September 23-26 sees Tent: London take over the Truman Brewery for its multi-faceted design show. ARTS THREAD previews the event and picks out some of the talents to visit.
Nature in Design is an exhibition that takes visitors on a journey through nature objectified by Icelandic designers and offers insight into the underlying ideas behind the products. Nature in Design is a collaborative project of the Iceland Design Centre and Landsvirkjun and is open daily until 28th August 2010.
Martina Hodkova, Fleur Mannifique, Nottingham Trent University
In this the year of the tenth anniversary of Free Range, ARTS THREAD visited the Truman Brewery to catch up with some of the excellent new graduates’ work on display. In a week mainly dedicated to Interior Design and Architecture, we caught up with three Product designers work from Nottingham Trent University in the additional 2D and 3D Product Design category.
We loved some of the product design concepts on display at New Designers aimed at child development and social interaction.
Terry Stokes, an Industrial Design Graduate from Brunel University had a couple of projects on display. Terry says his littlepal design is aimed at ‘reducing stress during children’s injections through the use of visual, tactile and sonic distraction’. The cleverly disguised needle is accompanied with a moulded plastic tray and educational packaging to encourage child interaction. Also on display was his Sensio design, a solution to a Future Design Concept project for Crayola, using haptic feedback by using pressure sensors within the pens.
Hannah Davies, Winner of New Designers One Year On Award
ARTS THREAD looks at the work of designers exhibiting at One Year On, a showcase for upcoming talent from previous New Designer graduates. This week’s selection includes textiles, product design, illustration, ceramics and much more.
Cyber-Duck Associate Award Winner Pablo de la Pena, University of Dundee
Pablo de la Pena was the Winner of the Cyber-Duck Associate Award for his interactive media design idea, a service to capture and record footage of snowboarders at different angles whilst they are on the slopes.
The BDC New Designer of the Year Winner Tortie Hoare, Bucks New University
Last night saw the winners announced for New Designers Part 2. Held at Islington Business Centre, the show celebrates 25 years this edition. Tortie Hoare won this year’s BDC New Designer of the Year award for her spectacular collection of eco-friendly ‘French armour’ inspired leather furniture. Each piece was carefully crafted and a unique exploration of the boiled vegetable tan leather process.
As the boundaries between different aspects of contemporary applied arts are being increasing blurred, we look at the graduates at New Designers who work across ceramic, wood, metal, glass and a variety of natural and synthetic media.
Curious, Design BA (Hons) Goldsmiths, IM-Materialism, Jane Ellen Taylor
This year’s Design BA (Hons) graduate show by Goldsmiths was entitled Curious and as programme leader Matt Ward observes, designers are curious about how things work, how things could be different.
Icosa pendant light, Rose Menuez; Satsuma light, Jonas Damon
Noho Design District launches its first design presentations alongside the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) and New York Design Week, running from May 15-18 2010.
Event organiser Sight Unseen has brought together design brands, local businesses and retailers, emerging and established designers to open pop-up stores, exhibitions, open studios and much more. ARTS THREAD looks at a few of the opportunities open to visitors.
Li Edelkoort; Post Fossil: Excavating 21st Century Creation
21_21 Design Sight museum in Tokyo is currently showcasing Post Fossil: Excavating 21st Century Creation – a exploration of new trends in design through the vision of Dutch trend forecaster Li Edelkoort.
An exhibition of new works by designers Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec has opened at French design gallery Galerie Kreo in Paris. The show presents a collection of hanging lights, wall shelves resembling rocks and shell-like wall lamps.
The students of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK) presented their experimental works during Salone del Mobile in Milan. The focus of the show was the importance of the research process and the interaction between experiences in the virtual and the physical world.
C, mm, n Hydrogen Car, Netherlands Society for Nature and Environment
Sustainability is an issue of increasing importance within society as businesses, designers and consumers attempt to address our unsustainable consumption of resources. Sustainable Futures at London’s Design Museum explores the latest developments.
During Milan Design Week (April 14-19 2010), seven designers and creative labs from Berlin gathered for the exhibition Made in Berlin – Open Process. Coordinated by the contemporary design platform DMY Berlin in collaboration with Create Berlin, the exhibition revealed new prototypes and innovative concepts for future living spaces.
