Rewrite by GamFratesi

Copenhagen designers GamFratesi have designed a prototype desk with a cave-like shield on top to create an intimate working environment.

Called Rewrite, the desk is presented at GamFratesi’s solo show at The Danish Museum of Art and Design.

A Culture of Sharing: the HCD Toolkit by IDEO

IDEO partnered with International Development Enterprises (IDE), Heifer International, ICRW, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create a toolkit for applying Human-Centered Design to inspire new solutions to difficult challenges within communities of need.

The Toolkit is divided into four sections:

The Introduction will give an overview of HCD and help you understand how it might be used alongside other methods.
Download the Intro Guide.pdf

The Hear guide will help your design team prepare for fieldwork and understand how to collect stories that will serve as insight and inspiration. Designing meaningful and innovative solutions that serve your customers begins with gaining deep empathy for their needs, hopes and aspirations for the future. The Hear booklet will equip the team with methodologies and tips for engaging people in their own contexts to delve beneath the surface.
Download the Hear Guide

The Field Guide and Aspirations cards are a complement to the Hear guide; these are the tools your team will take with them in order to conduct research.
Download the Field Guide
Download the Aspirations Cards

The Create guide will help your team work together in a workshop format to translate what you heard from people into frameworks, opportunities, solutions, and prototypes. During this phase, you will move from concrete to more abstract thinking in identifying themes and opportunities and back to the concrete with solutions and prototypes.
Download the Create Guide

The Deliver guide will help catapult the top ideas you have created toward implementation. The realization of solution includes rapid revenue and cost modeling, capability assessment, and implementation panning. The activities offered in this phase are meant to complement your organization's existing implementation processes and may prompt adaptations to the way solutions are typically rolled out.
Download the Deliver Guide

Also check the article by Alissa Walker (Fast Company)

Comme des Garçons souffle ses 40 bougies

Adrian Joffe (Photo by Chris Moore)

Rei Kawakubo, 66, is one of the great fashion forces from the last decades of the 20th century to now. Integral to her success is that she is too original to be pigeonholed. In fact, the guiding force of a fashion life that stretches way beyond clothes is an urge to think forward, encapsulated in new projects this month — from the ‘‘Black’’ stores to a collaboration with Vogue Nippon and an exhibition at the Paris store Colette.

Here is an inside look at Ms. Kawakubo’s partnership with Vogue Nippon. Photo: Comme des Garçons

An advertisement in a Tokyo railway station for the first of 10 stores devoted to the new Black Comme des Garçons guerrilla brand, which will be phased out after 18 months.

Pleated Pleat Chair by Raw Edges

I have been into pleated stuffs since Pleats Please by Issey Miyake, now I can get the chair by Raw Edges presented during Milan Furniture Fair.

 

Pleated Pleat uses a special material (Tyvek, patented by DuPont), similar to paper but more resistant, that when skilfully pleated and filled with rigid polyurethane foam can be used to create endless variations of padded seats. The advantages are evident: no moulding and no need for internal structures or even covering. Yael and Shay, Israeli but established in London, explain the transition from two to three dimensions: “We were fascinated by the fact that by pleating paper we can turn it into a stretchable surface. We tried pleating it in two directions (and not just in one as usually done with skirts) so it can be stretched into a dome shape.

Raw Edges 

Tendance Design: Utilitaire

Beasts par Nacho Carbonnell fait parti de l'exposition Craft Punk, une collaboration entre DesignMiami et Fendi. Les designers ont produits des pieces uniques en recyclant le materiel de l'usine.

