Lasvit Liquidkristal by Ross Lovegrove

Last April the Czech Republic glass manufacturer  Lasvit, presented in Milan at the Triennale Design Museum during Salone del Mobile "Lasvit Liquidkristal" by Ross Lovegrove. This new work is the result of an innovative process that Ross Lovegrove defines as “high precision heat transfer.” Lovegrove worked with Lasvit for more than a year to create the mobile, changing surfaces, inspired by the fluid, organic forms found in nature. The company deployed its most advanced technology to produce the transparent, undulating crystal panels, which appear dynamic, changing, capable of transmuting their shapes in a futuristic kaleidoscope. See more;

InfObjects by SHAPES iN PLAY

"Product designer and co-founder of the Berlin-based design studio SHAPES iN PLAY Johannes Tsopanides worked on translating abstract information into objects. Nowadays information is easily accessible and omnipresent. Due to the quantity and complexity it is yet hard to make use of the information available. Thus there is a increasing significance for tools that help us making data graspable. infObjects is such a tool. In comparison to most contemporary information visualisations it uses the medium product to pass on information by means of generative design tools." See more;

The Speed Book by Aram Bartholl

Last January was launched a new book by Aram Bartholl called "The Speed Book" which shows all the artworks, installations, and experimental projects he made from the beginning of his carrier.  The book has been published by Gestalten, as it says Aram Bartholl’s work explores the power structures, the social systems, the cultural innovations, the inner dynamics, the languages, and the products that are shaping our age. This first comprehensive monograph offers entry to an oeuvre in which space and cyberspace mingle and mangle each other, a realm that uses as little technology as possible while still speaking a digital language.  

In Aram's work there is a great connection between the virtual and physical world, he usually transports  stuff from virtual to physical and vice-versa. Another thing I like from his work is that it's quite experimental, craft and simple, but conceptual. As you can see on his blog or vimeo's channel he usually explains everything he works even how he creates his artworks. From people like him one can learn a lot!

Gestalten has just launched a video documentary which summarizes this new publication. I found it really interesting. Aram speaks about everything featured on "The Speed Book". See the video into the post;

White Elephant (Privately Soft) by Jimenez Lai

White Elephant (Privately Soft) by Jimenez Lai, 2011.

The White Elephant is roughly 10'x10'x10'. It has three basic premises: (1) A building inside a building, somewhere between a super-furniture and a small house. (2) An object that tumbles to attain multiple orientations to blur the qualification plans and sections. (3) An object that is hard on the outside, soft on the inside.

Its exterior is clad with translucent polycarbonate, and the interior is stuffed cowhide. It tumbles and changes orientation and can flip to eight different stances. See more;

Free Falling by Ezri Tarazi

What an amazing performing process shows this project called Free Falling, made by designer Ezri Tarazi. It is done by transforming a trapezoidal box made from a perforated metal sheets into a chair by the fall of a mannequin filled with concrete.The mannequin is pressed into the prism’s surface to create a subtly different shape each time. See more;

HAPTIC INTELLIGENTSIA by Studio Homunculus

HAPTIC INTELLIGENTSIA is a new project developed by Studio Homunculus. Consisting in a human 3D printing machine that allows the user to tactually perceive the virtual object and to directly transform it into the physical. The user can freely move the extruding gun, which is attached to a haptic interface. When the tip of the gun is moved into a surface region of the virtual object, the interface generates forces under computer control, allowing the user to feel and touch the surface of the object. See more;

Just Chairs by Michael Kluver

Just Chairs is the name of the latest work of Michael Kluver. It is an altered chair series from modernist design classics. All pushed back into the simple archetypal form, all of them now are dominated by simple ergonomic dimensions. Same seating height, seating width, seating depth, overall height, and angle of the backrest. See more;

Net Z33 by Numen / For Use

Numen / For Use is a design collective lately well known for creating amazing experiments based on architectonic and organic structures made from tape, here you can see their latest tape experiment on Melbourne. Btw, I didn't know about their lighting experiments, I really liked N-Light / Membrane, great flow!

This another project is called Net Z33, consists of multiple layers of flexible nets suspended in the air. The flat layers of the net are subsequently connected to one another on counterpoints thus forming a “floating landscape" open for visitors to climb in and explore. The result is an op-art social sculpture (or a community hammock) relating to topics of instability, levitation and regression. Net Z33 was exhibited the latest three months at House for Contemporary Art Z33, Hasselt, Belgium. See more;

The Company

The Company is a sound reactive light installation commissioned for the Bring To Light festival in Brooklyn NYC. A collaboration work between creative coder Andrea Cuius and designer Roland Ellis. The project consists in a suspended surface of 76 tungsten lamps form a catenary arch, playing host to live performances and revisiting the sounds of the 19th century East River industrial icons. Live adaptation of the soundscape reintroduces routine and mechanical process to the space. The piece intends to bring back an atmosphere informed by the architectural legacy, a machine being delivered to occupy the space that was once a bustling industrial environment. By either producing sounds or just reactive to the inputs from the environment, The Company is a sound reactive light installation. See more;

Creative Business Units

Heatherwick Studio won a competition to design low-cost facilities for sixteen start-up arts enterprises for Aberystwyth Arts Centre, part of the University of Wales Aberystwyth.

