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Hand-Eye Holiday Hits: Tosa Kitchen Knives

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These beautiful and affordable chefs' knives are hot off the presses in Tosa, Japan and ready to head straight into the hot mess of your kitchen. Great for both beginners and cooks with an eye for quality, their hand forged blades ideally blend toughness with incredibly sharp accuracy. High carbon steel (hagane) on the inside, forged to hammered iron (jigane) for tensile strength on the outside, with a simple handle that will gain patina with use. The Nakiri is a perfect prep knife for careful chopping, its double bevel and square shape comfortable for controlling large broad cuts and general vegetable business. The Funayuki is a deft single-bevelled all-purpose knife that shows particular strength in precise cuts, fillets, skinning and peeling. Combine their powers and the world gets more delicious. $40-$48 at Hand-Eye Supply!

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In the Details: Building the Perfect Spork

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When Micah Baclig embarked on his senior degree project at the Rhode Island School of Design last year, he wanted to create an object that spoke to the ideals of our modern society. "We are a more globalized community with almost instant access to unprecedented amounts of information," Baclig says. "We are constantly striving to do more, learn more and experience more of this life around us." So he created...a spork.

Specifically, Baclig created a compact aluminum spork that he has dubbed Kuma, and which he is now funding on Kickstarter in an effort to do a production run for next year. (As of press time, he had raised more than 80 percent of his $18,000 goal.) But wait—why exactly does today's globalized, information-soaked society need a reusable aluminum spork?

Kuma is the result of Baclig's insatiable curiosity and fascination with eating utensils—their history, how they work and what cultures created them. "From forks to chopsticks to even our own hands, what we eat with says something about who we are and where we came from," Baclig says. "Growing up in Hawaii with multi-ethnic parents, I constantly experienced this dynamic between food, utensils and culture. I fondly remember the times at the dinner table when my father, a first-generation immigrant from the Philippines, would put down his utensils to eat a meal he particularly enjoyed with his hands."

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For his degree project, Baclig focused his interest on eating tools that were both multifunctional and portable, which immediately brings to mind the spork. "In trying to be both a fork and spoon the spork is neither, which for some reason fascinates me," he says. "I also appreciate the spork's subtext of trying to achieve an ideal functionality."

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This Week in Booze-Based Designs: Liquor-Loaded Shoes, a Moustache Protector and a DIY Whiskey Flight Server

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The holiday season is when we start seeing some wacky promotional products, and this first one's a cake-taker. Johnnie Walker partnered up with shoemaking outfit Oliver Sweeney to produce these Leather Brogues. And yes, what you're seeing is real: The $489 kicks come with hollow compartments in the heel for the wearer to stash airplane-sized booze bottles.

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Moving up from the feet towards the top of the body, the manufacturer of the Whisker Dam figures their drink-topping gewgaw will solve a pressing problem for the mustachioed. This "handcrafted to perfection" piece of copper, "dressed with a timeless patina," is meant to protect your moustache from beer foam. H.I.A.H.

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And finally, YouTube tippler The Drunken Woodworker shows you how to make a candle holder. I mean, you tell your spouse and in-laws that it's a candle holder, but we all know the thing is for serving whiskey flights:

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New Post-it Plus App Makes Brainstorming a Bit More Manageable

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Content sponsored by Post-it Brand
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Let's admit: designers' minds work in mysterious ways. As fluid as the design process claims to be, it's most often a product of mismatched thoughts, tangential scribbles, and, in my case, Post-it Notes. However, the job of organizing those thoughts—whether for a client brief or personal sanity—causes a headache that most of us would rather avoid.

Post-it Plus App, a new digital tool from Post-it Brand, is designed to digitally catalog the brainstorming process. After covering a surface with Post-it Notes full of ideas, users snap a photo of the mess and the app visually recognizes each note. A green check mark means the Post-it Note has been recognized and captured; those not recognized can be enlarged for greater visibility.

While optical recognition is nothing new (a 3M-supported Evernote app released last year has similar recognition technology), the Post-it Plus App has organizational abilities to distinguish it as a useful tool for design teams. Captured Post-it Notes snap onto project- or topic-specific virtual whiteboards, and different users can combine their boards, allowing for team collaboration. Finished boards can be shared via text, email, and social media, or exported to PDF, Powerpoint, and Excel.