Photo: Fendi/DesignMiami







Une pleiade de designers (Maarten Baas, Kiki Van Eijk, Joost Van Bleiswijk, Minale-Maeda, Philippe Nigro, Van Eijk & Van der Lubbe, the Campana Brothers, Front, Marc Sadler and Bertjan Pot) pour un nouveau venu dan le monde du design avec une avant premiere a Milan: Skitsch (emotion et design contemporain)
Des objets simple et utile dans des materiaux peu chers comme le carton (The Build Up collection table et chaise par Philippe Nigro) ou la collection haphazard en porcelaine de Baas. Si l'objet perd les materiaux nobles, il gagne en revanche en personalite. En effet tous les prototypes de la collection de Baas ont ete moules a la main et sont donc uniques. Simple, utiles et uniques

Photo: Skitsch







Peut-on planter une chaise? Oui, c’est possible. En Amérique du Nord, au 19e siècle, de jeunes arbres étaient maintenus en forme pendant plusieurs années jusqu’à ce qu’ils adoptent les contours d’une chaise ou d’un fauteuil. Les freres Bouroullec se sont inspires de cette idee pour concevoir leur chaise vegetal en polyamide renforcé à la fibre de verre

Photo: Vitra

Adrien Rovero

Adrian Rovero will be in Milan to present Flip and Mapping the Field.

Flip:

A convertible sofa. The sofa can be transformed into a table by turning the board upside down. Project realised for the Company : Campeggi. Location:CampeggiPAD 12 – Stand C15, Salone Internazonale del Mobile.

© adrien rovero

Mapping the Field is a series of research projects using mapping processes: typical for the car industry to produce fake wooden car interiors, hydro tranfer printing can also be applied to create standard patterns like carbon or marble. On show at Glasgow and Genève are spheres in aluminium and stainless steel, which give the illusion of slightly deformed textures ”questionning industrial processes and our perception of objects and materials. The impression of materials such as marble, wood and carbon are presented as a contemporary ‘Trompe l’oeil’ when applied to the surface of a series of Rovero’s objects.”

Adrien Rovero is the first of a cycle of five Lausanne-based designers at the Lighthouse.

The Lighthouse -Scotland’s Centre for Architecture, Design and the City- in 11 Mitchell Lane, Glasgow, is open Monday, Wednesday to Saturday 10.30-17.00, Tuesdays 11.00-17.00 and Sundays 12.00-17.00.

Galerie Ormond, 21 rue des Bains, 1205 Genève in Switzerland is open Tuesday to Friday from 11.00-18.30 and Saturdays from 10.30-17.00. To know more about Adrien Rovero, read also Abitare’s 2008 October issue.

via Abitare

Milan preview

Top : Tension Bench by Lisa Johansson
Bottom: Giles Miller-Lego®

Crisis Shop - Sold Out

22nd - 27th April '09

Seves glassblock Showroom

Via Lodovico il Moro 25/27, Milan

The RCA’s PLATFORM 10 presents Crisis Shop - Sold out, an exhibition of work focused on handling situations of crisis in our contemporary society.

Featuring a series of products, each offering an opportunity in disguise, the exhibition offers a stimulus to rethink what a crisis actually is.

From candles with suction pads to deal with any emergency, to take-apart cutlery and LEGO® tables, the exhibition invests in the means to respond to crises at large.

To coincide with the exhibition Seves glassblock Showroom will host a series of films and lectures, with critical contributions by Prof. Niko Papastergiadis, Deyan Sudjic, and Richard Wentworth.

www.sevesglassblock.com

Top: Table by REEVESdesign
Below: Bird Houses by Chris Eckersley

Smile: Designersblock

April 22nd - 27th '09

Revel Scalo d’Isola
Via Thaon De Revel,3, Milano (Zona Isola)

Designersblock will be back in Milan this year showcasing a star lineup of established and up-and-coming designers including the like of Chris Eckersley, Puff & Flock, Reevesdesign and our personal favorite Ercol.

To complement the exhibition there will be a full program of screenings, discussions, presentations, performance and lots more taking place throughout the days and evenings of the salone in the Theater section of the venue.

So although it might be slightly off the beaten path, i would definitely include it on my list of must sees in Milan.

www.designersblock.org.uk

via DeTnk.

