Those of you working in the furniture and interior design industries have probably heard of Xorel. For those that haven't, it's a high-performance textile typically used as wallcovering, paneling or upholstery. It's also manufactured by Carnegie, an early proponent of environmentally-friendly, PVC-free fabrics; since its launch in the '80s, Xorel has been a popular choice for its safety, durability and for how easy it is to clean. And now it's getting an environmental makeover that renders it even more earth-friendly.
Yesterday, Carnegie launched Biobased Xorel, the world's first biobased high-end interior textile. Seven years of research culminated in a polyethylene yarn that is produced from 60 to 85 percent bio content, namely, sugar cane (rather than fossil fuels).
As part of MoMA PS1's forthcoming EXPO 1: New York exhibition, a "large-scale festival exploring ecological challenges," the contemporary art center is bringing rAndom International's "Rain Room" to its sister organization in Midtown Manhattan.
Rain Room is a hundred square metre field of falling water through which it is possible to walk, trusting that a path can be navigated, without being drenched in the process. As you progress through The Curve, the sound of water and a suggestion of moisture fill the air, before you are confronted by this carefully choreographed downpour that responds to your movements and presence.
The digitally-inclined art/design collective is pleased to bring "Rain Room" to MoMA following its debut at the Barbican Center in their hometown last fall, where it recently closed after a five-month engagement. We can only assume that some of our readers have already had the pleasure of seeing the installation in London, but we're definitely looking forward to experiencing it in person.
Shel Kimen loves a good story, and hers is a tale of a grassroots effort to support a creative community in their time of need. She dreamt up Detroit Collision Works, a multipurpose boutique hotel, co-working space and venue for all-around awesomeness, in Summer of 2011, and they're hoping to Kickstart a prototype of a converted shipping container in time for Flower Day in the country's longest running farmer's market—exactly one month out, on May 18. With just 36 hours to go to raise $11,000 for First Container, Kimen was kind enough to take the time to tell us why we should care.
Awesome needs a place to be.
As people are all too eager to tell you, Detroit has some problems, with the economy, crime, and fractured communities. So when I was thinking about a move to Detroit after 14 years in New York City, I knew that whatever I was going to do had to address some real needs. Coming from the design world, I know that making a good product means understanding, intimately, the people that are going to use it. So the first thing I started doing when I got to Detroit was talk to people. Lots of them.
It started with a hotel. Amazingly, there was not a modern, boutique hotel in all of Detroit! Yet creative people from all over the world visit to work on design an innovation projects—for the auto industry, for bio-tech, for the city (we are an urban planners dream thesis), and to perform at or attend one of our legendary music festivals that combined bring in half a million people annually. Those are creative travelers!
So, ok, we need a cool hotel.
But a cool hotel isn't enough. We need a place for coming together, with our immediate communities, as a city, and inclusive of the many people who visit us. We need a place to accelerate the growth of our communities.
Collision Works is a creative space needed by the people living in Detroit now and the people coming to visit us. It's an artful 36-room boutique hotel, co-working facility, and public event space that uses storytelling to connect and engage travelers and locals alike. Our whole lives are stories—truth and fiction, history and imagination. Stories connect us, help us learn, and catalyze personal and community growth.
I just came across shots of this 130-square-foot apartment in Paris. The fact that the tiny space is split-level could've been a big disadvantage, but the unknown designer turned it into a plus with their handling of the couch-bed situation.
As with a PATH Architecture project we looked at earlier, the bed serves as a couch during the day by concealing half of it, but at night it is pulled out to reveal its full width.
That old craftsperson's motto about making the back of the cabinet as nice as the front may not apply to set designers, but that doesn't make their job any less hard. Particularly when you've got to design a 360-degree studio set, as Florida-based Innovative Show Design recently had to do for NBA TV.
The basketball-based network's design requirements called for a set where they could shoot multiple shows in the same day, with each area remaining visually distinct, while still retaining the overall look of the NBA. In addition, a regulation-sized half-court would be integrated into the set, allowing analysts and/or actual players to "illustrate scale and perspective on air."
