New Design Interactions Research Website

October 15, 2010, 1:12 pm

≫ Next: Platonic Fashion by Amila Hrustic

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Happy Life by James Auger, RCA tutor.

The Design Interactions program at the Royal College of Art, led by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, has launched a brand new research site, collecting projects undertaken by tutors, research fellows and research associates in recent years. Cross-indexed by project, people, and partners, the site is an interesting browse and visual treat, capturing the breadth of topics investigated by department.

For example. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing Nina Pope's Cat Fancy Club, a documentary about genetics, cat breeders, and pedigree shows, based on Dr. Leslie Lyons' quote, "Everything you need to know about genetics you can learn from your cat."

Visit here.

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Platonic Fashion by Amila Hrustic

October 15, 2010, 1:39 pm

≫ Next: Vienna Design Week 2010: Design Criminals at the MAKVienna

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Sarajevo-based designer Amila Hrustic based her latest collection of clothing on the platonic solids, producing a set of delicate handmade dresses, each one exploring the cube, tetrahedron, octahedron, dodecahedron or icosahedron. Entitled Plato's Collection, the series is made from paper and more suited for "fashion editorials or the theatrical stage" than for wearing.

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Vienna Design Week 2010: Design Criminals at the MAKVienna

October 15, 2010, 3:00 pm

≫ Next: Designers-In-Residence: Rooted Design for Routed Living

≪ Previous: Platonic Fashion by Amila Hrustic

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Top, mischer'traxler's Automated Cake Decorator and bottom, one of its finished cakes. Photo: mischer'traxler

Curated by Sam Jacob, British architect, designer and director of FAT, the Design Criminals Or a New Joy Into The World exhibition is situated in the Design space of the MAKVienna and co-organised by Thomas Geisler, one of the founding members of Neigungsgruppe Design.

A selection of young designers from Austria were invited to create new works based on the Adolf Loos' 'Ornament and Crime' discourse written by the Austrian architect in 1908. In his essay, Loos explains that ornamentation can have the effect of causing objects to go out of style and become obsolete. Loos saw it was a 'crime' to waste the effort needed to add ornamentation, when the ornamentation would cause the object to soon go out of style. The exhibition title refers to this ambivalent debate about ornament and decoration and how the surface has become a form of cultural expression that conveys personal and social agendas.

As a way to explore this debate the selected graphic designers, product designers and architects focused on exploring the potential for ornament in more everyday and anonymous design activities such as cake decorating, hair dressing, tattoing and floristry.

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Designers-In-Residence: Rooted Design for Routed Living

October 15, 2010, 3:36 pm

≫ Next: Philips Invites You to Design the Next Ironing Steam Generator

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In simplest terms, Rooted Design for Routed Living is a design-build project, where designers-in-residence developed, prototyped and built new furniture for their residency programs, to be used for years to come.

The idea for the project originated from the observation that many artists travel from residency to residency, developing their practice in a string of different contexts. Though the lives of these artists may be considered rootless, the places they travel to provide many historical, regional, cultural roots to anchor them during their stay.

The Nordic Artists' Centre in Norway and A-I-R Laboratory at the Center for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw have observed that this is often not true of the residences themselves, often generic and "too pragmatic." In response, the institutions arranged an exchange. Polish designers would take residence at the remote Nordic Artists' Center and Norwegian designers would visit the metropolitan A-I-R Lab, both designing furniture that reflected their experience and observations abroad.

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Philips Invites You to Design the Next Ironing Steam Generator

October 15, 2010, 4:21 pm

≫ Next: Video: Yves Behar and Jack Schreur on the Sayl Chair

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For its 2010 design competition, Philips is inviting you to design the next steam generating iron. The goal is to come up with something innovative, geared to 2015, that represents Phlips' brand promise of "sense and simplicity." The top prize is $4500; second prize, $3,000; first, $2,500; and three honorable mentions will be awarded $1,000 each, plus Autodesk software for all.

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Video: Yves Behar and Jack Schreur on the Sayl Chair

October 16, 2010, 3:08 pm

≫ Next: VW Group design chief Walter de'Silva designs Leica M9 Titanium

≪ Previous: Philips Invites You to Design the Next Ironing Steam Generator

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Last week we ran an entry on the debut of Herman Miller's new Sayl Chair; this week we were able to get some video time with Yves Behar and Jack Schreur, HM's VP of Seating, as they discussed the Sayl's design process, manufacturing challenges, and what they hope the Sayl will accomplish. (Also, for you design students, we also asked both Schreur and Behar what qualities they'd like to see you guys bring to the table after graduating.)

