The wait is over: The City of New York recently announced the first annual full-fledged New York design celebration from May 10–21, 2013. NYCxDesign (pronounced New York by Design) will be a citywide festival spanning the five boroughs and all disciplines of design (including industrial, furniture, fashion, graphic, film etc). NYCxDesign could very well become the biggest celebration of design in the world.
The NYCxDesign Steering Committee is comprised of a stacked line-up, boasting some of the most notable members of the NYC design community—not only designers and media (including our own Allan Chochinov), but also curators, educators, entrepreneurs, retailers and more. With planning committee spanning so many diverse fields—NYC Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson and MoMA's Paola Antonelli, to name just a few—the inaugaral NYCxDesign has massive support from all corners of the design community.
Every May for the past 24 years, designers, students and design enthusiasts flock to the Javitz Center in NYC for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair. While ICFF serves as the must-see mecca for new ideas and conversations about the state of furniture and industrial design, it is high time for NYC to go ahead and brand an all-inclusive design festival. In addition to many of the yearly exhibitors and shows in past NY Design Weeks, a host of new venues and designers will be added to the roster in the 12-day event.
Great citywide support: check. Awesome exhibitions, shows and events from all corners of the globe and design field: check. But how does one go about creating a brand identity for an event that encompasses one of the largest and most diverse design communities in the world? The Steering Committee for the 2013 NYCxDesign looked to Base Design to brand a design tribe that is 40,000+ strong. According to lead Willy Wong:
Speaker Quinn and the NYCxDESIGN Steering Committee understood that the celebration's identity needed to showcase individual designers, firms, schools and institutions, embrace the diversity of their practices across disciplines and throughout the City. Base Design's emphasis on the 'X' nailed the brief beautifully. They created an open system with an inclusive symbol that stands for location, expression, identification, examination, experimentation, intersection, iteration, variation, amplification and excellence.
Over the course of three posts, we take a look at the highlights of the second edition of the Munich Creative Business Week (MCBW), which took place from February 16–24, 2013.
Colorful "Midgets" by Bastian Müller at the downtown Filser & Gräf gallery
Historical wardrobe area transformed into exhibition displays
Lifting the "Blackbraid" bicycle with a single finger
At the Alte Kongresshalle, we found a collection of exhibitions and company presentations. One of the highlights was meeting the lightest bicycle in the world. Manuel Ostner from PG explained how they developed a new procedure to produce braided carbon frames with Munich Composites resulting in the "Blackbraid" bicycle that weighs less than 5 kg, all (hand)made in Germany. [Ed. Note: Designer Jacob Haim also used this manufacturing process, as seen in our exclusive look at the RaceBraid bicycle from last November.]
The recent Ecodesign exhibition received no fewer than 140 entries but only a handful of them made it to the exhibition in Munich. Luckily, poster presentations explained the 14 winning products in detail (which can be seen here). Nevertheless we hope that this year's Ecodesign competition features more tangible entries. More information about the competition is available at the Bundespreis Ecodesign website (in German).
Welcome words by Ralph Wiegmann (iF design's Managing Director) at the reception.
Gianluca Armento (Brand Director of Cassina) explaining the importance of their archive
Over the course of three posts, we take a look at the highlights of the second edition of the Munich Creative Business Week (MCBW), which took place from February 16–24, 2013.
"Die Neue Sammlung," an impressive museum run by the Free State of Bavaria, houses the largest collection of industrial and product designs in the world. We found it difficult to concentrate on curator Corinna Rösner's introductory remarks about the museum as we walked by amazing products that most of us only know from design history classes. During our 20-minute walk, it felt like we are traveling through time, passing by Gerrit Rietveld's chairs, Richard Sapper's TV and AIBO dogs. Suddenly, we found ourselves in front of a huge paternoster system featuring the "secret archive of Cassina" with a dozen items from the Italian manufacturer, which has been archiving products and prototypes since the 1930s. Gianluca Armento (Brand Director of Cassina) elaborated on the importance of an archive and how it can help brand management. As a company, you need to keep track of your history in order to make strategies for the future.
