i spy pie!
Little Free Library
Andrew Carnegie built an impressive 2,509 libraries around the turn of the 20th century. Now Rick Brooks and Todd Bol are on a mission to top his total with their two-foot by two-foot Little Free Libraries.
Lea Balducci. textile student lab experiments growing crystals.
Dutch designer Jolien Hanemaaijer of Hanemaai has developed two products for her project ‘future travel’. The first object is titled ‘my infinite home tool’ which double functions as a portable cabinet and bag. This particular item started from the maker’s personal experience with extensive travelling and having to live out of a suitcase, a device to bring attention to what artifacts are important to a person.
(Source: blknymph)
Jannis Huelsen is a young german industrial designer graduated in 2011 from HbK Braunschweig.
Xylinum is a research project that poses the question: what could future materials and production processes be like? The title Xylinum is the name of the bacterium which produces an artificial cellulose material. This bacterium consumes sugar and builds a cellulose fibre structure around any given form. Since the process takes place in a nutrition liquid, the wet material can be dried later on, resulting in a durable and 100 % biodegradable material. The properties of this material can be adjusted by changing the genetic code of the organisms. In collaboration with the company Jenpolymers, a technique was developed to create a »skin« around a wooden stool frame, forming the coating and seating surface.
Kelli Anderson is an artist, designer she works to find the ‘hidden talents of everyday things.’ Anderson work tickers with the ordinary objects and materials people come into contact with on a daily bases, she looks at the ‘hidden talents of everyday objects.’
As we go through our everyday lives visual and experiential thing exert an enviable authority over our brains at all times, and they yelled this power in subtle and sneaky ways. So visuals speak volumes through these teeny tiny details through things like type, shape, colour and texture.
Anderson creates experiences which challenge the user preconception such as with a solar power ice cream truck. The truck worked to educate the public about renewable energy. There is an unexpected pairing of bright colours, sugar and global threat the world faces.
People arrive at experiences like this with expectations and when we make thing we are actively choosing what to do with those expectations.
Andersons work strives to create disruptive wonder and tries to confound the users expectations. As these everyday fundamental experiences and object that people frequently taken for granted frame reality in a way we often take for granted. Therefore the things we make can work to reinforce or challenge our assumptions about the world. When these small things do challenge preconception they open up a whole world of new possibilities and opportunities.
By challenging the world order which ‘does not necessarily deserve our respect.’ Sometimes meaning, justice and logic are present in the way thing are, and equal sometimes there is not. The realisation of this has allowed Kelli Anderson to free up her creative process and do something more interesting with the experiences and object she creates.
her project create something better through doing something more observed like creating a Christmas card that harnessed the memory of paper, allowing it to guide the user through the experience of the card. As the recipient of the card plays with the card they discover that through bending it, the card tells the story about the card itself. 
The project worked with the idea of ritual becoming empty gesture. The more an experience repeats itself the less it means, we begin to take the expected for granted. 
Anderson reinvention the wedding invitation as a paper record player, this project challenged the assumption made about materials and their limitation such as paper is silent and website should be flat.
More recently Anderson has created a perfect counterfeit The New York Times with only good news. It was filled with stories capping wages, ending wars and improving education. The newspaper was post-dated in the future optimistically offering stories they hope to print in the future.
Jungeun Lee works research and experiment with unconventional methods of constructing garments.The process she has most recently developed eliminates the need for sewing, cutting and weaving.
Lee creates her garment through wrapping synthetic fibers around a desired form and then uses a heat process which transforms the fibers structure into a three dimensional solid moulded garment. Lee can manipulate unusual and unexpected forms and silhouettes.
These amazing product are a ZERO WASTE product and could have significant impact and use if developed. by designing and creating without vast amount of waste as found in traditional methods opens the doors to an eco friendly and sustainable future. However as yet the synthetic fibers are created using a petoleum base.
Bill Cunnigham.
Glass and Sugar. glass and sugar share many surprising similarities this project is from the ‘Oh! BCN’. It is an independent project involved in the Barcelona design festival. All the speakers and participant were from gastronomic, design, glass craft and art background along with trend researchers. The project was based around the unusual association of food and glass.
Albert Adria (brother of Ferran) showed new products for the new Adrià’s restaurant in Barcelona. The pastry chef Crhistian Escrobà made fascinating demonstrations. Teams were build up and they developed concepts and products
Bjark ingels Creates architecture which more than just 2/3 dimensional building he strives to design an eco-system both of ecology and economy, Looking at the flow of people and resources through the building. The architecture talks and reacts to its environment, it considering the ecosystem of ecology and economy that affect space and buildings. Ingles approach takes into consideration the flow of resources and works to integrate the consumption patterns within the architectural framework of buildings.
The architectures work to challenge conventional design of which is sustainable, that can improve the quality of life for the space users.
