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.

Design Auction: Few and Far

16th September '09, 6:00pm

Few and Far

242 Brompton Road, London SW3 2BB

This wednesday Few are Far will host their very own design auction. Run by an ex Sotheby’s auctioneer, the sale will offer works by a range of designers including Andrée Putman, Nigel Coates, Vico Magistretti, Xavier Lust, Julian Stair among others.

Viewing will take place 14th - 15th September ’09.

For further information and catalogue enquiries tel: 020 7225 7070

Absentee bidding is available.

www.fewandfar.net

Simon Hasan by Vauxhall Collective Commission

As part of this year’s Vauxhall Collective commissions, Simon Hasan combines ancient craft techniques with industrial design language to create a unique range of design pieces.

Commissioned by Vauxhall Motors to design a series of products under the theme ‘The Great British Road Trip’ Hasan – one of the UK’s most promising designers – took to the open road to delve into the lost crafts of the British Isles. While exploring the tension between industrial led design and rural craft, Hasan’s work sets out to revive a series of ancient craft techniques by making them part of a commercially and semi-mass-produced collection.

Comprising three distinct designs this latest collection is a perfect complement to Hasan’s RCA graduation work based on the Medieval process of Cuir Bouilli,

Including Stoneware Vases, echoing the distinctive beer flagons once widely used across the UK, Oak stools, using an ancient woodland craft known as cleaving, and an Oak and Steel cabinet, again created using the cleaving technique, Hasan’s fascination with obscure and ancient craft techniques is once again the driving force behind this truly remarkable collection.

Simon Hasan is a member of the Vauxhall Collective 2008/2009. His commission pieces are for sale through the Vauxhall Collective website.

From top: Vases Inspired by Stoneware by Simon Hasan - Vauxhall Collective Commission 2009

Blonde Stained Stool by Simon Hasan - Vauxhall Collective Commission 2009

Ebony Stained Stool by Simon Hasan - Vauxhall Collective Commission 2009

Welded Carbon Steel Cabinet by Simon Hasan - Vauxhall Collective Commission 2009

farmer and style at Design Huis (6 august - 27 september)

The current financial crisis and our concerns about ecology have contributed to rethinking our existence in the challenging and stressful city, while advances in information technology have participated in setting humans free from a fixed location within the urban environment. Man can now live wherever he wants and however he wants at any given moment.

We therefore can live like nomads and gather like shepherds: news, knowledge, music, images, objects and food. The slow food movement has shifted the focus from the exotic and exclusive to a need for the local and the seasonal. Forgotten vegetables and regional recipes are rediscovered and reinvented. Now this movement is spreading to other domains within our lives and “slowing down” becomes a general and accepted idea.

Everything seems to indicate that rural realities are influencing urban life. The greening of the city and the urbanization of the country will ultimately lead to the blurring of borders between these two domains. Designers, artists and architects are reflecting upon this exchange of ideas. The life of man and animal will be strongly integrated and the production of food will take place within the city borders. In a search for autarchy, a more mature and autonomous positioning is requested concerning the chain of food production. New ideas will be born to seed, hybrid and harvest within the city.

Materials will be given by the land and animals and will be treated with respect; they will carry the honest identity of the fibre and the flock and transform the designer into a conceptual farmer. Several internationally renowned designers already choose to live on farms today.

Form is derived from the romantic pastoral past and seeks the essence of the farm in new materials and images. The land and earth is studied, mapped and researched and is used to formulate simple and generic tabletop products made from a colourcard of clay from the polder. The wheelbarrow and the rocking chair are reinvented. The tile stove and pick fork are back. In a first trial to understand and map this movement, through fifteen installations, Eindhoven’s Designhuis will explore a new lifestyle where humans are seen as an integral part of the ecologic cycle, integrated in the process. Placing themselves on equal ground with agriculture and animal. Humans with respect for life.