ISD whipped up renderings, beginning with the constraints of the basketball court and the studio's dimensions—the fixed numbers, in other words—then designed the rest of the wraparound set to fit. The color scheme was predetermined by the NBA, and the design team chose "motion" as the overarching theme. "We looked at the game itself, and considering the game is constantly moving, we wanted a set to have that energy. We looked at the arcs created by the ball as a player shoots," said ISD designer Mark Dowling.
You'd probably never guess what the inside of that building above looks like.
As it says on the side, that's the Fulton Market Cold Storage Company, essentially a ten-storey freezer that opened in Chicago's Meatpacking district in the 1920s. The company recently picked up stakes for a new facility out in the 'burbs, and the Meatpacking space has been sold for development.
Architecture firm Perkins + Will, who are turning two of the storeys into a velodrome, machine shop and workspace for bicycle component manufacturer SRAM, have posted some astonishing photographs of the interior. "Before work could start on the makeover," writes Edible Geography, "the building had to be defrosted. Nine decades of cold storage, combined with a lack of maintenance as the building ran at one-third capacity over the last five years, had left its interior encrusted with ice."
As the developers brought in a series of propane heaters and began cranking them up, here's what happened:
If you were to hear the phrase "glass floor," you'd probably picture something like this, right? Like a glass-bottomed boat, except that you're actually inside, and you're not sitting next to someone's seasick cousin, and you mostly just have a view of your downstairs neighbor's mismatched furniture and it's kind of awkward to see them hanging out all of the time, especially when you catch them looking at the bottoms of your feet and couch and the ugly electrical conduits that run right through the middle of the floor. In fact, it sounded cool at first but now it doesn't seem like a very good idea at all... and that's not even considering the corollary that "one man's glass floor is another man's glass ceiling," which seems vaguely related to the fact that skirts and dresses wouldn't be options for women who live in houses with glass floors.
But wait: you assumed that by "glass floor," I meant "clear floor," which isn't necessarily the case. Indeed, a new flooring product from Germany's ASB Systembau GMBH boasts a semi-opaque ceramic finish to the effect that "the floor does not reflect too much to be a distraction but still gives a slight reflection which compares to the effect marble has on the eye." Billed as "the most advanced flooring system in the world," the ASB GlassFloor is a system in which reinforced glass panels are set on an aluminum substructure that can be embedded with lighting elements.
Originally designed for squash courts, the surface is designed to emulate hardwood courts with the advantage of flexible lane lines and markings for multipurpose gymnasiums, meeting European regulations for a variety of indoor sports, from badminton to volleyball. However, I was most interested to learn that the ASB GlassFloor can display video as well. "Video messages or scoreboards under the floor are only the beginning. The whole surface can be turned into one big screen. The possibilities for presentation and advertising are as versatile and innovative as ever seen before."
But the visual aspect isn't the only selling point of the flooring system: the company duly notes the durability of the panels, developed by longtime glass manufacturer Kinon Porz.
The floor is made from tempered security glass and can withstand enormous impact. The panels are made from two specially-treated glass plates held together by a 2mm PVB safety layer. The glass panels can be produced to a size larger than 2×2 metres and make the floor longer lasting than any conventional floor. This is why in 2007 we have been able to install the first open air squash court on a cruise ship, withstanding the impact of sea water and perpetual movement over years.
The surface of the glass undergoes several special treatments to achieve ideal elasticity, friction and reflection of light. After years of extensive testing we have reached a result where the floor does not reflect too much to be a distraction but still gives a slight reflection which compares to the effect marble has on the eye. Also deflection and friction of the floor achieve equal or better results than conventional sport floors. The floor is ISO and EN certified. The same treatment that ensures the dim reflection also causes scratches to remain invisible. The surface can be in almost any colour you like. The colour of the floor is determined by special foil coat applied to the bottom of the floor and can be changed even after years.
For exhibit designers, it's tough to cut across the visual clutter clogging the floor at monster events like CES. Eventgoers' peripheral vision is basically rendered useless, as colors, shapes, text, and screens all scream for their attention.
However, whatever firm Audi hired to handle their exhibit design found an effective way to stand out. They erected a large rectilinear tunnel, paneled entirely with white plexi covering what appear to be daylight-rated bulbs. After all the visual junk you've waded through to get there, Audi's area looks so clean, so pure and so awesome that your feet automatically start taking you towards this visual oasis.
