We see plenty of upcycling and repurposing projects in the past, but those humble materials that find new life as furniture, lighting and other household objects are rarely of notable provenance, so to speak. Conversely, the museum setting—the rarefied domain of pure aesthetic experience—is typically considered to be exempt from sustainability, housing exhibitions that are duly spectacular and often labor- or material-intensive.

Thus, Johanna Dehio's latest project, "Furniture - Improvisation," offers metacommentary on multiple levels: her two-month residency at quartier21 of Museums Quartier Wien culminated with a one-day workshop, in which the general public was invited to build furniture from plywood from previous museum installations.

For last month's Vienna Open Studio Night, "the set up of the gallery was made by pre-cut pieces of reused wood sheets coming from former installations or art pieces of the museum, [which offered] a mix of various shapes, surfaces and colors." Visitors selected "pieces they personally like," combining them with cable ties to create their own furniture.

Senior UI Designer - Medical/Technical
Continuum
West Newton, Massachusetts

Continuum is seeking a UI designer to create screen-based interfaces used on medical devices and other complex equipment. He or she will design effective user interfaces for medical devices, consumer appliances and other complex devices—interface platforms include dedicated medical devices, desktop computers, and mobile devices (personal and car-based). The ideal candidate can work from rough hand sketches to pixel-level finished computer designed files to produce screen layouts in various levels of fidelity (paper prototypes to wireframes to Flash simulations) to support user testing. The designer will collaborate closely with experts in different domains such as field researchers, design strategists, human factors experts, industrial designers, and software engineers, as well as work independently.

It was the year 1952, and Mercedes had just won a series of prominent international racing events with their W194 racecar. And that's all it was, a racecar, an experiment; they had no plans to put the car into production. But thankfully fate intervened.

A New York City-based automobile importer named Max Hoffman had recently signed a contract to import Mercedes' cars to the U.S.A. As a former racecar driver himself, Hoffman's attention was then captured by the W194's victories making the news rounds. I'm guessing Hoffman was eager for a chance to drive the car himself, but the fact is that he knew cars as well as he knew customers, and he felt strongly that a roadgoing version of the W194 was something his well-heeled clientele would line up to buy.

He lobbied Mercedes to build one, and while they were initially resistant, Hoffman employed some clever tactics to get them to agree. (That story, and Hoffman's subsequent influence on auto design history, is fascinating enough that it will get its own entry later.) Based on Hoffman's prompting Mercedes greenlit the W198, a road-ready version of the W194.

Now we turn to why the car has gullwing doors in the first place. As we learned in the entry on its W194 antecedent, the car was constructed using an unusual system of alloy tubes assembled into interconnected triangles. This gave the frame the necessary rigidity at an extremely low weight. But in order to achieve enough rigidity in the areas flanking the passenger compartment, the framing had to extend upwards much higher than your average car door's sill. This precluded the possibility of designing a car door that would allow sufficient room for the driver and passenger's ingress and egress.

In the roofless versions of the W194 racecar, this was no problem: The driver could climb in and out.

For the enclosed W194 versions, like the one below that took second place in Italy's 1952 Mille Miglia endurance race, Mercedes engineers had to work out a point of access.

Mercedes chief engineer Rudolf Uhlenhaut and his team looked at the problem: creating a conventional door above the high sill line was not an option—the resultant aperture would be too small for any human, even a racecar driver, to be expected to clamber through. They clearly needed to enlarge the aperture, but there was no way to go down, not without compromising the frame. The only way to go was up, incorporating a chunk of roof into the door. That would make a hole large enough for a driver and co-driver to get into. But how the heck would you hinge such a thing?

They then decided to hinge the thing at the top. I cannot stress enough how radical a design twist this was in those days, when every other car door opened on a horizontal plane.

Industrial Designers always seem to be tackling the issue of prosthetic limbs, there is good reason to. It is estimated that in the United States, there are approximately 1.7 million people living with limb loss. The difficulty in replicating the functions of the human arm and hand lay in the complex machinery required. Kaylene Kau, a recent graduate of the University of Washington for Industrial Design, came up with this concept. Unlike conventional concepts, this one is essentially a tentacle-like arm that allows for dexterity and grip.

