2Modern Design Talk - Modern Furniture & Design Blog

New on 2Modern: Droog! Different and fun, Droog's products are wide-ranging; from Doorbells to Swings, Tablecloths to Parasols. Based in Amsterdam, Droog prides itself in "creating innovative concepts that change perspective."

Residential Starchitects on the Rise in New York

I wanted to make quick reference to a fun article in this week's Sunday New York Times called "Nice Tower! Who’s Your Architect?".  It's about the new trend in residential New York "starchitecture". I still haven't made up my mind if it's a blessing or a curse to have residential developers finally realize it might be appealing to have an avant-garde world renowned architect design their building. It's appealing because I always find it challenging and exciting when people like Frank Gehry press physical space to their limits. It's unappealing because, as an unknown architect, I have fewer chances to break into this upper crust of design stars. If you only choose a brand name designer then how do the young guns move up?

In the last five years more than a dozen have been completed; maybe a dozen more are scheduled to break ground this year. They range from soaring, elaborately decorated towers by international celebrities like Jean Nouvel and Frank Gehry to smaller but equally ambitious architectural statements by lesser-known talents like Mr. Denari.

United States Artists

I took a look at a very interesting site today: http://usa.freedom.com

In their own words:

 

In an effort to share artists' work around the globe, United States Artists (USA) and film company City Projects introduce Encounter: USA Fellows featuring video shorts profiling artists and their work. Unique in tone and content, each video provides a glimpse of the creative process.

United States Artists (USA) is a new non-profit organization celebrating the fearless impulse that compels every great artist to create and inspire us to think.

In collaboration with filmmaker Phillip Rodriguez , USA Broad Fellow, USA will release a total of 14 video shorts as part of Encounter: USA Fellows. The first eight videos are now live on YouTube and the USA website. Six additional videos will be released this Spring.

Here is one of the videos (there are many more on the web site):

notNeutral

Can't wait for Spring? Neither can notNeutral! Hot new products are bright and outdoorsy. New Triton 1 and 2 Throw Pillows take the fun Triton Tray pattern and remixes it. Season Wallcandy Arts join the ranks of the Transport and Count Wallcandy Arts. Great for the patio, Triton and Season Hurricanes light up the night. And everyone's favorite, new City Plates!

The Design Tokujin Yoshioka

Tokujin Yoshioka is a designer that I am not extremely familiar with, but in 2007 he was named Design Miami's Designer of the Year, and in 2008 he was named best furniture designer of the year in the Wallpaper Design Awards.  So when I started to explore his work it was as if a creative shroud had been lifted from my eyes. His work is punctuated by his extremely acute sense of drama and his ability to take simple materials or modular units such as a drinking straw or a crystal, in the case of his work for Swarovski, and turn it into something yet unknown until Mr. Yoshioka revealed it.


Tokujin Yoshioka is a renaisance man who works in every medium of design, so paring down projects of note to two is quite impossible, however, I'll try. The first I'm picturing above is his work for the design Miami Designer of the Year show. The medium he chose was a simple translucent drinking straw. Multiplied by tens of thousands of times, and this straw takes on the form of a wintery crystal world where walls and floors are blurred into a dream.

His work for Swarovski is equally dreamy.  Each year, Swarovski invites a number of designers to undertake the most ambitious use of crustals they can dream up. Last year, Yoshioka went to extremes as he created an interactive, three dimensional television using thousands of the crystals as the pixels of the screen. The effect he created was unlike anything every seen because of his design to layer several images at once through different levels of the crystal matrix.

Future projects include a Swarovski showroom where the designer uses thousands of crystal tubes to make up the facade of the building.

One From Wallpaper's Design Awards: Cubic Meter Shelving by Arik Levy

Wallpaper recently came out with their design awards issue, and one piece that just immediately popped out at me was the One Square Meter by Arik Levy. This piece is one in a treasure trove of Mr. Levy's pieces that shows true genius. It is a modular shelving system that can break out into any form you want, or it can be compressed into its original shape of a one square meter cube (thus, the name). The finishes in the original collection came in black and natural oak and was limited to a production of 10. However, it appears that Paul Smith has bought the rights to make this piece and will be going into larger production. I checked the Paul Smith website for price and availability, but no information is currently available.

Know of a good Charity Organization?

                               

"You will find, as you look back on your life, that the moments that stand out are the moments when you have done things for others." - Henry Drummond

2Modern has given to several charities (small and large) over the years and are constantly searching to donate auction items to good causes.

If you know of a charity that has events or auctions to raise money, please have them visit:
http://www.2modern.com/site/form-charity.html

Some of the charities that 2Modern has supported include:

Buy One & Help Light Up The World.

Most of us take light for granted. We have to remind ourselves to turn the lights off. When dusk comes, we walk over and flip a switch and light illuminates our lives. While listening to NPR today I learned that the World Bank estimates that close to two billion people around the world don't have access to light. That means when the sun sets, they must sit in utter darkness. But a gentleman named Mark Bent has now invented the BoGo Light, a solar-powered flashlight to help in his quest to light up Africa and other poor nations around the world. When you purchase one of these bright beauties, another one, free of charge is sent to non-profit organizations and the donated are distributed to needy individuals and families in the developing world, and the impact of that gift radiates a positive impact on people in need, and our planet.

Do Good While You Shop!

"Do Good While You Shop" - 2Modern with help from Lucky Magazine committed to contributing 30% of proceeds from the sale of the Agnes & Hoss Eucalyptus Pillow to the American Heart Association.

OKAY Studio: A Fabulous New Design Collective

I was recently compiling a master list of London Design Links with an emphasis on furniture and interior design when I came upon one of the freshest design collectives I've seen in weeks. The Collective is called OKAY Studio. There are seven members in the collective all of which took the Royal College of Arts Design Course taught by Ron Arad. The range of objects which the collective invests their time in is no less than miraculous.

For example, Hiroko Shiratori's "unusual objects from Japan" collection include items he made for a fictitious history where fantastical scenarios were concocted and products were made to respond to those fictions. One object in particular that struck my fancy was his "Handless Barber's Tools" which I've included below.

Someone that may be more familiar to the design geeks out there and also a member of the collective is Jorre Van Ast. His work derives beauty not as much from the narrative structure used to derive the product but from his uncanny sense of creating hyper-useful products. He is, in other words, a "why didn't I think of that?" kind of designer. Probably his most talked about houseware design is the clampology collection. This is a collection of cleverly tweaked simple machines that do functions that always needed to be done but you were never aware. One of my favorites in the bookshelf clamps which I show below.

This mentions two of the seven in the collective, but the work gets even more diverse and tangential from there. I highly recommend a look if you're into what the forefront of conceptual design holds.