Recently in Design Category

Wim Delvoye has taken the modern large-format 3d printer and used it to recreate the Gothic world, if the EVERYTHING were Gothic.  Nautilus shells, tables, gazebos even a comcrete mixer are all done in complex neo-gothic tracery. 

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Monograms

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One page, covering the pairs AL through AT, from a book of monograms entitled Schul der Pallas (The School of Pallas), engraved by Johann Baptista Homann.  This copy is owned by the Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst (Austrian Museum of Applied Arts), more commonly referred to as the MAK.

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A Vessel

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Splinter Works, a UK-based design studio, has created what I think is safe to call the first hammock-inspired bathtub.  They've basically taken the ability of carbon fibre sheeting to form almost any shape and remain infinitely-strong and built the tub out of it.  2.7 meters long and mounted on 2 stainless-steel brackets, which can be hidden if desired it's not entirely functionless form, the thick foam center insulates the tub, keeping the hot water hot longer.   The optimal setting would be in a wet-room with the center-mounted drain of the tub just suspended over a drain in the floor, but they'll deign to provide a drain-pipe if needed. 

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ps. neither the diaphanously-robed model nor the faux-Pollock come with.

Tom Fruin is a Brooklyn-based artist who tends to work in large, kaleidoscopically-colored plexiglass.  His latest work is at the western edge of his home bourough, and is based on one of the iconic elements of New York buildings, the roof water-tower.  During the day it's illuminated with natural light while at night there's a computer-controlled internal lighting system.

This is also a fantastic example of how photography can make or break an installation.  Compare the impact of the first picture with that of the second.

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If you're REALLY interested, there's a video online of the assembly
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Fishtank

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An amusing bit of whimsey from Psalt Design.

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More link-cleanup from this winter, a Christmas-tree Dreidel1dreidel.jpg

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The florid prose and the CamelCase product name is well matched to the fountain-pen (msrp about $2,000)

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This unique pen with its impeccably sleek profile and smooth curves is entirely made in Switzerland, although it looks as if it has just emerged from a NASA lab or from the desk of Major Boothroyd, the iconoclastic inventor of the James Bond accessories. Nonetheless, the sheer purity and simplicity of the design also evoke the golden age of aeronautics, the glorious era of the first Paris-New York flights, spiced up with a dash of Art Deco style. This tribute to third millennium design is a compendium of aesthetic appeal featuring an extremely playful DNA, enriched by the finest expression of the expertise cultivated by RJ-Romain Jerome in the domain of fusing materials.

 Moon dust, embodying all human fantasies of exploring the sky, is encapsulated in the cockpit bubble, and the resulting eloquent invitation to escape earthbound reality is interpreted in three different versions : Heavy Metal, Black Metal and Vintage, each adorned with 48 handapplied rivets. To ensure take-off in the best possible conditions, the MoonFighter is protected by a leather pouch and, upon returning from its missions, fits neatly into its carbon-finished docking station.

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Transparent Belgian Church

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Built of 100 layers of stacked flat steel plates in the Belgian region of Haspengouw,"Reading Between the Lines" takes the form of a church as its starting iconography.   It transforms from solid to nearly transparent depending on the perspective of the viewer.  Designed by a pair of young architects in Leuven, Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh, who collectively go as Gijs Van Vaerenbergh, it is part of a larger exhibition project Z-OUT, an initiative in which Z33, the contemporary art museum of the city of Hasselt, presents art in public spaces.

Opaque:
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The shades of red and brown are from the rust that has accumulated on the unfinished steel structure. 

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In this closeup from during construction you can see how the layers are stacked.  As this is still in the workshop, the fresh grey steel has not yet started to rust.
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These photos are from the artists website, there are plenty more there and a video clip of the actual construction.


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Logo Evolution

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A fantastic bit of humor, just go and see for yourself

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Ikepod is a strange little watch company which has always been focused more on the design side of the watch industry, using reliable but not interesting movements.  They have worked in partnership with industrial designer Marc Newson (previously mentioned) for a while now, but their release of his hourglass at Baselworld 2011 gave them quite a bit of positive publicity.
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Those are the basic models, the larger one times abotu one hour and costs about $30k, while the smaller model is about 1/2 the price and times 10 minutes.  Both are hand-blown from rather thick (3mm) borosilicate glass and use tiny steel balls, plated with nickel, copper, gold or something else for color, for timing.  According to promotional materials the large model contains approximately 1.3million balls. 

Their video of the production is stunning


For the 2011 Only Watch auction, they've made a unique model with red glass.  I was a bit disappointed to read that the red is a paint, rather then inherent in the glass, but that in no way detracts from the dramatic look


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In live shots the clarity and intensity of the red color, probably somehow related to the flag of Monaco, is much more obvious

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