How high is space how deep is sea infographic.
infographic > [ visual.ly ]
infographic > [ visual.ly ]
michael beck | american roots (2009) | seen at art chicago, image courtesy of paul thiebaud gallery
Thank you for all your support this year. Looking forward to welcoming you back in 2012!
[ 2010 art chicago ] [ paul thiebaud gallery ] [ michael beck ]
Maison & Objet just presented their 2012 Now! Design à Vivre award to Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka. A favorite of the luxury world, Yoshioka has worked with Hermès, BW, Cartier and Issey Miyake as well as museums like the Musee d’Orsay and the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. But aside from delivery luxe goods, Yoshioka is known as a “designer of the senses” and for exploring new “technopoetic ground.”
Just what makes something technopoetic? Yoshioka’s 2007 Pane Chair is a good example. Made from small, lightweight fibers baked in a kiln, it’s an excellent model of how rethinking materials can yield both innovative solutions and exciting new forms. I mean, when was the last time you looked at a bunch of fiber shavings and thought, hey that might make a good chair?
Earlier this year Yoshioka unveiled a new furniture collection for Kartell so minimalist the pieces are almost completely invisible. In fact, that’s what Yoshioka named the collection. “Invisibles” plays with our idea of physical space with benches and chairs that make it appear as if the user is seated in mid air. “In the last few years,” Yoshioka said, “I have been thinking about a design that would include natural phenomena and invisible elements such as sense, wind and light. The presence of the object is eradicated and it will create a scenery of a sitter floating in the air.”
Scenery is the key word there; I imagine a room full of “Invisibles” would be much more effective than just one in a cluster of so-called regular chairs. But aside from the coolness and conceptual factor, just how comfortable would these things be? At least Philippe Starck’s Ghost Chair has a smooth, rounded back and a shaped seat. As I’m not in the market for luxe goods I doubt I’ll be test driving one any time soon, but a word to those on the hunt for injection-molded polycarbonate: bring a cushion.
about perrin drumm
leonardo da vinci noticed that a tree’s resilience utilizes design principles in their branch structure. via npr.org [ nOnnIs ]
The Little Shining Man is one of the most magical-looking things I’ve seen all year, and it’s an appropriately uplifting note on which to end 2011 and begin 2012. It’s literally uplifting, actually: it’s a kite. Crazy, right? It looks like a heavy, ginormous block, and with over 23,000 individual components you’d never think it could fly, but it’s made of carbon fiber rods and nylon connectors that secure “a hand-made composite fabric normally used for yacht sails.”
The kite was made by artists Heather and Ivan Morison, who are best known for their pavilions and outdoor installations. They’ve worked all over the world on commissioned, site-specific and sculptural projects. For Little Shining Man, they collaborated with an architect and fabrication design studio to create the delicate, three-part structure based on the tetra kites of Alexander Graham Bell.
“There were several challenges in realizing Little Shining Man,” said Heather and Ivan. “The structure had to be as strong and light as possible in order to fly, but had to return to earth with minimal damage so it could be installed as a piece of sculpture. Carbon fiber rod and Cuben fiber – a hand-made composite fabric used primarily in Racing Yacht Sails, achieved the perfect combination of strength and weight. The visual impact of the fabric produces an etherial sense of depth and refraction that gives the heavy mass the lightest touch.”
The kite was built in three parts that come together to create the final piece, hung as a sculpture in a new development in St. Helier, Jersey. Once a year it will be taken down and flown in St. Aubin’s Bay.
Prefabricated architecture makes its way to the top of the Italian alps with the Alpine Pod, located on the Freboudze glacier on the Mont Blanc range. Commissioned by the Italian pine club, CAI Torino, the pod offers climbers refuge from the terrain’s severe conditions.
Designed and built by LEAPfactory, “an Italian firm specializing in modular structures with low environmental impact,” the Alpine Pod uses nautical and aeronautical fabrication techniques to create a self-sufficient structure capable of withstanding extreme weather, like 124 mph winds and 26 feet of snow.
Nothing like this has ever been attempted before, and as such it looks nothing like typical alpine structures. Luca Olivari, the project’s structural engineer, used glass-fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP), which he said is “an ideal material for extreme conditions because the fiber’s weight and orientation can be precisely defined in every area of the structure to support high-concentrated loads.”
As for the pod’s features, it’s 250 square-feet and has a kitchen as well as dining and living areas, twelve bunks, storage for gear and a weather monitoring station. Photovoltaic panels produce 2.5 Kwh of solar energy; It weighs almost 3 tons and cost about $327,000 to construct. And because it’s based on a modular structure, with “individual modules designed for specific functions like eating or sleeping,” the pod itself can actually be rearranged and expanded, should demand require it.
