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Just when I thought I had seen everything that Maurizio Cattelan ever made hanging in the Guggenheim’s rotunda I find out he’s also one half of the duo behind Toiletpaper Magazine, a publication that’s vastly more pleasing to the eye than its name suggests. The other half of that duo is Pierpaolo Ferrari, a photographer who’s shot just about every famous face in the world. For Wallpaper*’s Handmade collection they created an edition of six photorealistic, trompe l’oeil tablecloths printed with a rich spread of vibrant foods being devoured by an army of insects. You may not want to eat your next meal atop of table of beetles snacking on orange slices and baked ham, but it is pretty amazing to look at as a fully satiated viewer.
The tablecloths were used at Wallpaper* and Toiletpaper’s joint party in Milan during their Handmade exhibition, and you’ll see it again in a fashion editorial shot for Wallpaper*’s September issue.
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In just a few days Taschen will release their much anticipated retrospective of multi-talented designer, Marc Newson. A true jack of all trades, Newson has designed everything from “mass produced objects to limited edition furniture and fashion,” including chairs, restaurants, boutiques, cars, planes – even a spaceship. Written by Alison Castle, who also penned Taschen’s two sold out Stanley Kubrick collections as well as “Linda McCartney’: Life in Photographs,” she and contributing authors Laszlo Adams, Nicholas Foulkes, Louise Neri, and Alice Rawsthorn wax verbose in this 610-page encyclopedic tour through all of Newson’s works to date, “from early pieces such as Lockheed Lounge (which holds the world record for the highest price paid for a piece of designer furniture, at over two million dollars) through designs of household objects and more recent, large scale projects such as the interior of Qantas’s A380 and the Aquariva boat.”
Available in two editions, the $1,000 edition (hardcover in slipcase) and the $6,000 Art Edition (hardcover with leather inlay in a Micarta slipcase), which is limited to 100 numbered and signed copies.
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Some of our favorite designers are represented by De La Espada, which is why we were excited to get a little taste of what they’ll be showing during the London Design Festival this September. This year they’ll return to The Tramshed event at designjunction, where they’ll be showing special exhibitions from Autoban, Matthew Hilton and Søren Rose Studio.
“A celebration of authenticity, creativity and innovation, The Tramshed is a carefully curated event with a diverse selection of both established and emerging companies. designjunction, this year in central London’s disused Sorting Office, is a stimulating place for design, culture and entertainment.”
Autoban will exhibition their second of four site specific installations schedule for 2012. Spread over 1,000 square feet in The Sorting Office, environment has an ethereal depth created by multiple layers of sheet material and the passage of light. The spatial organization highlights the interplay between the product, the space and the visitor. New products launching at the event include Cloud Table, an oversized wood dining table inspired by the organic forms of clouds; and Master Chair, an upholstered dining chair with a slender wood frame. Each will be available in a choice of four hardwoods: oak, walnut, chestnut and ash. The new products will be displayed next to classics from the range.”
Matthew Hilton will use the festival to launch Mary’s Chair and Mary’s Side Table, two new pieces of furniture inspired by a trip to the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco. Apparently, Hilton was moved by “the contrast of the oppressive weight of the concrete structure and the release of the swooping, expansive space within. Mary’s chair and side table are inspired by this experience. Crafted in solid hardwood, American white oak and American black walnut, the side table with a marble top, the forms are substantial yet delicate, sculptural yet highly functional. Also launching are Misty sofa, a cool and brooding design with an exposed timber frame and a cast iron leg; Misty coffee table in the same materials and design language as the sofa; Pole Light, a functional timber reading lamp with brass detailing; and a new version of the existing Horizon Coffee Table, with larger overall proportions.”
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Søren Rose Studio (top of post) will also release new products from their Park Avenue collection, including P.A. Bed, a solid wood bed with a light expression; P.A. Bookcase, a timeless, expansive storage unit with drawers a seamless part of each shelf; P.A. Rectangular Table, a functional table with lightness and purity of form; P.A. Ottoman Tray, which transforms the P.A. Ottoman into a coffee table; and Church Chair, a stackable timber chair suitable for use as a dining or conference chair.
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Berlin-based design group osko+deichmann recently released Plot, a padded, modular seating system for the contract market. Designed for Brunner, Plot is a versatile, customizable and easy to adjust lounge system “inspired by cascaded formations in nature.” Intended for use in hotels, lobbies and airports, the system is made up of add-on units that come in three height levels – low, medium and high. The base level acts as a low-lying side table to hold purses, drinks, etc. The medium level cushions act as seats and can be raised to the next highest level to form seat backs, arm rests and area dividers. The color-blocked units make this system much more attractive than your average contract commercial seating, too. Watch this short video to see how Plot can grow or shrink to fit your space.
From Brunner:
How do we sit down while we’re travelling? Do we wait or do we work? Do we meet other people and communicate? Do we take a time-out and relax ? How private do we want to be in public spaces?
plot from Berlin-based designer duo osko+deichmann provides a contemporary response to these questions. Building on a square base module with variable seating surfaces at three levels, plot fully reinterprets the roles of arm-rests and back-rests.
Every person uses furniture in their own unique way. While sitting down, people change their posture and furniture serves a different purpose for each of us – for some it offers a spot to rest or communicate while for others it provides a temporary office space or an oasis of tranquillity. With its multilevel seating, plot allows different seating positions and encourages informal communication. plot, the modular loungescape invites people to return and interpret seating in a new way.
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Just what we need for the dog days of summer: Rock, by Swiss designer Adrien Rovero, brings a breath of cool, crisp mountain air to our steamy urban heat traps (aka our apartments). Rovero is just one of 40 Swiss artists, architects and designers who were asked to reinterpret the 40-year-old aluminum cable car for “Mountain Climbers: revisiting a Swiss icon.”