Inside there were no adornments, signage, built-ins or displays; just a few letters on the floor denoting the two cars they were showing off, the RS5 and R-18 E-Tron Quattro racecar.
I realize not everyone's got the scratch to pull this off, nor has just two objects they're trying to display, but this was the one exhibit design out of the entire scrum that really had a remarkable design.
As an industrial designer, it's gratifying to see something you worked on sitting on a store shelf or showroom floor. Conversely it's depressing when a project you toiled over gets axed and never sees the light of day. But it is set designers who must experience the most mixed emotions of all: They will spend months creating props or environments that will definitely get made--but that will then be destroyed after filming, to make room in the studio for the next project.
One grand exception of this occurred not in Hollywood, but in Leavesden, England. Bear with us while we break this down:
The L.A.-based Thinkwell Group is an "experiential design firm" that designs, among other things, amusement parks. Towards the tail end of the filming of the Harry Potter series of movies, Warner Brothers tasked Thinkwell with creating a post-film-franchise attraction, to keep the money coming in after the series' conclusion. Thinkwell headed out to Warner Brothers' Leavesden Studios in the UK, where all of the Potter films were produced and where the sixth was then being shot, and made a startling discovery: The filmmakers had saved nearly everything. Props, sets, models, and elaborate constructions dating all the way back to the first film had been stored in a massive airplane hanger and spilled over into a further 200 shipping containers.
As one example, check out the sick "Snake Door" from movie #2, The Chamber of Secrets. I saw it years ago, and blithely dismissed it as CG, but it's a working motorized prop:
Nutty, no? And while the video can give you the misimpression that the door is small, check out this photo showing the scale of it:
Another thing I'd seen in the movie and assumed was CG was the Hogwarts castle:
The Natural History Museum really does come alive, and not just at night: one of New York's most well-known museums is home to live and stuffed animals alike. After admiring the massive mammoths, you begin to notice the vivariums. The word itself is defined as a semi-natural space designed for specific flora and fauna for viewing and study. Maximizing the efficiency of a vivarium is just as important in the design of a window display. Understanding the relationship between animal and the viewer, designer Roy Lorieo shows his design and fabrication process.
Living space for Tree Frogs in New York's best known Upper West Side museum
With a diverse education, studying architecture at Yale and design at Pratt, it only seems natural for Roy Lorieo to pursue such a project. The vivarium is designed for Tree Frogs in the Natural History Museum. As an exhibition designer, Roy has also worked on a Traveling Dinosaur Exhibit as seen here on his Coroflot portfolio.
Blue foam construction shows more dynamic living space that will improve life longevity for the Tree Frogs
The previous vivarium suffered many design flaws that hindered the living habits of the frogs, as well making upkeep by the caretakers difficult. Roy addressed the flaws and sought out a solution.
The Bavarian Forest National Park recently built a towering, egg-shaped vantage point called the Tree Top Walk, a 150 foot high open air lookout built around three massive fir trees each measuring 125 feet around. From the top, visitors can take in sweeping views of the surrounding mountain ranges, including the northern Alps on a clear day, but the really significant part of the structure is its accessibility. Yes, there's an elevator to shoot children and those with disabilities straight up, but because the circular walkway winds at a steady, smooth incline like the Guggenheim's rotunda, everyone can amble around the 4,250 foot long path to the platform that sits above the tops of the fir trees.
For those craving a little more adventure, there are three stations with unprotected, unscreened wooden bridges, rope bridges and other challenges. And because this is in Germany, there's a restaurant and beer garden at the top where you can wash down a plate of wiener schnitzel with a pint or warm up on a winter's day with a cup of a tea with rum. A scenic treetop walk followed by a crisp beer in the middle of the woods - Germans do hiking right. Good thing there's an elevator for the way down.
The 2012 edition of Interieur—the European Design Biennale taking place in Kortrijk, Belgium, October 20–28—is bound to become one of the top global design destinations this year.