The radical approach allows for less motors and machinery to occupy the space within the arm. This translates to less parts, cheaper to produce and easier to maintain. The tentacle arm approach allows someone to grip multiple objects just like a real hand would. However, I am skeptical about how finer, more tactile operations such as using a pencil or picking up a small object could happen.

The solution to control the arm unit is simplified here but with further refinement such a concept could work. It is great to see that there are design solutions that can extend so far from conventional approaches. The organic form, not human, is a beautiful contrast to the Darth Vader like arms that are on the market already.

I teach design process to people with very little experience in design, at a thing we call the Design Gym. The response from our attendees is always very positive. People, with this new knife of analytic thought, feel excited and energized to go and use it in their lives, to organize their thoughts and to approach their problems in a new way. When I tell other frameworks for non-designers to better understand design, the responses are sometimes controversial.

A few months back, at an Interaction Designer's meetup, I brought up what I do at the Design Gym. A new friend protested adamantly against the idea of process. He insisted that he just got in, rolled up his sleeves, and got the job done. He insisted that he followed no process at all. Plus, he derided process as rigid and no fun. And in one way, he's right: something is killed when you think about and describe what you do. He feels that a certain freedom is killed. But what is created?

One of my friends from Industrial Design school recently had me over to discuss her portfolio as she considered her options for jobs. She's been working at a design-driven consultancy for the past several years as a senior designer... and the feeling is that it's time to start getting ready for the next step. The consultancy she works at doesn't have an explicit process—companies come to them for their brand power and aesthetic. So when showing the story of a project, there are too few pieces around to speak to. There are a few sketches, then some renderings, then the object. Which is a story, after all...but it doesn't speak to the why or the how—the sort of things employers say they love to see in portfolios. I think she realized that this was a problem, which is why she had me over: to help her find and tell her story, through the lens of process.

What is created when we apply a process? When process is used consciously you have evidence of work for each part of the design process. Those groupings of work help tell the story of the project, and the decisions made at the transition points in the process.

The Mercedes 300SL Gullwing has today spawned a subculture of fanatics in the California-based Gull Wing Group, an organization dedicated to preserving these rare machines. With only 1,400 made worldwide and only 1,100 sold in the U.S., it's quite the select group. They have an annual road rally, where they drive the cars around in a parade that must give insurers heart attacks, and presumably trade tips on where you can order custom-fitted luggage made for their rides.

Owners of that new SLS AMG Gullwing—which I consider an abomination compared to the original—can join the group, but never as full members, and they're not allowed into the road rally. Hear hear for tradition.

In 2009 auto enthusiast Jay Leno, one of America's more well-known classic car fanatics and perhaps the luckiest, somehow managed to find a 1955 300SL Gullwing languishing in a storage container. It had been sitting in there since 1980!

I really respect that he decided not to restore the exterior, so that he can actually drive the car around and not have to worry about it getting dinged up. (The following point is somewhat moot since your indigent correspondent will never own a $590,000 car, but if I had one, I'd leave the exterior as-is and drive the ish out of it.)

Join us tonight at the Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club in lovely downtown Portland, Oregon as Dee Williams of Portland Alternative Dwellingsas she shares her love for tiny, mobile living spaces!

Tonight! Tuesday, Nov. 27th
6PM PST
Hand-Eye Supply
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR, 97209

Micro Houses—structures that are often smaller than 200 square feet—have captured the attention of mainstream media and the hearts of thousands of Americans. They may be portable or fixed-in-place and may stand-alone or may be tethered to a "normal" house for utilities. These wee buildings are used as backyard studios, extra bedrooms, guest suites or full-time residences. Tiny House advocates explain that these small simple structures provide a flexible, affordable, reasonable (albeit small) solution for residential use, urban infill, and pocket communities. But what sort of person would actually want to live in (or next to) a house with less square footage than a roll of paper towels? Dee will offer her experience designing and building micro-houses with a focus on the unique benefits and challenges of taking small to the extreme.

