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The sound sculptures and installations of Zimoun are graceful, mechanized works of playful poetry, their structural simplicity opens like an industrial bloom to reveal a complex and intricate series of relationships, an ongoing interplay between the artificial and the organic.
25 woodworms, wood, microphone, sound system
5 ventilators, 35 styrofoam balls, 5 helping hands, air
23 prepared dc-motors, grid
30′000 plastic bags, 16 ventilators
97 polysiloxane hoses 3.0mm, compressed air
Zimoun, Sound Sculptures and Installations
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House in Minaminachi 3 is a residence for a couple with 2 children. It is standing at a place where an old shopping street and houses are still kept. The site area of the dwelling is only 55 sqm, and it has a square form. Also, houses at the area are sitting closely next each other, so the condition is quite difficult to make the residence open to outside keeping its private. The unique design of the house is a relationship between the building and its exterior elements. There are extra walls along the site, and they fully covered the dwelling that has only 29 sqm as building area. The house is standing with angle, not parallel to the exterior walls and site. Through the gap between the walls and the inside construction, sunlight is coming down well reflecting between the two structures.
House in Minamimachi 3, Hiroshima city, Japan, by Suppose Design Office
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“VANMOOF was inspired by the good old-fashion Dutch bike”, explains the designer Sjoerd Smit, “we stripped the bike from whims that can only break or cause frustration and added innovation and style”. The VANMOOF is built from the day-to-day experience of cycling in Amsterdam, it has a striking aluminum rust-free frame with a highly advanced solar powered LED light system built inside the frame. Gone are the dynamo’s that add friction to the wheel, no more cables, and best of all for the urban rider, no more lights stolen off your bike!
VANMOOF Bicycles, by Sjoerd Smit, for VANMOOF
Buy it here:
VANMOOF N°3 & VANMOOF N°5 (this product ships to European Union countries only)
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One of the really great figures of design – Alessandro Mendini – is curating and designing a retrospective of the last 30 years of Italian design specially for Die Neue Sammlung. Mendini focuses his exhibition on a key player in the design world: the Alessi company, which has very successfully morphed from a small metal-working firm into a creative factory in the field of design with global operations. Not only with its products but above all through its influential ideas, actions and meta projects Alessi wrote European design history and provided inspiration for reflections on the future of design.
Objects and Projects - Alessi: History and Future of an Italian Design Factory, May 22 - September 19, Die Neue Sammlung Museum, Munich, Germany
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The potential of the various spaces unfolds in a sophisticated game of indoor and outdoor areas, which are directed to a spatial sequence. Different wings of the building to which certain features are intended, are woven together to create but also specific points of their own identity and mood. The mutual position of the wings of the building reacts to the different directions of view and sunlight and various outdoor spaces that are created in interaction with the living quarters.
The spatial configuration of the villa is also a response to temporal sequences of a family life, which allows commonality but also individuality in the different stages of life or daily routine. The courtyard structure with its various wings generate both open places of community but also quieter places of retreat and contemplation in which parallel various needs can be lived. The courtyard structure allows for capturing the sun in the living area during the whole course of days, without having to sacrifice views to the lake.
Villa, St. Niklausen, Switzerland, by Niklaus Graber & Christoph Steiger Architekten
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Both a sculptural object and a functional vase, Polyvase.MGX is made by using rapid prototyping technology, a 3D printing process. Available in three sizes and colors havana brown, black or green.
Polyvase.MGX by Dan Yeffet, for MGX by Materialise,
Photography by Frank Gielen for Hooked on Walls
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Located in the Swiss Alpine village of Lumino, just north of Bellinzona, this house stands as a monolithic element, quietly complementing and echoing its context. The surrounding area is characterised by traditional stone built houses, many of which date back centuries and are marked by their use of this single construction material. The new house is intended as a relevant response to and contemporary interpretation of the vernacular; its exposed reinforced concrete form recalls the revered strength and resonates the presence of these old stone houses. Sitting on the edge of the old village, the house acts as a sort of bastion between the old core and the modern residential expansion.
House in Lumino, Switzerland, by Davide Macullo Architects, via: Arch Daily
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Winner of the Good Design Award and shortlisted as one of the 25 Best Design Objects by Monocle, the Studioilse w084t task lamp is made from natural materials and sturdy construction.
“Materials have hidden messages. These create a powerful link to our emotional psyches and shape our connection to daily life. Our light is a sturdy friend, unpretentious and always there for us. We have chosen honest materials that carry clear messages: iron for its feelings of stability, reliability, trust; wood with its warmth and life, and mineral plastic for its intimate glow, as well as its tactility. Then we have put these three together for a certain oddness. This is because there’s an innate awkwardness in the directional light that we wanted to amplify-rather as with people this is a sympathetic quality, not a sin.”
- Ilse Crawford
Studioilse w084t, by Studioilse, for Wästberg
Buy it here: Studioilse w084t Halogen IRC Lamp
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Hiroyuki Hamada’s works are monumental in impact, but built with delicacy. They are filled with an unknown spirit. There is no direct reference, but one can read the mysteries of the ancients or the mapping of a digital age in their rich surfaces. The forms hold space, rather than make it. Tension pervades, as each mark and tone tell a story of perfection, balance and upset. Hamada spends up to three years creating the sculptures, as he applies plaster over burlap and wooden forms. He then shapes and stains them with wax, resin, and paint.
New Work, by Hiroyuki Hamada, August 28 - October 10, Art Sites, Riverhead, New York, USA
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“Make a step into the world of tea, slow down, enjoy, relax and focus on the moment. a place to celebrate my own tea ritual. From the beginning, research of calmness was linked to the aim of creating a space. a space where you have to slow down, feel protected and invisible. This is the reason why I designed a teahouse, a place for my own ritual of preparing and drinking tea. there is an important succession of actions: to select the tea, to prepare the teapot and to boil the water, to let the water cool down if necessary, to infuse the tea and to give it time to draw, to pour the tea into a bowl, enjoy it and to clean up afterwards.”
My Teahouse, Model scale 1:10 / Graduation Project, by Simon Kaempfer