Laced with LED: Yanko Design

Tiny little LEDs dotting the inner realm of a lampshade, you can only imagine the mesmerizing effect it’s going to create. The LED Shade Lamp is just this; no bulbs, no holder, but a handful of twinky lights doing their thing. I love the way Peter describes it, “the shade itself becomes the source of light.”

 


Designer: Peter Bristol

UK Pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010: Thomas Heatherwick

The UK Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo expresses British creativity and environmental engagement at the biggest event of its kind since the Expo phenomenon began in 1851 with the Great Exhibition at London’s Crystal Palace. Since then, there have been more than 50 Expos - which have also been known as World’s Fairs or World Expositions - and the most spectacular have included those at Chicago in 1893 and Paris in 1900. The latter attracted 50m visitors, a record at the time, setting an early benchmark for a country’s portrayal of innovation and progress.

The UK Pavilion has been designed by Heatherwick Studio. Led by the internationally-acclaimed Thomas Heatherwick, his design team won the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) commission to create the Pavilion following a competition that attracted a shortlist of ambitious architectural proposals from other teams led by Zaha Hadid Architects, John McAslan + Partners, Marks Barfield Architects, Avery Associates, and DRAW Architects with dcmstudios.

The concept behind thomas heatherwick's british pavilion at shanghai expo 2010, is an enclosure that throws outwards from all sides, a mass of long radiating cilia.

The centerpiece of the pavilion is the seed cathedral, a six storey high cube-like structure,  pierced by approximately 60 000 7.5m long slim transparent acrylic rods which sway gently  in response to any wind movement. during the day each of these rods will act like fibre optic filaments, drawing on daylight in order to illuminate the interior. at night, light sources at the interior end of each rod will allow the whole structure to glow from the outside.

The pavilion will be situated on a landscape which resembles paper which once wrapped the building, but now lies unfolded on the site. the surrounding space will provide an open venue for public events and along with shelter for visitors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdlL9d0SUQU

Cascading Water Tap Reminds Me of Bamboo: Yanko Design

The Bamboo Fountain faucet takes inspiration from the natural Asian springs and looks like a bamboo stem. The water intentionally flows as a slow gurgling fall to minimize wastage. The water flow can be fortified with dietary elements like Calcium, Iron, and Potassium using special cartridges. I think this is a good idea for counties where it is safe to drink out of tap water. Temperature control and touch sensitive display round off the features.

Joints: Nathan Wierink

Wood joinery is functional. In the past the joinery was all made by hand. For this it was kept relatively simple. With the present day machines it is possible to make these joints faster and more accurate. Joinery made in this way is decorative as well as functional.

With this in mind there were several ways to go. The idea lends itself for different options such as child furniture with the joinery being a story, a more technical approach where the joint itself is the instruction manual. Or a subtle visual joy where the joints are beautiful and functional.

The result is a desk completely made with a CNC Router. With the joints as the decorative element in it. The desk is designed to show the joinery and give it prominent place, it is an example of how this idea of joinery can be implemented in many different ways.

"Joinery made in this way is decorative as well as functional"

The mahogany table is manufactured using a CNC router, which allows more complex joints to be made than are possible with traditional hand tools.

The result is a desk completely made with a CNC Router

“In the past the joinery was all made by hand,” explains Wierink. “For this it was kept relatively simple. With the present day machines it is possible to make these joints faster and more accurate.”

Designer: Nathan Wierink

Department: Man & Activity

Project: Joints

http://www.dezeen.com/2008/10/27/joints-by-nathan-wierink/

Single Cup Special: Yanko Design

Oh boy, this Plug Cup is going to make me lazybones. Ever since I’ve laid my eyes on it, I have wanted this concept to come to life. It’s perfect for this instant coffee and green tea glutton that I am. A simple 180° rotating 2-pin plug at the base of the cup hooks on to any power source; so imagine this hanging off the powerstrip where my computer plugs are hitched! A tight lid ensures no spills and a clamp lock keeps the cup upright at the base. The good thing is that the heating element detaches so that the cup can be cleaned easily. Coffee mix, tea, water bottle….all will sit right next to my printer!

Designers: Dong Hun Seo, Geun Hyuk Yoo, Ki Sang Yoon & Yune Jae Bang

http://www.yankodesign.com/2011/05/30/single-cup-special

You are the measure: Gordon Matta-Clark

Timely Lessons From a Rebel, Who Often Created by Destroying

The Gordon Matta-Clark retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art should be required viewing for any architect born in the age of the computer screen. Few artists could match his ability to extract raw beauty from the dark, decrepit corners of a crumbling city. Fewer still haunt the architectural imagination with such force.

Day's end, 1975

A trained architect and the son of the Surrealist artist Roberto Matta, Matta-Clark occupied the uneasy territory between the two professions when architecture was searching for a way out of its late Modernist doldrums. His best-known works of the ’70s, including abandoned warehouses and empty suburban houses that he carved up with a power saw, offered potent commentary on both the decay of the American city and the growing sense that the American dream was evaporating. The fleeting and temporal nature of that work - many projects were demolished weeks after completion - only added to his cult status after an early death in 1978, from cancer, at 35.