Dee Williams is a designer, builder and certified tiny house nut! She teaches workshops across the country, with a focus on green building and micro-housing. She's also authored a how-to e-book, Go House Go, and has consulted with hundreds of people to design and build their own micro homes. She's been featured in Yes!Magazine, TIME Magazine, on Good Morning America, The New York Times, National Public Radio, PBS, and other media. In 2008, Dee won the Washington State Governor's Award for Sustainable Practices. Dee's house is currently featured in a five-year exhibit, House and Home, at the National Building Museum in Washington DC. You can see the video here!

Berlin-based design duo Neulant van Exel have the broad portfolio you might expect from a collaboration between an architect and sculptor, and their latest project, "Floppy Table," is a surefire hit.

Although Jeff Skierka opted for CNC-milled plywood for his "Mixtape Table," Neulant van Exel's throwback-media-inspired-furniture is a rather more industrial affair, comprised of hot-rolled steel and stainless steel. They've also cleverly reimagined the iconic metal shutter as a secret compartment (GIF after the jump)...

Tiny House advocates explain that these small simple structures provide a flexible, affordable, reasonable (albeit small) solution for residential use, urban infill, and pocket communities. But what sort of person would actually want to live in (or next to) a house with less square footage than a roll of paper towels? Dee will offer her experience designing and building micro-houses with a focus on the unique benefits and challenges of taking small to the extreme.

See more of Dee in action at the Portland Alternative Dwellings site.

When it rains, it pours: Zürich-based design studio Micasa LAB first showed up on our radar four weeks ago, with the iRock rocking chair, followed by the Cocoon1 just a week later. This week sees the launch of the "Nebula 12," which can only be described as a WiFi-enhanced combination of a lamp and a fog machine, a device that gives new meaning to "cloud computing."

The Nebula 12 gathers meteorlogical data via the Internet (specifically, a weather service called MetOff) and translates that into atmospheric conditions indoors: "the Nebula 12 can change in colour and brightness and thus can be used as a variable source of light for romantic evening meals, when doing homework, when reading or just chatting... wake up to a flooding yellow light on a sunny day, or below a real cloud on that overcast winter morning." The artificial cumulus is conjured from thin air though "some peculiar techniques, liquid nitrogen, WiFi, and high-powered vacuum suction."

That last bit might obliquely underscore the device's passing resemblance to a certain article of paraphernalia, but the first thing that came to mind, for me, was actually a birdfeeder (not least because it hangs from the ceiling). In this sense, the Nebula 12 is essentially the inverse of the Nest learning thermostat: instead of adapting to user behavior (as the Nest does), Micasa LAB's concept is operates based on the forces of nature—sublimated into an attentuated household weather pattern:

In the standard mode, Nebula 12 predicts the weather for the next 48 hours. A threatening low-pressure area is announced by a red cloud, and sunshine is shown in yellow. At the same time, the user can adjust the settings and define the source of information themselves. And the best is: regardless of how dark the cloud is, Nebula 12 never brings rain. At least, not within one's own four walls.

Graphic Designer
Perkins Eastman
Washington, D.C.

Perkins Eastman is looking for a Graphic Designer to work with the marketing team to design and produce marketing-related deliverables including proposals, brochures, qualifications, presentations, etc., in accordance with firmwide graphic standards. In addition, the graphic designer will work with architectural project teams to design and produce project-related deliverables including reports and presentations. The ideal candidate will have two years experience working as a graphic designer, and will have excellent communications and organizational skills, as well as strategic thinking ability. The ideal candidate needs to have solid experience with Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite.

Here's the fascinating story of a man responsible for seeing not one, but several automotive icons brought to market. He was not a designer, nor an engineer, and he didn't even work for the companies that produced these cars. But he became an influential tastemaker with an indelible place in auto design history.

In 1953 Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned to design an automobile showroom in New York City. Located on tony Park Avenue and 56th Street, the Hoffman Auto Showroom—owned by automobile importer Maximilian Hoffman—was intended to sell cars by what was then known as a curious English brand called Jaguar.