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By applying grid-based whiteboards and document export capabilities, the Post-it Plus App accomplishes what many designers have struggled to do: make the ideation process look professional. In a field where some of the best work starts on coffee napkins or paper stuck to a wall, the Post-it Plus App provides a polished format to support a design decision, particularly to clients who are unfamiliar with brainstorming's background mess. That clarity in presentation can make or break the brief—especially if your brief, like most of mine, began as a piecemeal of scrawls, asides and coffee.

Post-it Plus App is a free universal iOS app. Download it here, and then get back to scribbling.

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2014 Year in Review: 15 Design Stories to Read before 2015

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C77YiR_2014.gifFish or foul? Check out #14 from our Top Design Stories of 2014.

As we wind down the year and settle into the holiday cheer of family gatherings, movie marathons and an unending parade of sweets, here's a look back on 2014 from your friends at Core77. Over the next two weeks we'll be rounding up our favorite stories from the past year and revisiting the ideas and innovations that have captured our imagination.

It's been an exciting year of the big and small—from the publication of our first book, Designing Here/Now to the publication of our first newspaper, the Design Daily for New York Design Week. And who could forget the Core77 Conference? With speakers like Carla Diana, Michael DiTullo, Casey Neistat and Jordan Brandt, (watch their presentations here!) 2014's Object Culture conference provided a snapshot of the changing shape of product design and an opportunity to connect with familiar faces and meet new friends.

We've had a tremendous year at Core77 and can't wait to share another year with you. But before we get too ahead of ourselves, here's some required reading—a roundup of our top 15 stories to read before 2015.

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15. Dungeons, Dragons & Design: Geek Chic's Gorgeous Gaming Tables

14. California Oil Spill Turns out to be A Massive Amount of Fish

13. Knee Defender: Industrial Design Gone Awry? [Editorial Note: Although this post was originally published in 2013, the product became a news story in 2014 when a plane was grounded due to an altercation involving the Knee Defender]

12. Getting Hired: How to Score a Job at Google X

11. How Adding Bike Lanes Actually Improve the Flow of Car Traffic

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Is 'Flow' the Future of Haptic UI? An Interview with Senic CEO Tobias Eichenwald

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Chances are if you're a designer, artist, musician or use a computer daily, you have encountered that fateful moment when your mouse keeps you from making that perfect color selection or nudging a layer into exact position with Photoshop. While most computer aided drawing and modeling programs account for clumsy hardware (thanks magnetic lasso), isn't it about time we demanded better hardware? The fact is—from fancy Wacom tablets to every incarnation of touch screen and foldable keyboards—UI tools still fall into the uninspired categories of keyboard, tablet and mouse.

Recently however, the Y Combinator alumni and Berlin-based startup Senic has tackled this exact issue of high precision interface with their wireless device aptly named 'Flow.' The freely programmable controller is not only compatible with most computer based applications but also has potential integrations for connected home objects and even Internet enabled microprocessors.

The sleek aluminum, stainless steal and polycarbonate casing pays not-to-subtle homage to Dieter Rams-ian simplicity. At just under 2.75 inches, Flow boasts 360 degree angular positioning, capacitive touch and infrared-based hand gesture recognition. Additionally, with 3,600 values in just one rotation of Flow, exact manipulation of brush sizes, color selection and anything else is right at your fingertips.

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The four co-founders represent a broad skill set and media prowess enviable to most start-ups launching a crowdfunding campaign. We caught up with CEO Tobias Eichenwald to discuss the campaign, the frustration that gave birth to Flow and the future of UI.

C77: How did Senic start? What first put you on the path to designing a tool like Flow?

Tobias Eichenwald: We're three friends and co-founders from Germany and we use digital tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Rhino or Eagle on a daily basis. We need to be fast and we need to be good at what we do. Browsing through menus and pulling a fake slider with a mouse didn't feel that way. Existing interfaces don't give us the pixel-precision we need; they are time consuming and interrupt our workflow.

We found similar problems in other fields like controlling our connected devices for example. We grew up with the assumption that you turn on a light by hitting a big white button on the wall without thinking about it. Now that smart devices are replacing traditional devices and the market for connected homes is exploding, we are expected to browse through apps and spend time waiting in a hallway, just to turn on a light.