The "Refuge Tonneau" reconstructed by Cassina
Basic kitchen inside the Refuge Tonneau
The exhibition also features the so-called "Refuge Tonneau," designed by Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret in 1938, during the threatening early years of World War II. The space-shuttle like mountain shelter has been reconstructed by Cassina for the exhibition to demonstrate that design is not only about objects but also about vision and ideas.
Over the course of three posts, we will take a look at the highlights of the second edition of the Munich Creative Business Week (MCBW), which happened from February 16–24, 2013.
The R32, BMW's first motorcycle
BMW Museum
BMW clay model
Our time in Munich kicked off with a guided tour through the BMW museum, led by designer Antonia Cecchetti, who passionately explained how the brand started making motorcycles and engines in 1917 and expanded throughout the years without loosing its identity. The first motorcycles used to be available in only in black with white stripes, followed by a color alternative of "white with black stripes." Today, the brand (and its colors) have expanded enormously without compromising its signature design elements, such as the iconic round headlights and kidney-shaped air intakes. We were lucky to have Antonia guide us, being a great BMW fan. We enjoyed it when she told us how the new BMW7 tail lights makes her heart beat faster.
One of the highlights at the museum is the kinetic sculpture, which was used in an advertisement for the BMW 5 series:
Text by Rachel Carvosso; images courtesy of mizmiz design
Kamidana is a product that you're unlikely to find at design shows outside of Japan. The word "kami" means god in Japanese and a "Kamidana" literally translates as "god shelf." Kamidana are traditional miniature Shinto altars found in some Japanese households that worship a specific Shinto god. The Kamidana (designed by mizmiz design) on exhibit at Tokyo Designers Week is a stylish, compact and thoroughly modern take on these miniature altars.
Referencing Japan's history and Shinto religion, the front of the tabletop object features a carving of te Ise Shrine in Mie prefecture, one of the holiest Shinto shrines in Japan. The Kamidana can be used as a stylish, handy container to keep prayer papers (believed to contain some of the god's power) collected from visits to shrines.
The cedar wood is sourced from Iwaki City in Fukushima Prefecture, where the dedicated woodcraft team, moconoco, is based. Some of the design features are not immediately obvious to a non-Japanese observer—I asked what the hole in the front of it was for and was told that the small rectangle is necessary to allow the "power to come out."
We were back in Beijing for the 2nd annual Beijing Design Week festivities. It was exciting to engage in the conversations surrounding the future of design and craft in a country with over 5000 years of craft history and a reputation of being the manufacturing capital for the world.
Although this year's events did not include the Triennial at the National Museum, the addition of the Caochangdi Arts District and a more diverse showing from the larger design community generated much excitement for this year's events. Organized by BAO Atelier's Naihan Li and Beatrice Leanza, the bulk of the exhibitions took place in the red-bricked galleries designed by Ai Weiwei.
Traditional materials and craft practices were merged with contemporary design aesthetics, most popularly in displays of porcelain objects, reinterpretations of everyday Chinese objects and archetypes. The work itself looked towards a future where Designed in China becomes more ubiquitous than Made in China.
Text by Rachel Carvosso; images courtesy of Yusuke Yamamoto
Tucked away in the Architecture section, I discovered Yusuke Yamamoto and his "Moveable Movie Theater" project. Yamamoto, an architect, started this independent project after volunteering in the area ravaged by the earthquake and tsunami last year. Yamamoto told me many survivors he came across would express the simple desire to go see a movie—impossible to do when all the movie theaters in the region have been destroyed. While discussing the revitalization of the region's film industry with a professor of film at Tohoku University, Yamamoto came up with the design for his theater.
Current laws prohibit the building of certain permanent structures in the earthquake and tsunami ravaged region, but Yamamoto's moveable movie theater turns the problem into a design feature. The theater's rectangular structure is designed to allow easy transportation on one truck, with each level sitting within each other, like a Russian doll. Stretching out like an accordion when in use, the design (currently in a prototype production phase) will feature wood sourced from the local region. The current design fits about 30 people inside, and also features bookshelves along the sides, to double as a movable library.
A giant, rainbow-colored "Hello Design" welcomes you at the entrance to this year's Tokyo Designers Week, which runs through Monday, November 5, at the Meiji Jingu Gaien in Tokyo's Shibuya district. This year the two themes are "House" and "Play" and there's plenty to see.