Hoffman was an Austrian citizen with Jewish blood who'd had the foresight and good fortune to escape his native Vienna as Nazi influence spread in the 1930s. Still in his thirties, he left behind a past as a successful racecar driver and car dealer for a French-Austrian auto venture that presumably collapsed during World War II.

Relocated to New York City, Hoffman had to start from scratch, and he spent the 1940s running a costume jewelry business. By 1947 he'd saved up enough dough to pursue his dream, which was to get back into the automotive business. The subsequent Hoffman Motor Company scored a distribution deal to import Jaguars to the U.S. in 1948.

By 1950 Hoffman scored a second deal, this time to import Volkswagens. The business flopped in just a few years, and it wasn't hard to see why: In the 1950s American cars were becoming awesome, and average families could afford them. Given a choice between a "people's car" shaped like a "bug" and a people's car shaped like a rocket ship, it was no contest.

That was why a more upscale car like the Jaguar seemed a good business bet. Wealthy Americans with sophisticated tastes would appreciate them; Hoffman was the only place to buy a Jag in the eastern United States; and a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed showroom on Park Avenue was a perfect way to catch their attention.

By 1952 Hoffman had signed up to import Mercedes-Benzes to the U.S. That same year their impressive W194/300SL racecar was winning race after race, which caught Hoffman's attention. And then he had an insight: Wouldn't wealthy American motorists love to drive such an unusual, exotic, prize-winning car as that 300SL?

As an importer, Hoffman had lines of communication in to Mercedes HQ, and he made an unusual request: Please make a road-going version of the 300SL that I can sell to my customers. Mercedes wasn't interested. So Hoffman came up with a creative way to force them to make the car: He placed an order for 1,000 of them.

That was enough to get the bean-counters' attention, and they greenlit project W198, a roadgoing version of the W194. With a guarantee that they'd sell at least a thousand, there was no reason not to try. You all know how that story ends up, from the previous entries on the 300SL Gullwing.

Around the same time Hoffman began importing Porsches...

We mentioned it in yesterday's announcement of our eighth annual Ultimate Gift Guide, but it bears repeating: it's time to celebrate! You've ogled the product on the Internets, now you finally have the chance to see it in person at our New York City pop-up shop at Blu Dot, a physical manifestation of the holiday gift guide, through December 24 (for you last-minute shoppers out there).

Must-have party accessories: Leather 4-Pack Tote&Marshall Hanwell Speaker

Designers of all phenotypes are invited to the launch party this Thursday, November 29, from 6–8PM—stop by to say hi, have a drink, and (of course) get some holiday shopping out of the way. If you're even thinking about coming, be sure to RSVP to rsvp[at]core77.com for guaranteed entry!

Core77 Pop-Up Shop
Blu Dot
140 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10012
Open from 11AM - 7PM on Mon. - Sat. and 12PM - 6PM on Sundays through December 24

Browse the Gift Guide online to prep your wishlist for Thursday!

If this was The Daily News, I'd lead off with the sensationalist headline "Frank Lloyd Wright Fathered More Children Than New York City Buildings!" But while that's the truth, it's hardly noteworthy; of his more than 1,000 commissions, he only accepted three in Gotham—one house in Staten Island and just two spaces in Manhattan.

One of those spaces was the Hoffman Auto Showroom on Park Avenue, completed in 1955. Though tight by auto showroom standards at just 3,600 square feet—this was in Manhattan, after all—the space contained plenty of drama. The main room was dominated by an ascending, semicircular ramp that encircled the de rigeuer rotating auto platform.

The rotating platform was large enough to fit four cars on it, bringing each one around like a sushi restaurant for auto enthusiasts. The upwards-sloping ramp could fit another three cars, and also had space for customers to walk between the cars and the barrier, allowing them to ascend the ramp and view the cars on the platform from above.

