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…
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.
In a slide show posted on the Life Web site—yes, Life; it lives on despite ceasing regular publication in 2007—BoingBoing co-founder Mark Frauenfelder writes about Raymond Loewy’s inimitable body of work, which includes iconic designs for Coke, Lucky Strike, Greyhound, and Studebaker. “His signature, streamlined sensibility combined a feeling of luxury with practicality, novelty with familiarity, and boldness with elegance,” Frauenfelder writes. He also takes a look at a couple of classic Loewy designs that have since been tinkered with—not surprisingly, to disastrous effect. Check out the complete slide show here.
Related: Last March, in “The Children of Raymond Loewy,” Deyan Sudjic wrote about the “curious lineage” that exists between the dapper Frenchman and today’s design stars.
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.”
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.
It’s not every day that recent design-school graduates get to see their work showcased in finished residences, but Pratt students will get that chance soon, thanks to a collaboration between the university and the New York-based developer Hudson Companies. More than 90 students, faculty, and alumni from the institute will display their furniture, textiles, lighting, and an assortment of other home furnishings in two model apartments designed by Rogers Marvel Architects at Third + Bond—a 44 unit, townhouse-style development in Carroll Gardens that mixes luxury condominium housing with environmental design (the entire project’s on track to receive LEED Gold and Energy Star certifications). Inside the apartments, prospective buyers will find everything from teapots to first aid kits, all Pratt-made, in an arrangement curated by Anthony Caradonna, an alum and professor at the School of Architecture. It’s student meets teacher, academic meets commercial, on display at 115 Third Street beginning next week.
Check out more photos of the Third + Bond interiors after the jump. Read more…
The Electrolux Design Lab announced the winners of its 2009 competition yesterday afternoon. As in past years, the relatively narrow brief—it challenges industrial-design students to “create thoughtfully-designed products that will shape how people prepare and store food, wash clothes and do dishes over the next nine decades”—yielded a range of interesting proposals for the domestic sphere. Top prize went to Rickard Hederstierna, of Sweden’s Lund Institute of Technology, for his Cocoon meat and fish maker (above), which, according to a press release, “prepares genetically engineered and pre-packaged meat and fish dishes by heating muscle cells identified by radio frequency identification (RFID) signals.” Yum? Read more…
The winners of the third edition of the INDEX Award, a competition that focuses on designs to improve life, were announced today in Copenhagen, as part of the city’s design-week festivities. This year’s competition received more than 700 entries from six continents and 54 countries. The organizers give out a whopping 500,000 euros in prize money, making it one of the world’s biggest, if not the biggest, design award. This year’s five winning entries are a diverse group, ranging from a fetal heart-rate monitor that works off the grid and a stove designed to limit smoke in indoor cooking to a micro-lending Web site and a book tracking all the products made from a pig.
Here’s a rundown of the five winners, which fall under the categories of body, home, work, play, and community:
Browsing the MoMA Design Store’s new fall catalog this afternoon, I was struck by a photo of Peter Schlumbohm’s 1941 Chemex coffeemaker, which has long been a part of the museum’s permanent collection but is only now being sold through its retail arm. It’s a familiar enough object, and easy to overlook—but what a funny design! Read more…
Fanny-pack and belt-buckle-cell-phone-holster users, get excited! OFF! has just come out with a summer 2009 super-gimmick: a clip-on mosquito repellent for fanning the bloodthirsty beasts away one refillable disk (and two AA batteries) at a time. How does it work? Metofluthrin, a relatively new repellent chemical not intended for skin contact, is blown out of the bottom of the unit as air is drawn into the center, releasing a pesticide current around the user. According to most consumer reviews, however, product functionality is poor; and according to yours truly, the product design is heinous. The cobalt-blue extruded-plastic unit looks like a birth-control pack on steroids—a clunky, embarrassing accessory for your summertime get-up. Even if you’re into walking around with a glorified Glade PlugIn clipped to those cut-offs, the waist-height placement seems problematic for cookouts. Believe me, you don’t want to be the party-fouling picnicgoer blowing pesticide all over the fried chicken.
Fanny-pack and belt-buckle-cell-phone-holster users, get excited! OFF! has just come out with a summer 2009 super-gimmick: a 
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