In my weekly In the Details column, I take a deep-dive into the making of a new product or project, always with the goal of figuring out how exactly the thing was made and why it was made that way. In 2015, I encountered all manner of innovative design and manufacturing processes, from the ancient art of eggshell lacquer to the contemporary quest for uncomplicated women's undergarments. Here are my ten favorites.
Extruding Plastic Furniture in London
If you ever wondered what furniture made out of a giant hot-glue gun that shoots out toothpaste might look like, here you go. Royal College of Art graduate James Shaw shares the story behind his graduation project, an arsenal of guns used for creation instead of destruction.
Shrink-Wrapping a Storefront in Manhattan
You've wrapped presents in paper and leftovers in plastic, but do you have what it takes to wrap a building? Last February, Dustin Hoover of Atlantic Shrink Wrapping Inc. and the team at SO-IL explained how they shrink-wrapped a building in downtown Manhattan—and showed us why New Yorkers can't have nice things.
Crushing 1,800 Eggs in Brooklyn
Brooklyn-based Mark de la Vega of DLV Designs takes us through his annual process of ordering around two thousand eggs from a farm in Pennsylvania, hard-boiling them and delicately removing their shells to create gorgeous interior finishes. It's like they always say: To make a Coquille d'Oeuf finish, you have to break a few thousand eggs.
Building an Adult Play Pen at New York Design Week
It's rugs like you've never seen them before. New York–based designer-slash-artist Katie Stout enlisted the help of a traditional rug-making factory in Providence, Rhode Island, to scale up children's building blocks and create this adult-sized play zone for Sight Unseen's OFFSITE exhibition during New York Design Week.
Using Hearing-Aid Batteries to Make a Scepter-Inspired LED Torch
Taking inspiration from a regal portrait of King Edward V in London's National Portrait Gallery, Brendan Keim designed and built a long, slender brass flashlight—powered by eight 1.5-volt hearing-aid batteries. It's truly a flashlight meant to accompany you to your royal throne.
Casting Furniture with Sugar, Salt, Coffee Grounds, Ice-Cream Sprinkles and Other Random Things
Just add cement! Sculptor Fernando Mastrangelo blends a wide range of materials with casting techniques to create minimal forms with complex structures. Using wood and silicone molds, Mastrangelo translates his drawings to three-dimensional forms. "There's almost nothing that's dry and able to be cast that I haven't tried at this point," he says.
Covering Your Walls with Images From Space
Rachel Mosler and Nick Cope of Calico Wallpaper turned to NASA image archives to unearth out-of-this-world inspiration for a new line of wallpaper. Sifting through images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, Mosler and Cope worked with studio BCXSY to create celestial swaths in gold and silver that are anything but your grandmother's wallpaper. (Unless your grandmother is super cool, in which case she'd probably love it.)
Un-Complicating Complicated Underwear for Women
Turns out, designing simple lingerie for women is actually quite complicated. At least that's what Lauren Schwab and Marissa Vosper discovered when founding Negative, a line of considered, minimalist intimates for women. Vosper tells us all about her development process, from posting Craigslist ads for a sample maker to pillaging piles of overly ornate elastic to put together the perfect garment.
Freezing Metal Table Legs in the Snowy Mountains of Austria
To test out the idea for what would eventually become his Freeze collection, Paul Cocksedge buried copper table legs in the snow, allowing them to shrink just enough to fit inside openings in blanket-swaddled aluminum tabletops. The designer believes that this experiment is just the first step toward a hardware-free future.
Getting a Mouthful from a Beverly Hills Dentist
After watching his daughter struggle with a traditional "boil and bite" mouth guard, Scott Wilson of Chicago-based MINIMAL knew there had to be a better way. So when a Beverly Hills dentist reached out with an alternative technology, the two joined forces to create one that uses PVS, a silicone impression material that can be prepped, Play-Doh–style, by the user herself.
________________________________________
• 15 of Your Favorite Posts from 2015
• The Coming Age of Automobility and What It Means for Designers
• 10 Clever, Innovative or Bizarre Design Processes from 2015
• 10 Brilliant and Beautiful Objects from Our 'Designing Women' Series
• 12 Projects to Inspire Future Living
• Design Entrepreneurs Were Killing it in 2015
• The Year in Furniture Designs, Part 1: The Beautiful, the Innovative and the Unusual
• 15 Tools and Tool-Based Projects We Loved in 2015
• 8 New Types of Digital Fabrication Machines
Create a Core77 Account
Already have an account? Sign In
By creating a Core77 account you confirm that you accept the Terms of Use
Please enter your email and we will send an email to reset your password.
Comments
Great interior design. Looks so simply but also elegan.
Nice post !