What is happening in the murky video clip to your left? To be honest, I’m not entirely certain. All I can tell you for sure is that this is a preview of the new work by Joris Laarman Lab to be exhibited at Friedman Benda Gallery, in New York, beginning Friday.
Laarman is the young Dutch designer best known for creating the Bone Chair and Bone Chaise, among other bone furniture. For those limited-edition pieces, he used computer algorithms and a trademarked CAD casting method to mimic the growing patterns of bones in bizarre-looking aluminum or polyurethane seats.
His new work includes the Half Life Lamp, which again tries to imitate a biological process in a manufacturing setting. This is a case where it may be best to let the designer speak for himself. Here’s an excerpt from a statement by Laarman:
This lamp Half life – it is half made of living organism and half made of non living material recently died. It was born on February 23 in a Dutch tissue culture laboratory. On the video Half life radiated brightly when it was in healthy conditions. The cells responsible for the emission of light in the hood of the lamp originally stem from a Chinese hamster. In 1957 these CHO cells were isolated from a hamster’s ovary and kept alive as a cell culture for research purposes. In the 1990s this cell line was enriched with the fire fly’s luciferase gene. Ever since than these hamster cells glow in the dark in presence of luciferine. According to present state of knowledge in the life science the development of bioluminescence systems in living organisms occurred naturally about 20 or 30 times in evolution. Well known examples of bioluminescence are found in bacteria, fire flies, and jelly fish.
So the above video illustrates this bioluminescence. And the final result? Read more…
The Austrian manufacturer Wittmann has been making elegant upholstered furniture since the 1950s—but apparently its sofas and chairs would have looked just as good in the living spaces of the 1150s. At least that’s the idea behind the company’s new catalog, which Stefan Oláh shot at Schloss Ernstbrunn, a gorgeous medieval castle in Lower Austria. This is pretty much exactly how I plan to live once I find that winning lotto ticket. More photos after the jump. Read more…
Last week, the New York International Gift Fair arrived at the Javits Center with, as usual, a handful of terrific new products. Here’s a quick look at a few of my personal favorites.
The Brooklyn-based distributor neo-utility was showing this elegant stainless-steel pen by Düller and the German designer Dietrich Lubs, of Braun fame. It’s available as a ballpoint pen, a fountain pen, and a mechanical pencil.
A bit belated, perhaps, but here it is: your guide to the gifts guaranteed to impress the design devotees and architecture aficionados in your life, organized into four convenient categories:
Muji’s City Stencil Set lets youngsters construct their own elaborate cityscape with world monuments from New York, Paris, London, and Tokyo. It’s $14.75 at the Muji USA online store. Pairs nicely with the appropriately named 36 Color Pencils in Tube ($16.75). .
Technically, these Frank Lloyd Wright Lego sets are intended for children, but no doubt many architecture-minded adults would love nothing more than to spend a few hours putting together their own miniature Guggenheim ($39.99; ages 10+) or Fallingwater ($99.99; ages 16+). Note: these sets are currently on back order at Lego.com, but ShopWright.org has them in stock as of Dec. 8.
Yves Behar seems determined to push below-the-belt product innovation these days. Last August he launched a new line of eco-friendly underwear; now he’s teamed up with the adult-toy company Jimmyjane to create an ergonomic vibrator called the Form 2. The compact design features two flexible vibrating “ears” that move independently, for an effect dubbed “sensation in stereo.” Scandalized? For what it’s worth, Behar notes in a recent press release that the Form 2—nicknamed Little Perky—conceals “a number of engineering, material and manufacturing breakthroughs.” And there are further breakthroughs on the way: Behar and Jimmyjane will be unveiling Forms 3 and 4 next March and May, respectively.
. Related: In 2007, Jade Chang plumbed Behar’s story-driven approach to industrial design for “All About Yves.”
New York City is one of the few places where it is socially acceptable, and even encouraged, to rummage through curb-side trash. There is no shame in this. All New Yorkers know someone who has found a treasure on the curb: a rare first-edition book, say, or a good-as-new couch. The question is inevitably the same: “Who would throw this out?”
For the next two days, Blu Dot is honoring this cherished urban pastime with the Real Good Chair Experiment. In collaboration with mono, Blu Dot will place chairs all over the city, free for the taking. But there is a slight catch: most of these chairs, valued at well over $100, are GPS-enabled. Blu Dot will use the devices to track the chairs’ voyage for a documentary debuting this December, to mark the one-year anniversary of the company’s Soho store.
But don’t worry: GPS or no, if you happen to stumble across one of the chairs, it’s finders keepers! The rest of us will have to be content to track the chairs’ progress at realgood.bludot.com.
Sixty years in, Vladimir Kagan has found something new. Kagan, the furniture designer whose signature forms—organic and sinuous—made him an important figure in midcentury Modernism, this month unveils a new line of furniture built entirely in fiberglass. It’s the first time the designer’s worked in the medium, but, according to Kagan, the effort fits an aesthetic he’s played with throughout his career; cast from full-sized clay molds, the chairs retain the fluidity of his original designs. The best thing about working in a new medium? “I have the great flexibility of being very animated and sculptural,” says the octogenarian. “It’s liberating.”
In 1939 a young woman named Marie opened a hair salon in Randers, Denmark. Money was tight so she asked her husband, Holger, a metalsmith, to help furnish the store. One of his resulting creations—a sturdy stainless-steel trash can with a rubber foot pedal—caught the eye of locals and, before long, Holger was filling commissions all over central Denmark.
When Alvar Aalto helped found the manufacturer Artek in 1935, he wanted to apply new methods of bending and splicing wood across a whole range of furniture: armchairs, stools, tables, sofas, and more. It was an ambitious plan, but it’s probably safe to assume that Aalto didn’t envision his ideas being applied to the field of perfumery. Read more…
Images: Nick Rochowski/courtesy Andy Martin Associates
In the late 1940s, Gio Ponti embarked on a decade-long experiment in super-lightweight furniture design that resulted, in 1957, with his Superleggera chair for Cassina, which weighs a mere 1.7 kilograms (or about 3.75 pounds). At this year’s 100% Design exhibition,which just wrapped up in London, a designer named Andy Martin released an homage to Superleggera that attempts to recreate Ponti’s chair without the horizontal braces he used to support the legs. Read more…
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