Exhibitors' booths are packed and with lots of small hidden pockets of space, it's hard to feel that you have seen everything. True to the "Play" theme, you can contribute to a sticker mural, draw on walls, build wooden block towers and climb into and over some exhibits. For a more techy form of play, the DESIGN NEXT area features a whole row of booths dedicated to digital devices—you can even register to "like" items by physically touching them with your Suica / Pasmo (Tokyo's metro cards).
One of the great things about TDW is the opportunity it creates for smaller, independent designers to exhibit and get an audience. One that caught my attention was Shinn Asano, who originally trained as a graphic designer in the US before returning to work in Japan. Asano's "Sen" is a series of 6 pieces of furniture inspired by traditional Japanese crafts.
Asano explained to me why he decided to move to interior design:
I realized that a lot of the things I was working with were in two-dimensional space—lines, negative space, etc.—I wanted to work with in three dimensions. Japanese craft is known for its high quality and attention to detail and I am interested in combining new materials with forms taken from crafts such as Japanese weaving.
All these pieces are based on the concept of the intersection of planes, lines that work in 2-D or 3-D. For example "Kagome" the name of my stool, is both a pattern used in basket weaving and a shape used in Shinto shrines. The word "kage" given to the small circular table means "shadow" and I have incorporated these ideas into the way the light works with the furniture. I chose red because for me it is a powerful color with a long history in Japan."
Through a solid three years of experimentation and tinkering, Yusuke Hayashi and Yoko Yasunishi of Drill Design have arrived at "Paper-Wood" which is now sold as a material used by a range of different designers and companies to make everyday objects (furniture, stationary, garden and kitchen utensils).
According to Yoko, the initial combination they came up with used acrylic and wood but the latest series (four and five) use paper and basswood. Since the colors aren't painted on, the material always retains its bright colors, even when it wears down. When I asked what kind of paper they use, I was quietly told it's a 'company secret.'
"...the first two years we experimented in workshops to find out what materials, colors and combinations worked best... we wanted to explore the concept of adding things to wood to make new kinds of 'layer cake' materials," explains Yoko. Look closely at a slice of Paper-Wood and you can clearly see the "layer cake" she's talking about—each layer alternates between, well, paper and wood.
DesignTide Tokyo, held again this year at the Tokyo Midtown, is a little oasis of intimate calm in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the Roppongi district. The exhibition hall is big enough to make the experience relaxing in a city where large spaces are at a premium.
One of the designs that immediately caught my eye was the black lacquer lamp by Kenke Design that was established this year. It is the brainchild of Kensuke Yamaguchi, a designer with a background in art history, which makes sense when viewing the "Koshirae" light he's exhibiting. The word Koshirae refers to the mountings of Japanese swords that were traditionally covered in multiple coatings of lacquer.
Yamaguchi left the interior solutions company Ilya to study the traditional Japanese lacquer craft technique of "Urushi Nuri" in Kyoto, where he was selected for the Kyoto Design awards earlier this year. His small company combines the best of Japanese design elements: simplicity, craftsmanship and functionality.
The lamp unit is created using the lacquer technique 'Honkataji-roiro' leaving its surface a perfectly smooth, shiny black. The body of the lamp is also about the same width as a sword and sits on a choice of two possible bases allowing for both a horizontal or vertical mounting. At under a meter long (77cm), it's just the right size to be used as a floor or table lamp.
Another noteworthy detail is the lamp's internal switchless touch system, which allows the lamp to be turned off by lifting the entire body off of the stand (there's a regular on/off switch on the cord as well). The functional elements are largely hidden leaving a product that hints at its own functionality whilst remaining disarmingly abstract and simply executed.
Top: New York City myThread Installation by Jenny Sabin. Bottom: Beijing Design Week Feather Pavilion by Arthur Huang
Coming off the success of their Flyknit collection, Nike has launched the Nike Flyknit Collective: an architectural initiative challenging a curated group of designers, artists and architects to create installations based on the core features of the collection—performance, lightness, formfitting and sustainability.
We had an opportunity to see 2 of the installations in person over the past few weeks and although the installations were quite different, it was interesting to follow the path of practitioners separated by geography and disciplines as they explored the way that yarn can be employed to create engaging structural experiences.
