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It was easy to miss the small DMY satellite show where Veronika Wildgruber‘s craft-focused products were on display earlier this summer, though I wish I hadn’t. The attention she pays to every aspect of the design process, from concept to execution, is clear even just by looking through her website. Because she has a knack for making hard wood appear soft, the Berlin-based designer describes her work as “simple and surprising.”
The best example of this is Soft Wood, a limited edition collection of chairs that, at first glance, appear to have upholstered seats and backrests but are actually made from wood. Her Wood Bulbs series has a similar soft look, with rounded edges that mimic the form of a traditional bulb, though these are fitted with LEDs. Little Creatures, her latest collection is a modular storage unit that can be stacked one on top of the other for a tower of handmade wooden cubicles, or used alone on the ground, where “they look like little living creatures who conquered our spaces. A bit familiar, a bit strange.”
See the rest of Wildgruber’s work, like her clever Hand Towel, which is equal parts dishcloth and oven mitt.
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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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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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Though Oscar Tusquets Blanca is an “architect by profession, painter by vocation, writer out of the need to make friends” and a designer only “by adaptation,” it’s his design work we’re most excited about, especially his latest piece, the Fontal Chair, which the Spanish furniture manufacturer, Expormim, presented in the Salone del Mobile in Milan last month.
Cane chairs were popularized with Marcel Breuer’s 1928 Cesca Cane Chair, which paired a rattan seat and backing with a bent metal frame. Blanca’s design is more of a return to basics, not only in his use of traditional rattan, but because he doesn’t combine it with more modern materials. It’s simple and elegant, suitable for the kitchen or for a more formal dining table. I’d also imagine it promotes good posture. While it’s beautifully crafted that back looks none too comfortable. Here’s what Blanca himself has to say about his design:
“The project was born from the desire to take back rattan as a noble material, building on the rich tradition of craftsmanship in our country that supports its use. To that end, we tried to give the hundred-year-old technique a new look, which was achieved by substituting the traditional strutting and joint wrapping for a twinning technique to join one reed to the next. With this innovative option, we created a flexible yet resistant structure that is very lightweight. A light, warm, charming and luxurious, in the true meaning of the world, chair.”
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I like that Stefano Pugliese calls his latest furniture collection a ‘family.’ According to Pugliese, the Furniture Family is from Chitaly, or Italy and Chile, the two countries where the pieces were made. The simple, plywood forms are already childlike and playful, and by calling the whole set a family it evokes images of afternoon playtime or sitting down to breakfast with your children.
But there’s also a formal elegance at work here. Pugliese lets you see – in fact wants you to see – the joinery between the seat or the table top and the legs, and because this normally concealed aspect of furniture making is exposed, he takes full advantage of it by joining the stools together with fun and whimsical shapes. There’s an exclamation point, an X or a plus sign and a single line with two dots that become a round face.
Pugliese said the design was born from “a formal exercise that explores the mechanical and aesthetic value of plywood paired with black Raystone, which is a 100% organic petrol-free bio composite board produced from the waste of sugar production. Through digital controlled cutting technology and simple finishing work, the project seeks to deliver different solutions starting from a single type of joint. Like all members of a family, all pieces are slightly different but similar.”
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Sticks aren’t a brand new design, but since I’ve never seen a cabinet system quite like it I think deserves some attention anyway. Made in 2011 by Gerard de Hoop, a product and interior designer based in the Netherlands, Sticks come in four different heights and widths and a variety of colors, so you can customize them to fit the needs of your space. They can be used a lowboard, sideboard, small wardrobe or as a single loose cube that can serve as a nightstand or side table.
Which brings me to their best design feature (if it wasn’t obvious already): they stand on one leg, making them the pirates of the cabinet world. Really, their one-legged-ness comes from de Hoop’s devotion to minimalism, so minimal, in this case, that he did away with 75% of the product’s base. Still, they’re just as stable and function just as well as their quadraped counterparts.
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