Earlier this month, Metropolis editors called out the top spaces, products, and ideas that we really liked at Greenbuild, in integrated social media coverage known as Metropolis Likes. We sought out design solutions and messages we deemed forward-thinking, useful, and meaningful; not necessarily a new product launch.
Our favorite concepts were awarded plaques, Metropolis Likes which are produced by 3M Architectural Markets using 3M Crystal Glass Finishes. The plaques became a visual guide to Greenbuild—helping attendees spot must-see spaces, products, and ideas.
The partnership between Metropolis and 3M Architectural Markets continues to celebrate the most forward-thinking ideas at industry trade shows; it generates an online conversation for the global design community around the creative breakthroughs. The program was so successful at this year’s ICFF and NeoCon that we decided to continue it at Greenbuild in San Francisco, where it has certainly kept up its momentum.
Design enthusiasts around the world followed our editors’ picks via #MetropolisLikes as each selection was announced live with photos via Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook.
Congratulations to all that Metropolis Likes from Greenbuild Expo 2012! And special thanks to 3M Architectural Markets for a great collaboration.
Alera: Micro6 LED Luminaire
The Micro6 LED luminaire reduces energy consumption through intelligent controls that are unparalleled in simplicity of use, flexibility of design, and ease of installation.
Ruediger Otte and Roman Lindebaum’s Greenwich Tea Time table. Image: courtesy the designers
The notion of a single designer creating an object that is finished when it rolls off the assembly line is as antiquated as Ford’s Model T. Increasingly, the decision-making power is being put in the hands of consumers, who are being asked to vote for potential product releases, customize their new purchases, and even design their own wares through open-source Web applications. It’s a broad-reaching and often grassroots movement in which individuals, from laymen to pros, are participating in the creation or modification of mass-produced objects, blurring the line between the role of designer and consumer. In his first curatorial effort, the industrial designer Yves Béhar—the founder of fuseproject, whose products include the $100 XO laptop, a jewel-like Bluetooth headset, and, most recently, hip glasses for needy Mexican children—explores these developments for an exhibition called TechnoCRAFT, opening at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for Contemporary Art on July 10. Recently, Behar spoke with me about this 21st-century arts-and-crafts movement and what it means for the future of design and the assembly line.
How do you define “techno-craft?”
It’s all these new ways in which people are bringing the notion of craft into design, the notion of self-made, self-crafted, self-developed products and software. The big phenomenon that the show is trying to explain and walk visitors through is this notion that while a lot of people said craft was disappearing, actually there’s a new type of craft, a new type of involvement of the human and the hand in the mass-production process. Read more…
We first wrote about the Helsinki-based design firm Company back in 2008, shortly after its founders, Johan Olin and Aamu Song, debuted their Top Secrets of Finland collection. The idea there was to commission traditional Finnish manufacturers to produce small runs of everyday products unique to the region. Now Company has expanded the line for the exhibition Secrets of Central Finland, on display at the Craft Museum of Finland until September 5. Check out more images of Olin and Song’s latest Finnish design finds after the jump. Read more…
Murray Moss and Franklin Getchell at Moss were so excited with their latest exhibition, Poetic License, that I asked Franklin to send over some pics. The show, which celebrates rule breaking, envelope pushing, and taking chances—everything a designer should be doing—showcases works that push the boundaries of what’s been done before in a variety of media. You’ll see some launches by young European designers like Michael Anastassiades, Mathias Bengtsson, Finn Magee, and Oskar Zieta, as well as work by standbys like the Campana brothers, Michele De Lucchi, and Patrick Jouin. The show opens May 16, and is a nice kick-off to ICFF. And if you miss the show this weekend, it’s open until June 26. Read more…
The ICFF invites are rolling in (and in and in and in—check our Ultimate Event Guide for a frequently-updated roster of all the happenings) and already we’ve noticed a 2010 show-floor mini-trend: At least three exhibitors this year will be hand-making products in their booths. Should be a nice reminder of just how much painstaking work goes into the creation of all those flawless new products at the Javits.
Upon first encountering the new chair and bench prototypes from the Dutch design duo Tejo Remy and René Veenhuizen, of Atelier Remy & Veenhuizen, you’d be forgiven for not immediately registering the furniture’s material. From a distance, the objects appear to be inflated. Are they vinyl? Plastic? Then again, they could be leather; they look malleable and seamed and just a bit overstuffed in places. It’s only on closer inspection that you see the telltale pocking on the surface that can only mean one thing: The chairs and benches are fabricated of concrete. Poured into plastic molds and structured with steel, these pieces read one thing (light, airy) and are another entirely (cement and metal). 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…
On the site today, you’ll find Metropolis’s annual special product issue. After the jump, senior editor Kristi Cameron explains this year’s theme in the latest installment of our “Metropolis Minute” video series.
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…
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.
The ICFF invites are rolling in (and in and in and in—check our 
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