Water and Bonsai by Azuma Makoto

A beautifully curved deadwood of Sabina chinesis is attached to java moss resembling leaves. Different trunk and leaves are combined to form Bonsai, which now rests in a new environment with water.

Within a fully glazed aquarium eliminated any excrescences, we catch a glimpse of Bonsai in its true light, from its foliage, nervure to breath. The aquarium’s internal environment follows a natural cycle, by stimulating photosynthesis with LED lights and CO2 emissions, which are reversed day and night. A filtration system runs constantly to keep clean water.

Bonsai transforms its shape through ages, now finds a life in water and continues to be alive. We can, continuously, admire its new appearance with plants from land and water within clear water.

Water and Bonsai, by Azuma Makoto

4D Type by Lo Siento

4D Typography is the result of intersectioning, in an orthogonal way in space, two extrusions of the same character, which allows the spectator to read it from, minimum, two different positions in space. An observer searching to enjoy a particular architecture, is forced to move around and through it. The change in perspective generates new spaces in which light acts in different ways. In this case, it is the typography who makes the effort of abandoning its two dimensions to approach the architectural sense. It does not resign with a third dimension; a fourth one is necessary to complete the reading possibilities. By hanging the typography, the reader is allowed to surround the characters in order to understand all their shapes.

4D Type, by Lo Siento

Martin Creed x Pierre Gagnaire

Eindhoven-based design duo Raw Color toast the opening of Martin Creed’s grand overhaul of London’s Sketch restaurant with graphic still lifes dedicated to the restaurant’s new menu. The Turner Prize winning artist’s takeover saw him entirely revamp Sketch’s interiors, hanging his large-scale paintings along the walls and hand-picking each individual table, chair and piece of cutlery, as well as contributing in the kitchen. Sketch co-founder and Michelin-starred chef Pierre Gagnaire conceived two playfully named dishes dedicated to the conceptual artist–“Navet Martin Creed” and “Dundee Pinky”. Raw Color concocted their Irving Penn-esque visions from each dish’s disassembled ingredients, including black olive jelly, squid ink and parmesan cream. “The cooking side of the project was harder to translate into our own visual language,” says Christoph Brach, one half of Raw Color with Daniera ter Haar. “But looking at Creed and his approach to projects, how he organizes things, stacking from big to small, we knew we could take the ingredients and do something similar with them.” In typical Creed fashion the artist has even given the project a numbered title: Work No. 1347.

Read more: Edible Sculptures at Sketch

Still Life Series, Work No. 1347, Martin Creed x Pierre Gagnaire for Sketch Restaurant, London, United Kingdom, via: Nowness

Hermès M9 Special Edition Camera by Leica

Following a string of limited edition collaborations, Leica is back with a third in a line of special M-System cameras built with the help of renowned Parisian fashion house, Hermès. The partnership results in two special editions, with a total of 300 Edition Hermès digital rangefinders set to ship beginning in June for $25,000, while 100 “very special” Edition Hermès — Sèrire Limitèe Jean-Louis Dumas models will release in July for — $50,000. Both editions will be offered as complete kits, with the “cheaper” of the two built with soft calfskin leather with a silver chrome finish for its redesigned control points, complete with a Leica Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4 ASPH. optic. The “other” arrives with three lenses, the Leica Summicron-M 28 mm f/2 ASPH., a Leica Noctilux-M 50 mm f/0.95 ASPH. and a Leica APO-Summicron-M 90 mm f/2 ASPH — all with an anodized silver finish.

Hermès M9, Special Edition Camera, by Leica, via Freshness

Mountain View Lamp by Dima Loginoff

Mountain View Lamp, by Dima Loginoff

Ice Cube Celebrates the Eames

In the late ’80s, before he became famous as a member of the Compton, Calif., gangsta-rap group N.W.A., Ice Cube studied architectural drafting at a trade school in Arizona. In the video, made for “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980,” the sprawling Getty Institute-organized collection of exhibitions on the postwar Southern California art scene, Ice Cube tours the Eames House in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, marveling at the resourcefulness of the husband-and-wife team.

“Got off-the-shelf factory windows, prefabricated walls,” he says, sounding as if he were admiring a tricked-out low rider. “They was doing mash-ups before mash-ups even existed.”

For the exhibition Ice Cube wanted to recreate this famous photograph by Charles Eames sitting on a rare 1953 DAT-1 Chair.

Exhibition: Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980, Ice Cube, Interviewed by The New York Times

Primer V2 by Masahiko Yamaguchi

Japanese roboticist Masahiko Yamaguchi has designed a robot capable of riding a fixed gear bicycle without brakes.

Primer V2, by Masahiko Yamaguchi

Exhibition: Stephen Burks: Man Made

Prototypes & Material Compositions (Pile Up) Including Basket Lamps and Basket Low Tables, 2010

Material Composition 1 (Totem), Polystyrene, Paper, Senegalese Sweetgrass and Polyethylene Basket, Birch Plywood, Acrylic Paint and Oak

The Studio Museum in Harlem is pleased to present Stephen Burks: Man Made, a unique project that furthers industrial designer Stephen Burks’s ongoing exploration of the global economy of artisanal craft. Inspired by Burks’s collaboration with Senegalese basket weavers based in New York and Dakar, as well as projects with artisans in South Africa, Peru and India, Man Made starts with the traditional basket-weaving process as its core concept. During the exhibition, the Museum’s galleries will be transformed into a workshop where New York-based weavers and artisans will create a series of functional and experimental objects and installations conceived by Burks.

Stephen Burks: Man Made, March 31 – June 26, at Studio Museum New York
Photography by Daniel Håkansson for Readymade Projects

Wearable Architecture by SUUM

Designed for modern mind and ritual, SUUM SUMS are wearable architecture that requires the human form to build, support, and embody. More than metal. SUUM SUMS are the experience of acquired function and multi-faceted beauty when beings and design concept work together. Each SUUM SUM is a collection of precision, interrelated stainless-steel components. Original compositions are chosen and may evolve over time with additional sculpture- and material-altering components, known in SUUM terminology as EVOLVERS.

Wearable Architecture: Rings, by Nava Wiegert, Brianna Kenyon SUUM

QuaDror by Dror Benshetrit

Four years ago while experimenting in the workshop, Dror Benshetrit discovered a serendipitous geometry. Initially inspired by the aesthetic and flexibility of this versatile form, he soon realized the structural integrity of the interlocking members. Dror then embarked on four years of inspired and diligent investigations. Working in a collaborative and experimental environment, the team developed a unique structure that can adapt to a variety of conditions and configurations. These range from product design, trestle structures, dwellings, dividing walls, sound barriers, and more. Some applications take advantage of its load-bearing capabilities, while others capitalize on its acoustic properties, ease of manufacturing, collapsibility and energy performance.

Boosted by a team of experts, the studio conducted inter-disciplinary research and rigorous analysis, to soon discover the overwhelming strength of the geometry coming from the most simplistic physical force. The geometry revealed five development direction for applications with endless possibilities; dividing, dwelling, trestle, fenestration and artistic installation. These enabled designs reflect an ever-changing world where contextual factors and technological resources are shifting definitions of architecture, design, and the traditional boundaries between disciplines.

“Our goal is to inspire change. Working with creative and innovative experts from various fields, we aim to share and implement this geometry in urban design, architecture, philanthropic work, and public art. When realizing that the system could potentially bring a groundbreaking solution to the global issue of habitat, we were eager to complete our experimentations and share this discovery with the world.”
- Dror Benshetrit

QuaDror, by Dror Benshetrit, Dror
Volume.MGX Table Lamp from MGX by Materialise