Studio SC by Studio MK27

Brazilian practice Studio MK27 (Marcio Kogan, Suzana Glogowski) has completed ‘Studio SC‘, a free-standing food photography studio in São Paulo, Brazil. Longitudinally set back to accommodate a generous outdoor garden, the design utilizes a simple and linear layout that features an elevated concrete catwalk overhead.

Fronted with large sliding metal doors, the facade can be set in a variety of configurations that will facilitate different levels of connection between the garden and the interior. The central studio space is defined by its open nature, neutral enough for maximum flexibility. A longitudinal working area defined by a single-stretch desk along the back wall maintains the linear design while also creating a space that facilitates interaction and communication.

Slicing across the double-height studio space is a suspended concrete walkway which connects two pavilion-like structures on either ends of the layout. hosting specific programs necessary for the food photography studio, the wooden boxes continue the customizable language of the facade by enabling total privacy/transparency through collapsible shutters. Accommodated programs include a reception area, rooms for image treatment, and a technical kitchen for preparing food for shoots. A roof top deck complete with a large secondary kitchen provides an airy space for a variety of events.

Studio SC, São Paulo, Brazil, by Studio MK27, Photography by: Nelson Kon, via: designboom

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Normann Copenhagen Cognac & Liqueur Glasses

The Cognac Glass and the smaller Liqueur Glass is a beautiful combination of function and pure pleasure. A simple and practical pivot allows the glass to swirl thus releasing the aromas of the spirits. The concern to quality of cognac resulted in the shape of the glass, which increases the pleasure of deep colour and movement of the liquid.

“I wanted to craft a cognac glass. The perfect gift to the man, who has everything. The inspiration springs from my own perception of when you drink cognac; that is when you have time and in calm surroundings. I wanted the glass to give the user a feeling of a gentleman’s study and at the same time, the sense of calmness you get when you fondle a stone. The stem kept irritating me. I took the consequence and cut it off. That’s how my Cognac Glass was born.”
- Rikke Hagen

Normann Copenhagen Cognac & Liqueur Glasses, Set of Two, by Rikke Hagen

Exhibition: Modernism in Miniature: Points of View

The architectural model gained new prominence after a period of decline when it became a popular tool for design education and practice in the early twentieth century. This revival is usually associated with the turn towards objectivity and the search for expressive means to communicate ideas in three dimensions–but how was the model transformed in the age of its mechanical reproducibility?

Modernism in Miniature: Points of View explores the encounter between photography and model-making between 1920-1960. It focuses on model photography as a distinctive genre and suggests that the so-called ‘model boom’ was inextricably bound up with the explosion of modern mass media.

The objects on display illustrate a variety of visual practices ranging from straight records of study models to hyper-realist photomontage. Channelled by the illustrated press, miniatures reached out to a wide public and, in some cases, acquired enduring cult status. By revisiting a widespread yet oft-neglected imagery, the exhibition provokes questions about the relationship between media in architectural culture and the specific impact of photography on the perception of the miniature.

Modernism in Miniature: Points of View, September 22 – January 8, at Octagonal Gallery, The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Montréal, Québec

L’Opéra Restaurant by Odile Decq

French architect Odile Decq has completed the ‘(Phantom) L’Opéra Restaurant’, which recently opened in the Palais Garnier located in Paris, France. Recessed within the historical building, visitors pass the facade’s original pillars to enter the undulating interior. The mezzanine space is carefully integrated to resist touching the existing structure’s walls, columns and roof. The contemporary addition compliments the classical details of the vaulted stone ceiling without altering history.

Accommodating and seating 90 guests at one time, the large floor plate is suspended with concealed steel plates. A glass wall encompasses the interior isolating the space from the existing shell. the billowing white structure touches down to the lower level producing integrated organic supports. The striking red chairs, benches, and floors produce a theatrical character reminiscent of the phantom of the opera which was once performed within the auditorium.

L’Opéra Restaurant, Garnier Opera, Paris, France, by Odile Decq, Odile Decq Benoit Cornette Architectes Urbanistes, Photography by © designboom, © roland halbe, via: designboom

Fishermen Lamps by Mattias Ståhlbom TAF Studio for Zero

Inspired by the traditional glass fishing floats used by the fishermen around the world since mid-19th century, the Swedish designer and architect Mattias Ståhlbom of Stockholm’s TAF studio has created this series of pendant lights for Zero. Each rope is hand-knitted by a small company on the Swedish west coast whose specialty was making ropes and netting for the fishing industry.

Zero Fishermen Lamps, by Mattias Ståhlbom, TAF

Boxing Life Apartment by UdA – Architetti Associati

A Calvinist essentiality that recalls diaphanous, diffuse, pervasive lights in sharp contrast black and white, and rigorous geometry where very little space is left indeterminate or uncertain. A seemingly scarce indulgence reminiscent of a more evident sensuality, immediate in the relationship between the body the occupation of the space, which finds expression by means of the geometric articulation of a sequence of containers; containing and contained.

Inspired by the oriental sensibility for the “box” as a container full of instruments for the unfolding of human life and by the drawer holding the domestic objects which are the primary nucleus at the centre of the oriental domestic space, all the spaces are obtained from a sequence and superimposition of cupboards, containers and joinery that not only organise the functional aspects of life, but also contain it, forming bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchen and other living spaces in a sequence that is at once labyrinthine, yet clear and reassuring in its inexorable mechanism.

