Despoke

These bottle tops were created by Korean industrial designer Junggi Sung as part of a collection named ‘Positive Piece’. The collection aims to encourage viewers to think more deeply about the fundamental elements we take for granted in our daily lives such as air water, wind and earth.

The top of Sung’s ‘Uncomfortale Bottle’ imitates the shape of a conventional water tap and was designed in order to make people think more carefully about how they use tap water. Sung explains; “Recently, drinking water out of PET bottles has become the norm…yet we can still easily drink water out of the tap. This design aims to inspire us to be more cost and energy-efficient and also to take simple actions for our environment. This is a positive piece.”

Find out more at www.junggisung.com

One of the most popular hot spots at this year’s 100% Design exhibition has got to be the Re-Loved Lounge, a communal cafe space for guests to take a break from the busy exhibition trail. Far from simply being a dining area, the Re-Loved Lounge is an interactive exhibition space showcasing vibrant pieces of work by a selection of African and African-Caribbean designers.

The lounge was commissioned as part of the African & African-Caribbean Design Diaspora, a festival of events taking place as part of London Design Week. The Festival is a celebration of diversity, highlighting creative talent within the African and African-Caribbean community in the UK. As Clemens Hackl, Creative Director at AACDD puts it; “There is such an incredible array of creative talent within the black community…Let’s see it!”

The Re-Loved Lounge is just one of several AACDD exhibitions on display over the course of the festival. The brief for the designers was to ‘re-love’ and ‘up-cycle’ discarded furniture, transforming it once again into desirable objects for the home. These recycled works take on African and African-Caribbean design inspiration in fabrics, colour schemes and accessories and in their resulting beauty, challenge the ethos of our throw-away consumer culture.

Rather than showcasing these pieces in the sterility of an exhibition stand where they would become spectator pieces, curators of the space were keen to put together an exhibition that allows guests to interact with the work, to touch, feel and utilise the pieces. Laurence Kanza, who’s own work makes up parts of the collection explained; “these pieces are vibrant and colourful and it makes sense that they should be part of a living space”. These ‘vibrant’ colours and patterns are reflective of the warm and joyful culture that inspired them, resulting in one of the most inviting areas of the exhibition.

Designers whose work makes up the Re-Love Lounge include Laurence Kanza (La Petite Congolaise) and Emamoke Ukeleghe, whose daringly colourful fabric designs make a bold and beautiful statement throughout the space. The large central banqueting table was created by Alexander Mulligan using recycled wood and the string of hanging lights above the table were made using recycled wine bottles, designed by Taslim Martin.

Above: “Rescuing The Supermodel” by artist Adjani Okpu-Egbe, on display in the Re-Loved Lounge.

The energy consumers expend dancing can be used to power cellphones and even nightclubs, so why couldn’t the excess body heat of thousands of busy commuters be harnessed in a similar way? Jernhusen, a real estate company has devised a way to use just such an energy supply to warm an entire office building.
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Hillary Taymour a Brooklyn-based designer behind the brand Collina Strada, has produced this new handmade bike bag.
It is currently available at Free People and will also be available in NYC in February at Adeline Adeline bike shop in Tribeca.
Website:www.collinastrada.com/about/

Obsolescence is a crime from Vitsœ on Vimeo.

Vitsoe have produced a film attacking the practice of inbuilt or planned obsolescence. they say;

“The result is that you are forced into an everlasting cycle of repurchasing and repeating. For 50 years we have stood by our common sense approach of living better, with less, that lasts longer.
This single-minded, avowedly long-term, philosophy takes on physical form as our 606 Universal Shelving System – a product that is a flexible and faithful servant in the face of a turbulent world, one that minimises its inevitable impact on the world’s environment and resources by being useful for as long as possible.”

Join the debate www.facebook.com/vitsoe twitter.com/vitsoe

In September TEN PLAN was Highly Commended by the Judging panel for the Blueprint / 100% design Awards. This year the TEN designers produced downloadable plans enabling the public to make designs by the collective. We constructed a Flowerpot Furnace, smelted scrap aluminium that we had collected and cast components for an adjustable task lamp called C-Lamp.

VENTILITE
Ventilite received an Honourable Mention at the Surplus & Creativity Exhibition in Wellington, NZ. Ventilite coupled water jet cut aluminium legs with re-appropriated housing vents to produce a small industrial table lamp. The judges included Professor Jim Kaufman, Treasurer of the Industrial Designers Association of America.

www.northwards-design.co.uk/

MMXI UTILITA MANIFESTA – FIGHT POVERTY DESIGN COMPETITION

Announced as one of Ten Finalists in the Utilita Manifesta Fight Poverty Competition. The competition, supported by Iconograda and the AIAP, called for Industrial & Graphic Design entries that attempted to deal with the issues of sustainability and social change.

Fat Lip is a collaboration with ethical manufacturer Bodj who work with local people in Cambodia to enhance their quality of life through empowerment. Utilising traditional Khmer craft techniques we designed as a log basket that uses the rim of the basket as the handle, constructed from woven rattan on a light gauge coloured steel frame.

northwardsdesignstudio.posterous.com/

FAT LIP FOR BODJ
As stated above, FAT LIP is the first collaboration with ethical manufacturer Bodj. Fat Lip will be officially launched later this year, with the Design Royalties from the project being directed back to the villages to help support child education and assist the makers who produce the product.

This is the first in a series of exciting collaborations with Bodj. Look out for more news on the project in the future and images in the Northwards Design Studio website soon

www.bodj.co.uk/.

YIELD
Earlier this year TEN were asked to design the exhibition for a new show by sustainable fashion designers Holly McQuillan and Timo Rissanen.

YIELD will show the best of Zero Waste and maximum Yield fashion design. The show will be at The Dowse in Wellington in March and Parsons New School in New York in September. Exhibitors include Zandra Rhodes, Julian Roberts and Yeohlee Teng.

Collaborating with Graphic Designer, Gerbrand Van Melle, we have designed an exhibition experience that uses QR codes to give a mixture of static and dynamic information. The exhibition attempts to convey the transition from two to three dimensions in the zero waste design process by exhibiting the finished garments over the full size flat pattern. Furniture for the exhibition will be made from test prints of the pattern on the recycled cardboard honeycomb substrate that will display them.

The project aims to deliver an exciting contemporary exhibition in the most sustainable way possible.

We are giving an insight into the design process in a completely transparent manner, which you can view on the YIELD blog.

yield.posterous.com/

northwardsdesignstudio.posterous.com/

A Swedish architecture firm that came up with a plan to roll buildings through a city on rails has won third prize in a competition to develop the Norwegian city of Åndalsnes.

The company, Jagnafalt Milton, suggested that existing and new railroads could be built to provide the base for buildings that could be positioned differently depending on the seasons and on the weather. It proposed designs for rail-mounted single- and double-birth cabins, along with a two-storey suite. It also imagined lookout towers, kitchens, lifeguard stations, changing rooms, and — in true Swedish spirit — a sauna.
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Swiss artist and designer Nicholas Le Moigne has created a remarkable sculptural stool made out of discarded materials used to create roofing tiles.
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