Curator and Interieur President Lowie Vermeersch (former head of design at Pininfarina and now CEO of the Turin-based GranStudio), set out to reconnect with Interieur's avant-garde roots through a selection of 300 carefully picked international exhibitors and an extensive cultural program, 'Future Primitives' installations, custom-designed bars and a pop-up 'bistro.'
Crucial this year is the expansion beyond the Xpo fairgrounds, into the city center and particularly the Buda Island.
Together these expanded locations will establish a new DesignCity with a continuum of lanes, diagonals, piazzas and unexpected places where installations, actions and encounters unfold.
Seven specially commissioned Future Primitives project rooms by Nendo (JP), Troika (UK), Makkink & Bey (NL), David Bowen (US), Ross Lovegrove (UK), Greg Lynn (US) and Muller Van Severen (BE), will offer different investigations into our future living environment.
William Root constructed and completed this Tiny House project after his freshman year at Pratt.
The thought of summer vacations evoke thoughts of flings, new friends and the occasional awkward family vacation. For me this is what I thought was the general consensus for myself and my peers' summer vacations until I met William Root.
Hailing from Albaquerque, NM, Will Root is a fellow sophomore at Pratt Institute for Industrial Design. Will is one of the characters that can only be found in an art school, attractinb a veritable cult following on campus with his iconic structuralist book bag, which he designed and made several versions of the bag during foundation year. In one of our many all nighters together we inquired about each others lives and in turn this past summer.
For most students, the reality of the summer is working to pay off their debts. Will realized that working a minimum wage job would pay for a mere two weeks at Pratt. Not content to rely on tips, he opted to think big—big enough to cover an entire year at school. With an entrepreneurial mindset that only the school of hard knocks could teach, he set out to build (and sell) in his words "The best Tiny House ever made."
In the time it usually takes to adjust to being back home, Will finalized his design for a Tiny House and set out on construction within the week. In a rented lot near the lumber yard, he set out creating the project that would consume his entire summer. Tiny Houses, all though not definitively defined, do tend to have some common characteristics, mainly that their proportions and size are constrained to the size of a trailer.
Still, one of Will's goals was to make a no compromise Tiny House. Where many other designs made the house as small as possible, he made his as large as state laws would permit. Thus, he was able to incorporate a full-size kitchen, tiled bathroom, and a 9×13 sized deck. In total the house encompasses a mere 160 sq. ft, which is small even by NYC standards, where the legal minimum is 400 sq. ft.
Although not technically part of the London Design Festival at all, the proximity of the Science Museum to all the designerly action in South West London this month, has resulted in many a festival goer straying over to the Google Web Lab exhibition that promises—a smidgen ambitiously, we soon discovered—to 'bring the extraordinary workings of the internet to life'.
Keen to fill our minds with the secrets and web wizardry of everyone's favourite internet Goliath—dreaming of the multi-millions our future tech start-ups would make, when endowed with this supreme knowledge—we bounded down to the dimly lit basement and entered 'the lab.'
Up-and-coming London-based design star Lee Broom has been joining in the LDF12 festivities this week with a beautifully crafted pop-up shop in Shoreditch, taking his charming handcut crystal pendant lightbulbs to the streets—perfect for festival goers hoping to take home a piece of the designerly action.
The bulbs themselves are hardly groundbreaking but arranged in the store like this the 90 GBP price tag begins to seem a little more reasonable. Lee has been racking up some major interior design awards over the last couple of years, so it is, perhaps, no surprise to see such characterful interior and displays—the floor even strewn with sawdust—essentially just to flog a few lightbulbs.
Mathieu Lehanneur is pleased to present his latest project, the first flagship store for high-end chocolatier Maison Cailler at the Nestlé subsidiary's headquarters in Broc, Switzerland. The 60m2 building also serves as a visitor center, where guests can sample the goods to determine one's "individual 'chocolate personalities' or that of your loved ones to offer formulas best suited to your taste." The forward-thinking French designer has appropriated " the local tradition of 'tavillon,' the wooden Swiss tiles... to design an armadillo structure."
Where the material suggests an exotic creature curled into a scaly ball—a "protective yurt," as Lehanneur puts it—the main entrance alludes to, um, gastromimetic inspiration, as the glass storefront resembles a radially-sliced wheel of gruyère. (The description refers to the latter as "the other regional specialty"; we're assuming l'autre one is chocolate, not the more outré mammalian reference point, which are indigenous to South America.)