Even so, the container, modeled and modified by the highly worked material surface, recalls and alludes to the physical dimension of the human body and to a sensuality completely devoted to containing life; humour, affection. Tragic, sweet, sublime Virgin of Nuremberg, the porcupine’s quills removed in an innocuous representation of the domestic fort/castle in which we come back to believing ourselves the masters of our own lives, in a perennial oscillation between intimate introversion and public exposure to the light, to relationships, to chance encounters, here represented by the expansive, fully-glazed living room and entrance.

Following the game of the Chinese boxes placed one inside the other, one can imagine a suburb that contains a building that contains an apartment; rooms, furniture and objects – or in a metaphorical sense a story that contains another. Certainly a change of scale from the large to the small in which that which changes is the dimension and not the value or importance of the various boxes. Stories that proceed at times following the line of reason, at times in opposition – rational, orthogonal volumes that are at odds with furniture with inclined planes, fittings curved and asymmetrical.

Metallic laser-cut surfaces set against hand-lacquered woods, graphic colours (black and white) against red and ochre in a continuous succession of light and shade, of finished versus crude, of low versus high, and of the playful versus the serious to give body to a story that contains, from passage to passage, from chapter to chapter, rigour and incoherence, calculation and improvisation, method and paradox.

French mathematician Henri Poincaré once said “creativity is to unite existing elements with new connections that they may be useful” “creativity is the union of disorder and order”.

Boxing Life Apartment, Turin, Italy, by UdA – Architetti Associati, via: mocoloco

Companions & Sidekicks by Studioilse for De La Espada

Studioilse presents the Companions family of furniture, designed to support daily life. The family includes a bed and bedside table available in white oiled chestnut with cork bowls as storage for private bits. Also in natural oiled chestnut or painted – pure white RAL 9010 or black brown RAL 8022. In addition is a slim writing desk, proportioned to fit in the spaces in between. This also has a cork bowl for wires and plugs, and a top that can close to hide away papers and laptops.

Also launching are the Sidekicks, a series of small occasional tables that live throughout the home to accommodate our different activities. They are the right height and dimension to sit next to sofas and chairs, for drinks and snacks, papers and magazines, or a short time on the laptop. They come in 60cm dia / 30cm h, 41cm dia / 50cm h, 60cm dia / 71cm h (polished aluminium, copper, brass) and 100cm / 71cm h in polished aluminium. There is also a height adjustable table available in polished aluminium, copper and brass.

Companions, Sidekicks, by Studioilse, for De La Espada

Books: Apple Design

Apple is clearly one of the most influential design, manufacturing and software companies of our era. The forthcoming book is a comprehensive survey of the company’s products to date. The book is also a catalog for a new exhibition Stylectrical: On Electro-Design That Makes History, which examines “the complex process of industrial design in the context of cultural studies.”

Featuring over two hundred examples of designs, this publication focuses on Jonathan Ive (*1967 in London), Senior Vice President of Industrial Design for Apple, who since 1997 has been responsible for the design of all of the company’s products. Over the past decade, Ive and his team of designers wrote electronics design history with their standard-setting iMacs, iPhones, iPods, and iPads. Their user-friendly, distinct, and elegant design has made a significant contribution to the brand’s cult status.

This volume compares various approaches to design and casts light on numerous aspects of design history, deepening one’s understanding of contemporary industrial design. Following an analysis of the forms and functions of the featured products, the book provides an explanation of the innovative production methods and materials applied. Last but not least, it points out Apple design’s noticeable references to the simplified forms of the products manufactured by the successful German brand Braun, and lists the Ten Rules for Good Design promulgated by the company’s chief designer, Dieter Rams.

Exhibition: Stylectrical: On Electro-Design That Makes History, at Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, (Museum for Arts and Crafts) Hamburg, August 26 – January 15, iPhone app

Apple Design, Edited by Sabine Schulze, Ina Grätz, foreword by Sabine Schulze, texts by Friedrich von Borries, Bernhard Bürdek, Ina Grätz, Harald Klinke, Bernd Polster, Henry Urbach, Thomas Wagner, Peter Zec, graphic design by Jung von Matt, 2011. 320 pp., 542 color ills., 25.80 x 30.70 cm, ISBN 9783775730105, Published by Hatje Cantz

Buy it here: Amazon

Bulb by Minimalux

As the name suggests this new table lamp pays homage to the shape and materiality of the familiar, but soon to be obsolete, incandescent light bulb. In thanks and recognition for all its hard work over the last century, Minimalux now frees it from its customary upright and operational mode and allows it to rest on its side, relax and enjoy its retirement. Bulb is made from hand blown opal glass with a machined brass stem and cable entry.

Bulb, by Minimalux

Textile Field: An Installation by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec

“During the London Design Festival, The Victoria & Albert Museum invited us to intervene in any space we wanted within the Museum: the result is Textile Field an installation 30 meters long and 8 meters wide which takes over 240m sq of the floor of the famous Raphael Cartoons Gallery.

“An invitation to lascivious reverie. Our intention is to propose a different, casual approach to freely experience what can be a quite intimidating environment, such as a museum. We conceived an expansive, coloured foam and textile piece with gentle inclinations to produce a sensual field on which to comfortably lounge while meditating on the surrounding Raphael Cartoons. