Design Musuem Awards 2012

The Design Museum once again hosts the Design of the Year Awards 2012. These awards showcase the most innovative and progressive designs from around the world with categories including Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Furniture, Graphics, Product and Transport. This year, designer Ilse Crawford is head of the judging panel, joined by Hella Jongerius, Sir George Lacobescu, Henrietta Thompson and Evgeny Lebedev. Category award winners and the overall winner of the Designs of the Year will be announced on the 24th of this month. Nominees include Kihyun Kim's Balsa Furniture, André Klauser and Ed Carpenter at Very Good and Proper's Harbour Chair, Jasper Morrison's Lightwood, Bethan Laura Wood's Moon Rock Table, Attua Aparicio & Oscar Wanless at SILO's NSEPS and Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby for Vitra's Tip Ton Chair.

Best of luck to all,
Grainne

"Balsa Furniture"

"Harbour Chair"

"Lightwood"

"NSEPS"

"Tip Ton"

10 Most Unique Tables

These imaginative coffee tables aim to test the limits of traditional design by embracing contemporary materials, technologies and design practices.
Combining aesthetics with push the boundary function, pieces like contorted coffee tables, crumpled dining tables and unstable side tables are just some of the many creative and unique table designs on the web. From the visually intriguing to the tactile and interactive, these innovative furniture pieces are bold and memorable and are taking the design world by storm.



Distorted Table by Suzy Lelievre

Grand Central by Lindstrom and Stromgen

 

Auto Canabalistic by Atema Architecture





The Corocotta Table by Jason Philips

The Loop Coffee Table By Baita Design



Sectional Table by GT2P



The Why Knot Table by Kino Guerin

Crash Table by Judson Beaumont

The Bonsai Tree Table by Anke Weiss

The Porcupine Table by Naturalism Furniture

RDS National Crafts Competition 2012

The Call for Entries for this year’s RDS National Crafts Competition has been announced. The deadline for entries in to the first stage of the competition is the 8th of May at 5.00pm. Regarded as one of the largest competitive platforms for Craft in Europe, the RDS brings an international panel of judges to Ireland to adjudicate it. This competition is open to all craft makers and designers living in Ireland or Irish makers who maybe living abroad. Categories include Ceramics, Feltwork, Embrobiary, Woodwork, Glass and Metalwork.With a total prize fund of €27,000 to award to winning designers, the highest accolade is the RDS Award of Excellence for €7,000 and the California Gold Medal. Previous winner include Karl Harron, Mark Campden, Kieran Whitelaw, Kathryn Hutchinson, Caroline Schofield, Sean Dunleavy, Fergal Costello,  Robert O'Connor and  Richard Healy. A competition well worth entering.

Best of luck to all,
Grainne

 

Furniture by Fergal Costello




Woodcarving by Richard Healy




Glass by Karl Harron



Spoon Lamp

This trendy new lamp known as the "Spoon Lamp" was designed by U.K based designer Clive Roddy. The lamp itself was inspired by large pine cones that were found in Yosemite National Park, California. Spoon Lamp, which is a pine cone-shape has been designed and built using 115 dessert spoons. The stand is made with three long legs that are made of solid oak. The contrast of silverware and natural wood gives the Spoon Lamp a rustic appeal which would work well in most modern restaurants and hotels. I will be keeping an eye out for this piece the next time I go for dinner!

Jenga Table by Intussen

The Pixel Table which has been inspired by the puzzle game Jenga was designed by the Hague based Studio Intussen founded by Tessa Kuyvenhoven. This lamp table with integrated storage could easily be mistaken as a big version of the a Jenga balancing tower. But the Pixel Table does not challenge people to display their mental and patience skills instead it serves a purely practical purpose. The individual blocks of bamboo wood that slide in and out of the Pixel Table combine to form additional storage for books and magazines aswell as other pull out multilevel surfaces.

Real Garden Furniture

Nothing more says green and eco-friendly as growing your own furniture! But it can and has been done. In the world of eco-friendly design there are a couple of designers who have pushed the boundaries to create something truly green. Some are bound by man-made restraints while others grow directly from the soil to form their rare furniture shapes. Check out these unique and wonderful designs.

 This garden chair is the product of an ingenious method of tree shaping developed by a couple of artists at Pooktre. The idea first came about over 20 years ago when Peter Cook,surrounded by natural landscape in the mountains of Australia, wondered if it would be possible to grow his own chairs.

This garden table was designed by furniture company Ayodhyatra. "The Secret Garden Table" is a collage of various moss's with diffrent greens and textures that resemble a natural forest floor. The mossy landscape resemble thosefrom the hills of Tuscany to the Amazon rainforest.

This garden chair was designed by Michel Bussian. "The Growing Chair" was created and grown using a clear plastic chair shaped frame in which tress shot up and grow within to form the chair shape.

This garden chair was designed by Kai Linke. The chair is part of collection of growing furniture called "Roots" which was first shown at the Cologne Furniture Fair in 2010.Kia's "Root" collection involved cultivating fast-growing plants such as grass, cress, and bamboo and chanelling their roots into a clear plastic chair shape mould.

The Land of LEGO

My 4year old nephew became a member of the LEGO Club this week so I decided to do a bit of research on the topic of LEGO and its endless boundaries.
Colourful,modular and versatile, LEGO blocks are toys that have unlimited uses, not only in the mind of a child but also in Architecture, Product Design and Interiors. Although they are made from non-renewable plastic, these popular toy building blocks are strong, weatherproof and long-lasting. Best of all, they can be used and reused again and again meaning interiors and furniture can be altered and changed around as often as you like to whatever shape or style you desire. Check out these amazing LEGO finds.

The LEGO House
built in the Denbies wine estate in Dorking,UK.

LEGO Staircase by I-Beam in Manhattan, US.

LEGO Room Divider designed by NPIRE

LEGO Kitchen
by designers Simon Pillard and Philippe Rosetti

LEGO Board Room Table by ABGC for Boys and Girls