How many ways can you think of for arranging this collection of hollow tubes? Finding creative uses for Derek Chen’s Section collection is endless. This modular collection can be used as hard or soft seating as well as storage and display by stacking or joining to reveal new surfaces and cavities. Available veneered with natural wood or upholstered for indoor use or in powder-coated steel or polished stainless for use outside.
Leading contract textile manufacturer Designtex presents: Sonic, their latest upholstery created from 49 percent reclaimed cassette audiotape and 51 percent recycled polyester. This extremely durable fabric has shimmer and a surprisingly soft hand, plus it will be available in 5 colors. The most interesting thing is that you can actually play the tape! The design was conceptualized by a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Alyce Santoro who began collecting cassettes ten years ago for a different sort of homemade collage, unspooling the tape and knitting it into small household items. A friend suggested she try a nearby mill for more professional results, and soon Santoro had two large sheets of half audiotape and half cotton “I had no idea that the fabric was actually going to be audible,” Santoro says. “That wasn’t part of my plan. All I cared about was that it contained a lot of sound; I wanted it to be about stored memory.” When she discovered that by dragging the tape head of a Walkman across the surface, she could hear the sounds on the tape. For Design Tex, she recorded sounds of New York City on the tapes to make the textile a peice of art. “It is going to be more of a specialty textile,” Designtex marketing coordinator Cherie Davis predicts, but it certainly doesn’t have to be. Even though it is a novel idea, the use of entirely reclaimed and recycled materials makes it a noteworthy product regardless of its audio qualities.
This weekend is the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Javits Convention Center in NYC. Along with ICFF, there are many other galleries and shops featuring the work of local designers about the city. Jeanne Scandura, founder of FLOAT, will be showing her furniture designs at the DelGreco furniture showroom in New York this weekend. Come see the latest “curvaceous, sensual, and simplistic” designs from this architect turned furniture designer.
http://www.delgrecoandcompany.com/index.html
Yonkers, NY is preparing for the U.S. debut of British architect Will Alsop. The developer, Remi Companies has commissioned Alsop to transform a long-unused power plant along the Hudson River into a residential complex featuring a contemporary art museum (located in the old switch-house), restaurant, and park.
The 80,000-square-foot power plant sacrifices it’s two smokestacks to gain a large residential tower. Approximately 135 of the 400 units will be luxury condos and the rest rentals, with some reserved for low-income residents.
Members of the town’s architectural review board are concerned that the main building, at 25 stories high, will block river views. Others said they favor preserving the power plant as it is now. The residential units, that the devloper has named “The Magic Tower” has been widely criticized and some have even said that the tower looks like “…a trash can filled with scraps of paper”.
Sustainable architect William McDonough asks what our buildings and products would look like if designers took into account “All children, all species, for all time.” With his dry wit and absolute commitment to “cradle to cradle” design, he philosophizes about design that can bridge the needs of ecology and economics. Please view his lecture on video via the link below where he shares some of his most inspiring work, including the world’s largest green roof (at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan), and the entire sustainable cities he’s designing in China.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/104
http://www.mcdonoughpartners.com/
For the 2007 Milan Furniture Fair this year, Corian collaborated with architect Jean Nouvel for Nouvel Lumières, a “multi-sensorial interior environment that, through six domestic themes (kitchen, dining room, library, living room, bathroom and bedroom) creatively and elegantly explores the interactions of Corian® with light.”. Nouvel uses small touch-control panels which “allow the control of every electronic function of the environment. The devices - dimmers, controls of time-delay, ’scenarios’, day and night, hot-to-cold and chromo-therapy - all feature simple, intuitive designs, and are illuminated with coloured LEDs, making them easy and pleasurable to use.”
http://www2.dupont.com/Corian_Nouvel_Lumieres/en_GB/index.html
Stockholm based industrial & textile designer, Oldsjö Hultgren, has created a line of patio stones called “Alien.” They are concrete with black, white or grey pigment and some are partially varnished.
Oldsjö Hultgren Design believes in the connection between concept, function, material, and aesthetics. They strive to take the clients’ vision and push the envelope to go beyond the initial expectation by using many different materials and techniques. Check out their other lines of patio stones, tiles, fabrics and lighting.
http://www.solidformdesign.se/
Aswoon / Susan Woods Studio, LLC, a Brooklyn, NY based production facility and showroom specializes in experimental approaches to functional art, artistic exterior and interior design. They also fabricate their designs in a variety of sophisticated and reclaimed materials. Their studio in the Navy Yard develops sculptural prototypes along with configuration solutions for interior and exterior spaces. With her versitility between design experimentation and production, Susan Woods continually creates additions to her own design lines. The latest addition is the New Wave line which includes this undulating plywood bench, called Rave Wave, which is at home in your living room or in your building lobby.
