Trending in Milan 2012

We are mid way through The Milan Furniture Fair, Salone del Mobile for 2012. Heres an overview of whats been trending the past 3days.

The ‘LygoLamp’ by the Netherlands based company Studio Mango is the latest installation in their collection. The lamp comes in flat pack form, just like boxes of LEGO. The packages come with 12 dozen LEGO blocks and all the necessary electrical equipment to create this elegant new lighting fixture. The hanging circular lamp comes in a variety of different colors to incoporate into any contemporary layout.

"Endless" by Dirk Van Der Kooij is a collection of chairs designed using a robot he trained. Considering the high investments for complicated moulds that have to be made for processes similar to this one, hedeveloped a system which enables automatic production independent from the object’s design. He taught the robot a new craft involving drawing furniture out of one endlessly long plastic string.

Designed by Italian furniture designer Fabio Novembre, 36h and 56h chairs have been created for Driade. Designed around the childhood memory of making home made pasta with his grand mother, Novembre gives these chairs a fluidity which works hand in hand with the natural outdoors. Composed of an aluminium frame and covered in a woven plastic makes this collection of outdoor seating very durable and weather resistant.

British designer Ross Lovegrove has collabirated with Italian lighting company Artemide  for this new collection of lighting designs. The first piece, "Nebula" is generated from advanced parametric scripting.

It is enclosed in a circular painted aluminum LED ring, a diffuser which is sculpted from thermoplastic material, accentuates the organic forms as it captures the surrounding light.
This lighting design can be mounted on the ceiling or the wall, alone or in clusters to create an installation.

"Selvedge" is a collection of armchairs designed by U.K based design studio Raw Edges for Kvadrat. These chairs are designed to celebrate the scraps of fabric normally disgarded by the Danish fabric and textile company Kvadrat. These pieces of fabric known as selvedge are usually found lining the borders of a textile while on a roll, the selvedge is cut and not included as a part of the end product. Using the linear elements of the "Hallingdal 65", they stretch it to dictate the form and structure of an armchair.

Hilla Shamia "Wood Casting"

“Wood Casting” designed by Israeli based product designer Hilla Shamia went on show at Milan Design Week this year.  Designed and made using cast aluminum and tree trunk, the hot aluminum is poured onto wood allowing Shamia to preserve the natural form of the piece while still having distinct boundaries in its creation. The metal material along with the square shape allow a sense of artificiality while preserving the memory of the natural wood material. “The negative factor of burnt wood is transformed into a natural aesthetic and the value of the pieces".

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.