Jenny Sabin installing the myThread Pavilion
Philadelphia-based architectural designer Jenny Sabin's work explores the intersection of architecture, biology, craft, technology and generative design.
Hong Kong-based design gallery, ILIVETOMORROW, presented a vibrant exhibition with a focus on ceramics during Beijing Design Week. The gallery, established in 2010 by French designer and architect Nicola Borg-Pisani, represents a diverse roster of designers in the Asian market.
Jesse McLin and Julie Progin's Fragment(s) collection developed from their trips to the Chinese porcelain capital of Jingdezhen. For those unfamiliar, the city has been the center of porcelain production for over 1700 years. While visiting Jingdezhen, McLin and Progin noticed discarded molds and began salvaging them. After reconstituting the molds, they were able to create new vessels from these fragments, "each piece is different, each piece contains a memory," explained Progin.
The Viennese design group breadedEscalope (Sascha Mikel, Martin Schnabl und Michael Tatschl) transformed the entrance area of the Vienna outpost of Stilwerk into a temporary workshop in order to turn 'misfits' of the THONET chair production into make-shift, one-off chair designs. For those who might not be familiar, Stilwerk is a design retailer that houses 160 shops and over 1000 brands across their four locations—Hamburg, Berlin, Düsseldorf and Vienna.
Members of the public were encouraged to join in and build their own Thonet chair with the help of a few (power) tools, cable binders, glue, screws and assisted by the designers.
The cooperation does not work on the basis of a briefing but on the freedom of communicating an analysis of the form, material, tradition and processes involved in inventing a product.
The popularity of this workshop, conducted during Vienna Design Week, manifested in the outcome of more than 50 chairs, which could be taken home by their makers. Check out the video showing most pieces as well as breadedEscalope talking about their project in collaboration with Thonet.
Recent Beijing transplant Henny van Nistelrooy presented a selection of his textile work at this year's Beijing Design Week. Exploring the intersection of craft and industry van Nistelrooy's work centers on the process of creating (and deconstructing) textiles. Although he studied Industrial Design, the Dutch designer found himself drawn to textile design—first learning on the hand loom and later working with an industrial weaving process.
Fabricate 1 Lampshade
On display is van Nistelrooy's screen and daybed he created with the Scottish textile brand Bute, as well as an interesting lamp shade that challenges the idea of mass-production. Using computer-generated design and industrial weaving, he created bolts of lamp shades that are then hand-assembled into pendant lighting.
The push and pull of the design poles of craft and industry continue to enchant designers young and old. This year's Beijing Design Week theme of "Craft" invited Chinese designers to delve into the cultural history of object design in the country while taking advantage of the manufacturing prowess of China today. Although we didn't see a wide-reaching rigor in the design practice on exhibit, it was great to get a glance into future possibilities for design in China.
This past week, in a 10,000 square-foot salvage warehouse, DesignPhiladelphia hosted an evening of design exhibitions, fashion showcases, and outdoor revelry to kick off the eighth year of this nationally recognized design festival. This citywide festival features five days of non-stop design programming showcasing the work of over 400 designers and creative thinkers in more than 120 public events.
Set on the fringe of Philadelphia's Northern Liberties neighborhood at Provenance Architecturals, guests were treated to a cocktail party amid the many treasures one can find in an architectural salvage shop—Corinthian columns, retro globes, Victorian streetlamps, modern furniture and home decor, monumental church stained glass, slate slabs, stacks of reclaimed wood, 19th-century milling tools and more.
Unlike many design festivals around the world, DesignPhiladelphia aims to demystify design for the general public and make it experiential. They're focused on educating the public—beyond the professional design community—about the importance of good design, and the way design effects our daily lives. As Hilary Jay, Founding Director of DesignPhiladelphia, stated in her opening remarks Wednesday evening, they "envision a future where innovative design is strongly associated with Philadelphia's story, beyond the lore of soft pretzels, cheesesteaks, Rocky movies, and the Liberty Bell."
Although 'zines have been a popular format for artists, writers and provocateurs since the '70s, in China, an independent arts press is a relatively new phenomenon. Welcoming visitors at The Factory in the Dashilar hutong design district was a collection of over 100 Chinese zines on display. The exhibition, PAPER INSTINCT, takes an interesting look at the bubbling DIY youth culture in China.