It’s an amazing feat of specialized building under extreme conditions. I’m anxious to follow this project to see how the pod functions after months of wear. But even if the cute sweater design gets rubbed out by wind and sleet, it’s still an oasis in a frozen, forbidding landscape for adventurers heading into the alps on foot.
If you’re like me you start your day by unscrewing the plastic caps of your cheap, ugly contact lens case, putting the darn contacts in your eyes and then ushering the unsightly case out of sight as quickly as possible. Until recently, so did Portland-based designer Beverly Moon, but unlike the rest of us, she decided to do something about it.
It took her a year to design, produce and fund (via Kickstarter), but it looks like the MOON case is ready to begin its mission of replacing all the ugly conta-ct lens cases of the world.
“It’s a routine that many of us go through at least twice a day and it’s an object that holds a prominent place on the bathroom sink,” said Moon. “I wanted an object that complemented my space and felt good in my hands. So I applied simple, modern design to beautiful materials to make the MOON Case for a more refined everyday experience.”
The case is made from Corian, a hypoallergenic, non-toxic material that’s also non-porous, so it doesn’t harbor the growth of bacteria. Also, it’s beautiful. Corian not only gives it a heft heretofore unseen in contact lens cases, but they seem to glow from within – at least the ones in white do (they also come in Concrete and Sand). Moon also had the cases made at a local manufacturer, minimizing the environmental impact and giving her the ability to work face-to-face with the machine operators during the process.
MOON is just the first in what will hopefully be a long line of projects as part of her Pretty Mundane Objects series, an annual undertaking that aims to make the everyday beautiful. “It’s not about designing new things,” Moon said, “but refining the experiences and relationships between us and our objects. It’s about looking at products that are essential to our routine, but that most designers haven’t bothered to observe. To take a second look at the mundane objects that we use daily and re-think our interactions with them.”
8 february > 8 march 2012 | london
The first solo-show in London by Swiss designer Nicolas le Moigne, opens 8 February 2012, at Gallery Libby Sellers.
Following his graduation in product design from ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne in 2007, le Moigne has gone on to create award-winning designs that can be described as a celebration of juxtaposition. His work in lighting, product and furniture shows an understanding of, and capacity for, complexity and contrast: seemingly fragile yet resilient, at once artisnal yet also industrial, assuredly sophisticated yet without guile.
This equanimity has brought le Moigne, now a professor at ECAL, to the attention of both industrial companies such as Eternit or Atelier Pfister and design galleries in Paris, Berlin and Mexico. Sellers and le Moigne have been working to produce new designs since his graduation, however to offer an overview of his work since 2007 the London exhibition will also include limited edition designs commissioned for NextLevel Galerie in Paris and Helmrinderknecht in Berlin. The exhibition will include the debut of le Moigne’s leather Slip stool, alongside jewellery for the Austrian firm A.E.Koechert, seating for Eternit, and a selection from the Podium and Materia collections.
For four years Gallery Libby Sellers was “pop-up.” This freshly minted permanent space opened on 8 September in advance of the London Design Festival and the Nicolas le Moigne solo show will be their 4th exhibition.
venue: gallery libby sellers | 41-42 berners street | london w1t 3 nb
opening times: tuesday > friday 11a > 6p | saturday 11a > 4p
enquiries: gallery at libbysellers dot com | +44(0)20 3384 8785
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The Mojo HD is the longer travel bigger brother to the Mojo and Mojo SL. The “HD” as Ibis calls it, has 6 inches of rear wheel travel, up 2 inches from the other Mojos. The Mojo HD takes the concept of efficient, lightweight ( 22.5 pounds ) long travel suspension a step further giving riders another level of skill and confidence in nearly every situation, combined with uncanny climbing prowess. Carbon frame. $4,000
Carbon frame. $4,000 | Ibis Mojo
[ ibis mojo ]
Just in, exclusive images on MINI USA’s MINI Snowman event held a few days ago in Kühtai, Austria. The event marked the first time MINI has announced that the John Cooper Works Countryman has been built/sold. Prototypes of the new MINI were previewed and guests had the opportunity to test drive. The MINI John Cooper Works Countryman is a nod to MINI’s heritage, which has always been about balancing practicality and efficiency with performance. The vehicle will make its official debut in an upcoming auto show in 2012 and will be available in the second half of the year.
[ mini usa ]
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