Craig Alun Smith's WANK chair is a metaphor of the interdependent relationship between the first and third world and speaks to the war for oil in Iraq. You may have noticed the white chair is missing a leg (possibly due to a roadside bomb) and is bleeding oil....

Craig's summary of this work: "In reality WANK is a joke, a commentary on the current state of design and the trend of designers to create pointless 'one line' design objects and pass them off as art". WANK is also currently on display at the Winnipeg Art Gallery as part of the 2 Chairs exhibition.

+ othergallery.com

• On the value of dissatisfaction
  Well, in contrast to the usual news that happiness is THE key to a better living I found that this article share some interesting sources on quite the contrary. Similarly have you ever thought about how our world would look/feel like if everything is 'designed' well? For me this triggers quite a few follow up questions like: How about Design's role as 'styling' then in contrast to 'Design' as a source for innovation? And re-phrasing Naish's words: 'Bad Design is the driver of human endeavour'! What do you think?
  (tags: design happiness designthinking research Book Review)

Thermoplan systems use Ziegel blocks with a thin bed of mortar, to provide a breathing wall construction system. When combined with woodfibre board they can form a thermally and acoustically high performance shell. The Ziegel blocks come as part of a full load-bearing external and internal wall masonry system, and combine high thermal performance with robustness, speed of build and a breathing wall design.

Because of all the trapped air and the thickness of the walls, these blocks provide reasonable insulation, while at the same time do provide some degree of interior thermal mass for maintaining constant interior temperatures. This is an unusual combination of these two factors in a single wall system.

Sovrappensiero's new project is about favorite objects from the past that live on in attics and basements, holding onto memories and stories. Grandmother's doilies become fossilized with dust from the cellar to take on a new form as Waiting, trivets that will bear witness to new stories. Missing is an old vase that is not longer in fashion, so long unused that no one even sees it anymore. Saving is the abat-jour that accompanies the user along the journey to finally stand as a trophy, protected under glass. Sovrappensiero reminds us that things relegated to the past can and will haunt us if they are of sentimental value.

+ sovrappensiero.com

Matthias Demacker of demackerdesign sent us some pictures of his newest projects; takeOff.series (above) is a seating collection for Ferlea featuring a geometrically shaped compact seat, lounge chair and sofa. "The frontal cuts give the seats a light, dynamic look and offer place for your feet while swiveling in the seat.". The extensible curvex.table after the jump is for Italy's Varaschin.

+ demacker-design.de

• Meetings suck, but they don't have to
  We all know the drill when it comes to meetings: Arrive prepared and in time, stick to the agenda, don't interrupt others and let them speak until they're finished … But we all do also know that we so often suck with these basic rules.

  Therefore I'd thought that it might be a good idea to have the basic rules written down. This is no matter of being a business or design manager. On the contrary maybe some more structure in discussions would very often help meetings on design, process, and aesthetics to be more effective … What are your experiences?

  (tags: design mangement meetings rules productivity management business tips office projectmanagement)

Tom Kundig: Houses

"The form is essentially a cast-in-place concrete box, intended to be a strong yet neutral background that provides complete flexibility to adapt the space at will." - OSKA site

On site they applied a void filling top coating to the foundation wall and ground it smooth. This creates a mottled patina on the concrete surface which looks pretty cool.



The rest of the crew is sanding reclaimed oak barn boards which will become the ceiling of the ground floor.



Tune into the 3030 House flickr group to see all of the photos forwarded by the owner.

Technorati Tags: 3030 House, 6030 House, 6040 House, ecosteel, modern design, modern house, prefab house

The collaboration between BIG Architects of Copenhagen, Denmark, and NOD Landscape Architects of Stockholm, Sweden, provides not only a solution to Slussen, one of Scandinavia’s busiest intersections but most importantly privileges the pedestrian and cyclist.
When the Stockholm City Council invited BIG and NOD to act as design consultants on Slussen, the direction given was to create a proposal that reconnects the historic Gamla Stan with Södermalm. Understanding the long legacy of previous attempts to solve Slussen’s traffic chaos, the team set out to create a single form within which the different modes of traffic are layered. The proposal touches the waters surrounding Gamla Stan and slowly terrace up using ascending and descending ramps to create a new, coherent area focusing on providing an attractive and functional setting for both movement and rest.

Currently considered inaccessible to pedestrians and cyclists, Slussen is a black hole in the heart of Stockholm. It is no wonder then that Danish-Swedish collaboration has made sure to offer cyclists as well as pedestrians easy access to and through the area. The proposal turns Slussen into an urban recreational area assuring easy movement for the citizens and tourists of Stockholm. Slussen will gain a whole new kind of urban space unlike any other in the world, where artwork, a summer’s midnight stroll and outdoor theatre can cohabitate with the need to move cars, buses, trains, metro, and boats. The strength of Slussen lies in its continual and varied movement which the proposed ramped landscape only underscores. The heavy traffic of cars and buses is carefully immersed under the rising hillside. Suddenly due to the submersed traffic, large areas have been freed and are made attractive to the entire city to enjoy. As a result, new opportunities for urban life are created.

The basic traffic system has already been developed by Nyrens Arkitektkontor as part of an architectural competition, with soft traffic and a public program on the top and with heavy traffic at ground floor level, storing away boats, buses, metro, cars and trains. But instead of separating the different levels, connected only by stairs and elevators in a traditional way, we propose to integrate all public, accessible areas around Slussen by interweaving the levels using descending and ascending ramps as this will allow people to move freely between the levels.

Pedestrian zones are designed to connect the already existing promenades and road crossings, and all areas of the new Slussen are as such accessible to pedestrians. The bicycle lanes follow the road as well as the promenade along the waterfront, and are pulled away only where the curvy bays of the new Slussen are created to leave space for pedestrians to enjoy the waterfront.