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VW Group design chief Walter de'Silva designs Leica M9 Titanium

October 19, 2010, 10:29 am

≫ Next: Announcing the New AZ Awards for Design Excellence

≪ Previous: Video: Yves Behar and Jack Schreur on the Sayl Chair

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Walter de'Silva has influenced the design of many Alfa Romeos, Seats, Audis and now, as head of design for the entire Volkswagen Group, is responsible for the design direction of everything from Bentleys and Lamborghinis to the new VW Golf. Leica, the iconic German optics company, recently asked de'Silva design a limited titanium edition of their M9. De'Silva follows in the footsteps of fellow car designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, who designed for Canon and whose ItalDesign studio de'Silva's employers recently acquired.

Only 500 examples of the limited-edition, de'Silva-designed Leica M9 Titanium will be produced, going for (cough) $31,300 apiece... it seems you don't get a free VW with it though....

Disregarding the exorbitant princely sum it takes to purchase one of these, I do love how restrained the the M9 Titanium is with a focus on function and materiality. I wish Mr de'Silva could influence his teams at the VW group to maintain a similar design ethic. In my opinion, the VW and Audi lines of product of late have ever creeping amounts of superfluously stylized surfaces, moving away from the appropriately Bauhaus inspired styles Freeman Thomas and Jay Mays designed in the early 2000's. For reference, below is a comparison between the 2001 and 2010 Audi TT.

via Autoblog

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Announcing the New AZ Awards for Design Excellence

October 19, 2010, 10:32 am

≫ Next: Replenish: A "disruptive" spray bottle that's better for the environment

≪ Previous: VW Group design chief Walter de'Silva designs Leica M9 Titanium

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Though the submission period does not officially begin until January 1st, this may be something to start thinking about, especially if you're missing I.D.'s Annual Design Review. This year, Azure is steps up to the plate and launches its AZ Awards for Design Excellence, an international competition celebrating architecture firms and design studios that have produced stellar work over the past year. The categories include Industrial Design, Architecture, Interior, Concept and a Student Work. The jury has not been announced yet, you can sign up to receive a call for entries (when it's ready) here.

Submissions open: January 1st, 2011. Deadline: March 31st, 2011.

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Replenish: A "disruptive" spray bottle that's better for the environment

October 19, 2010, 11:18 am

≫ Next: Core77's Hand-Eye Curiosity Club - Tonight in Portland, Ore.

≪ Previous: Announcing the New AZ Awards for Design Excellence

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We like seeing the recycling problem being attacked on multiple fronts. For example, single-use spray bottles are recyclable, yet for various reasons only 7% of recyclable plastic actually makes it into the right pile; so Replenish is a spray bottle that aims to extend its lifetime within your household.

Billed as a "disruptive new household cleaning product," Replenish is a durable bottle made from PET-1 (the most-recyclable type of plastic) that essentially comes to the consumer empty, with a "twist-on concentrate pod" containing concentrated cleaning solution. Fill the thing up with water, mix, and you're good to go. Once it's drained, you can buy more pods with different types of cleaning solution in them, and again, you refill it with water you've already got on tap. This means there's a lot less to truck around, as only 5% of the weight of your typical spray bottle is the actual active ingredient; the rest is plastic and water, needlessly adding to the carbon footprint.

Replenish was developed in conjunction with William McDonough's MBDC consultancy. Learn more about it here.

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Core77's Hand-Eye Curiosity Club - Tonight in Portland, Ore.

October 19, 2010, 11:23 am

≫ Next: Completely circular kitchen knife, nay or yea?

≪ Previous: Replenish: A "disruptive" spray bottle that's better for the environment

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Tonight Core77 welcomes Blake Van Roekel of Keuken and Art+Palate Supper Club fame to our bi-weekly creative speaker series: The Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club. Blake will be presenting "The Intellectual Palette; Design in the Kitchen", so if you or your foodie friends are in Portland tonight drop by 23 NW 4th Avenue for the 5:30pm start! For those of you in far-off locales tune in here at 5:30pm Pacific Time for the simulcast!

