daniel svahn pallarna

"Daniel Svahn brought the concept of Chinese Whispers to the designing of his Pallarna (Swedish for stools). He took an image of Jacobsen’s ‘Seven’ chair and wrote a description of it without explicitly saying it was a chair. Another designer then sketched a design based on his text. A third designer wrote a text based on that image which was passed to a fourth to draw it. ‘Each step created variations and produced a final design that I might not have come up with myself,’ says Svahn. ‘The shape took off based on different interpretations so it was an intensely shared process.’ "
wallpaper graduate directory 2010

It would be interesting if he had also made the chair that was sketched by the second designer and placed them along side the Jacobsen 7 series chair which was the starting point. The design process plays on the idea of multiple (mis)interpretation and using the limitations of text into an exploratory tool, which in itself is intriguing, but in this case, the execution might have been more provocative if the concept was pushed a little further by repeating the steps a few more times, resulting in a more drastic departure from the original, perhaps letting it transform into another type of furniture or even into something outside the realm of a functional object.

daniel svahn
wallpaper graduate directory

lindsey adelman bubbles

Lindsey Adelman's lighting fixtures are like wild mechanical plants, sprouting from a ceiling or from the floor on a stem, with pivoting stainless steel arms, sometimes brass, branching off like in a classical molecular structure. The branches terminate with glass buds at the ends, each housing a naked electric bulb which feed off the energy coursing through the wires embedded within the branches and stem, blooming in a display of anti-photosynthesis at the flick of a switch. Sometimes, the light is melon-like, sitting freely on the floor with vines sprawling across it, alwasy ready t be plucked and transplanted to another location, perhaps a tabletop.

There is a quiet botanical beauty despite the use of cold inorganic materials. Each fixture is made to order and prices will ensure the farmer is well fed. The description of the 3-globe with naked bulb reads,"...add $1600 for each globe and $400 for each socket without glass."

see more of her work here.

erwin hauer : continua

The Continua screens of Erwin Hauer are at once, skin and space, liquid and stone. The anitclastic surface curves and weaves into itself in periodic rhythm, infinitely expandable through modular addition. Though earlier versions had to be put together from indivdual handle-like components, advancement in casting technology allowed single, and later, multiple modules to be cast in a single piece. The graphic quality of the screen is striking, especially in a large expanse, where it visually feels like a punctuated geometric sheet. Up close, the sculptural and spatial qualities become apparent, the curvature morphs in 3 dimensions, concave becoming convex, forming a cavity in between through which light, air and space filters through. The screen casts a shadow within itself through its own depth forming an interplay of light and shade; its curved surface reflects incidental light in multiple directions, casting a diffused, ethereal glow onto itself.

Some words from Hauer about his Continua screens here.

SANAA nextmaruni chair

You might recognize the "rabbit" chair from photos of projects by SANAA (the collaborative practice of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa), and it is likely that you have last seen it at the most recent Serpentine Pavilion which they designed. The chair, also designed by SANAA, is part of the Nextmaruni range of chairs by the Hiroshima based furniture company Maruni Wood Industries, in which renown designers are invited to design production pieces for the line. Designed in the tradition of Arne Jacobsen's series 7 chairs, the "rabbit" chair is made up of a steam bent plywood shell set onto a stainless steel leg frame. The plywood shell is spliced halfway in the middle, with the shape of the backrest looking like a pair of rabbit ears, perhaps more whimsical and easily liked than a minimalist white SANAA building.The articulation also serves an ergonomic function, diverting the pressure on the back of the a person to the side, leaving the spine free from any contact with a hard surface Wouldn't mind getting one of these for my room as a companion to the Chair_One I'm using now. Unfortunately, stockists outside of Japan are scarce and I'm too cheap to pay for shipping. And at ¥30000 each, the the chair is not particularly easy on the pocket, so for now, it'll just remain on my to-buy list.

hansel pop-up store

The label Hansel, by designer Jo Soh, has taken over the space of the old Baylene shop at Stamford House and set up a temporary store selling her range of girly candy-esque clothing. The shop interior is a whimsical jurassic landscape of pixelated mountains, cut-out dinosaurs and floating cuboid clouds. Inspired by children's pop-up books, sheets of brown cardboard fold out from the wall to form clothing racks and cartons are stacked to create display shelves, partitions and a counter. The people behind the interior concept is a group of MFA students from the La Salle School of the Arts working under the name Musement. The shop is open till 26 July.




The Hansel Pop Up Shop
#01-04 Stamford House

www.ilovehansel.com/

recession rings

A collaboration between London's Tithi Kutchamuch and Nutre Arayavanish, the All Year Rings are 12 laser-etched paper rings, each having a different floral design representing each month of the year. The rings come in a single sheet from which you pop out the one of your desire.They also come in a birthday card version that you can send to loved ones as a gift. Cheap thrills in these dark economic times, I say wear one for every month of the recession, well, at least till you can afford a real gold ring.



tithi.info
nutrejeweller

andrea lissoni talks about milan

a quick google turned this interesting snippet: Milan as a city of islands.

courtesy of useful + agreeable

BLESS in apartamento nr. 3

Objects and devices...are mimetic in the sense that they insinuate themselves, they graft on and they root in the interior spaces as if they were immediately classics, therefore becoming splendidly invisible... They hide indoor or fling open outdoor, acting as a zipper. Windowgarden is not a possibility of a slit, a revisited trompe-l'oeil-figure on which Bless has always focused -- but it disappears, becoming a hinge.

a beautiful piece by Andrea Lissoni on Bless can be found in the third issue of apartamento. he writes about the humanising temperament of their most subtle yet pervasive products. the word temperament suggests character, Lissoni says, a personality evident in each Bless production. this character, like the personalities that use the products, has multiple natures and is able to broaden existing horizons by revealing a second, third, fourth function in addition to its most obvious one.

the feeling one takes away from Lissoni's writing is a hopeful one - perhaps enhanced by the good humour evident in Bless' products themselves. Ricardo Fumanal's illustrations, black and white with an occasional light daube of pastels, add to this atmosphere.

stationery porn

So while googling for Craft Design Technology yesterday, I stumbled across websites that can only be descibed as stationery pornography. Here's some of them. Close your door and enjoy!

notebookism
eraserjoy
pencil revolution
penciltalk
moleskinerie
timberlines
dave's mechanical pencils

craft design technology

Craft Design Technology is a company that aims to enhance the lives of people through the design and creation of quality products that meld craft and technology. Their first line of products is a suite of desktop stationery, created in partnership with a list of well known manufacturers, that would arouse the fancy of any stationery fetishist. The overall aesthetics is minimal with a predominantly pale mint green and white colour scheme, and each product is branded and labelled in an elegant serif font. You might find that the aesthetics of the whole brand is reminiscent of Monocle, that's because Tyler Brûlé has a hand in creating the brand concept through his Winkcreative office.

Looking past the vague and somewhat pretentious mission statement on the website, we see a range of products that is not only pleasing to the eye, but also have sense of a no-frills functionality, conceived by people who know what they doing and made by people who are experts in the respective field of products.

The philosophy is not unlike that of Junya Watanabe's Man line in which he seeks not to invent new forms but to enliven menswear through working with experienced classic menswear companies and recreating classics with a twist. However with CDT, there is less of the element of reworking or reinvention but more of curating a range of good quality products from various sources and packaged under the umbrella of one brand.

My favorite items from the line are the mint green HB pencils and the Universal Scissors, which through its weird geometrically shaped handles, allows both left and right-handers to use it comforatbly.

Currently stocked only in Japan, Paris, Hong Kong and Taipei.