Today Slussen does not take advantage of its rising topography. Seeking to utilize its unique setting the proposal uses the terraced hillside to house kiosks, shops, and tourist information stands accessible through the network of ramps. In this way, a new and active urban area is created. In addition to the landscaped contours and pathways characterising BIG and NOD’s proposal, the dispersion of light has been instrumental in developing the site and the various levels. By day, natural light will pierce through circle shaped skylights into the lower levels. By night, the skylights will be illuminated from below. The expression will thus vary from dusk till dawn, from season to season and depending on the weather. This dynamic process and the continual hum of traffic will serve as the backdrop to a new urban form and regenerate life into the surrounding neighbourhoods.

There is an animation showing the complete program as well. I will put it up in a separate post as well.

Ping Intressant.se

Andra bloggar om: slussen, stockholm, kultur, arkitektur landskapsarkitektur, bjarke ingels, stadsbyggnad

A snapshot of the latest trends of Location-based Service (LBS) in Beijing, Shanghai, Hongkong and Tokyo.

Trend Description:

Many people would agree that Location Based Services are becoming more and more popular worldwide and are opening a host of opportunities for business, but few would agree on the business model that will best monetize the service. Nokia, the mobile market leader, expects to ship 35 million GPS-phones in 2008 and the latest  ABI report blueprinted a $ 3.3 billion market value for LBS, but still the way to whip up revenues from existing technology and infrastructure remains unclear. Here we filtered some promising, if not profitable, practices of LBS in Asia to summarize new trends for industrial practitioners and those who may be concerned.

Cases:

GyPSii is a social networking platform headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherland. It has partnered with Shanghai Rannuo and China Unicom to launch its GyPSii service during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and has opened a China Data Center to enhance local user experience. What GyPSii is doing in China is encouraging its network users to send back location information via mobile devices and integrate it into the digital map. Other users (who are also content creators) then, can experience a seamless mobile lifestyle, connecting with friends and communities, searching UGC and viewing maps and directions to points of interest.

Naviblog X is Japan’s first location-based moblog/mobsearch website. With this service, usrs can easily create their mobile diary sites within 60 seconds even if they know little about programming.  After the sites are created, they point their mobile phones to the QR Code auto-generated with the sites and transfer them to the mobile phones of their friends or clients to log on the sites. It is also designed to geo-tag users’ information by one-click. Naviblog is said to be used on non-Japan phones soon.

LV Soundwalk

Fashion makers lag behind to none in creativity if not in high-tech. With thousands of foreigners entering China this Olympic year, Louis Vuitton, the French luxury fashion brand entered the mobile space with a unique location-based audio guide, available in six languages, to three major cities, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. The voice is coming from three locally born actresses: Gong Li for Beijing, Joan Chen for Shanghai and Shu Qi for Hong Kong. It directs visitors by mobile phones in real time through the cities and costs 17 USD for for each city in one of the six languages, English, French, Cantonese, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

Trend Potential:

The convergence of social networking, user-created content and location is a big trend. Mobile-enabled LBS is important because it links up something missing on the internet. There are some major barriers for business related to mobile internet, such as licensing and sophisticated algorithms, but as some of the global players have discovered, a fast track to enter a local market is to line up with local mobile carriers, technological developers and last but not least the users, who know best what they want.

Read the original post at CScout China Blog.

Part of the characteristics of blogs is their sequential format. This implies that postings usually appear in a chronological order. While this is in general nothing to worry about from time to time however you’d wish to point people to ‘older’ blog posts as well.

However old is relative and if you’ve done several postings per week your ‘Monday Musing’ is low down in the list and already far away from visitor’s attention. Therefore here’s my weekly (visual) Summary:

- My Take On Design Leadership

- Dear Blog: Happy 5th Anniversary

- DMI Remix Conference Ning

Technorati Tags: ecosteel, modern design, modern house, Plat House, prefab house

New houses in Sweden are primarily built on slabs, partly because its expedient, but also because its naturally the best way to have in floor radiant heating. In a cold climate this is the only way to use a slab otherwise your slab will feel cold and uncomfortable. But a slab in a cold climate must be insulated from the elements or it will throw heat out its edges. There are typically two strategies to isolate your slab from the cold.

Technorati Tags: modern design, modern house, prefab house

• Design Research Conference 2008, IIT Institute of Design; Chicago
  One of a few conferences I've never been to so far is the IIT Design Research Conference held each year in Chicago the home of IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology). Unlike many other conference organizers they are releasing the conference videos quite shortly after the conference has ended and that's what I've appreciated over the last years. While very often the selection of speakers tends to be the outcome of buddy networking there are from time to time some good talks available to be found in the archives.

  Pretty much the same counts for their other conference they are hosting each year the 'IIT Insitute of Design Strategy Conference' to be found here: http://snipurl.com/iitstrategy [trex_id_iit_edu]

  (tags: conferences conference design research IIT designresearch 2008 strategy&design)

Charlie Lazor is the founder of FlatPak, the system of prefab building components that are configured to meet the client's needs. The client works with the design team to create the best house for the site and can have as much creative input as he or she wishes. Or simply leave it up to the design team. (The excellent FlatPak website features a revealing case study about this process.) The system is based on one component: an 8' wall that is one storey high. The design comes into being eight feet at a time, so the possibilities are almost endless. Or are they, now that the housing market is a mess?



FlatPak House in the Catskills

How are things going now that the real estate business is suffering? Is this a golden opportunity or the beginning of the end?
We sell a product that is a good value. We don't sell silver bullets. So like all good values, your market might shift in a severe downturn and you would expect to do less, but frankly, it's too early to tell. I c