As for the "chocolate personality" bit, visitors are invited to partake in five samples to "lead [them] towards the formulas which will most closely satisfy [their] stress-related food cravings." We can't confirm if the "laboratory protocol" prescribed by Lehanneur is double blind in the interest of the scientific method, but the pseudo-experimental approach should come as no surprise as another manifestation of the designer's longtime fascination with science.
Loosely defined, industrial design is about designing objects, and therefore the user's experience in interacting with that object. And although product lifecycles are getting shorter, the object is meant to endure in some sense. But we can't help but wonder what it'd be like to work at a place like Moment Factory, a new media studio where they design fleeting experiences heavy on spectacle and wonder, absent the ID pretenses.
While we've highlighted some of their projects before, we're always excited to see what they're up to. The most recent example is this "pixels rain" spectacle for a recent concert by The Black Keys. It consisted of individual LED lights, dropped from above and designed within a housing that caused them to slowly helicopter down into the crowd:
The company's reel shows some of the more spectacular work they've done, combining light, sound, architecture, balloons, water, thrown objects, you name it:
Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year's Core77 Design Awards 2012! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com
Infinite variety is an exhibition of a private collection of 651 red-and-white quilts, arrayed in such a way as to enable the public to experience the vibrancy of the quilts.
How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?
We learned by watching the webcast. It was a great experience!
What's the latest news or development with your project?
There is a good chance that the entire exhibition will tour to some major U.S. cities beginning late 2013. We are about to begin a feasibility study in preparation for that. Additionally, Elizabeth Warren, the curator, will be completing a beautifully-illustrated catalogue of the collection, which has been in great demand since the exhibition opened. This should come out in 2013 as well, in time for the tour.
What is one quick anecdote about your project?
Mrs. Rose has been an astonishing, wonderful presence throughout the process, from day one when we presented the original design proposal. She was completely unafraid to be enthusiastic, even joyful about the prospect of what we were showing her, and never wavered in her enthusiastic support of our work or the project as a whole. Self-effacing in a way that has grace and beauty, she proclaimed "This is wonderful. I love it. It's so good that it makes me look less like a crazy woman with too many quilts."
What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?
There were many, starting with the day that Sherri Wasserman in our office walked into a charrette session with a drawing of chairs in a circle, with quilts draped over them, and Bix Biederbeck, our materials specialist, opened a drawing of cardboard tubes suspended from steel cables. We put those two elements together and the exhibition became suddenly possible and meaningful. But the real ah-ha moment came when the doors opened and throngs of people began walking into the exhibition. They were walking slowly, faces upturned, with the wide-eyed, smiling expression we came to call "the look." People wept at the entrance. They experienced a kind of bliss that we hadn't dared hope for. Never before have I seen an exhbition we've designed--something so simple, to boot-- have such a powerful, affirming, emotional effect on so many people. It was and remains deeply moving, and humbling, because the effect is genuine, and larger than anything any of us actually did. If I understand it correctly, it expresses something of the myriad, anonymous women--mostly women--who made these quilts, some singly but most together with other women. Somehow the exuberance of the collection, rising to the sky, seems to evoke a spirit that everyone could feel.
Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year's Core77 Design Awards 2012! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com
In an effort to show the city in a different light, the design group Tellart achieved it through sound. SoundAffects NYC transformed the mundane and routine sounds we hear everday into a harmonious and beautiful collection of sounds. In addition the sounds were composed with the aid of various sensors measuring light, temperature, and movement. All of this came together to produce a truly unique sound that describes the diversity and complexity that is New York City. As our jury explains:
One of the few projects analyzed by the team which was chosen unanimously! The winning professional is SoundAffects NYC for Parsons the New School for Design. The project is an interactive installation in the form of a wall with embedded sensors, cameras and light components, installed on a street in New York City. The wall "listens" to the ambient sound and translates the noise into a unique musical composition.
How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?
We watched the live stream on the design awards site. Was nice to see it happen in real-time.
What's the latest news or development with your project?
