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Clockwise from top left: Sushir Kadidal’s Tempo chair; Alexandra Pulver’s Lunch Bag stool; Mike Jozewicz’s Nabolis chair; Esin Arsan’s 142 chair; and Jonathan Gillen’s Primitive chair
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Wilsonart Challenges, a competition that asks a class of design students to come up with a chair to be photographed for an ad campaign, presents an interesting problem, because the winner is more image than object. Though a person does have to be able to sit in it (presumably to avoid nasty spills during the ad photo session), it’s more important that the chair showcase the properties of laminate and bear a recognizable reference to the sample chip (you know, those colorful little rectangles with a hole on one end for a chain to go through). I’ve now judged several of the competitions, and I always find myself torn between what I think is the most commercial design—the one I’d want in my living room—and the one that will best serve the ad. This year that tension was especially pronounced. Read more…

Those of you who went to Milan this year had a lot on your plates. You navigated the ever-expanding array of booths. You deduced which satellite events were skippable. You managed to get some interviews amid exhibitor-buyer talks that increasingly resembled Hungry Hungry Hippos. You even found your way back to the hotel, despite the trains shutting down before you finished your prosecco! And this was all before some volcano erupted!

With all of the distraction, you could be forgiven for overlooking a trend or two. Particularly this one. It’s the latest example of an obscure-but-intriguing furniture-design trope that I would hereby like to dub Piles of Chairs.

Piles of chairs. I’ll wait a moment for that to sink in. Read more…

For me, the best thing about Rem Koolhaas’s much-hyped design of Prada’s New York “epicenter,” in the early oughties, was not the 180-foot zebrawood half-pipe so much as the wallpaper—a rotating selection of  slyly subversive graphic themes (with titles like Guilt and Vomit) by the New York design studio 2x4. Now even those of us who can’t afford to shop at Prada can have a little of 2x4’s visual savvy in our daily lives: The wall-graphic company Blik—which sells giant, removable stickers as a decorative alternative to wallpaper and painting—announced today that it is carrying four decal sets by the 2x4 team (including “Modular Icons,” above). The prices range from $25 to $55 per set; check out more photos of the new line after the jump. Read more…

We’ve been following the Swedish lighting manufacturer Wästberg since it released its first collection in 2008—and, in 2009, we wrote about the Stockholm design studio Claesson Koivisto Rune’s experiments crafting furniture from a new material called DuraPulp—so, naturally, we were intrigued to learn just now that Wästberg and CKR have teamed up to produce a task lamp using this durable paper-pulp composite. Called w101 (catchy!), the lamp is made of DuraPulp on a cast-iron base with a five-watt LED. “Paper has been used throughout history for making lamp shades,” the manufacturer’s founder and CEO, Magnus Wästberg, said in a press release. “Now we are using paper for the actual structure of the fixture adding advanced LED technology.” Indeed. The company officially launches w101 in Milan next week; here’s a bigger image of the (origami-influenced?) design: Read more…

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.

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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:

For Kids, or Kids at Heart
Workaholic Chic
Books (and One DVD)
For the Proverbial “Person Who Has It All”

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For Kids, or Kids at Heart

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).
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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.

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Relate.

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.

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Related: In 2007, Jade Chang plumbed Behar’s story-driven approach to industrial design for “All About Yves.”

See more photos at www.flickr.com/photos/realgoodexperiment/.

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.