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Here's the First Object Designed on the Ground, E-Mailed into Space, and 3D Printed at the ISS

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If you remember our post on how tools are organized on the International Space Station, it's hard to imagine they'd forget to bring anything. But according to Mike Chen, whose Made in Space startup built the 3D printer currently sitting on the ISS, station commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore found himself in need of a tool. Writes Chen:

My colleagues and I just 3D-printed a ratcheting socket wrench on the International Space Station by typing some commands on our computer in California. We had overheard ISS Commander Barry Wilmore (who goes by "Butch") mention over the radio that he needed one, so we designed one in CAD and sent it up to him faster than a rocket ever could have. This is the first time we've ever "emailed" hardware to space.

The 3D printer and designs for 20 test objects were sent up to the ISS in September, for the purpose of printing the objects in space, to later be compared to objects printed on Earth to see if there are any performance differences.

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But Wilmore's wrench was apparently an add-on, whipped up by the team on the ground in Autodesk Inventor before being e-mailed upstairs.

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When Good Maya Animations Go Bad

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We've all had those moments in CAD, Photoshop, or whatever software you use where things just start going wrong. Your object won't Group, your Curve won't close, a Layer won't cooperate, you didn't leave enough Undo steps in your Preferences. For the most part these errors are ours, but as animator Nathan Hibberd shows below, sometimes it's just out of our hands.

While this video starts off looking like your average Maya tutorial, trust us, it ain't. At 0:35 things start to go wrong:


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Nathan Friend's Browser-Based Spirograph Emulator

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Folks, this holiday season I am giving you the gift of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Because you're going to click on this link to Inspirograph, which is a browser-based spirograph emulator developed by engineer Nathan Friend. And you're not going to be able to stop playing with it.

You choose how many teeth you'd like on each gear; you select which gear you'd like to be fixed and which rotates; you choose the ink color and which hole to plug it into; and the darn thing is even sort of pressure-sensitive, meaning when you go over a curve twice it gets darker.

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If your boss walks in on you, explain that you're working out some logo concepts for a new client.

Friend, by the way, is currently working on a mobile version.

Via The Awesomer

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2014 Year in Review: Planes, Trains, Bikes and Automobiles, A Year of Transportation Design

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Like most years, 2014 brought both rad and bad new offerings in the transportation world. Hoverboards saw weirdly practical strides forward, self-driving cars are no longer just in comic books and secret Google labs, steam punkish bikes clung on, and Harley Davidson went... electric? We had our favorites among the mess of concept projects and bike porn, and to pilot us into a new year here are some key highlights and oh-no-lights from our 2014 transportation coverage.


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Philippe Starck's work with Giro Helmets explored some unusual territory, attempted to update a fairly staid part of the biking experience, and reminded us of the dual values of exploring challenging new forms... and thoroughly researching your concept project materials.

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Philippe Starck Wears Many Hats. So Does His Latest Lamp Design

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Philippe Starck is known for eclecticism, so perhaps we oughtn't be surprised that his latest design is in a category of its own. The Chapo, as it's called, is a combination lamp and hat-stand.

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The aluminum lamp is well modern, with LED illumination, an optical dimmer in the base (that little orange button you see) and a USB socket for charging your phone; then it goes old-school by providing an X-shaped flange for your lid. The hat itself then becomes the lampshade.

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If you're a guy or gal who wears lots of hats, then yes, you've got a variety of looks for your desk lamp. And when hat-less, the lamp does not give off glare as the LEDs are downward-pointing and located on the bottom of the X.

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I think the thing all of us are wondering is how he thought of this in the first place. The only explanation comes from manufacturer Flos' website: "When Alec Guinness, James Stewart and Fred Astaire got home in the evening, with a sharp and elegant gesture they would throw their hat onto anything within reach," reads the quote attributed to Starck. "So why not a lamp?"

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Barilla Announces Winners of 3D-Printed Pasta Design Challenge

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Just as I was getting a handle on how different kinds of pasta are extruded, the self-described "most reputable company in the global Italian meal experience" up-ends it all with digitally manufactured pasta. Barilla has just announced the winners of their "Print Eat" 3D-printed pasta design challenge, which prompted entrants to design pasta shapes that couldn't be made the traditional way.