The Total Table Design project which premiered at Dutch Design Fair Object Rotterdam earlier this year came to Salone del Mobile Furniture Fair in Milan this week. In the exhibition Dutch designers Kiki van Eijk and Studio Scholten & Baijings (Stefan Scholten and Carole Baijings) present their visions for the art of dining.
Inspired by the folk event of the Cene di San Giuseppe in Sicily with its hand-crafted bread displays, Autarky is a new installation by Formafantasma, a young design studio of two Italian designers Andrea Tremarchi and Simone Farresin, who both graduated in 2009 from the Design Academy Eindhoven. The exhibition is on show at Spazio Rossana Orlandi in Milan during Salone del Mobile, 14-19 April 2010.
The Savage Mind is a show featuring seven students from Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design of Stockholm at Spazio Rossana Orlandi during Milan Design Week April 14-19 2010.
Ivar Björkman, president of Konstfack explains the idea behind the works of young talents in the show: “The age that we are living in stretches back to the origin of human beings, irrespective of whether we are modern or not. In his book The Savage Mind, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss explains that there are no fundamental differences in how we think between primitive peoples in the Stone Ages and ourselves nowadays”.
Kontuur Blind, Helena Karelson; Coat stand, Daniel Rawlings
Graduates from Kingston University’s Product and Furniture Design are showcasing their products at Salone Satellite during the Salone del Mobile (April 14-18 2010) in Milan. The products on show had been created as part of Kingston University students’ graduate projects for 2009.
During Salone del Mobile (April 14-18 2010) Design Academy Eindhoven presents ‘Questions’. The exhibition will show the most recent work of graduate students from 2009 and is curated by Anne Mieke Eggenkamp, Chair Executive Board Design Academy Eindhoven and Ilse Crawford founding Head of Department for ‘Man and Well Being’. Crawford heads the renowned design company Studioilse, alongside her brand consultancy.
“What questions are we facing? What is the role of the designers today? What is the future role of a designer? What are we focusing on? Questions are the start of everything.” comments the academy on the show.
The Royal College of Art Design Products department presents Hotel RCA April 14-18 2010 during Salone del Mobile in Milan. Professor Tord Boontje, Head of Design Products at the Royal College of Art in London, will be presenting work by 90 students and recent graduates of the MA course at the exhibition Hotel RCA located in over 900 square metres of a disused factory in Lambrate – the old industrial district of east Milan.
A Human Measure, Digna Kosse, Design Academy Eindhoven; Radiolarian Sofa by Lazerian studio, Designersblock
Milan, design capital of Italy is ready to celebrate its biggest annual design event Milan Design Week in April (12-19 April) alongside its well known Salone del Mobile, International Milan Furniture Fair. During this important week dedicated to design, many events and exhibitions will be held in different venues throughout the city. ARTS THREAD looks at some key trends emerging for this year’s fair.
As part of Reykjavík DesignMarch, students from the Iceland Academy of the Arts were invited to meet some of Iceland’s most successful furniture and product designers, who have been contributing to Icelandic design since the 1950s.
For Studio Job’s new exhibition, Carpenters Workshop Gallery commissioned two new lamps to sit alongside the designers’ Industry collection. In editions of six, the two pieces come in sturdy bronze.
At last month’s Stockholm Furniture Fair Twelve graduating product design students from Beckmans College of Design presented furniture for a 48 square metre apartment.
Belgian art centre Z33’s new exhibition Design by Performance explores performative trends in contemporary design. The focus of the exhibition is not on finished products, but on the production process itself where the project dictates that the object will always be changing or else has been formed by its surroundings or the specific situation it is placed in.
Participants are Atelier NL, Maarten Baas, Pieke Bergmans, David Bowen, Oscar Diaz, Edhv, Front, Martino Gamper, Simon Heijdens, Eric Klarenbeek, Sofie Lachaert & Luc d’Hanis, Laurent Liefooghe, Lawrence Malstaf, Bruno Munari, Markus Schinwald, Studio Glithero, Studio Libertiny, Tjep, Unfold & Tim Knapen.
Monterrey Housing by Elemental; Plato’s Atlantis by Alexander McQueen
Last Friday saw the category winners of the Brit Insurance Design Awards 2010 announced. Covering architecture, fashion, furniture, graphics, interactive, product and transport. The overall winner will be revealed at the Award’s ceremony on March 16 2010.
Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design; Greenhouse 2010
Greenhouse is Stockholm Furniture Fair’s area for independent designers and design schools. Design schools participating this year included Stockholm’s Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design and Beckmans College of Design through to northern European colleges outside of Sweden, such as Art Future Design School from Saint Petersburg and Tartu Art College (TAC) in Estonia.
The 2010 [d3] Contest saw 30 products from 33 young designers from 12 countries on show in a special exhibition at the imm fair in Cologne, Germany this January. The jury of interior experts chose three winners and three highly recommended. The three winners take away prize money of 2000€ each.
Superform showed off the work of first year students on the Royal College of Art’s Innovation Design Engineering (IDE) course in a five week module that test students from a diverse range of backgrounds in designing and building a chair that is capable of being tested in a way that proves its innovation.
Currently showing at design gallery and shop Coming Soon Arnhem is the work of ArtEZ Academy Arnhem Product Design graduate Juliette Warmenhoven – a project entitled Everyday Growing that looks at the beauty hidden in small everyday items in nature.
Luckybite, who are RCA tutors Durrell Bishop and Tom Hulbert, have designed The BirdBox – a physical BirdBox made from card, that turns an iphone or ipod Touch into a nesting-box cuckoo alarm clock.
This year’s New Design Britain Awards were recently announced at interiors 2010, Birmingham. 16 product design finalists were selected from the 150 original entries. Applicants were from a range of disciplines from over 80 universities. Award Winners were invited to exhibit by the organisers of New Design Britain and their work was on display in the Thinking Space in Hall 2 of the NEC.
UK designer Tom Price’s solo exhibition at Chapter 7 in Hangzhou was the culmination of a ten week invitation to China to create new works for the gallery’s opening show. The gallery provided accommodation, assistant and an impressive studio space with all the necessary equipment and materials.
From an original 500 entries, 16 finalists recently displayed their working prototypes at this year’s interiors 2010 at the NEC, Birmingham. The competition, organised and sponsored by The Lighting Association is also sponsored by a number of established names in the industry including, OSRAM, ACID (Anti Copying In Design), Philips, Total Lighting Magazine, DAR Lighting Group and the Energy Saving Trust.
For the third year running Designersblock has created a feature area for interiors 2010 in Birmingham running January 24-27. Designers, companies and manufacturers have collaborated on new projects that will be shown for the first time at the show, with new projects from Ercol, Timorous Beasties, Sitting Firm, Chris Eckersley, Puff and Flock, Lazerian, Pure Whyte, Hendzel & Hunt, Assembly Room, Thomas Forsyth, Owen Gildersleeve, Camira, Bute Fabrics, Lunchtime Cinema and more.
Boffi Paris in collaboration with the Manufacture de Sèvres, Normal Studio
10 new talents have been sponsored by Philippe Starck, Maison’s 2010 Designer of the Year to be part of a showcase curated by Chantal Hamaide, editorial director of the Intramuros magazine at next week’s now! design à vivre exhibition, as part of Maison & Objet, Paris.
‘Industrial Design students at Swinburne are provided with the practical, theoretical and business skills required to work creatively and professionally in a wide range of product design and development industries…Industrial designers develop products and systems that meet human needs and expectations.’
Swinburne University, Melbourne, offers Bachelor, Bachelor with Honours and Masters courses in Industrial Design. Students from all of these three areas exhibited work at a recent graduate exhibition at the Guilford Lane Gallery December 2-6 2009.
Swinburne Inside Out show; Rehab Box, Jacki Downing
It was heartening to see that many projects featured at Swinburne’s Product Design Engineering graduate show, Inside Out, had a humanitarian focus. Problems effecting people of all ages and backgrounds everyday were solved with some creative, ingenious ideas.
Serv-Family; Message Bench; Bunch of Tools, Fabrica
During Design Miami/, the new Miami showroom of Italian design house Zanotta showcases TRANS-FORMA, an exhibition of 17 historical pieces from the company’s nearly 60 years of archive collections, re-interpreted by young designers from Benetton’s research laboratory Fabrica.
New Designer’s prize winner Robin Grasby won a complementary stand at this September’s 100% Design, where he showed his flexible office/studio desk Homework and Bench lounger. Graduating in 2009 with first class honours in 3D Design: Furniture and Product from Northumbria University, Robin Grasby aims to create rational, enduring, functional furniture for mass production.