Historically the field of architecture has been dominated by two opposing extremes. On one side an avant-garde full of crazy ideas. Originating from philosophy, mysticism or a fascination of the formal potential of computer visualizations they are often so detached from reality that they fail to become something other than eccentric curiosities. On the other side there are well organized corporate consultants that build predictable and boring boxes of high standard. Architecture seems to be entrenched in two equally unfertile fronts: either naively utopian or petrifyingly pragmatic. We believe that there is a third way wedged in the nomansland between the diametrical opposites. Or in the small but very fertile overlap between the two. A pragmatic utopian architecture that takes on the creation of socially, economically and environmentally perfect places as a practical objective.
The Danish Pavilion for Expo 2010 by Bjarke Ingels Group
Melanie Bowles The ‘Peoples Print’ is a series of textile design projects that develops new systems for participatory design to empower consumers through direct involvement in the design and making process.
The project explores methods of co-design, Slow and emotional durable design concepts, which transform consumers into co-designers of textiles and garments, using interactive methods of DIY, handmade, and traditional techniques. These methods, re-formed with modern-day digital production, create an individual bespoke printed pattern that reflects the character of the user and their environment.
Finally, utilising local print bureaus and sewing services for the production and making of a final garment.
The Projects include:
Slow Grow Mary’s Sweet pea Shirt
The Brixton Market Skirt
The Wallpaper Dress
Kathy’s Kaleidoscope Scarves
The Brockwell Rose Brixton
is an enthusiastic textile experimenter, the work reveals hidden stories through illustration, texture and colour.
Lucy McRae – is a Body Architect, her work merges biology and technology within our own bodied, playing and manipulating with the human form to see how she can transform it.
Initially exploring the human skin and how technology can transform the body she developed different concept like an electronic tattoo that in augmented by touch and clothing the blushes and shivers with light, McRae then went on to investigated with reinventing the skin through wrapping her body in plumping tubing and other materials interacting and reacting. She became increasingly interested in
‘ a maybe technology something that was not switched on or off, a maybe. That could take the form of a gas or a liquid I became obsessed with the idea of blurring the perimeter of the body. So you couldn’t see were the skin ended and the near environment started.’
This however was still only exploring with the exterior form of skin, So McRae changed her approach and developed a swallowable perfume. That once taken enters the body and is realised when you perspire.
Releasing perfume from the inside out turns the traditional use of perfume on its head. Working with natural body odour to biologically modifies and enhance it, changing the way we communicate with others, and how we attract others. In doing so skin is redefined as the atomiser and can manipulate our form to better express what we want to reveal.
Chromogenic textile designer Lauren Bowker
Lauren Bowker MA textiles graduate RCA, create amazing unique, playful textile that can interact with the environment and users. Her work embrases scientific approach to textile creating thermal chromatic dyes that can react to heat and gases ‘Making the invisible, visible’. These could be put to fascinating, alerting people to then hidden truths.
Laura says: As a textile innovator, artist and designer I am intrigued by the cycle of life and how it can be controlled and revealed. I have embarked upon a journey to visualise, control and construct a piece that constantly evolves lives and dies in front of our eyes.
Through the expansion of many types of ink, I have developed an original take on dynamic chromic imaging. Using focused thermal beams, sequentially controlled through computer software to allow my pieces to take on lives of their own.
Not only does my project PHNX have applications in the artistic ways I have perceived it for the exhibition, the technology behind the ink has the potential to break grounds in the area of healthcare, sports and wearable sensors. As a designer, I am inspired by the notion of visualising the invisible and creating a textile that is both as useful to us as it is aesthetic.
THOS is an alternative fashion brand which claims that it is possible to capture the essence of luck into garment. Its underlying thoughts are meant to provoke a discussion and pose an alternative to the current trend logic.
Created by tschagsalmaa Borchuu it is an exploration of different alternative movements in fashion, focussing mainly on deconstruction in fashion. Borchuu paper’s reflects on deconstruction, Nu Luxury and emotional design helped to classify THOS as another facete of these movements.
One has to understand, that this project is based on a personal experience and an inner debate.
It is based on the Mongolia belief that as ancient myth would have it, you can charge your spirit and fortune by standing in the dust of the famous horse races.
This is exactly what Borchuu challenge became - if you could capture that luck within the garment? and if it was possible that fashion could bring you luck?
this later developed many other questions much as What is luck? What is luxury? And ultimately how are these things connected to humans’ desire for spirituality?
This is an interesting case showing the value selling systems today and the power of branding.
I believe that THOS is a valuable contribution to the fashion world. With its unique and personal approach it tackles age old questions of luck, luxury and spirituality in a whole new manner.
It is more then just a fashion concept, it is food for thought and one of the few projects I believe capable of coping with the paradigm shift that we are seeing in the consumers’ mindset. The next evolutionary step of luxury in the west will be intangible. It will be projects like THOS that help satisfy that desire.
http://www.thos.mn/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/THOS-lookbook-3.pdf