A little background:
Blake Van Roekel is the owner of Keuken and a co-founder of the successful and popular Art+Palate Supper Club. Her menus are inspired by art and design, literature and music resulting in meals that are thematic and unique to the time and place of the event. Her goal is to introduce greater levels of meaning to the food on our plates by not only stimulating our taste buds, but our emotions and intellect as well.

Blake's talk will focus on the process by which we create dishes. Not only are taste and textures motivating factors in recipe and menu development, but color, aesthetic and the creative process imbue themselves upon food as well. What we see, the literal and the intangible, is what we eat . . .

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Completely circular kitchen knife, nay or yea?

October 19, 2010, 11:56 am

≫ Next: 1.99 Real Housing: Public Housing and Open Innovation

≪ Previous: Core77's Hand-Eye Curiosity Club - Tonight in Portland, Ore.

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[image credit: Norman Copenhagen]

I don't know enough about cooking ergonomics to know if this is the way to go, but LucidiPevere Studio's Chop mincing knife is certainly neat to look at. A subtle bump on the knife half lets you know which side is which, though I could see myself pulling this thing open the wrong way. Can someone with experience with food prep sound off in the comments--do you want a circular blade for mincing, or is this just eye candy?

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1.99 Real Housing: Public Housing and Open Innovation

October 19, 2010, 12:11 pm

≫ Next: How they shot the Star Wars opening crawl

≪ Previous: Completely circular kitchen knife, nay or yea?

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Architecture for Humanity Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Village of Igaraí in Brazil have just launched 1.99 Real Housing: Communities + Designers, an open platform competition attempting to locate that middle ground between "top-down and bottom-up systems" in public and emergency housing development.

Designers, makers and thinkers from all over the world are invited to work directly with a group of residents in Igaraí, Brazil who currently live in a public housing development that isn't working out so well. The title of the competition, 1.99 Real Housing, is based on the nickname locals have developed for the type of structures they live in, "R$1.99", based on the popular R$1.99 stores (Brazil's US dollar store equivalent) and a reference to the cheap and flimsy construction of their current homes.

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How they shot the Star Wars opening crawl

October 19, 2010, 12:15 pm

≫ Next: Core77 Gallery: Valencia Design Week

≪ Previous: 1.99 Real Housing: Public Housing and Open Innovation

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For all these years I never really knew how they shot the text crawls that opened each Star Wars picture, but I never imagined it was something this low-tech:

A camera hanging from a track, shooting a printout that's been gaffer-taped under some glass? Are you kidding me? Next time I'm going to look for the cameraman's feet beneath the last line.

Vanity Fair's got a good behind-the-scenes photo essay of the Empire Strikes Back, featuring the above shot and many more that show you how the magic was made. (Here's a heads-up: They weren't above using monkeys and mattresses.)

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Core77 Gallery: Valencia Design Week

October 19, 2010, 1:39 pm

≫ Next: X-RAY: Tokujin Yoshioka's Transparent Cell Phone

≪ Previous: How they shot the Star Wars opening crawl

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Earlier this month, Core77 correspondent Sam Dunne landed in Spain for Valencia Disseny Week, a program of exhibitions, events, studio visits, and more, anchored by the Habitat Valencia trade fair. See the many ways the city is trying to put itself onto the design map in Sam Dunne's gallery of highlights, where he wonder if, in a growing sea of international design weeks, can Valencia make an impression of their own?

>> view gallery

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X-RAY: Tokujin Yoshioka's Transparent Cell Phone

October 19, 2010, 2:05 pm

≫ Next: Could Your Gaming Device Solve an Environmental Problem?

≪ Previous: Core77 Gallery: Valencia Design Week

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Tokujin Yoshioka (so prolific we can barely keep up) has designed the X-RAY phone for handset manufacturer KDDI's designer label iida. Like those see-through phones from childhood, but better, because in their extreme miniaturization, cell phones have many hundreds more tiny micro circuits to gape at.

At first, it was hard to tell how this works from the press photos, but after poking around on the iida site, we realized that it's a flip phone, not some insanely sophisticated all-clad see through touch screen. We're relieved—not quite a throwback, and a bit of relief. In a market that's already too diverse, the X-RAY phone has succeeded in calling a lot of attention to itself, with a form that does nothing much more than become transparent.

More shots after the jump. And stay tuned, we're sure Yoshioka will be churning out another amazing project in no time.