The number of submissions was so overwhelming--more than 530 product designers from 20 countries around the world jumped in, submitting some 216 concepts--that the judges required time extensions. (The contest wrapped in October, and the results were just announced yesterday.) Here are the three winners:

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Rosa Pasta from Loris Tupin, a French industrial designer from Maxilly sur Leman, is a 'bio-dynamic' 3D model that 'blooms' to turn into a rose when placed in boiling water.

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Vortipa by Danilo Spiga and Luis Fraguarda, a product design team from Cagliari, Italy. Their pasta was based on the vortex pattern progression system and it looks a bit like a Christmas tree.
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A Presidential Address on Innovation: RKS Reports on Obama's Visit to Cross Campus

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It's not every day you get to hear the President of the United States weigh in on and answer questions about the future of innovation. Our friends at RKS attended an Innovation Friday event at the Cross Campus space in Santa Monica (where they have a satellite office) that featured the commander in chief addressing audience questions about what the future holds for the innovators and institutions driving change in this country.

From the valuable role accessible health care plays to the success of American entrepreneurs, to the importance of getting more girls involved in the science, technology, engineering and math fields at a young age, the President addressed questions and concerns from the crowd in a confident, yet conversational way. He even fielded a job offer from a Cross Campus member towards the end of the QnA. Ravi at RKS published his thoughts on the visit, along with a video of the whole speech. It's well worth the read and the watch, so view it all here on the RKS blog.

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This Man Can Carve a Working Pair of Pliers--Both Sides--From a Single Piece of Wood!

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Children who visit The Warther Museum in Dover, Ohio each get a special gift on their way out: A working pair of wooden pliers, carved from a single block of basswood. The gift is appropriate since the museum houses the work of Ernest "Mooney" Warther, an American master woodcarver.

In the video below, son David Warther shows you how he makes the pliers--in just ten cuts with a knife--and proves that he's learned a thing or two from his dad. Pretty amazing:


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The McMass Project: Social Design Gone Wrong?

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Whilst showing many signs of satire, The McMass Project appears to be a fairly earnest proposal for luring errant congregations back to the bosom of their local church with the temptation of a mid-mass Big Mac. With a mission to "revitalize Churches as centers for conversation and cultural engagement", designers at christian design consultancy (oh yes) Lux Dei Design are aiming to crowdfund $1million in order to purchase a McDonald's franchise whilst also crowdsourcing nomination for a church to house their experiment.

The concept is reminiscent of increasing numbers of social design projects sprouting up at grad shows in recent years—the outcomes often ambitious mashups of various social infrastructure to cure any number of urban ills, complete with heavy branding and slick concept video.

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Some Assembly Required: Time-Lapse of a Boeing 737 Coming Together

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As you read this, the skies are filled with travelers on their way to see loved ones. Those of you on the ground are likely thankful you're not dealing with the holiday crush, as riding inside of an airplane filled with people is no fun.

However, watching an airplane being built by people is a lot of fun. Check out this footage of a Boeing 737 coming together, time-lapsed and compressed:

Now maybe assembling that piece of Ikea furniture under the tree tomorrow won't look so daunting.

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2014 Year in Review: From Mongol Materials to Luminescent Paint, A Year of Materials in Review

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Understanding how materials work, and how they can be worked, is part and parcel of being an industrial designer. Whether it's old materials being worked in old ways, old materials worked in new ways or new materials worked in new ways, we need all of that stuff rattling around in our heads to inform our decisions. So here's a recap of our most popular materials stories from 2014.

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The first one actually comes from...the 13th Century! In our "A Brief History of Unusual Objects Designed to Kill People From Far Away" series, we saw how the Mongols used horn, wood, bamboo, animal glue and waterproof lacquer to create "the carbon fiber of that era." This early example of materials mastery yielded a militarily devastating weapon, enabling them to conquer the largest contiguous land empire in all of human history.

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Another old material that drew eyeballs this year was stone. Once subjected to the tender ministrations of a CNC wire machine, the most ancient of all building materials can be transformed into some decidedly newfangled shapes.