Conical Intersect, 1975

Four decades later, however, what stands out is not so much Matta-Clark's somewhat naive ideological stance as the wonderfully raw quality of the work itself. One of the most entrancing  pieces at the Whitney is the crude homemade video "Splitting" (1974), which shows the artist carving through the various floors of a quintessential suburban American home, literally splitting it in two. The act evokes the disintegration of the American family, as well as more personal trauma. (The old Matta, a less than supportive father, once spat on one of his son's artworks.) 

Yet its strength lies in the way it conveys the act of building, especially the violence. The physical process becomes more important than the final perfected vision. Shirtless and sweaty, Matta-Clark and a laborer rhythmically hammering away at the house's foundation and straining at the lever of a jack. As one side of the house is gently lowered, a splitting appears down its centre, pierced by a narrow beam of light.

Splitting, 1974

 
"Completion through removal. Abstractions of surfaces. Not-building, not-to-rebuild, not-built-space. Creating spatial complexity, reading new openings against old surfaces. Light admitted into space or beyond surfaces that are cut. Breaking and entering. Approaching structural collapse, separating the parts at the point of collapse" - Gordon Matta-Clark, 1971

Your rainbow panorama: Olafur Eliasson

Olafur Eliasson’s, “Your rainbow panorama,” is a circular, panoramic walkway, in all the colors of the rainbow, constructed on the roof of the cubic museum building designed by schmidt hammer lassen.

The ARoS building was inspired by Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” the nine circles of Hell and the journey up from the mountain of Purgatory, ending in perfection in Paradise. The permanent installation of “Your rainbow panorama” on the roof represents the completion of the building’s idea.

Drawing: ARoS

The 150 meter long, circular panoramic walkway, measuring 52 meters in diameter, is supported by 12 columns resting on the weight-bearing steel construction beneath the terrace deck.

The glass in “Your rainbow panorama” consists of 2 x 12 mm laminated glass composed of up to 6 colored sheets creating the individual shades. For the sake of personal safety, the two layers of glass have been heat-reinforced and laminated together around the colored sheets.

There is space for 290 visitors at one time on the roof terrace, and 150 in “Your rainbow panorama.”

During the hours of darkness, "Your rainbow panorama" is illuminated by means of lamps in the floor.

Photos: Ole Hein Pedersen © 2006 - 2011 Olafur Eliasson

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/olafur_eliasson/rainbow-panorama/rainbow-panorama.html

Vals Thermal Baths: Peter Zumthor

Built over the only thermal springs in the Graubunden Canton in Switzerland, The Therme Vals is a hotel and spa in one which combines a complete sensory experience designed by Peter Zumthor.

Peter Zumthor designed the spa/baths which opened in 1996 to pre date the existing hotel complex. The idea was to create a form of cave or quarry like structure. Working with the natural surroundings the bath rooms lay below a grass roof structure half buried into the hillside. The Therme Vals is built from layer upon layer of locally quarried Valser Quarzite slabs. This stone became the driving inspiration for the design, and is used with great dignity and respect.

The fascination for the mystic qualities of a world of stone within the mountain, for darkness and light, for light reflections on the water or in the steam saturated air, pleasure in the unique acoustics of the bubbling water in a world of stone, a feeling of warm stones and naked skin, the ritual of bathing – these notions guided the architect. Their intention to work with these elements, to implement them consciously and to lend them to a special form was there from the outset. The stone rooms were designed not to compete with the body, but to flatter the human form (young or old) and give it space…room in which to be. 

“Mountain, stone, water – building in the stone, building with the stone, into the mountain, building out of the mountain, being inside the mountain – how can the implications and the sensuality of the association of these words be interpreted, architecturally?” Peter Zumthor

Architects: Peter Zumthor, with Marc Loeliger, Thomas Durisch and Rainer Weitschies

Location: Graubunden Canton, Switzerland

Project completed: 1996

http://www.archdaily.com/13358/the-therme-vals/

Dieter Rams: ten principles for good design

Back in the early 1980s, Dieter Rams was becoming increasingly concerned by the state of the world around him – “an impenetrable confusion of forms, colours and noises.” Aware that he was a significant contributor to that world, he asked himself an important question: is my design good design?

As good design cannot be measured in a finite way he set about expressing the ten most important principles for what he considered was good design. (Sometimes they are referred as the ‘Ten commandments’.

Dieter Rams

Good design is innovative

Good design makes a product useful

Good design is aesthetic

Good design makes a product understandable

Good design is unobtrusive

Good design is honest

Good design is long-lasting

Good design is thorough, down to the last detail

Good design is environmentally-friendly

Good design is as little design as possible

Rams' work is an influence on Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice-President of Industrial Design of Apple Inc. Obvious evidence of Rams' influence on Apple products can be seen in the appearance of the calculator application included in iOS, which mimics the appearance of the 1987 Braun ET 66 calculator designed by Rams and Dietrich Lubs.

Recognise any of these products we take for granted in our every day lives?

In Gary Hustwit's 2009 documentary film Objectified, Rams states that Apple is the only company designing products according to his principles.

Should Dieter Rams ‘Ten commandments’ be instrumental in achieving innovative and creative architecture???