SoundAffects was only a two-week event, although we look forward to installing more projects like it in the future. The response was fantastic and we had an amazing time working with Mono and Parsons to create it.
What is one quick anecdote about your project?
The weather on installation day was fantastic and rain was the furthest thing from our minds, but about midway through the 2-week installation, New York city was hit with some intense rains and our wall actually flooded. The cameras and sensors became waterlogged and various components were ruined. We scrambled to find replacements and get it all up and running again, and it ended up being fine- the cool part is, we labeled the incident on the project's timeline so you can actually go back in time and listen to what it sounds like when the rain started, when our sensors went down, and finally, when we were up and running again and the sun came out.
What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?
The evening the red falafel truck spent a couple of minutes hitching up and driving off for the day. It was magical to hear something so pretty and then point to something utterly dull and say "that's why." It was absurd to the point of being sublime. I think it says a lot about how we see the world.
Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year's Core77 Design Awards 2012! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com
Designers: Alicja Pytlewska, Hal Watts, & Ben Alun Jones of Royal College of Art & Imperial College London
Location: London, UK
Category: Interiors & Exhibitions
Award: Student Winner
Liminal Spaces is an installation that presents rich creativity, using technology in a very simple and economical form. When controlled by remote control systems, the installation varies in shape, creating different forms and an ever-changing landscape. As our jurors noted:
Liminal Spaces is a sensitive and light project, well resolved and of graceful sophistication which explores in a playful manner the interaction between people and the space that constantly transforms, changing our perception inside of it, and our relation with the surrounding. This changing landscape promotes interesting effects of lights and shadows. We believe that it deals with an experience, which motivates our present and our experiences, placing us in an environment where design, architecture and the imaginary accomplish complementary functions.
How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?
Having arrived from the airport at 1am, Alicja found a very unexpected email in her inbox. After a few, middle of the night text messages with Ben and Hal, we celebrated with pints at a local pub—London style.
What's the latest news or development with your project?
We are working on pushing the installation in new directions, which includes adding more layers to the experience through new materials, colour and possibly sound. During the development stage of the project, we designed a sensing floor, which may also be included in the next incarnation of the piece. We are also working on a book summarising our findings.
What is one quick anecdote about your project?
During the build of the piece we knew the schedule of the night security guard in our workshop space down to the minute. It was helpful hiding from him so we could continue to work late into the night.
Set up by Benetton in Treviso, Italy in 1994 as a communication research center, Fabrica describes itself as "an applied creativity laboratory [and] talent incubator." If you were at Salone de Mobile earlier this year, you may have seen their impressive presentation for which they asked designers to create 25 objects inspired by the 1930s-era Villa Necchi in Milan. Fabrica is consistently generating good work. Most recently they staged a live performance by Sam Baron in the windows of the Sisley store in Piazza san Babila and created a line of seven outdoor furniture products for an event at the Milano Scala Hotel.
Fabrica has a proven eye not only for remarkably beautiful and minimal design, but also for color. Take "Objet Colore," a system of store display fittings for Benetton's retail locations. All the pieces are modular and customizable so they can be used in any store around the world. And like the company's full title ("United Colors of...") suggests, the items are bright, bold and lively blocks of green, red, yellow and blue.
Another collection exhibited as part of their presentation at Salone del Mobile that's worth calling attention to is their limited edition collection of glassware for Secondome gallery. Eight pieces by seven designers include vases, vessels and more unusual pieces like Catarina Carreiras' "Necklaces," a set of two to three vases strung together like gem stones on a gold chain. The pieces can be hung on a wall or set on a table. The most successful pieces in the collection—in my opinion—are by Scottish designer Dean Brown. His "Uplifting" series of carafes for chianti, prosecco, balsamic vinegar and olive oil (his specifications, not mine) create the illusion of suspended animation. The larger carafes operate as normal, with a handle, while the oil and vinegar vessels are set into a larger glass stand and lifted with a smaller, looped handle.
Keep tabs on the other exciting projects coming out of Fabrica, including two short films and a calendar/yearbook. You can also apply to be part of their creative design incubator.