Rock is currently on view at Mudac in Lausanne at Rovero’s solo show “Landscale,” which runs through October 28, 2012. Rovero’s take on the vintage gondola is the first of the 40 to be seen by the public, with the remaining 39 cable car interpretations to follow. All of them will be exhibited around Switzerland after debuting at Design Miama in Basel in June, 2013. After another year of exhibitions, the pieces will be sold at auction by Christie’s and all the profits will be donated to the Make-A-Wish foundation.
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Milanese designer Alberto Biagetti‘s on trend 2012 collection for Post Design perfectly fulfills his Atelier’s motto of blending “fashion, art, design and architecture without distinction, creating a bridge between established forms of expression and new digital ones.” The tables, side tables and credenzas are ultra streamlined, combining traditional minimal forms and materials (spare cubes, glass, metal) with more contemporary choices, like pairings reflective surfaces with brass in pieces of furniture that look so luxe they’re more like semi-precious jewels, complete with display cases for your most precious things.
The same spindly, geometric base is echoed in the arm chairs – delightful miniature versions of the ombre sofas, the most striking of which sets off ho-hum beige with au courant neon yellow. If you don’t think you can rock day-glo furniture, the gray-to-navy version is still a progressive choice, albeit a more subdued one.
While the shapes are rigorously cubic, the seating is actually made with memory foam padding, so they’re extremely comfortable, too. Once again, Biagetti has designed a collection that is both luxurious and spare with unexpected colors and materials that add edge to longterm investment pieces.
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Without specifically naming Bertoia, French designer Patrick Norguet cites the “tradition of iron wire chairs” as the inspiration for his Kobi chair, designed for Italian furniture manufacturer Alias. Of course, if you want to make a woven metal chair, references to Bertoia are impossible to avoid. Still, Norguet expands on is predecessor’s basket-weave seat, bringing it up higher on the sides. The base is more prominent, too, with thicker legs and a wider support belt made from cast aluminum that wraps from the seat bottom all the way out to the sides.
Seat cushions are available in fabric and leather, and there are two options for the chair as well: support and legs in stove enamelled aluminum with a colored or chrome shell, or a stove enamelled support with aluminum legs in oak veneered aluminum and a shell lacquered in a variety of colors.
Even though my family’s hand-me-down Bertoia patio chairs are rusty and badly in need a paint job, I still prefer the shape of his seat over Norguet’s. What do you think? Is the Kobi an unnecessary remake, an overdue upgrade, or simply another option?
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One year after he got his Masters in Design Products at the Royal College of Art in London in 2001, Sylvain Willenz opened his own design office in his hometown of Brussels. In the past eight years he’s worked with brands like Cappellini, Established & Sons, Hay and Tamawa, and has won a handful of awards, including two Red Dot Best of the Best Product Design Awards for his work with Freecom Mobile Drive.
What I particularly like about Willenz’s work is that even when it’s at its most technical it remains approachable, never intimidating. The simple, minimal forms and bright elementary colors are a friendly callback to the Bauhaus aesthetic. In fact, one of Willenz’s more recent pieces, the Folk rug, is right at home with Bauhaus textile designer Anni Albers’ bold geometrical patterns.
Designed for Chevalier Edition, the Folk rug “was born out of the desire to organize geometric forms while exploring colors and structure. The motifs clearly evoke and play with the idea of folk or traditional rugs in a deliberately simplified manner.” Willenz, who works mostly in lighting and furniture and has never before collaborated with a manufacturer on a textile or pattern said “the opportunity to work solely on a graphic level does not occur very often in my design office and when Chevalier Edition approached me for this collaboration the assignment was certainly appealing. The exploration of two-dimensional forms became, without a doubt, most liberating and I truly enjoyed this exercise.”
The Folk rug is made from 100% handknotted wool and comes in three color variations, Light, Dark and Bright.
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The Milan-based studio Attico is the work of Cristina Celestino, who showed her odd and lovely Veneer vases at Salone Milan this year. I’ve been keeping tabs on her ever since, following how she applies the “industrial design quality and research skills” she learned in school as an architecture student “to traditional materials to generate a new projectual philosophy.” What that means can be seen in the aforementioned Veneer vases, which are composed of layers of wood, carbon, glass fiber and adhesive films that are directly wrapped onto steel spindles and polymerized, a process that, in very simple terms, combines many molecules into a new molecular compound. Here, she applies an industrial process to a domestic object with a combination of both domestic and industrial materials. The pieces almost look like offcuts of a larger fabrication, but Celestino’s pattern work, the stripes of color, material and texture, lend each piece a singularity; In fact, no two pieces are alike.
Celestino has been busy this year, coming out with six more new projects, including Luna Park, a seating system inspired by carnival bumper cars. See more of her work.
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Alberto Ghiradello is one of eight Italian designers at Dustodesign who showed work at DMY earlier this month. Most recently he won first prize at the Generazione Expo for Tattanimali, a set of educational toys for young children, and he’s designed everything from watch cases, vases, seating and tableware. For DMY he showed a clever kitchen tool called Trick, a chopping board that comes with it its own knife. On one end of the board where a handle might normally be, Ghiradello has made an inset for a semi-circular blade held in place by two magnets on either side of the handle that meet with two magnets on either side of the blade’s slot. Trick is still a prototype, but it can easily be reproduced in a wide variety and thicknesses of wood, even, I suppose, a series of different knife blades, too.
Ghiradello’s Plano serving tray makes equally clever use of materials. The flat metal sheet is machine pressed to make handles on the sides, eliminating the need for extra parts or manufacturing processes.
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