Everything And Nothing

Ikea PS 2006

Ikea has a new collection called Ikea PS that is bringing together eco-consciousness and a few clever design ideas under the question we all ask - “What if…”

Twenty-eight designers were asked by Ikea to design products with innovated materials and techniques, including recycled and sustainable elements. The outcome is the PS collection.

[ via PSFK ]

Electronic Toy Design

Yury Gitman is teaching a course at Parson's this semester called Making Toys: The Insides and Outsides of Electronic Toy Design. The students are just beginning to sketch out their own projects. Check out the class blog for photos and videos of the dissections and continue to tune in to watch their progress through the Fall.

[ via Cool Hunting ]

Designers Gone Wild

Most items featured on www.there-she-goes.com were made by graphic designers. Products include purses, messenger bags, iPod cases, jewelry and clothing. Prices range from $8 to $125.

If you are interested in applying to contribute your products to the site, send photos of your work, along with descriptions of materials used, sizes of items, and anything special or unique about your items. They will also need an estimate of retail pricing: [email protected]
If you prefer to mail your photos, please send return postage for anything you would like returned (otherwise we will keep on file) to: Dawn Zidonis, 1116 Cook Avenue, Suite 29, Lakewood, Ohio 44107.

Toy Story

Anna Koudelka, a 22-year-old designer, teaches art workshops at Toronto schools and day-care centers. She noticed that more and more toys were coming with lengthy manuals - but still did little to promote much creativity. So for her college thesis, she created a toy with absolutely no rules or instructions. Her idea transformed to reality at the Rocket Industrial Design Show and Competition, Toronto, Canada, winning three awards including first place in the "Just For Children" category.

The Yams kit is a set of foam pieces that can be connected to build pliable sculptures, forts or anything else a child's imagination can dream up. They are available in two sizes, large and small. The large kit is $174.99 and the small kit is $114.99. All pieces are nontoxic, inflammable, washable and recyclable.

It has a free-form capability, allowing the hole-filled, flat foam pieces to be joined together with tubes of the same material — Plastazote, soft and safe, non-toxic and washable, nonflammable and recyclable. After play all the pieces in the kit fold together to form a carrying case which then makes for easy storage.

The Most Ubiquitious Designer You've Never Heard Of

In the United States at least, Jack Ruther's artwork might have the widest circulation of any living American artist. He is the lead bank-note designer at the Bureau of Engraving & Printing in Washington. His new $10 bill was unveiled on September 28 and will be hitting the streets in early 2006. (Yes, it still features Alexander Hamilton.)

The design includes new security measures, such as an orange "security thread" in the paper that says "USA TEN" and is visible when held to a light. His last release was the $20 bill in 2004.

BusinessWeek.com has an online interview with Ruther here.

Shelflife Shelving System

Designer Charles Trevelyan had some new designs at 100% London and writes; "My main piece was the Shelflife shelving system, a large shelving unit or room divider that features a chair and table that can be pulled out from within the shelves. I also showed a lamp, Titanic, designed to appear to be sinking beneath the surface of the table."

[ Link via Boing Boing ]

Please Don't Touch the Art

An Acconci-designed island in the Mur River in Austria

I talk against art because the tradition of art is that the viewer stands here and the art is there. Anywhere else, when you come upon something for the first time, you pick it up, you turn it upside down, you touch it and smell it and possibly taste it. But you aren't allowed to touch art because art is more expensive than people, which is a repulsive position.'
~ Vito Acconci

Vito Acconci, the renegade artist turned architect, in 2003 designed a children's playground, Murinsel, an artificial island shaped like a giant bowl that twists into a dome. It arrived via river in Graz, Austria. (It was so instantly notable that a Graz bakery named a pastry after it before the last curve was set in place.)

The building is in the form of a giant sea shell. Two foot-bridges connect it with both banks of the Mur River. The center of the platform forms an amphitheatre. Below a twisted round dome there is a café and a play-ground. The Murinsel is built for a maximum number of 350 visitors.

Acconci said of the project, “We wanted to design something which clearly demarks two zones and makes them interlace with each other. People in the theatre see the playground in the background, and when in the café, the playgound becomes part of the roof. These two functions should not be separated radically, as the water flows around the island in permanent motions; we wanted to construct something that keeps flowing and changing all the time.”

His work in general concentrates on people, including seemingly uninvolved passers-by. He's an interesting character with an interesting history. I have to stop researching it now - it's making me want to go play in and/or on the water. If you want to learn more about him, Aric Chen wrote an article in the New York Times about him in the Style section on September 18.

Luxe for Less

New York Interior Designer Thomas O'Brien, founder of Aero Studios Ltd., will join Isaac Mizrahi, Phillipe Stark, Todd Oldham and Michael Graves in Target stores today. O'Brien has designed an upscale but affordable home collection exclusively for the company.

The introductory line, called Vintage Modern, combines traditional and contemporary design elements that will appeal to a variety of tastes. The collection includes more than 500 pieces of furniture, decorative accessories, lighting, dinnerware, bedding, bath and stationery and is the biggest launch Target has ever done.

Prices will cap at $499. Available in Target stores or at www.target.com.

The Target line joins his lines of luxury bedding (from Marshall Field's) and an elegant collection of furniture that bears his name (from Hickory Chair). He also designs textiles for Lee Jofa, which sells to interior designers, and he does a lighting line for Visual Comfort.

Metropolis magazines 2006 Next Generation Design Competition

MetropolisMag.com is offering $10,000 in seed money to an emerging designer with a "big idea" that will make our environment better, safer and more sustainable. Applications are available here and are due by Dec. 15.

If you don't know where to start, the ever-helpful Joe recommends working on the problem of bed bumpers. (No, not your significant other - the hard, sharp edges of the bed frame.) Hey, it will make Joe's environment - and guest bed - better, safer and more sustainable anyway. Hit him up for some money if you don't win the design competition. (Or at least a free night's stay in the guest room.)

Sitting Pretty

The greatest problem is the gravity; we must think of a way to erase it.
~ Shiro Kuramata

Through October 2, the Azzedine Alaia gallery in Paris will host a retrospective of the work of the late Japanese sculptor Shiro Kuramata. He worked in the ephemeral, the sensation of floating and release from gravity, transparency and the construction of light.

He was fascinated with the culture of the Western world - and tried to blend East and West in his designs. The chair above, named "Miss Blanche," was created for KAGU Tokyo Designer’s Week in 1988. The chair was inspired by Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. Like Tennessee, Shiro identified with the frailty and vanity of Blanche - he used cheap artificial red roses in the chair. "Flores pour les muertos" perhaps?

Kuramata had a great passion for pieces with drawers. When friends and journalists asked why, he would answer coyly, "Maybe I hope to find what I didn't put in them." He was also known to remark, "If I knew how to express myself in words, why would I have to design things?"