About the exhibition

the exhibition farmer and style, from the 6th of august till the 27th of september, sketches how globalization, a growing world population and the search for sustainable lifestyles leads to concepts like vertical farming. as farming slowly makes it’s entry into the city, however in a modernized way, farmers specialize themselves in urban life. design plays a crucial role in this new interpretation. li edelkoort (former chairwoman of design academy eindhoven) will curate this exhibition. she has already invited a number of important designers, architects, artists and brands to collaborate with us. some of the participants are for example piet heijn eek, wiel arets, Mike Meire, Esther Kokmeijer, Claudy Jongstra, Jurgen Bey and Rianne Makkink, Koen van Mechelen, Frank Tjepkema, Christien Meindertsma, MVRDV, Nadine Sterk, Lonny van Rijswijck, Maarten Kolk, Studio Job, Scholten en Baijngs, Floris Schoonderbeek, Dick van Hoff, Joep van Lieshout, Joons Kim, Ton Matton, Kranen/Gille, Frederik Molenschot, Jessica Hansson, Revital Cohen, Agata Jaworska, Rosanne van de Weerdt, Sander Bokkinga, David Olschewski.

During the exhibition the audience can enjoy organic/regional products at the café and every Friday there will be a market with organic products on the square. The banks of the river will change into an organic vegetable garden for the surroundings. During the exhibition different activities, like rural movie nights, documentaries and presentations in which the farm represents innovation and education, will be developed. There will also be two lectures from an architect and a designer who are passionate about the subject.

Main image: Atelier NL, Maarten Kolk
Image: Christien Meindertsma
Image: Ton Matton
Image: Koen van Mechelen

it's a small world

it's a small world explores New Craftsmanship in Danish design, architecture and craft. With focus on future design practice, human scale and sustainability, the exhibition challenges the traditional role of the designer. Six interdisciplinary scenarios seek a new relevancy for design - in the world.
it’s a small world will be showing at Danish Design Center Aug. 27. 2009 – Jan. 31. 2010 and will subsequently visit museums in Europe and USA.

Burden Chair by Apirak Leenharattanarak

Recent Central Saint Martins MA Design graduate, Apirak Leenharattanarak designed a series of furniture pieces exploring patterns of use and storage.

As a reaction to how technology is constantly impacting our use of personal space, bringing its own detritus to our increasingly confined urban environements, Apirak created furniture with a personalised and distinctive language.

As an example of the collection, the Burden chair highlights the weight we carry in our everyday lives, by integrating symbolic storage exposing the number and identity of our possessions.

www.apirak.info

The idea of a tree

The idea of a tree

This concept was inspired by a certain fascination for machines and nature. A tree is a product of its specific time and place. It reacts and develops according to its surrounding and constantly records various environmental impacts in its growth process. Each single tree tells its own story of development.

The goal of ‘the idea of a tree’- project was to bring the recording qualities of a tree and its dependence on natural cycles into products.

“The idea of  a tree” is an autonomous  production process which combines natural input with a mechanical process. It is driven by solar energy and translates the intensity of the sun through a mechanical apparatus into one object a day.

The outcome reflects the various sunshine conditions that occur during this day. Like a tree the object becomes a three dimensional recording of its process and time of creation.

The machine starts producing when the sun rises and stops when the sun settles down. After sunset, the finished object can be ‘harvested’.

It slowly grows the object, by pulling threads through a colouring device, a glue basin and finally winding them around a mould. The length/height of the resulting object depends on the sunhours of the day. The thickness of the layer and the colour is depending on the amount of sun-energy. (more sun = thicker layer and paler colour; less sun=thinner layer and darker colour)

This correlation between input and output makes the changes visual and readable. The product becomes a three-dimensional ‘photograph’ of the time and the space where it is produced and communicates certain characteristics of locality. The process is not just reacting on different weather situations, but also on shadows happening in the machine’s direct surrounding.

Each object represents one day at one spot where it was produced. The concept of introducing natural input into a serial production process suggests a new way of looking at locality. What I would like to call industrialized locality, is not so much about local culture, craftsmanship or resources, instead it deals with the climatic and environmental factors of the process surrounding.

Various shapes and various colours are possible.

Misher'Traxler

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 

Design collective Outofstock exhibited a collection of five furniture pieces as part of the SaloneSatellite in Milan last April.

The collection includes a chair, lamp, desk, side table and coat stand.

Outofstock exhibited new projects at the Salone Satellite of the Milan Furniture Fair last month. A collection of five projects – Arbor, Sherlock, Coat Shed, Black Forest and Naked Chair were shown. Outofstock also selected by Elle Decoration Spain to show at the Elle Decoration Young Talents Show located in the basement of Super Studio Piu, where Black Forest and Naked Chair were exhibited.