Exhibition: The Design Circus

On Display is a great selection of design pieces that are “Made in Spain” in an unusual and creative context: the circus. Go deep into a space where objects explode, stay balanced or are chopped in a guillotine. The wonderful world of the circus offers you the most fascinating products. Different scenes inspired by the art of the circus in which you will have an extraordinary vision of objects. Enjoy a magical and unique setting, in which you will surely see the most mysterious side of the most global Spanish design.

The Design Circus, at Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain, November 12 – January 24, Curated by CuldeSac, via: Yatzer

Exhibition: Models by Michele De Lucchi

The small wooden houses are studies, born from the desire to experiment and research independent from the clients’ needs. Most of the sculptural works are made of solid wooden blocks, which De Lucchi models with a chainsaw. The architect said he realised the wish to work manually with wood while sharpening pencils with a penknife.

Works by Michele De Lucchi, at Ingo Maurer, Munich, Germany, February 4 – March 20.

Typography = Models: Praline & The Model Shop

When Praline teamed up with The Model Shop, we were presented with a cauldron being stirred by an excellent set of designers and equally adept architectural model makers. The results are understandably broad, and include a new typeface, architectural models, a neon sign and most importantly one fantastic concept.

Avec, by Praline, and The Model Shop, for the If You Could Collaborate project
via: It’s Nice That

Happy Hour Chandelier by Marcel Wanders & Nanine Linning

Happy New Year!
Award–winning choreographer Nanine Linning and designer Marcel Wanders present an innovative concept in which a Dancing Angel is hanging upside down for 20 minutes from a Chandelier. The dancer offers little spoons of chocolate mousse and flutes of champagne to the crowd beneath her.

Happy Hour Chandelier, by Marcel Wanders, and Nanine Linning.
Bookings: Happy Hour Chandelier

Photography: Naoto Fukasawa The Outline by Tamotsu Fujii

Product designer Naoto Fukasawa unfailingly designs shapes to meet people’s expectations. His unique efforts to determine the “outline of things” from people’s unconscious are gathering attention worldwide. Advertising photography expert Tamotsu Fujii superbly depicts outlines blending into light and air.
The “outline of design”, something obvious yet invisible, emerges through the efforts of these two men. This exhibition, including 100 products designed by Naoto Fukasawa and some 70 photographs taken by Tamotsu Fujii over 4 years, is something never attempted before – an exhibition revealing what everyone has sought… the “outline of design”.

Exhibition: The Outline, Products by Naoto Fukasawa Photography by Tamotsu Fujii, October 16 – January 31, at 21_21 Design Sight, Tokyo, Japan

Globe by Studio Job for Swarovski Crystal Palace

Studio Job has created a 175 cm diameter spinning globe applying 500,000 Swarovski crystals. “Maybe it’s the sense of time and gravity that touches us, maybe it is the earth that keeps turning and turning.”

Globe, by Studio Job, for Swarovski Crystal Palace

Casa Camper Dos Palillos by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec

Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec have designed the interior of a new restaurant called Dos Palillos for Camper Shoes in Berlin.

“What immediately interested us was that Dos Palillos was a one of a kind culinary experience offered by Albert Raurich, elBulli’s former chef. In order to celebrate his cuisine, the concept of the restaurant gives full means of expression to his culinary art.”

“Naturally, the kitchen had to be the centre of the space and thus, it had to be wide open so that guests could see the preparation of the dishes from the beginning to the end. We have decided to articulate the environment around one long wooden table and the stainless steel kitchen, one module facing the other. Consequently, the guests find themselves at the centre of the kitchen, while the chef acts in front of them.”

Dos Palillos Restaurant, Casa Camper Hotel, Berlin, Germany,
by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec

Travel: Amangiri Resort at Four Corners Utah

Located on a 243-hectare (600-acre) expanse of wilderness the Amangiri resort is tucked into a protected valley with sweeping views over colourful, stratified rock towards the Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument. Architecturally, the resort has been designed to blend into the landscape with natural hues, materials and textures a feature of the design. The structures are commanding and in proportion with the scale of the natural surroundings, yet provide an intimate setting from which to view and appreciate the landscape.

Amangiri, Amanresorts, Canyon Point, Utah, USA, by Marwan Al-Sayed, Wendell Burnette and Rick Joy

Eternal Ice Drop by 5.5 Designers for Hennessy

Encapsulated in a glass drop, the imprisoned water freezes after a few hours in the freezer then spreads its coolness through the glass by finding its liquid state. Beyond its sustainable and reusable aspect, this object has a not unimportant consequence over the moment of the tasting of a good Cognac. Certain consumers, if they like the effect cooling some ice cube on their drink, do not like that by melting ice cubes alter the taste of this one, by dilution. Furthermore, the action of the cold tends to break certain aromas of the Cognac. This mode of cooling, lighter than a traditional ice cube, represents then an ideal solution to lead the cognac to the good temperature of tasting.

Eternal Ice Drop, by 5.5 Designers, for Hennessy

Light Space Modulator by László Moholy-Nagy

Like many émigrés fleeing from Nazi Germany in the 1930s, László Moholy-Nagy sought refuge in various countries: the Netherlands, England and, finally, the United States. Wherever he and his family went, they took an enormous metal and glass machine, which looked so odd that it always caused a rumpus at customs. The problem was describing what it was. Telling the truth did not work. Custom officers snorted in disbelief when Mr. Moholy-Nagy explained that he had designed the Light Space Modulator, as the machine was called, to create pools of light and shadow so he could study their movement. They were almost as skeptical when he tried passing it off as a robot, fountain and mixing machine. Eventually he fobbed them off by claiming that it was “hairdressing equipment.”

Moholy-Nagy explains: This piece of lighting equipment is a device used for demonstrating both plays of light and manifestations of movement. The model consists of a cube-like body or box, 120 x 120 cm in size, with a circular opening (stage opening) at its front side. On the back of the panel, mounted around the opening are a number of yellow, green, blue, red, and white-toned electric bulbs (approximately 70 illuminating bulbs of 15 watts each, and 5 headlamps of 100 watts). Located inside the body, parallel to its front side, is a second panel; this panel too, bears a circular opening about which are mounted electric lightbulbs of different colors. In accordance with a predetermined plan, individual bulbs glow at different points. They illuminate a continually moving mechanism built of partly translucent, partly transparent, and partly fretted materials, in order to cause the best possible play of shadow formations on the back wall of the closed box. (When the demonstration occurs in a darkened space, the back wall of the box can be removed and the color and shadow projection shown on a screen of any chosen size behind the box.) The mechanism is supported by a circular platform on which a three-part mechanism is built. The dividing walls are made of transparent cellophane, and a metal wall made of vertical rods. Each of the three sectors of the framework accommodate a different, playful movement study, which individually goes into effect when it appears on the main disc revolving before the stage opening.

Light Space Modulator (1922- 1930), by László Moholy-Nagy, at Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity, at MoMa, New York. Flickr set: Markal
via: New York Times