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Could Your Gaming Device Solve an Environmental Problem?

October 19, 2010, 2:33 pm

≫ Next: Streaming Live from Hand-Eye Supply!

≪ Previous: X-RAY: Tokujin Yoshioka's Transparent Cell Phone

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This Thursday (Oct 21st) Kate Bellingham of the BBC hosts a live chat with Open Planet Ideas program participants Dax Lovegrove (World Wildlife Fund) and Ben Moore (Sony) to discuss how you can get involved with the program's current phase of design collaboration.

With the establishment of recently announced eco-design themes, participants are now tasked with the fun assignment of appropriating existing defined showcase technologies like GPS, portable gaming, and RFID to be used in new and interesting ways in tackling environmental challenges.

How might a PSP gaming device be used outside of its commercial gaming context to address environmental impact? Or better yet, how might gaming frameworks create incentive based systems for participants to practice better environmental behaviors. These are the types of questions you're asked to explore while concepting.

Tune in at Studiotalk.tv and post your questions via twitter using hashtag #studiotalk this Thursday at 3pm BST (UK).

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Streaming Live from Hand-Eye Supply!

October 19, 2010, 6:43 pm

≫ Next: Wright Auctions find: 1960 Door to Door Salesman Model of Buckminster Fuller Dome

≪ Previous: Could Your Gaming Device Solve an Environmental Problem?

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Blake Van Roekel: Keuken

"The Intellectual Palette; Design in the Kitchen"
Blake Van Roekel is the owner of Keuken and a co-founder of the successful and popular Art+Palate Supper Club. Her menus are inspired by art and design, literature and music resulting in meals that are thematic and unique to the time and place of the event. Her goal is to introduce greater levels of meaning to the food on our plates by not only stimulating our taste buds, but our emotions and intellect as well.

(more...)

Wright Auctions find: 1960 Door to Door Salesman Model of Buckminster Fuller Dome

October 19, 2010, 6:49 pm

≫ Next: Weird and kind of cool: Nooka's packaging that you eat out of

≪ Previous: Streaming Live from Hand-Eye Supply!

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Before the internet, we had catalogs mailed to our door to entice us to buy things from home. Prior to that we had salesmen walking on foot, going from door to door, schlepping everything from the latest vacuum to... geodesic domes? When it came to selling large items like farm equipment and said domes, salesmen were equipped with accurate miniatures to help close the deal. Wright, home of some of the designer drool worthy auction lots around, just auctioned a beautiful 1960 example of one of these models in their Modern Design Auction on October 12 which sold for well over it's estimate of $1,000-1,500 at $7,500. Apparently the modern design collectible market is going strong!

See the rest of the collection that was auctioned off here!

Thanks to Tony Meredith for the link!

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Weird and kind of cool: Nooka's packaging that you eat out of

October 20, 2010, 8:17 am

≫ Next: Braille bracelet wins People's Design Award

≪ Previous: Wright Auctions find: 1960 Door to Door Salesman Model of Buckminster Fuller Dome

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In a bid to ensure their packaging is not thrown away, watch manufacturer Nooka has partnered with design brand SiliconeZone to produce a rather unusual product: Packaging that you save and use to eat out of. Nooka's new gem box is microwave-safe and harkening back to the days when the impoverished would save jam jars to use as drinking glasses, though the cooking-grade silicone used here is decidedly more hi-tech.

Nooka's even going to start putting recipes up on their website. Sure it sounds a little weird at first, but you can't say the thinking isn't out of the box....

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Braille bracelet wins People's Design Award

October 20, 2010, 8:54 am

≫ Next: With Flipsters, Aussie ID'er and law student hit success in just one year

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Surprisingly, only 10% of blind people are Braille literate; but among blind people holding down jobs, 90% of them can read and write Braille. In other words, Braille literacy is clearly the way to go for those seeking self-sufficiency.

To draw awareness to Braille literacy, Leslie Ligon designed the Braille Alphabet Bracelet, a simple way to learn the system. The Cooper-Hewitt conferred the People's Design Award on Ligon's bracelet earlier this month. "I'm delighted that the public has chosen to honor the Braille Alphabet Bracelet, which looks good, communicates without a glance and feels great too!" said Cooper-Hewitt Director Bill Moggridge.

Ligon is selling the Braille Alphabet Bracelet here.

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