Reluctant to dilute the wooded character of the site by superimposing a single campus-style block, the studio chose instead to set eight smaller buildings among the trees. These consist of simple timber frame sheds, split down their centre and pulled apart to provide light and ventilation and a shared entrance area. See more;

Daniel Michel 2011

Google Vase

I'm quite impressed about the new work of Daniel Michel. Love the ideas and conceptual work he has developed this year to create new products. His work is based on industrial design and tridimensional fields, he usually gets the inspiration from the real world and  other products which have already been created by others, like you can see in his new three following projects. See more;

Linnaeus by UVA

United Visual Artists have created Linnaeus, consisting of two murals for the Capability Brown restaurant in Syon Park, London. Commissioned by Artwise Curators.

Using subtly lit relief panels, Linnaeus uses the park’s design as a framework for setting evolutionary conditions. The actual topography is used to divide the panel’s surface area into sections that have corresponding ecosystems. As a result, an abstracted genetic tree of botanics runs left to right across the walls. See more;

Gravity Stool by Jólan van der Wiel

The Gravity Stool is the graduation project of Jólan van der Wiel in the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam.
"The Gravity Stool thanks its unique shape to the cooperation between magnetic fields and the power of gravity. Departing from the idea that everything is influenced by gravitation, a force that has a strongly shaping effect, I intended to manipulate this natural phenomenon by exploiting its own power: magnetism. The positioning of the magnetic fields in the machine, opposing eachother, has largely determined the final shape of the Gravity Stool. It is the combination of the magnetmachine with the plastic material, developed especially for this purpose, that enabled me to start a small but efficient chain of production." See more;

Particle by Bethan Laura Wood

Animation, Bethan Wood and Ellis Scott

"Particle is a range of furniture designed during Bethan Wood's residency at London's Design Museum. Bethan took her inspiration from the Design Museum's location, at Butlers Wharf, overlooking the River Thames. Investigating the historical usage of the building and the site, she discovered that it had been a banana warehouse, when the Port of London was the main site for importing and exporting all manner of goods to the UK from around the world. In response, Bethan has created a furniture system based on crates and packaging materials. This range of interlocking and stacking units has been designed to allow for many different uses depending on their combinations." See more;

Katja Schenker

Nougat is a nice experimental mix made from lots of raw material. A public sculpture created by Zurich based artist Katja Schenker in Sitterwerk, 2009.  She excavated a big hole in the earth, then filled inside concrete and mixed it with firesand, lime, kaolin, bitumen, colophony, brass, copper, bronze, graphite, wood, marble, granite, river stones, plaster, slate, hard coal, charcoal, asphalt, brick sand, silicon, aluminum, bamboo, hay, pine cones, straw, cork, mussels, pigments, lamp black, coconut, chalk, clay, pumice stone, tuff, lava rock, gneiss, quartz and plant seeds. When the mixture was ready,  well hardened,  Schenker cut it into a precise four-sided cube with a diamond saw. See more;

apparatu

Love the experimental and conceptual profile of apparatu, an industrial design studio based in Barcelona, founded by Xavier Manosa. I selected one of his works called "Totem", a sculpture made for Nike in honour of hoddie. Which was exhibited the last November in Barcelona at the event "More than Run". See more;

Ken Isaacs

How To Build Your Own Living Structures explains on how to build furniture, small houses and even vehicles using basic tools and materials. It's a DIY architectural manual created by American architect Ken Isaacs from 1974.

"This book is a beautiful guide about how to make a variety of flexible experimental indoor interiors, storage units, and a microhouse. The microhouse is a flexible creation of architect, Ken Isaacs. The modular design is based on stacked tetrahedrons, which can be moved in and around each other providing shelter and dividing living space in a creative way. The book gives you step-by-step instructions with plans for many different versions of Isaac’s original designs interspersed with ideas about simplicity, and getting rid of our personal possessions. The book is type written and spiral round in a nice Do-It-Yourself aesthetic, and Isaacs writes in a genial manner as if he were sitting across the table from you. He muses on the philosophical meanings of surplus and uses the designs as a means of addressing life as whole; a simple place to raise a family and house extended family that has a low impact on the surrounding natural environment – by the The Library of Radiant Optimism for Let’s Re-Make the World". See more;

Primitive [x] Capsule by Charlie Berendsen

Primitive [x] Capsule is the latest project by Charlie Berendsen, graduated at the Interaction Design department at the ArtEZ Academy of Art & Design and works in the field of 'Information Design', where data (input) and poetics (output) meet after the link (design).

"It isn’t possible to describe the shape of an object as one shape. On the other hand, It is possible to describe a collection of shapes which have a certain formation and proportion to each other. Any kind of language creates an abstraction of the original form. ‘Primitive [x] Capsule’ investigates how form can be captured through the use of syntax. Then a representation is being made of the shapes which have been described in the form of a new object, in which the essential forms are revealed. A form essence." See more;

Time Print Machine by Paul Ferragut

Paul Ferragut's Time Printing Machine uses felt pen, blotting paper, and a time based algorythm to create an amazing "pixelated" aesthetic.

"The time print device uses blotting paper with Letraset felt-pen. The felt-pen ink bleed in the paper for a duration relative to the grey value of a pixel. Every "time stain" gradually recreates any images in a pointilist style. This device was made for my MA project more info at www.convivialtool.com" - Paul Ferragut. See more;

Yoichiro Kamei

Yoichiro Kamei was born in 1974 in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. He is one of the most appreciated young ceramic artists. With more than 10 solo exhibitions had in the past ten years in Kyoto, Tokyo, Aichi, Osaka and Faenza, he was awarded Merit Prize at the 1st Taiwan International Ceramics Biennale in 2004. In 2010 he received the Kyoto City Artist Prize, which is one of the most valuable Japanese art awards. See more;