Brazilian ironwood and polyurethane foam La belle et le clochard table by François Azambourg, Bold chairs by Big-Game

Maple wood and polyurethane foam La belle et le clochard table by François Azambourg,
Bold chairs by Big-Game

Instant tableInstant seat chauffeuse in plywood beech, Arbre table centre by Matali Crasset,
Vapeur lamps by Inga Sempé
and

Left: Bold chairs by Big-Game,

Arbre table centre by Matali Crasset,
Vapeur lamp and suspension by Inga Sempé

Right: Box stool by Big-Game,

large Vapeur lamps and suspension, Armoire souple storage module by Inga Sempé,
Arbre table centre by Matali Crasset

Natural leather Instant seat chauffeuses by Matali Crasset,
Box stools by Big-Game,
Large Vapeur lamp by Inga Sempé

Instant seat chauffeuse and Arbre table centre by Matali Crasset,

Armoire souple storage modules and large Vapeur lamp by Inga Sempé,
Bold chairs and Box stools by Big-Game

Mètre shelf by François Azambourg

Box coffee table and stool by Big-Game,
turquoise leather Instant seat chauffeuses and Arbre table centre by Matali Crasset,
Armoire souple storage modules and large Vapeur lamp by Inga Sempé

Slastic coat rack by Ana Mir + Emili Padros

Why a new home furnishings company?
The idea of a new French company of contemporary home furnishings might seem either odd or gutsy, considering how full the world is with furniture and objects. And if the company in question chooses to work with designers and producers who are close contacts (in every sense of the term—geography, affinity and tastes) whereas globalization seems to be the way of our times, isn’t this a little anachronistic? And if the company’s aim is to build a network based on both complicity and know-how, and if the company believes that between very upscale and standardization there should be a wide range of choices: is this utter madness? Announcing Moustache. Founded and run by Stéphane Arriubergé and Massimiliano Iorio, moreover partners in Domestic, Moustache’s aim is to bring together a group of like-minded designers to nurture the development of innovative and honest furnishings that will stand the test of time.

via Yatzer

Bram Boo in Milan

Milan is around the corner and here is a quick look at what Bram Boo wil be showing




"Sleepless" bed
photo: jasper willemen
desigenr: bram boo
function: because of its particular shape, this bed offers you comfort and inspiration when making love...
creation: 2008
material: lacquered steel











"Overdose" chair
photo: Jasper willemen
function: made for an exhibition called "prophets and penitents" confessions of a chair. Fuori Salone Milan 2009
Like Saints, often are represented surrounded by an aureole around their head, it inspired me to use function and especially an overdose of storage to create an aureole for everybody who is seating in the chair!
designer: bram boo
creation: 2009
material: lacquered mdf, steel, wood





























"Overdose" desk
photo: Jasper Willemen
funcyion: this desk with its storage units disposed in a nonchalant way on the tabletop gives you the opportunity to make order quite easily!
designer: bram boo
creation 2007/09
material: lacquered mdf, wood
dimensions: W231xD120xH140cm
still a prototype

Leko car by Ikea

In a few hours, IKEA will be launching Leko, its first eco car.

Roulez Leko

Amusement Magazine: the future of publishing

Nice collaboration between the french mag Amusement and Nike: the Cortez Fly motion collector is the first trainer to come with RFID, it gives access to art pieces produced especially for the mag

Puce RFID & dispositif

Dans la puce RFID : video game by Messhof, work by Electronic Shadow, Factoid (Pierre Nouvel, Valère Terrier) and Le Tone, 3D stuff by Gkaster and wallpaper by Philippe Jarrigeon.

magazine out today in France

via Fubiz

Also on the technology and omni-connectivity, it seems homeless people in DC are using mobile phone check the Post article on the subject

Priestmangoode Design New First Class Suite for SWISS

Priestman Goode has designed the new first class suite for airline Swiss.

The suite will enter service in April as part of the airline's new first class cabin.

This is in conjunction with a fleet renewal programme that will see Swiss' Airbus A330-200s replaced with A330-300s.

Priestman Goode has previously worked on the interiors of Lufthansa's intercontinental fleet and the Airbus A350 cabin design.

Goode says the consultancy worked with Swiss on the design concept, and then worked closely with the super first class division of US manufacturer BE Aerospace to develop the suites.

He says, 'BE has a seat mechanism that has been certified and passenger tested, and everything else in the suite is bespoke. We worked closely with BE, at this level you have to be very precise.






images via Dexigner