if the forthcoming dates are TBD, at least the press materials include a selective history of 3D printing. Between the trailer and milestones listed below, it looks like there's definitely a narrative arc to the documentary...