Sound familiar, that bit about the curving wraparound ramp? The Hoffman Auto Showroom has been described as a "forerunner" and "precursor" of Wright's design for the Guggenheim, as the former opened in 1955 and the latter broke ground in 1956. But while that's semantically accurate, it might give you the misimpression that the Guggenheim's ramp was inspired by an automobile showroom. Which is not true. Those of you who've sat through interminable semesters of History of Architecture will recall that Wright spent over a decade on the Guggenheim design. Three out of four of his original Guggy sketches, from 1943 and ’44, featured the wraparound ramp. It's more than likely that the Guggenheim design influenced the Hoffman showroom, and not the other way ’round.

If its mundane (yet accurate) name somehow belies its understated form, it is precisely because Alexandra Burr's "2×4" lamp is a successful exercise in brevity.

This pendant light is made from a simple 2x4, whitewashed to make it slightly more precious. Suspended by mono filament, it appears to float. An LED strip is hidden by a frosted glass lens. And a decorative red cord loosely stretches to the ceiling.

The Brooklyn-based Burr—an architect by training—is duly "material and process driven, exploring the technical challenges of the production and manufacturing process while striving to produce beautiful objects and spaces with an inherent simplicity of form." Thus, the execution of her pendant lamp is radically different from previously-seen trompe l'oeil table lamps, which achieve the magic of levitation through magnetism.

Nevertheless, the perspicuously antiseptic setting of the photographs is entirely too perfect for the minimalist lamp, and it's difficult to imagine how it might look suspended in context. While there's no denying the 2×4's elegance, I suspect that the fixture demands similarly unassuming decor (if Sébastian Cluzel's "Culinary Landscape" is too obvious, I could also see "2×4" hovering over, say, LucidiPevere's "Boiacca" table).

Up top: Ferry Porsche and Maximilian Hoffman

In the photo below, of the Frank-Lloyd-Wright-designed Hoffman Auto Showroom, at right you can see the large planter in the center of the rotating car platform. And atop that planter you can see a box with the now-familiar Porsche logo on it. But back then, in 1955, that logo was brand new.

You'll recall that the Hoffman Auto Showroom was intended to sell Jaguars; so why, you ask, is it filled with Porsches during its 1955 opening? Hoffman commissioned the space in 1953, but just two years later his business arrangement with Jaguar had evaporated. This wrinkle happened close to the Showroom's launch date; Frank Lloyd Wright had designed a leaping Jaguar statue to go onto that planter, in the center of the showroom, and Jaguar craftsmen had completed it and shipped it over to New York. After the Jaguar/Hoffman relationship evaporated, the statue was shipped back to Coventry, so the only thing it really leaped was the Atlantic. Twice.

Now back to the Porsche logo. Porsche was a logo-less company until (rumor has it) Ferry Porsche—son of company founder Ferdinand—had lunch in New York with Max Hoffman. The suspiciously colorful story, which contains at least one geographic error, goes like this:

In 1952 while dining in a New York restaurant, Max told Dr. Ferry Porsche all cars of some standing in the world have a crest. "Why not Porsche, too?" he asked. "If all you need is a badge, we can give you one, too!"

Ferry then grabbed a napkin and began to draw the crest for the state of Baden-Wurtremberg [sic] with its curved stag horns. He added a black prancing horse from Stuttgart's coat of arms and the word PORSCHE across the top and handed it back to Max asking, "How about something like that?" With a bit of refinement and color, the famed Porsche Crest was born and today remains true to Ferry's original sketch more than half a century ago.

(The error is the attribution of the crest to "Baden-Wurtremberg," which is both misspelled, and the incorrect region.)

The Internet being what it is, another story has it that Hoffman penned the logo himself. The needle on my BS meter is quivering.

At just under halfway through his Kickstarter campaign for his eponymous "freshoe," French designer Olivier Iguaneye is only a quarter of the way to his £20,000 goal. He might be cutting it close, but we hope he reaches his funding goal for the Amazon-inspired second-skin footwear:

Ok, so that was just the preliminary research for the seamless slip-on shoe, based on the story that "Amazon Indians dipped their feet in the latex from hevea tree and smoked them in a fire to coagulate the first rubber shoes." The final product is far more refined, featuring slits for ventilation an anatomic form developed by footwear specialists Dulster Design.

