The Skylight House by Chenchow Little

The Skylight House inverts a traditional Victorian terrace house. The living rooms are relocated to the top floor where there is better access to views and sunlight, and the secondary bedrooms are placed on the ground floor. The design is imagined as two fluid horizontal planes that have been inserted within the traditional envelope; one folding to form a ground plane that mediates the natural ground levels along the site; and a second along the ceiling line which fragments and undulates to permit sunlight into the length of the building. The ground plane has been cut around a central courtyard containing an endemic Banksia Integrifolia which, along with the sculptural southern facing skylight, brings light into the living, kitchen and dining spaces. These two planes act as spatial dividers as well as create a light filled, open fluid space unfamiliar in a traditional terrace house.

The Skylight House, Sydney, Australia, by Chenchow Little, Photography by John Gollings & Katherine Lu

Casa Ericeira by Monica Penaguião

Courage, talent, style and refined humor go hand-in-hand in this house. Decorated under the direction of Monica Penaguião in a sophisticated style, this house is a song of optimism.

Furniture and accessories by: Swedese, Baccarat, Venini, Fornasetti, Flos, and above: Lamps by Tom Dixon and New Antique Chairs by Marcel Wanders for Cappellini.

Casa Ericeira, Portugal, by Monica Penaguião, via: Elle Decor

Hirsaki Knife Box by Keiji Ashizawa Design

Hirosaki Knives have been around for approximately 1000 years. The cases for the knives are made from paulowina wood, and apple tree wood. These woods are used not only for the unique look of the design, but also the efficiency of the protection of the knives. Paulownia is unique to the history,and culture of Japan. Finally, the apple tree, that is used as the rail and connection, comes from the apple tree in Hirosaki which is the most famous producer of apples in Japan.

Hirsaki Knife Box, by Keiji Ashizawa Design, Photography by Takumi Ota

Jug by Aldo Bakker

A new porcelain water carafe by Aldo Bakker in five colours. This carafe is born with its own traditions. It demands the user to handle it like no ordinary carafe.

Jug, by Aldo Bakker, at Particles, Photography by: Erik and Petra Hesmerg

Studio Job House

Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel have renovated and converted a 1960s villa into a home-cum-museum. To add authenticity to their restoration of the villa, the designers tracked down the same model of car owned by the previous occupants – a 1972 Ford Taunus GXL Coupé – which now sits in the garage, ready for use.

Studio Job House, Bergijk, Netherlands, via: Wallpaper, Photography: R. Kot

Icon: Brionvega Algol TV by Richard Sapper & Marco Zanuso

The Brionvega Algol TV is a design classic designed by Richard Sapper and Marco Zanuso in the 1960s has has proved to be one of Brionvega‘s more successful products. The company was founded in Milan in 1945 by Giuseppe Brion and specialized in manufacturing televisions. Brion’s televisions used cutting-edge technology and advanced manufacturing techniques. Many of Brionvega’s products have become collector’s items and are often exhibited in design museums around the world. Part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

Brionvega Algol TV, by Richard Sapper & Marco Zanuso

Exhibition: Philips: The Microbial Home

For the 2011 edition of Dutch Design Week, Netherlands-based giant Philips will be showing five lifelike models of concepts for the Microbial Home, a forward looking group of design concepts that represent an innovative and sustainable approach to energy, waste, lighting, food preservation, cleaning, grooming, and human waste management.

The Microbial Home project is part of the Philips Design Probes program, which explores far future lifestyle scenarios based on research in a wide range of areas. The Microbial Home Design Probe consists of a domestic ecosystem that challenges conventional design, it’s a proposal for an integrated cyclical ecosystem where each function’s output is another’s input. In the project the home has been viewed as a biological machine; to filter, process and recycle what we conventionally think of as waste – sewage, effluent, garbage, waste water.

Says Philips, “Our world is sending us warning signals that we are disturbing its equilibrium. A drastic cut in our environmental impact is called for. This Probe explores how the solution is likely to come from biological processes, which are by nature less energy-consuming and non-polluting. We need to go back to nature in order to move forward.”

“Designers have an obligation to understand the urgency of the situation, and translate humanity’s needs into solutions. Energy-saving light bulbs will only take us so far. We need to push ourselves to rethink domestic appliances entirely, to rethink how homes consume energy, and how entire communities can pool resources” says Clive van Heerden, Senior Director of Design-led Innovation at Philips Design.

Exhibition: The Microbial Home, at the Piet Hein Eek Gallery during Dutch Design Week,
via: mocoloco

Balloons by Dan Yeffet and Lucie Koldova for Brokis

Balloons is a collection of unique, simple and timeless lights that are based on an idea of transparent ‘invisible’ volume with a floating reflector. There and not there, seen and unseen creating an ambient and artistic object. The biggest piece of the collection is pushed to the limits production wise. It is the maximum possible dimensions of handmade blown glass. This series is compounded from one table model and two floor models. Available in 3 sizes (S 40×29 cm – M 60X43 cm – L 80X55 cm), different colored glass and reflector finishing.

Balloons, by Dan Yeffet and Lucie Koldova, for Brokis

Kaj Franck Table Remade by Matti Klenell

After a visit at the glass factory in the Nuutajärvi village in the middle of Finland, Swedish designer Matti Klenell found a very special design by Kaj Franck. It ended up with a personal interpretation of the table as a homage to the great Finnish designer.

“The Nuutajärvi village in the middle of Finland has one major industry and that is their famous glass factory. Over the years masters such as Tapio Wirkkala and Kaj Franck worked here as artistic leaders and much of their designs are still in production by Iittala who the factory now belongs to. In the 1970s Kaj Franck designed a small museum dedicated to glass in an old building that used to serve as a brewery. It’s a beautiful space with an almost mysterious aura. One of the items on display stayed in my mind long after paying my first visit. It was a low table with strange legs. On the table top there was a map showing the Nuutajärvi surroundings displayed under a glass surface and on top of that laid a thick piece of solid glass to use as a magnifying glass enabeling you to properly read all the details of the layout. I decided to design a remake of it. Something different but with an echo of what I remembered from the museum. My table is made of solid ash wood and the top is an engraved glass sheet. The detailed drawing is based on various sketches I made during the project and took me four days to engrave.”
- Matti Klenell

Exhibition: Kokeshi, at Galleri IngerMolin, Stockholm, Sweden, September 24 – October 10
Photos 1-3 © Jason Strong Photography, via: David Report

Clock for an Acrobat by Daniel Weil

Daniel Weil’s new clock explores parallels in the way time moves in space and an acrobat moves along a wire.

“Just as gravity is the medium of the acrobat, so it is the medium of ‘Clock for an Acrobat,’” says Daniel Weil. Second in a series to his “Clock for an Architect,” Weil’s latest design revisits themes that have interested him for over 25 years.

The materials are ash and nickel-plated brass and silver. For the movement, Weil sought parallels between the way time moves in circles and in space, and the way an acrobat moves along a wire: both precarious, both precise, both balanced. As the wheel turns on its track, gravity steers the glass bearing to six o’clock. This prompts the user to reset the dial, acting as an active re-arranger of time.

The battery is held in midair by positive and negative power lines that feed the clock’s movement. Appropriately, it is the only part of this gravity-defined clock that defies gravity.

Clock for an Acrobat, by Daniel Weil, Pentagram