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…
When Jim Hackett, Steelcase’s CEO, and James Ludwig, the company’s VP of global design, invited us—panelists and moderator—to dine at Wright’s restored Meyer May house, I felt my spine tingle. On the evening before the September 10th symposium, which focused on what today’s designers can learn from the master, I was thinking of how uncomfortable sitting in those stiff chairs would be. But instead we were all pleasantly surprised and grew to understand that Wright knew exactly how to bring people together.
With Jim and James seated at either end of the table and functioning as family patriarchs, the setting turned us into a lively group, willing to express opinions, argue (collegially, if heatedly at times), exchange ideas, and come away feeling that each of us had something to add to the discussion. Though the food, prepared with local produce, was delicious and the service courteous, we felt that it was Wright’s design that made it all work. Read more…
It’s the motherlode! In the 72 hours since this year’s NeoCon World’s Trade Fair wrapped up at Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, our roving photographers have been busy putting together a slew of nearly 150 photos (!) from the show floor and area showrooms. Without further ado, then, we present a tour of some of the best in workplace furniture, lighting, textiles, and technology (and cocktail parties) from the exhibitors at the 2009 NeoCon. Read more…
Even after our four-day live-blogging extravaganza, I ended up with scores of unpublished snapshots of worthy products and projects from this year’s ICFF. Herewith, one final show-and-tell from the 2009 International Contemporary Furniture Fair.
I’d been looking forward to meeting PARO, the cooing therapeutic robot seal from the Japan by Design exhibition, since we first wrote about it (her?) in the May issue. Finally, on Tuesday, I got some face time.
Cute enough to thaw even the most Javits-hardened heart. (Click here for a video of PARO in action.) Read more…
After two full days at the ICFF, some people—I’ve heard—have to fight off an uncontrollable urge to head home and take a nap. Still, our party photographer managed to spend a few minutes cruising the Meatpacking District’s Design 09 cocktail-crawl finale last night.
The Design Within Reach showroom on 14th Street was hosting an exhibition of architectural models by the Swedish architecture and design firm Claesson Koivisto Rune.
I’m sitting in the press room in the bowels of the Javitz Center typing away and I just heard the most awful crashing sound come from the show floor. People started running towards something—I don’t know what because I’m shackled to this laptop at present. It sounded like glass crashing down and I pictured one of these many intricate pendant displays hitting the floor. I’ll have to go investigate…
At the Austrian Trade Commission booth: Lobmeyr’s fish-flecked drinking set no. 279, by Ted Muehling
Artemide and Ross Lovegrove debuted the Mercury Cluster lamp last year, but now it’s available as a customizable ceiling pendant. The “pebbles” come in several standard sizes, but customers can arrange them any way they want.
The reflective pebbles are molded thermoplastic with a polished-chrome finish.
A circular subwoofer designed by Scandinavian superstar Harri Koskinen won the 2009 Fennia Prize Grand Prix, awarded Thursday in Helsinki. Judges lauded the 5040A’s sound and shape: The device’s domed, drawn-steel-and-die-cast-aluminum shell is uninterrupted by knobs or readouts, and its drive and controls are located on its underside. The unit’s marriage of form and function also helped its manufacturer Genelec expand from the audio professional market into the residential, increasing company profits.
In all 23 products received honors at the competition, which recognizes Finnish products and companies using design in innovative, socially responsible, and economically significant ways. All winners are on view through March 29 at Design Forum Finland, which co-sponsors the biannual event with the Fennia insurance company. Some of the best of the honorees follow. Read more…
As Suzanne LaBarre reported last month, many local governments are taking a chance on LEDs to improve the energy efficiency of their cities’ infrastructure. But they’ve already run into problems with high up-front costs and foot-dragging utilities (to say nothing of the steep road LEDs’ more experimental cousins, organic light-emitting diodes, still face).
The New York Times’s Bits blog notes this morning that as far as the technology has come in recent years, there are major hurdles ahead for light output. (Oh, and lots of the down-market versions are simply garbage.) To help standardize LED performance, the U.S. Department of Energy has introduced the Lighting Facts metric, an assessment of light quality, color, and energy use that comes in a nutritional-label-style package. It should warn specifiers off some of the junkier products. Even so, it’s hard to shake the feeling that while LEDs might be a good choice for Times Square, they’re still a ways off from lighting your office.
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