Mason Currey

Five years in the making, Ingo Maurer’s wallpaper is a surprising application of LED technology.

Luis Eslava Studio’s versatile sofa collection invites sprawling relaxation.

The country’s resourceful young talents infuse product design with local culture.

Ka-Lai Chan’s first mass-produced design is a storage system that signifies self-expression.

In making his work less manufacturable, a young American designer creates his strongest furniture collection.

WEB www.lucanichetto.com www.foscarini.com As a native of Murano, Italy, the designer Luca Nichetto has fond memories of the handcrafted “pearls” that are sold as souvenirs of the island’s famous glassmaking industry. So when the manufacturer Foscarini—which also got its start…

WEB www.lunatik.com Scott Wilson has had a long and varied design career—formerly a global creative director of Nike, he now runs his own studio, Minimal, in Chicago—but since late 2010 he has become best known for his Kickstarter story. Wilson…

Multitasking urbanites will welcome Dror Benshetrit’s new bag designs for Tumi.

Dana Barnes makes giant sculptural textiles using an improvised felting technique.

Small touches of whimsy enliven Nika Zupanc’s austere home-office furniture.

A Dutch design couple’s first collaboration yields 40 mix-and-match textiles and one svelte sofa.

Ville Kokkonen has created a pristine light-therapy lamp for Artek.

Turnstone’s affordable, modular Bivi system is a natural fit for small companies.

A “connoisseur of computer science” tackles the ultimate architectural challenge: finding easy ways to build complex structures.

Benjamin Hubert’s Pod chair insulates sitters in a cocoon of pressed PET felt.

Dana Cannam’s Clamp Lamp uses minimal materials for maximum sustainability.

WEB en.plusminuszero.jp In 2003, Naoto Fukasawa launched the Japanese brand Plus Minus Zero with a small collection of housewares and consumer electronics meant to embody a design philosophy summed up in two words: “just right.” The resulting products are generally…

Abandoned military bunkers on the Pacific Coast stand testament to a nation’s attitude to war.

Barber Osgerby finds that it makes sense to bring a rocking chair to the classroom.

In a thoroughly researched compendium on office-chair design, Jonathan Olivares reveals the genius in the details.

DESIGNER Martí Guixé www.guixe.com The Spanish designer Martí Guixé describes his latest product as “a cubicle for making fun.” Although that concept may sound oxymoronic to your average office drone, Guixé’s design does look pretty amusing. Called My First Office,…

From the mind of a student comes a commercially viable lighting design.

Generating electricity through applied pressure is a rapidly evolving technology.

Deep Impact Here in the U.S., Indie Energy (www.indieenergy.com) may be spearheading a growing trend toward geothermal energy, but this country has been leading the way globally for quite some time. A 2009 report by the U.S. Geothermal Energy Association…

A new Metropolis Books title is proof that architects still draft their ideas by hand.

Metropolis Hits and Misses

Metropolis Hits and Misses

The medicine cabinet is a highly useful invention, but it has seen few innovations since man first thought to stash his Band-Aids and prescription- drug bottles behind the bathroom mirror. That finally changed, however, at January’s Maison et Objet, in…

WEB www.newschool.edu/parsons www.tagheuer.com Here’s a good lesson for aspiring designers: get used to making things that you will probably never be able to afford. But that was hardly the only real-world lesson to come out of a recent collaboration between…

WEB www.ifdesign.com Among the 43 medical devices selected for this year’s iF product-design awards in Hannover, Germany, three in particular should help consumers age in comfort and style. Paint-dipped canes by the New York company Omhu come in six glossy…

A federal program yields border stations that resemble more than just pit stops.

A new 220,000-square-foot building takes zero-energy architecture to a whole new level.

Bertjan Pot upholsters his latest chair in a single piece of wool.

Manufacturer: When Objects Work www.whenobjectswork.com Richard Meier is no stranger to product design—his oeuvre includes furniture, flatware, wristwatches, and a grand piano—but it’s been quite a while since the venerable New York architect has turned his attention to household objects.…

With the publication of a new book, Muji reveals the designers behind its cult favorites.

DESIGNERS: CuldeSac www.culdesac.es For an exhibition of Spanish design at this year’s Tokyo Designers Week, which begins October 29, the Valencian studio CuldeSac has concocted an intriguing bit of revisionist history. Made in Japain, as the 3,750-square-foot exhibit is called,…

WEB: www.moma.org In “The (Limited) Power of Good Intentions” (p. 66), Julie Lasky investigates why socially responsible design initiatives often fail, despite a surfeit of good design, goodwill, and real need. Meanwhile, curators at the Museum of Modern Art, in…

The renowned design consultancy recently teamed up with 3M to take on a particularly wasteful contingent of American consumers: bottled-water addicts, who run through a staggering 30 billion plastic bottles each year (less than a third of which get recycled).…

Is minimalism an inherently green approach to design? It is, after all, about living with less stuff and choosing items of lasting quality. To test this theory, we called up the “father of architectural minimalism” himself, John Pawson, whose new…

The Spanish manufacturer is known for pushing the boundaries of rug design, but it has also pushed sustainable design in some creative directions. Its Bicicleta rug, from 2006, was made of recycled bicycle inner tubes, and last year’s Global Warming…

Designed by Paul Schärer and Fritz Haller Though ecofriendly materials and production methods are crucial for new products, the truth is that the most sustainable design may be the one you keep the longest. A perfect case in point: USM’s…

The online furniture retailer YLiving has always carried some ecofriendly products in its portfolio of modern designs, but lately the company seems to be pushing sustainability to the forefront of its business. Last summer it introduced three new collections noteworthy…

­A welcome new desk corrals pesky accessories for a clutter-free work space.

PURPOSE: Task chair for the younger set I’ve never liked to think of myself as a Millen­nial, a member of Generation Y, that demographic cohort now in its teens and twenties. No doubt you’ve heard about us: we’re informal, tech-savvy,…

To develop an affordable chair for children, a Swedish design firm turns to a new material with vast potential.

As the environmental hazards of plastic become hard to ignore, a new generation of plant-based alternatives is creeping into commercial applications. Now it’s time for designers to take them to the next level.