Chandelier and Lamp Stencils, Kyu-Seon Lee, 100% Design
Kyu-Seon Lee graduated this year with an MA in Textile Design from the Royal College of Art and at 100% Design he showcased his graduate conceptual piece, Secret Links that visualises social networking sites, as well as his stencils for which he won the Crown Project this year with his elegant chandelier.
Calendars, Philip Luscombe, Northumbria University, 100% Design
At the recent 100% Design, Northumbria University’s School of Design had a stand promoting new work by its Designers in Residence, as well as a selection of work by 2009 graduates on the 3D Design: Furniture and Product course.
Return, Gerdiene van de Pol; Chitchat, Teun Flesken; A Drop of Water, Bas van der Veer
All photos by Jainy Gans
As part of Dutch Design Week, the Design Academy Eindhoven opens its doors to showcase the work of its graduates of design in both the BA and MA courses. ARTS THREAD takes a trip around the BA galleries to see what’s new.
We spotted Korean born designer Jung Myung Taek’s ‘Contemporary Art Furniture’ at Tent London last month. Working from his studio in Seoul, Korea, Myung Taek has a strong, quirky and individual style. We particularly liked the surreal, visually intriguing elements in his work.
Babel is an exhibition of the work of eight young designers around the theme of the Tower of Babel through the media of sculpture, photography, jewellery, drawing, installation, film making and music.
The talented Claire Coles caught our eye at Tent London. Her work encompasses illustration, embroidery, ceramics, bespoke wall coverings and accessories. She has had considerable commercial success so far in her career, and has attracted commissions from Liberty, Oasis, Ted Baker and Blooming Marvellous.
Just a year out of university, Zoe Murphy is already enjoying great success. She is working really hard to keep pace with demand for her lovely, colourful furniture and textiles.
New design collective Bricolage caught our eye at Tent London. Five talented textile designers, all recent-years graduates from Chelsea College of Art & Design, showcased their work together – creating a strong complementary mood. Their modern styling has a warm retro ‘50’s vibe which should be a sure-fire hit.
The Talent Zone at Tent London design show featured the work of ten graduates from universities and colleges in Europe and beyond. The ten were chosen by Tent London and the online store mydeco and given space at the event. The three lucky winners, chosen on October 7, get the opportunity to showcase their work to Terence Conran and Philippe Starck from the mydeco design board.
ARTS THREAD caught up with young furniture designer, Lee Walsh at Tent London. We first spotted Lee at New Designers last year, as a graduate of Manchester Metropolitan University and, since then, he has been developing a new range of super-modern pieces with a distinct, futuristic handwriting, which he showed for the first time at Tent.
Doing it for the Kids; Up-Cycled Frisbees, Future Industries
Now in their fourth year of exhibiting at 100% Design, with sustainable innovative design at the forefront once again, the [Re]design team did not fail to disappoint. They had invited a team of likeminded makers and designers along to contribute to their interactive stand, tackling the issue of sustainable play design for kids.
ARTS THREAD was drawn to the great mix of simplicity and quirkiness of design company Boex. Based in Cornwall and run by twin brothers Sam and Will Boex, their Pencil Bench from 2007 still looks fresh and fun – rightly drawing stacks of praise and being featured widely in the design press. Their new products include their beautiful ‘Easy Willow’ chair, and the ‘Turn Stool’ which mixes a warm traditionally turned ash seat with cool powder coated steel legs.
This is what we call product design...Sebastian Bergne; Martin Bone
During London Design Festival, the Charing Cross windows of Central Saint Martins showcased the work of alumni from the Product Design course – the UK’s oldest course in the subject, starting from 1938.
Words: Joyce Thornton
Arts Thread joined young product designer Giles Miller and friends at the opening of his new ‘pop-up shop’ at Kingly Court on London’s Carnaby Street last night. Miller has wasted no time since graduating with an MA from the Royal College of Art (RCA) in June. As well as showcasing his own work, this venture is his first foray into pulling together work of other designers, creating a vibrant, quirky interior space.
left to right: Fabien Cappello, Emma Yeo, Small Show, Huge Talent
Set inside the Kiddell Gallery at Sotheby’s, New Bond Street, is a short-run exhibition September 16-20, curated by Janice Blackburn, featuring the work of 2009 graduates, plus a few still yet to graduate.
Janice has picked out the Sèvres project from the Royal College of Art (RCA), five MA jewellery graduates from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design (CSM), plus photography and fine art.
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