Z Step, the latest project by Amsterdam-based designer Michael Schoner, is an ingenious retail display system based on measures of 33cm (about 13 inches). Each powder coated sheet metal unit is comprised of different 'steps,' each measuring 33 cm. The units can be combined in a surprisingly large variety of ways, and because they're magnetic they can be customized with hooks, knobs, pins, brackets (or anything stuck to a magnet) to hold and display books, clothing, food or literally any object. I love that it's a minimal, unobtrusive design that allows the user to personalize it to fit their space and suit their taste.
Schoner just completed the manufacturing in March and so far I've only seen the unit in white, but hopefully he'll come out with colored versions soon. Z step is currently on exhibition at Depot Basel until this Wednesday, July 11, 2012.
The design of subway stations generally sucks, with a few global exceptions. The Line 11 platform at the Arts et Metier metro stop, in Paris, is the most beautiful subway station I've ever been in. These are two shots I took of it in 2005.
The steampunk-style station had been redesigned that way in 1994 by Francois Schuiten, and though the photos may not convey it well, the copper lining the walls gives the space a warm glow you don't often find underground.
It's that warm unearthly light that makes Arts et Metier beautiful, at least to me. But I'd settle for earthly light, or anything besides fluorescent bulbs, to pretty up a station. The winning entry in a recent design competition in Tel Aviv, for instance, shows us what a subway could look like if lit by the sun.
Los Angeles' Staples Center had an unusual situation over the weekend: Both of L.A.'s basketball teams made the playoffs, as did their hockey team, requiring six playoff games in four days, all on the same floor. Staffers transformed the Center from Kings-branded ice hockey rink to Lakers-branded basketball court to Clippers-branded basketball court and back again over the course of four days:
That process is not unique; virtually every city with a stadium and teams from different leagues performs this routine, with transformation times (depending on crew size and efficiency) ranging from a blistering 90 minutes to a full day. The question is, how do they go from ice to parquet and back again? This video of the Verizon Center in Washington, DC being transformed provides a better view:
While not as intricate as floors done by Benjamin Lai (see some here and here) and without the found-object quality of Piet Hein Eek's furniture, interior design brand Jamie Beckwith has still managed to breath some new life into wood. Specifically through tiles.
The Jamie Beckwith Enigma Collection of floor tiles throws geometry at the problem of boring floors, providing over a dozen different shapes that add a visual effect trumping conventional parquet. They also just about guarantee the contractor will hate you.
Danish architectural practice 3XN launched their internal "Innovation Unit" called GXN in 2007 with the goal "to develop a building culture that positively affects the world in which we live both architecturally and environmentally" (the 'G,' of course, stands for 'green'). Their latest project fits nicely with our March editorial theme of Food Design, the increasingly fertile intersection of the two creative pursuits: Copenhagen's NOMA—which (if you don't know by now) was voted the Best Restaurant in the World for the second year in a row—invited them to design the interior of the new NOMA Food Lab.
In fact, we had the opportunity to meet the brilliant René Redzepi, founder and executive chef of NOMA at the Design Indaba Conference in Cape Town, South Africa. Of the collaboration with 3XN/GXN, he said, "We have been happy to work with GXN on the transformation of our former meeting rooms. The result is great and has contributed to not only the space, but also organizational life and inspiration."
NOMA Lab's interior fixtures (no connection to Noma Bar's Wallpaper covers) presented a challenge from the outset: the facilities are housed in "a former warehouse on the national registry of protected buildings. The tight restrictions meant that GXN was required to design the interior without using so much as one single nail in the walls or flooring." Thus, the design team had to literally work around the existing space:
The approach was to design four central multi-functional storage units; each composed from over five hundred uniquely formed wooden cubes. Curving playfully throughout the space, these units divide the 200m2 room into smaller areas accommodating the Food Lab, the herb garden, staff areas and office. Raw and simple, through colours and forms, it captures a unique Nordic aesthetic. True to the restaurant's philosophy, the NOMA Lab is developed exclusively using Nordic materials.
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Living space for Tree Frogs in New York's best known Upper West Side museum
Blue foam construction shows more dynamic living space that will improve life longevity for the Tree Frogs
William Root constructed and completed this Tiny House project after his freshman year at Pratt.
