Sep
5
These days “smart” LED bulbs are all the rage. But for those who’d like lighting that can change color without having to use an app or WiFi, here’s a solution made of cardboard and paper:
That’s the Pop-Up Lamp, by French industrial designer César Moncaut.
It’s in production by Dutch design brand Risette and runs €205 (USD $239), but they’ll only ship within Europe.
Sep
5
RIVR, the Swiss company that makes a nimble, wheeled robot dog, has now advanced to commercial trials. When we looked in on them earlier this year, they’d configured the ‘bot to carry a crate under its belly:
Now they’ve modified the design to put the payload up top, the easier for humans to access them. The company has partnered with two organizations, Swiss Post and Just Eat Takeaway, to deliver mail and meals in Zurich.
Under the Swiss Post arrangement, the dogbots ride around in an autonomous vehicle. They hop out at each stop and ferry letters and packages to doorsteps, all without human intervention:
It’s kind of funny how they poop the packages out:
“The system runs 24/7, delivering on demand, regardless of time or weather,” the company writes. “No more waiting for scheduled drop-offs. No more delivery windows. Just fast, smart, and seamless service — powered by machines that adapt to the real world in real time.”
The food delivery application, meanwhile, shows why it makes sense to have the payload at human height:
The company has announced plans to expand to other European cities, and also have their eye on retail and convenience store customers.
Sep
5
Paris-based architecture firm Beth X Episteme, a/k/a Marie Fleur Same & Bertrand Harold Emgoue, were tasked with making a tiny Parisian flat livable. The space has just a kitchen, a bathroom and a single room. The pair used a number of space-saving tricks to wring maximum utility out of a few scant square meters.
The interior wall conceals a Murphy bed.
The platform supporting the bed features tons of storage.
One of the panels raises up to become a table.
The design is about “Optimizing space without compromising charm and comfort,” the duo write. “An approach that enhances every square meter revealing the full potential of the place. Because living in a small space does not mean giving up on uniqueness.”
You can see more of their work here.
Sep
4
Brooklyn-based Dan McMahon is an industrial designer with a sense of humor. “I designed a very serious object to be taken seriously,” he writes of his Rise + Shine design. The object in question is a pneumatically-height-adjustable candleholder:
“Rise + Shine is a height-adjustable candleholder inspired by a collection of idiosyncratic 19th century candleholders at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, PA with the same function.”
“The object is humorously direct in its evocation of arousal, a quality which came out of the mechanics-forward exploratory design process. By squeezing the rubber bulb, air pushes a candlestick up to the desired height. By twisting the release knob, the candle can drop down into the aluminum cylinder.”
McMahon batch-produced a bunch of these for an exhibition; there are no production plans.
Sep
4
Proof that you can make anything sexy, given the budget: Sydney, Australia-based fabrication studio Kinkfab makes these custom AC vents out of CNC-milled, anodized aluminum.
In addition to their aesthetic appeal, they’ve been designed specifically where wood panels are desired, but cutting a large, contiguous opening (to accommodate a standard vent) would remove so much material that the panel is no longer structural. Kinkfab’s solution allows you to leave more meat on the bone.
Sep
4
The Eameses LCM (Lounge Chair Metal), unveiled in 1946 at the MoMA, was breathtaking and cutting-edge at the time.
Image: Eames Office
The world’s first plywood chair with metal legs, the LCM became an instant design classic, selling tens of thousands of units within a matter of years.
Image: Eames Office
Image: Eames Office
Image: Eames Office
One of the people who purchased the LCM was Danish architect/designer Arne Jacobsen. A fan of the Eameses work, Jacobsen kept the chair in his studio as inspiration, and intended to one day design bent plywood chairs himself.
In the early 1950s, Jacobsen had his chance. The Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Industries (today called Novo Nordisk) was growing, and wanted a nice cafeteria for the 600 employees at their Copenhagen headquarters. Jacobsen, who had already (and would continue to) design factories for Novo, was hired to design the chairs.
Jacobsen’s answer was the Ant chair. This design pushed past what the Eameses had accomplished, as the seat and back were a single piece of bent plywood. The chair was designed to be economical, using a minimum of material—the tapered waist hints at the insect that inspired the form—and practical for a cafeteria, being stackable. The initial design featured, unusually for the time, just three legs; Jacobsen felt it prevented a sitter’s legs from getting tangled. Even more radically, Jacobsen specified the legs be made of plastic, a more modern material than metal.
Image: lglazier618, CC BY 2.0
Fritz Hansen was reportedly not interested in producing the chair—perhaps it was seen as too radical for the time—but Novo put in an order for 300 units, so into production it went. And there was apparently some debate about the legs; while we don’t know the particulars of the discussion, we know that the Ant chair that wound up in the cafeteria had four legs made of metal, rather than three made of plastic.
The Ant chair went on to became a commercial success, and Fritz Hansen still manufactures it today.
In 1955, Jacobsen designed a follow-up to the Ant chair. His Model 3107 chair—today referred to as the No. 7 chair and/or “the Sevener”–was an elegant refinement of the Ant chair, with the Ant’s irregular cutouts made smoother and more flowing.
It retained the stackability.
