2Modern Design Talk - Modern Furniture & Design Blog

Traffic flows into Dubai

The Dubai design scene is booming, much like everything else here, and with the new opening of Traffic Gallery in the Al Barsha area of Dubai, the buzz from all the excitement is deafening. Not only are they having a FAB sale during May (first come first serve basis), with designers such as Droog, Magis and Tse & Tse being represented, but they have these awesome items from the Campana Brothers.

Warning: these are almost too cool.

Fernando and Humberto Campana are inspired by South American street life and successfully create vibrant, energetic & colorful unique pieces from found objects such as scraps of wood and fabric off-cuts. Coming from Brazil, one with a degree in law, the other with a degree in architecture, these brothers are establishing worldwide presence from Boston, USA to now, the UAE.

...and one for the kiddies!!!

Modern Outdoor

Great new Modern Outdoor lounge, the Luma Adjustable Chaise Lounge! Comfortable, stylish, and modern; this great lounge fits right in with the Luma Club Chair and Sofa. Shown here with the Lounge Cushion Set (sold separately).

Eco-Friendly Paint Hues

Like everyone else these days, I am on an eco-conscious, reduce my carbon footprint, path.  When I saw these paints listed in Readymade Magazine's Digital Sampler Edition, I just had to share.  All of the paint hues are low voc paints (that's low volatile organic compounds) for keeping your internal spaces environmentally friendly

 

You can get clearer images with costs per gallon and websites from ReadyMade's online edition article (just go to the contents page, click on Re View, and go through each page until you get to the one on paints...you'll enjoy the ride).

I first read about ReadyMade going digital from Sustainablog, then visited because I am mad for ReadyMade anyway and I love this thing of magazines having full digital editions online.  Turns out if you subscribe to their online edition, Nau, Inc. that other infamous sustainable (yet fashionable) outdoor apparel company automatically donates 5% of the suscription price to the Offset portfolio of Nau's partner organization, Climate Trust.

So, does that mean if I paint my walls with one of these Low Voc Paints, that I can then buy into these gorgeous chairs by Stephano Giovannoni for Magis? Although, the polycarbonate was conceived for injection molding without gases.

Check out Climate Trust's site to tell you about carbon offsets and what they can do to help us reduce our carbon footprint....but really for me to answer the above question, I need to go here.

A little "Design" joke...

Via Criterion.

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Design from Argentina

If you happen to be in Buenos Aires, Puro Diseño is a great place to shop for Argentine design objects. Puro Diseño believes in the local design since the year 2000, at first organizing a design fair. And since 2002 has a shop at the Buenos Aires Design, located in Recoleta, a famous and trendy neighbourhood in the Argentine capital city.

At the shop, you can find a variety of products such as furniture pieces, lamps and fashion accessories, designed by more than 100 Argentinian designers.

Orange22

2Modern introduces a new vendor that is both environmentally friendly and socially conscious! Each piece from Orange22's Botanist series starts with a single piece of aluminum, which is precisely cut, bent, and faced with either a high impact powder coat, such as the Botanist Flora Bench, or an epoxy coated real wood veneer, as shown here in the Botanist Natural Cocktail. For their pink items, such as the Botanist Flora Pink End Table or the Botanist Flow Pink Bench, Orange22 donates $25.00 of each sale to go to breast cancer awareness, research, and treatment.

Made on cardboard

This cheap material is now very popular in design.  It have many advantages: is very light, sufficiently strong to resist the human weight (if the shape is well designed, like these examples), and the best of all... is biodegradable, 100% eco-friendly.  Off course, don't use this chairs of cardboard in your back yard, near to the pool... or under the rain.  But inside of your house, with a good care of it, this beauties will last  many years.

The top chair is call Papton Chair, a creation of fuchs+funke design studio.  The next one, is a design classic of 1968 by Otto Raacke, now made on cardboard.   

If you want something more in tune with children, these seems to be great options.  David Graas's FYS junior chair (Finish your self) or the amazing cardboard safari.  A great way to collect animals at home without real hunting.

   

Are you ready to replace your furniture for a cardboard one?

The Only Sofa You Ever Need to Buy

The Jean-Michel Frank sofa. You might not be familiar with the name, but you are familiar with the look. It is everywhere. It is classic and clean and works with most modern (after 1930) interior design. If you own this shape sofa, it will fit in almost anywhere, though it might not follow the other lines in your furniture designs, it will not interfere, stand out too much, or compete. It possesses straight sides; is not too puffy, and depending on the chosen upholstery, also not too unusual.

Jean Michel Frank [1895-1941] was born near the end of the 19th century. Consider what furniture movements were around at that time and you can see how this shape would have been considered highly unusual to some or extremely pedestrian to others.
     

The proof of this design as a classic style and the fact that it plays well with others is that almost every major furniture retailer has a similar style in their core collection, such as:

Room & Board: Dean, runner ups: Essex, Winston

Crate and Barrel: Axis, runner ups: Lombard, Cameron

Restoration Hardware: Austin

Pottery Barn: PB Square

Macy's (as close as it gets) Corona

IKEA (close but not it) Karlstad

DWR: (close) Portula

For more on Jean-Michel:

Jean Michel Frank: The Strange and Subtle Luxury of the Parisian Haute-Monde in the Art Deco Period, by Pierre Emmanuel Martin-Vivier, $64
Architectural Digest Design Legends: Jean-Michel Frank
Architonic: Products 

Note: Jean-Michel never licensed his designs. The only way someone can guarantee that they have one of his pieces is if it can be documented that it was a part of an interiors he designed for a client's home. 

Past Perfect

Thank goodness the concept of the throwback is a big hit with pop culture. Now, not only is everything old new again, but it's way cooler than it ever was in its heyday. This national nostalgic tryst is especially good for hoarders who don’t have to go out and repay for the privilege of reusing stuff they kept from back in the day. It’s also good for the soul and a good reason to commercially reintroduce your father’s favorite childhood chair. And that’s just what good son and design director of Project Import Export (PIE) did. Based on his dad's description, he developed PIE’s Candy Collection weave chairs. They're constructed with the same materials and shapes as the originals, but with a modern edge and in eye-catching colors. The chairs' various weaves are fresh and captivating and dad, of course, is so very proud.

I've seen a Ghost, and it's fantastic!

Finally, the Milan Salone del Mobile has come around again, and with it brings all the fantastical chairs from design houses all over the world. One chair that has received enormous buzz (with good reason) is the Ghost Chair by Drift, a Dutch Design Collective.

The chair as you can see is the acrylic equivalent of the shroud of Turin. The shroud, as you may know, is a wispy and worn piece of cloth that has an ethereal, dreamy head and body of Christ soiled onto the cloth. The effect is a spooky artifact that if you look at just right can raise the hair clear off your neck.

The Ghost Chair is that powerful. At first glance, it looks like one large chunk of clear acrylic that needs to be cleaned. Then, you realize there is something inside. Something light and airy, almost alive. The shape is amorphous and simultaneously perfectly structured. You almost don't want to sit on it for fear that it will absorb into your body and touch your soul. But what else would you do with a chair?