Straight from Paris

The Paris based designer duo Amandine Chhor and Aïssa Logerot realised these fantastic projects in cooperation with local associations and skilled workers from Cambodia and Morocco. ‘artisanat du sud’ is the newest series of furniture handcrafted by women from Akka oasis in Morocco. The tables tops are made from woven palm leaves.

Giant Flat pack

 Giant timber parasols above the Plaza de la Encarnacíon in Seville – this sunday the Berlin based architectural practice Jürgen Mayer H. can finally unveil their most recent urban development project – a new icon for the medieval inner city of Andalusia’s capital. The timber-constructions offers an archaeological museum, a farmers market, an elevated plaza, multiple bars and restaurants underneath and inside the parasols, as well as a panorama terrace on the very top of the parasols.

Marc Newson Hour Glass

The Hourglass by Marc Newson
Ikepod has over the years sought to convey something different to the watch collector’s world, something that introduces elements from the worlds of art and design into the world of fine horology.
It is always a challenge to cross between worlds and between cultures, but Ikepod designer Marc Newson has done so, for over 20 years, by designing everything from limited edition furniture that has set auction records to the new airbus A380 for Qantas.
Ikepod, which has produced Newson’s timepieces now  brings timekeeping, design and sculpture together in the form of The Hourglass.
Marc Newson’s Hourglass is a feat of engineering made using borosilicate glass and millions of stainless steel nanoballs.
Borosilicate is a specialized and unusually durable type of glass. It is used in laboratories and aerospace applications because it is able to withstand high pressure and weight loads.
Our glass blower based in Basel Switzerland individually produce each piece by hand, closely reproducing Newson’s design.
The Hourglass is the consummate Ikepod anachronism , a merger of an age old time keeping mechanism crafted by hand, filled with millions of high tech metallurgical nanoballs, resulting in a 10 or 60 minutes chronometer unlike any other.

Sustainable Bulb from Phillips

A Bulb from the Future! It Looks Like it Belongs on a Spaceship
The Philips AmbientLED 12.5-watt A19 LED lightbulb (quite a name!) is probably the favorite LED bulb that I've tried so far. It beats the competition when it comes to light output (800 lumens vs. 450-590 lumens for the other LEDs that I've tried), the design of the bulb is very innovative, and light quality is excellent.
Technical Specifications for Philips AmbientLED Bulb
The Philips LED produces 800 lumens, which makes it a 60-watt incandescent equivalent . Its efficiency of 65 lumens per watt made it earn an Energy Star rating, and at 12.5 watts, it uses only about 20% of the energy of a 60-watt bulb. The socket is the A19 standard.
The unit that I am reviewing is warm-white (2700K) and has a CRI of 80. Warranty is 6 years, and Philips rates it at 25,000 hours of operation (it should last for decades if you take good care of it).
And yes, it is dimmable!

KD house

Japanese architects Geneto installed diagonal walls across the interior of this houe in Shiga, Japan, to block views through to neighbouring houses and create new spaces in between the rooms.
Called KD-House, the renovation project also involved installing built-in wooden tables and storage to make best use of the new areas created.
We did a renovation for a two-by-four construction unit house by Sekisui Heim that is located in a new residential area in Shiga prefecture. Although the site is relatively broad, the way it is built makes the site strangely narrow.

We believe this is because each houses were built only thinking about concluding within the site and without regarding the connection to the surroundings.

NZ Architects

New Zealand architects Gascoigne Associates have completed this Japanese restaurant lined with wooden slats in Auckland, New Zealand.
Called Cocoro (meaning ‘heart and soul’ in Japanese), the restaurant is located in a former warehouse.
Wooden slats hang over the exposed concrete walls and ceiling, with LED lighting and sound insulation concealed between them.

New download section

Checkout the free training manuals we have just added to design heist we are here to help, so stay tuned for a lot more to come.

Simple Danish Joinery

simple danish joinery really gets me going and this is a nice example of what can be done, designed by a student this piece is light and playful and very current.

AWESOME NEW BOOK

Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

The myth of innovation is that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the minds of geniuses. The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities.
This book introduces the idea of design thinking‚ the collaborative process by which the designer′s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people′s needs not only with what is technically feasible and a viable business strategy. In short‚ design thinking converts need into demand. It′s a human−centered approach to problem solving that helps people and organizations become more innovative and more creative.
Design thinking is not just applicable to so−called creative industries or people who work in the design field. It′s a methodology that has been used by organizations such as Kaiser Permanente to icnrease the quality of patient care by re−examining the ways that their nurses manage shift change‚ or Kraft to rethink supply chain management. This is not a book by designers for designers; this is a book for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization‚ product‚ or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

AKITA

The Japanese practice Sekkei-sha, founded by Yoshichika Takagi in 2005, recently unveiled its newest residental project, a single family home in the centre of Akita City. With a quiet convoluted floor plan and wide gaps and openings the young architects demonstrates again his sense for the interplay of inside (privacy) and outside (extensity).

Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things

I have just attended a lecture purely on why we love or hate everyday objects, some interesting comments where made and my eyes are truly wider after this one. Form function or simply just prescence.
Form is the obvious one but what forms do we warm to more often, studies show that curved soft floating forms, ideally the circle is the perfect form and the one that makes us warm and fuzzy inside will always refer to this basic principle.
Function is critical and all good design just works it performs it's duty seemlessly and hides all technical aspects, apple technologies is a beautiful example of this.
Product prescence and reputition is a human sub conscious way of warmer to something, through familiarity we feel most comfortable, like turning up to the same work place each and everyday we feel comfortable much like Bering in contact with familiar products or ways we interact with them draws us closer to them. Click the link above for further reading. Dh

State of design

After a few days off from posting, I have had time to think and collect my thoughts. I have a new outlook I would like to share about being a designer and time management.
Outsourcing from as many different angles as possible. My initial thoughts on this is great, if I'm not doing the work and someone is doing it for me I will have more free time or more time to invest in research or new content. There is floors in this process as much as there are huge benefits. With quality control you must very careful with who you use to represent what you do, if done incorrectly or you fail to employ the right person for your business this could destroy your reputation. So you may ask how do you get this right? I'll reveal all in the next post. So for now happy designing. Dh

Burn

Kaspar Hamacher uses fire to create furniture. Fittingly named 'ausgebrannt' which means 'burned out' in german. Tree trunks have been cut into segments varying in length

Flat pack hood

The young Swedish designer trio Form Us With Love realised this new pendant light which serves, due to its acoustic characteristics as well as a sound barrier. The lamp shade is made from modular felt panels, which can be assembled on site making 'Hood' a flat pack product

New york design

The New York based designer Lindsey Adelman recently exhibited her beautiful glass lamps at E.R. Butler & Co is Soho, manufacturer of her most recent work. The 'Ceres' collection – a series of technical yet sculptural appearing constructs – consists of brass branches with cylindrical light fittings combined with coloured glass tubes