Art and literature chapbooks were displayed side-by-side with more polished lifestyle catalogs. I particularly liked the illustration and comic books, although the photography books have more cache in a multi-lingual context.
Within the Passionswege ("pilgrimage ways") craft and design project of Vienna Design Week, Vienna-based designer Valentin Vodev was asked to collaborate with J. L. Lobmeyr, the renowned Viennese glassware manufacturer, now run by the sixth generation.
Vodev developed a series of pictograms to reveal "secret" information about the long-standing Lobmeyr product portfolio—information about the glassware that is never communicated to the buyer, yet passed on verbally from generation to generation to distributors and within the company.
These inside stories are based on technical as well as socio-cultural properties that have been discovered over the past 150 years of the Lobmeyr business. Vodev has brought these attributes to the surface to make them visible. Even though the unobtrusive symbol engravings are not clearly marked at first sight, the delight of discovering them at a second glance is part of the experience when looking through the Lobmeyr glasses.
For one of the Passionswege projects of Vienna Design Week, London-based designer Mathias Hahn was assigned to work with Staud's, a Viennese producer of fine vegetable and fruit preserves.
Hahn created an intriguing installation in which he approached the world of Staud's by poetically addressing color, material and the meaning of preserving for winter time. Each of the various vessels on display seemed to capture all the good stuff that summer has to offer; almost like a time capsule, recallable during a long, cold winter.
Photography by Sam Dunne & Perrin Drumm for Core77
Every year the London Design Festival grows in scale and this year was no exception—celebrating it's tenth anniversary—the city was overrun with hundreds of exhibitions, events, installations, and workshops. Designjunction was hands-down one of the most popular destinations packed with some really great work presented in an awesome industrial setting.
One recurring theme this year was the use of wood in conjunction with metals like copper and bronze, and there was an overwhelming amount of lighting concepts proportional to other furnishing items. A big digital presence was felt with the V&A Prism, Philips Lighting, BE Open Sound Portal, Google Web Labs, and Nokia getting in on the action at Designjunction.
The presentation of Lee Broom's Crystal Bulb Shop was incredible and also of note was a little townhouse in the Brompton Design District showcasing new designs from some really talented and experimental young designers. Catch all the highlights in our gallery and checkout more LDF goodness in the links below.
Mostlikely, a Viennese design collective, reproduced the Vienna Basilisk during Vienna Design Week. According to a Viennese legend from the 13th century, this mythological creature comes to life "when a rooster lays an egg which is hatched by a toad, and the offspring is reared by a snake". It was eventually forced to explode by being confronted with its own ugliness in a mirror that was held up in front of it by a brave young man.
Mostlikely rebuilt the Basilisk as a five metres tall paper structure—constructed from 360 single pieces, consisting of 3,780 different two-dimensional paper shapes, assembled with 22,680 joints. In order to produce this high number of technically complex forms rapidly themselves, the designers used low polygon modeling. This 3D computer technology, usually implemented for filmic visual effects, was put into manifestation with what they refer to as "low tech prototyping".
The 360 individual components were for sale at the finissage, the exhibition closing, to find a new life as lamp or whatever other function a buyer can imagine for their very own paper monster puzzle piece.
Industrial design graduate Lena Goldsteiner is currently showcasing her graduation project "Theatre of Destruction" during this year's Vienna Design Week. In the "Gschwandtner" location—a disused all-purpose-hall from the 19th century—she installed the complete set up to perform her project, which is all "about repair, destruction and reproduction".
Visitors are invited to bring apparently worthless and broken household devices, so they can be given a new life. Various squeezers and shredders on site encourage and enable people to chop up and fragment discarded plastic parts. These shards could then be re-processed into a plastic wire to feed a 3D printer, with which the new part, necessary to fix the broken household device, could be printed.
I am writing "could," as the machine for transforming various types of plastics into spools of plastic filament for 3D printers is not quite put into existence yet. But thanks to the Kickstarted project Filabot it will be soon.
An unusual liaison of material and function: pan and brush made from horn and pig hair by bespoke craftsmen.