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This Watch (is Made of) Rocks

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When watchmaking startup Plug & Feather says their timepieces are "built from timeless materials," they mean it. The faces are made out of stone, milled down to an unthinkable 1mm. The company reckons they're the first to pull this off, and they're not using run-of-the-mill rocks either: They offer (pictured in order, below) Snowflake Obsidian, Cloud Jasper, Sodalite, Carnelian and Charoite.

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"Every watch face has been milled from a different sliver of stone giving it a set of marbling and coloring that is entirely unique to that very piece," the company writes. "No two watches are exactly the same."

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What's even more shocking is the price--just $99 per watch, at least for a lucky few, meaning the first 100 backers on Kickstarter. And while those are all gone, the next level up starts at $104, with 95 slots left at the time of writing.

Here's the pitch:

This one's no sure thing, however: At press time the campaign was at $20,000 of a $30,000 goal, with nine days left to pledge.

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How to Gift Wrap Irregularly-Shaped Objects

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Last-minute shoppers: So you've mastered the one-piece-of-tape gift wrapping method, which works great with rectilinear objects. But now you've got to wrap an irregularly-shaped object, since that potted cactus was too great a bargain to pass up. How do you do it? Simple, use the "origami bag" method:

For those of you who find it painful to watch American television, here's a more subdued British presentation of the same technique:

Happy Holidays!

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2014 Year in Review: The Year in Photos

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In 2014 the Core77 team reported from the best design festivals, exhibitions, conferences, design studios and manufacturers around the globe bringing you a firsthand look at the designs and processes that made us look twice. Our photographers, many who are practicing designers, captured the beauty and the spectacle of the landscape of contemporary design.

From Swiss skis to party cups, precision vehicles to kinetic sculptures in the desert, here's a look back on some of our favorite photo galleries and photo essays from the last year.

Click on each image to see the full galleries / photo essays!


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This year's North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) didn't disappoint, with a solid lineup of production cars including the Ford Mustang, Ford F-150 pick up, Lexus RC, Cadillac ATS Coupe, BMW M4 Coupe, Corvette Z06 and Audi RS7. As the car reveals get more and more sensational sophisticated with massive choreographed video projections, music and live stage antics, it's fair to say Ford won most ambitious booth design with nearly 38-ton section of assembly line on their stand to demonstrate the robotic production process of the F-150.

One of the biggest trends was the resurgence in performance cars, possibly to attract the Millennial market who's lack of interest in car ownership has been widely reported. Or more simply, the industry has grown stagnant and senses it's time to inject some new excitement to appease the car enthusiasts like Toyota's FT-1 and Kia's GT4 Stinger concept cars.
> >View Gallery


New York Design Week: The Best of ICFF
Has the ICFF has found it's mojo again? This year saw a number of new designers exhibiting for the first time, delivering a higher standard of work from both established manufacturers and emerging design studios.

Bernhardt design, who have helped launch numerous emerging designers with their ICFF Studio partnership, celebrated their 125th anniversary this year and to mark the occasion, designer Frederick McSwain created a series of family tree wall sculptures inspired by the growth rings found in the cross section of a tree trunk. Chicago-based designer Felicia Ferrone launched her debut furniture collection bravely opting for white carpet in the booth, London-based Cycloc returned after a brief hiatus with some brand new wall mounting fixtures and accessories for bicycles, and Artek picked up an ICFF Editors Award with their multifunctional task chair 'Rival' designed by Konstantin Grcic.
> >View Gallery

A Brave New Modernism: Dubai, by Shaun Fynn
Dubai symbolizes the megacity with the megaprojects like no other. Rarely have our talents as builders been so effectively combined with our talents as storytellers. Dubai tells the story of unprecedented and rapid economic expansion spurred by oil wealth and the city's desire to be the hub of commerce for the region. The enactment of carefully crafted policies has created an international center for finance, tourism, trade and manufacture.

The fictional nature of Dubai has been the subject of much debate but interpreting the elements that contribute to the increasingly blurred lines between fact and fiction, myth and realty are a challenge for our era. Our abilities as architects and designers to understand the power of a brand now bridges every aspect of what we create. From handbags to high-rises, the entire built world becomes ever more sophisticated as we evolve our practices to better cater for the motivations and desires of both business and the individual.
> >View Photo Essay

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