Image: Corvus, CC BY-SA 4.0
More pleasing to the masses than the Ant, the No. 7 chair went on to become one of the most successful furniture designs in history, selling millions of units.
There is a bit of a tawdry sidenote involving a knockoff of the chair. In 1963 Christine Keeler, a 21-year-old British showgirl, was involved in a sex scandal. That year the British press revealed that she had had an affair with both John Profumo, the (married) British Secretary of State for War—as well as Captain Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché. As the Cold War was going on at the time, this was a career-ender for both Profumo and the British Prime Minister. The socialite who introduced Keeler to the men was put on trial and committed suicide.
Keeler became famous—think 1960s Kardashian—and British celebrity photographer Lewis Morley shot an iconic portrait of her that year. The provocative image featured a nude Keeler partially concealed by a chair Morley happened to have in his studio.
Morley’s studio chair was a knock-off of the No. 7 chair. Note the handle cut-out, which the original design does not have.
The image went 1960s viral, and The Independent suggests that it boosted sales of the actual No. 7.
So famous did the knock-off chair become that the Victoria & Albert Museum acquired the actual chair from Morley, referring to it as the Keeler Chair.
The museum points out what makes it a knockoff: “The plywood is much thicker and less subtly molded,” Gareth Williams, who works in the V&A’s furniture, textiles and fashion department, told the newspaper. “The cinched ‘waist’ is more pronounced, and the front of the seat is set back too far. Unlike Jacobsen’s chair, this model has a cut-out handle at the top of the seat, but even this is inaccurately positioned and irregularly cut.”
Now let’s wash the taste of scandal out of our mouths, and discuss another type of sexy. This is the 70th anniversary of the Sevener, and Fritz Hansen has created a special Series 7 – Tailored model. They’ve partnered with Italian leather specialist Enrico Pellizoni to wrap the chair in three sensual, precisely-stitched leather finishes: Slate grey, warm ecru and saddle brown.
Speaking to the lasting nature of the design, Creative Director Els Van Hoorebeeck says, “Since its release, it has been used in significant interiors as well as in everyday life—at home and in the workplace. You can make it approachable or more exclusive. These two characters—one functional, stackable, practical; the other expressive and iconic—coexist in the same design. It has withstood the test of time, again and again.”
The Series 7 – Tailored launches today.
Sep
4
This project was done by Denise Merlette, as her diploma project in Industrial Design at ECAL. Merlette seeks to turn what is considered by most furniture designers to be a useless part of the tree, the bark, into a useful resource.
“Barko is a research project aimed at reusing bark as a waste product in the wood industry. It accounts for 10% of the material processed in sawmills and is generally burnt.”
“The idea is to recreate a bark-based finish for wooden furniture. The aim of this finish is to reproduce the protective function of bark against all external aggressions. It is applied to wooden furniture to make it more resistant.”
“Inspired by ancient processes, I focused on finding solutions based on natural, recyclable products.”
Merlette, who graduated last year, has since landed an internship with Erwan Bouroullec. Not too shabby!
Sep
4
There is a great conversation happening about the new Audi TT concept on the Core77 Boards — add your TTwo cents on the latest version of the perennial designer touchstone…
A couple of enlightening quotes from Audi’s Chief Creative Officer on the new concept:
Massimo Frascella: “That’s true. In 1998, when the first Audi TT arrived at a dealership in Turin, I took a day off work to just look at the car in peace. I was there for hours, looking at the car from every angle, touching every surface. The staff probably thought I was crazy. But for me, the TT was more than just a car. It was a message: you don’t need to shout to be heard. You don’t need excess to make a statement. You just need clarity. And, more importantly, the courage to follow it.”
Massimo Frascella: “Radical simplicity is at the heart of our approach. We achieve clarity by reducing everything to the essential. We live in a world that is often shrill, fast-paced, and overloaded. Almost everything is overdone. The danger of losing your way is greater than ever. Our responsibility is to be better and do what really matters. And the outcome always has to be an emotion.”
Photos and Quotes courtesy of Audi
Sep
3
This Model 262 lamp was designed by Italian lighting designer Gino Sarfatti in 1971.
Made of an aluminum reflector and a single bulb, it was strikingly modern, minimalist, and industrial; the spun aluminum wasn’t polished, and wore its production method on its sleeve. The sole element preventing glare was the mirrored coating on the top half of the bulb.
The lamp could be either wall- or ceiling-mounted.
The Model 262 was designed late in Sarfatti’s career, when he was 58; in 1973, Sarfatti retired and sold his company, Arteluce, to competitor and former rival Flos. Flos subsequently mothballed the Model 262. It had only been on the market for two years.
Now the Model 262 is back. Astep, an Italian lighting brand founded by Alessandro Sarfatti—Gino’s grandson—has put it back into production. The only part of it that Gino Sarfatti wouldn’t recognize is the bulb, which is now an LED.
Sep
3
Although flatpack furniture is typically made of wood, the connectors are almost always metal. Bucking the trend, German cabinetmaker Michael Mahle has been developing wooden connectors since his time as an Industrial Design student at Bauhaus University.
Now, some four years after he’s graduated, here’s Mahle’s latest connection system:
Production plans are unclear. Mahle has a company, Nurholz, but at press time their website had little more than a landing page.