The concept of the Passionswege ("pilgrimage ways") program—an integral part of Vienna Design Week—is to connect designers with local Viennese producers and businesses in order to enforce the exchange of expertise, the preservation and further development of knowledge and the virtuosity in craftsmanship and manufacturing.
The brush manufacturer Norbert Meier is one of the last of his trade (here holding up an untreated buffalo horn from Thomas Petz, the last Viennese producer of horn ware).
This particular Passionswege project deals with the work of two handicrafts that hardly exist anymore: the brush manufacturer Norbert Meier is one of the last of his trade still possessing a master craftsman's diploma. In contrast, Thomas Petz, only 26 years of age, is the last Viennese producer of horn ware.
An intriguing and incredibly soft make-up powder brush was one of the results of this project.
Polish-born designer, curator, scenographer and design blogger Matylda Krzykowski was invited to work with both manufactories to design a series of products to be produced with these two handicrafts that are at the brink of disappearance.
The hair for the brushes is imported from China. It used to be locally sourced—until literally over night China dropped the prices for the material to a fraction of the local price, which put all local businesses out of business.
The outcome are timeless pieces that compel through their formal simplicity. Krzykowski kept the horn as much as possible in its naturally grown shape, only treated the surface to reveal the intrinsic beauty of the material. The fascination lies in experiencing how well these natural shapes work—not only aesthetically, but also ergonomically and functionally.
Ana Berlin, the VDW Lady of Press, enjoying the softness of the horn powder brush.
The 2012 edition of Interieur—the European Design Biennale taking place in Kortrijk, Belgium, October 20–28—is bound to become one of the top global design destinations this year.
Curator and Interieur President Lowie Vermeersch (former head of design at Pininfarina and now CEO of the Turin-based GranStudio), set out to reconnect with Interieur's avant-garde roots through a selection of 300 carefully picked international exhibitors and an extensive cultural program, 'Future Primitives' installations, custom-designed bars and a pop-up 'bistro.'
Crucial this year is the expansion beyond the Xpo fairgrounds, into the city center and particularly the Buda Island.
Together these expanded locations will establish a new DesignCity with a continuum of lanes, diagonals, piazzas and unexpected places where installations, actions and encounters unfold.
Seven specially commissioned Future Primitives project rooms by Nendo (JP), Troika (UK), Makkink & Bey (NL), David Bowen (US), Ross Lovegrove (UK), Greg Lynn (US) and Muller Van Severen (BE), will offer different investigations into our future living environment.
Tucked away in a nondiscript hutong in Beijing's historic Dongcheng District is WUHAO, Isabelle Pascal's design platform. WUHAO, number five, is a curated retail experience mixing fashion, furniture, tableware and accessories. Beyond taking in the unique stone and traditional garden setting, stepping through the door of this traditional courthouse is a journey into the exceptionally enthusiastic vision of Pascal and her team. After visiting China in 2002, Pascal was "immediately captivated by the country's energy" and relocated to Beijing in 2009 to develop the framework for WUHAO. Today, she represents a number of emerging Chinese designers—including Core77 faves Naihan Li and Pinwu Studio—and has become a global champion for their innovative design.
The newest designer in Pascal's stable is 21-year-old Mian Wu, a recent Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA) graduate. Her graduation project, Start from a Ring, is the centerpiece of WUHAO's fall experience. Wu's project examines the process of mass jewelry production and challenges ideas of perfection vs. defective.
In industrial jewelry manufacturing, a silicon mold and wax injection machine produce mass standard wax copies which will then, in turn, be cast using metal into jewelry. The process produces wax defects (see above)—typically these are just reconstituted and injected again. Wu creates beauty from these iterations.
Field Guide is a loose collective of designers, artists, technologists, musicians and journalists engaged with projects that focus on "the materiality of things that are immaterial, such as electricity, sound, light, emotions and the Internet." Often times these projects are ongoing works in progress or open-ended experiments that are, admittedly, sometimes a bit too conceptual to fully understand. Still, their showroom at Brompton Design District during London Design Festival was set up a like science fair with exciting, interactive gadgetry and liquid-filled glass vials that invited visitors to engage with the different projects and try them out for themselves to get a better sense of their intentions.
