Late last month I had the pleasure of joining three amazing women on a jury for the One Good Chair competition in Las Vegas. While it’s always confounding to talk about sustainability in windowless convention facilities, in a city that’s a manifestation of the monstrous hybrid concept writ large, we were delighted to see green moves on a small scale. My fellow jurors and I were pleased to review the five finalists in the competition and learn how young designers from all over the world are thinking about materials, packaging, ergonomics, and more.

Run by the Las Vegas Market and supported by the Sustainable Furnishings Council (SFC), (Metropolis is a media sponsor), the competition is the brainchild of architect Lance Hosey who hatched the idea three years ago. Read more…

Some design concepts never stop making sense. Elephants are always an extraordinarily good fit for children’s products – they are large, kind-hearted creatures, with just the right eccentric features to make them instantly loveable. And for Indian and Nepali children, elephants are omnipresent in their mythology and folktales, where they have a much deeper cultural significance, not just as playful companions but also as models of good behavior.

So Stephen Pennington seems to have hit upon just the right idea for his Elephant Walk Desk, a classroom furniture solution that has just been selected as a finalist in the INDEX: Design Challenge 2010.  Read more…

Ironically, classrooms often receive the least design attention in institutions of higher education. As Peter Hall pointed out in our June 2010 issue, funds from donors go towards building more glamorous spaces like galleries, high-tech research labs, even libraries. Yet the space where students spend most of their time is the old, regimented, sleep-inducing common classroom.

In working to redesign college classrooms around the country, the furniture manufacturer Steelcase had to first understand that classrooms had to change because students have changed. In the age of the online social network, students are more inclined to collaborative learning. They are taking charge in the classroom, driving the education process through discussion and teamwork, rather than being passive listeners. One of the things holding them back is the outmoded space that encourages outmoded classroom practices.

Steelcase’s experiences at the Stanford d.school take me back to my own design school days, where every semester was a struggle with studio furniture. Read more…

This summer, to mark the 20th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, four new rules were proposed by the federal government. These amendments could make the design of objects and interfaces more accessible to people of all abilities. While some designers are already addressing such issues as making websites usable by the visually impaired, there’s much more to be done. I believe an umbrella set of rules could be a great advancement in making accessibility standards universal across all websites, objects, furniture, and public places.

 As an industrial designer I am especially interested in the proposed regulation to equipment and furniture. It suggests making objects for places accessible to the public, whether these properties are owned by private or public interests, more usable than they are currently, by people of compromised abilities. This seemingly small amendment to the ADA promises to have a long-term impact on the development of a wide variety of products, from ATM machines to library furniture, from medical equipment to exercise machines. Read more…

When I.D, the oldest product design magazine in the U.S., folded after 55 years, its publishers promised that the Annual Design Review (ADR), at least, would continue in an expanded, online avatar. The ADR was a long standing tradition at the magazine, in which the editors and industry experts pored over applications from designers in various fields, and selected the very best to be published in the August/September issue each year.

The MeyerHoffer Surfboard – Best in Show, Consumer Products. 

This year’s review comes a little late, and it has quite a few quirky surprises. Read more…

From this year’s NeoCon World’s Trade Fair, in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart: Nearly 200 photos of the best in workplace furniture, lighting, textiles, technology, and more. Read more…

In our June issue, Ken Shulman writes about the up-and-coming design duo Antenna Design, and discusses its recent collaboration with Knoll. Antenna Workspaces is not only Sigi Moeslinger and Masamichi Udagawa’s first furniture-design project, it is also probably their “biggest job yet.” If you were suitably intrigued by the photographs that accompanied that feature, here’s a video (from the folks over at Cool Hunting) where you can see Antenna Workspaces in all its glory, and hear the “intense listeners” talk about the process of creating it.

Design was in the air this month, and we took in great heaving gasps of it as we ran from one event to another (and from one blog to another). New work was released, exhibitions were exhibited, and awards were awarded. For those who feel like the month passed them by, here’s our shortlist from May’s cornucopia of design news:

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A Pavilion Fiasco at the World Expo

What could possibly go wrong with an event that combines Shanghai and showiness? The pavilions. The U.S. pavilion has been called “a sorry spectacle,” and don’t even get us started on the terrifying animated baby mannequin in front of the Spanish pavilion. The only point of agreement, it seems, was the general nostalgia for the great Expo designers of yore.

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Honored by the AIA

Early this month, the American Institute of Architects announced the 2010 AIA/HUD Secretary’s Awards and the 2010 AIA Housing Awards. But the ones to really look out for are the seven young firms that won the New Practices New York awards: EASTON+COMBS, Archipelagos, Leong Leong, Manifold SOFTlab, SO-IL, and Tacklebox. Their prize-winning work will be on view at New York’s Center for Architecture from July 15.

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The Pritzker Ceremony and the RIBA Awards

A galaxy of starchitects and other glitterati descended on New York’s Ellis Island for the Pritzker Prize ceremony, where the Japanese firm SANAA received architecture’s biggest prize. Meanwhile, 101 buildings received the architectural excellence award of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

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Frank Gehry Stirs Up a LEED Controversy

Frank Gehry’s cavalier comments on the LEED ratings system raised a few hackles. While the focus of the discussion shifted from Gehry to the legitimacy of the ratings themselves, New York’s Bank of America tower was awarded LEED Platinum, making it the greenest skyscraper in town.

Read more…

Even after last week’s ICFF live-blogging extravaganza, we ended up with dozens of unpublished snapshots of noteworthy new products and projects from the 22nd annual furniture fair. Here, then, in no particular order, is a final roundup of neat stuff from the 2010 ICFF.

Above: Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance’s Corvo chair, for Bernhardt Design, which we wrote about in the April issue of the magazine.

Read more…

The biggest foreign presence at this year’s ICFF came from Spain, with 20 companies exhibiting a range of colorful and well-crafted furniture, lighting, carpets, and wall-coverings. Here are a few of the highlights:

Actually, one of my favorite Spanish products wasn’t on display at the fair: Nanimarquina’s new Digit rug, by the London-based graphic designer Cristian Zuzunaga, resembles an extremely enlarged color photograph. It comes in a 26-color version (shown) or with a more muted monochromatic palette. Read more…