Papercraft 1:1 Assault Rifle AK-47 by Martin Postler

The AK-47, also called the Kalashnikov after its inventor, is one of the most successful industrial products of all time. Since its introduction in 1947, an estimated 80 million AK-47s have been built. Its success is based not only on its resourceful construction, but also its affordable production, dependability, functionality and high demand. The AK-47 is one of the icons of the twentieth century, but it is also a deadly weapon.

For a new art project, the designer Martin Postler has investigated the history, the aesthetics and the lethal seductiveness of the Kalashnikov. He has freed the AK-47 from its terrible capacity to injure and kill by deconstructing it into a paper model construction set. When putting the detailed model together, the builder is automatically confronted with the Kalashnikov and its significance – both historical and personal. At the end of the construction process each person can decide if they would like to hang their own AK-47 on the wall, paint it, customize it with stickers or simply burn it. Then ultimately this AK-47 thankfully remains a piece of paper.

AK47, Paper Gun Model Kit, by Martin Postler
Available here: Van Stockum

Monograph: Wonderwall: Masamichi Katayama Projects N˚2

The internationally renowned interior and retail designer Masamichi Katayama is synonymous with exquisite quality and applies his distinctive trademark showmanship to create visionary retail environments.
This publication introduces over forty recent projects by Japan’s hottest retail designer with an extraordinary selection of interior designs for boutiques and retail outlets from high-end luxury spaces to mega stores in Japan, Great Britain, France, the United States and Hong Kong. Masamichi Katayama skilfully integrates diverse interior design elements including light, furniture, material and proportion in a unique and unrivalled fashion that translates into flawless design, comfort and functionality. Insightful text by John C. Jay, Wieden+Kennedy’s Creative Director and quotes by Tyler Brulé, the Editor in Chief of Monocle and many more affirm this appraisal.

Wonderwall: Masamichi Katayama Projects N˚2, Edited by Satoko Suzuki.
Buy it Here: Amazon

Books: crEATe, Eating Design and Future Food

Food is not just a hot topic in design and cutting edge creativity today but also an enormous industry with changing standards and perceptions. Based upon research by trend analysts Chris Sanderson and Martin Raymond from the London firm The Future Laboratory, crEATe investigates recent trends and visual developments in and around food. The book examines everything from the way we eat, the interiors and furniture of innovative restaurants and shops, industrial design and the packaging of food to branding and consumerism.

crEATe, Eating Design and Future Food, Edited by Chris Sanderson, Martin Raymond, R. Klanten, S. Ehmann, S. Moreno
Buy it here: Amazon

Wallpaper* City Guides add New Destinations

Wallpaper* City Guides have added 10 new destinations: Delhi, Hamburg, Kuala Lumpur, Kyoto, Marseille, Montreal, Moscow, Reykjavik, Seoul, and Venice. The guides present a tightly edited, discreetly packaged list of the best a location has to offer the design conscious traveller.

Whether you are staying for 48 hours or five days, visiting for business or a vacation, the editors have done the hard work for you, from finding the best restaurants, bars and hotels (including which rooms to request) to the most extraordinary stores and sites, and the most enticing architecture and design. Wallpaper* City Guides enable you to come away from your trip, however brief, with a real taste of the city’s landscape and the satisfaction you’ve seen all that you should.

Wallpaper* City Guide, Published by Phaidon. Buy them here: Amazon

Books: How to Wrap Five Eggs

How to Wrap Five Eggs, a mid-60s classic of Japanese design, is back in print. Assembled by graphic designer Hikeyuki Oka in 1965, this stunningly laid-out paean to traditional Japanese packaging is rife with sumptuous black and white photos by Michikazu Sakai of all manner of boxes, wrappers and containers that appear at once homely and sophisticated, ingeniously utilitarian yet fine and rare.
- dwell

“what we have lost for sure is what this book is all about: a once-common sense of fitness in the relationships between hand, material, use and shape, and above all, a sense of delight in the look and fell of very ordinary, humble things.”
- George Nelson

How to Wrap Five Eggs: Traditional Japanese Packaging, Edited by Hikeyuki Oka.
Buy it here: Amazon
via: dwell

Books: Jewelry Design

Jewelry is commonly perceived as a beautiful piece of wearable art: stand-alone, sculptural, and aloof. However, in order to understand contemporary jewelry design, we need to view the work as we would the product of any design field: as conceptual projects, as material studies, as social commentaries, and as connections to the past. The various creations by international designers presented in this book give an outline on current trends and developments in the field of jewelry. Their work is presented as a snapshot of individual practices, a broad sampling of innovative creations and forward-looking designers. What unites them are everyday considerations on context and production.

Jewelry Design, Edited by Carissa Kowalski Dougherty.
Buy it here: Amazon

Books: Shop America: Mid-Century Storefront Design

Window shopping
In postwar America, everything pointed to a bright, shiny future. Sheer optimism and opulence informed everything from automobile design to architecture, infusing design with larger-than-life planes and curves. Storefront design of the era is particularly indicative of this phenomenon, incarnated here in an extensive collection of hand-illustrated shop window designs from 1938 to 1950. These spectacular, often grandiose plans for grocery stores, shoe shops, beauty salons, bakeries, and more are reminders of a time when stores were sacred shrines for the congregation of American shoppers—impressive and even slightly intimidating, just like the future itself. In addition to an extensive selection of drawings are historical black and white photographs of actual shops built in a similar style.

Shop America: Mid-Century Storefront Design, 1938-1950.
Buy it Now: Amazon

Spank The Monkey

Edited by the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art — Spank The Monkey is an international survey of recent contemporary urban art starring twenty-two artists from the established art arena and those from the “street art” scene, who have created an art system of their own, removed from that of the museum and gallery circuit. Ranging from works by Barry McGee, Miss Van, Groovisions, Shepard Fairey, Os Gemeos, Swoon, Banksy and more, this book examines their works and places them in a broad context of urban and street art and harnesses the energy of some of the most significant artists to emerge from this new international sub-culture.

Buy it here: Spank the Monkey

Books: Concepts in Space

Concepts in space

Concepts in Space — The experimental art of Olafur Eliasson

Studio Olafur Eliasson is an experimental laboratory located in Berlin. Led by renowned Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, it functions as an interdisciplinary space, generating fresh dialogues between art and its surroundings. 
This rich sourcebook enables the reader to delve into the corners and crevices of the Studio’s diverse projects. The key concepts behind the works are presented alphabetically, and unfold in the course of short conversations with the artist.
The majority of Eliasson’s thought-provoking installations, photographs, sculptures, and architectural projects to date is included, with additional material focusing on the research processes at Studio Olafur Eliasson.

Buy it here: Studio Olafur Eliasson: An Encyclopedia (Extra Large Series)