The most accessible project is The Happiness Machine, a device that randomly collects happy or sad Tweets and blog posts and prints them out on a thermal paper feed that runs like a ticker tape machine. Created by Brendan Dawes, a digital artist and maker, the paper printed by The Happiness Machine is designed to remind us that behind every Twitter name or Tumblr account is a real person whom we've never met, and that the Internet "isn't a network of machines but a network of people."
The Happiness Machine is connected to the web via an Arduino compatible micro controller called a Nanode, which has a built-in Ethernet connection so it can connect to the Internet without any other accessories. Two capacitive touch buttons created using Bare Conductive's Bare Paint trigger the Nanode to retrieve either happy or sad thoughts from Jonathan Harris's crowd sourced emotional collection website, wefeelfine.org.
"The future of connected objects isn't just about screens," Dawes said. "In many ways paper is actually less of a throwaway than the display of pixels. Combine paper with a network such as the Internet and you have a lightweight, flexible, connected 'display' that you can carry anywhere, share, keep, scribble or even reuse."
See more of the Field Guide projects or submit your own.
We don't know if Viennese apartments are even smaller than those in New York, but the city's latest export seems to be made especially for cramped city dwellers. The Magic Wall, shown at 100% Design during London Design Festival, is a system of magnetic panels that you affix to the walls in your kitchen, garage, closet, storage room, etc.—wherever you need to clear out a little extra space—and use to hold metal objects like pots, pans or knives, or configure with a line of magnetized accessories like shelves, to organize books, cooking ingredients, desk items—even potted plants.
Wood panels come in mahogany, acacia, walnut and oak, the laminate is available in 80 color options and the terrazzo comes in 12 colors. Though the wood is more in line with our tastes, the process for magnetizing terrazzo has us impressed. According to the company, "Terrazzo consists of a traditional and ancient material originating from several thousand years ago. Over several labor intensive production stages the liquid terrazzo compound is aggregated by hand with extraordinarily strong magnets to form a Magic Wall. At our Vienna premises we produce Terrazzo by mixing Dolomite sand together with white cement and pure precious color pigments."
Available in five sizes (small, long, medium, large and big) in either wood, laminate or terrazzo, it's easy to find a configuration for your space. The panels are delivered with the necessary fittings, and all you need to do is drill four holes in the wall. See more configurations and color options at Magic Wall.
CAMPANA BROTHERS: CONCEPTS
NY DESIGN WEEK 2013 - WANTED DESIGN
NY DESIGN WEEK 2013 - SATELLITE SHOWS
NY DESIGN WEEK 2013 - ICFF
Colorful "Midgets" by Bastian Müller at the downtown Filser & Gräf gallery
Historical wardrobe area transformed into exhibition displays
Lifting the "Blackbraid" bicycle with a single finger
Central exhibition at the Alte Kongresshalle
Sweaters made of recycled felt by the 
Welcome words by Ralph Wiegmann (iF design's Managing Director) at the reception.
Gianluca Armento (Brand Director of Cassina) explaining the importance of their archive
The "Refuge Tonneau" reconstructed by Cassina
Basic kitchen inside the Refuge Tonneau
The R32, BMW's first motorcycle
BMW Museum
BMW clay model
Text by Rachel Carvosso; images courtesy of mizmiz design
Text by Rachel Carvosso; images courtesy of Yusuke Yamamoto
Text & photos by Rachel Carvosso
Text by Rachel Carvosso; photos by Junya Hirokawa
Text by Rachel Carvosso; photos by Junya Hirokawa
Top: New York City myThread Installation by Jenny Sabin. 
Jenny Sabin installing the myThread Pavilion
Xiaodong's Raindrop bowls and Reeds
Extract Daybed, Woolen Textiles from Bute
Fabricate 1 Lampshade
An unusual liaison of material and function: pan and brush made from horn and pig hair by bespoke craftsmen.
The brush manufacturer Norbert Meier is one of the last of his trade (here holding up an untreated buffalo horn from Thomas Petz, the last Viennese producer of horn ware).
An intriguing and incredibly soft make-up powder brush was one of the results of this project.
The hair for the brushes is imported from China. It used to be locally sourced—until literally over night China dropped the prices for the material to a fraction of the local price, which put all local businesses out of business.
Ana Berlin, the VDW Lady of Press, enjoying the softness of the horn powder brush.