Years ago, in Art History class, I remember learning that carving a veil out of marble—i.e. creating the illusion of lightness from stone—the ultimate challenge in ancient sculpture. I can't imagine it's gotten any easier over the years, and it so happens that designer Gonçalo Campos notes that it's at least as difficult, from a technical standpoint, to achieve the soft effect of drapery in porcelain. Thankfully, he was able to develop a process to cast molds from fabric with the help of Vista Alegre, a Portuguese Porcelain and Crystal company. He cites the veil as the inspiration for his latest project, "Tecido" platters:

Usually a modest item used to create anticipation and draw attention to whatever it conceals, and now it becomes an object in its own right. Affirmed by its own elegant and delicate shape, in a simple, yet impressive arrangement, it becomes a functional product that can be used daily, as much as in special occasions. This is a product to inspire each one of us to appreciate the simple things in life and see the beauty in all the details that go unappreciated, such as the gentle shapes in a veil.

Where Rogier Martens' fruit bowls took their form from their contents, Campos' wares obliquely refer to still life compositions, especially when augmented by line drawings of potential delicacies.

Architect/Product Design Interns
Dror
New York, New York

Dror's internship program provides design students or recent graduates practical work experience in product design or architecture design. Interns will be working closely with division heads on client as well as research and development projects. Interns will be exposed to a variety of roles inherent in a bustling, up-and-coming design studio and will gain invaluable work experience in all facets of the design process. They will be exposed to and involved in all disciplinarians of the studio (product, graphic, architectural and interior design).

Continuing from my earlier scattering of field notes, in this post, I want to turn my attentions to the rural areas of Uganda and some of the uses of technology I observed. Dubbed the "Pearl of Africa", the country has rich, fertile soil with great potential. Agriculture is a vital component of the economy, and according to Wikipedia, nearly 30% of its exports are coffee alone. Anecdotally speaking, most people I meet in Kampala, the capital, have family ties in rural areas—a reflection of the fact that most of the population is rural.

As with my previous post, my field notes often take the form of Instagram. Although I eventually type up more thorough notes, I find the practice of taking live field notes to be beneficialhttp://www.ictworks.org/news/2011/12/23/avoiding-digital-divide-hype-using-mobile-phones-developmentboth because they allow me to capture my initial thoughts and reactions while they're fresh in my head and because they spark dialogue and conversations with social media friends who get me thinking differently about what I see.

So much of food in rural areas is experienced in bags—stored and shipped in bags, purchased in bags, even sometimes cooked with bags. Known as kaveera, plastic bags are abundant in Uganda. The Uganda High Court recently ruled in favor banning such bags, a trend across East Africa, but it remains to be seen how the ban could be enforced. This is a story of technology but not communications technology. I couldn't help but wonder: what could technology provide that helps balance the twin needs of reducing environmental impact and providing accessible food packaging?

While spending time in Oyam, in northern Uganda, I saw a number of smart phones being used. This Nokia could play videos and music, display ebooks and of course capture photos, but it's not connected to a data plan—nor were most smart phones I encountered in the region. Rather, individuals would find opportunities to access an Internet-enabled computer (most often at a net cafe) in nearby towns that do have the Internet, and they would download materials, which could range from Nigerian comedies dubbed in Luo, the local language, to educational materials about agriculture and business. In this regard, Ugandans used the device more like an iPod... which happened to have phone capabilities.

In rural areas, I tend to rely much more often on my feature phone than on computers and my iPhone. It gives me an appreciation for the disruptive role of mobile phones. Although our driver (whose stereo you might recognize from the previous post) lives in the city, he spends much of his time in the field. But that doesn't stop his business: armed with multiple phones and phone plans, he's developed a 'cocktail of special plans that allow him to make multiple calls at low rates. He keeps his phone charged by his car and whenever we're stopped, he's constantly making calls and conducting business.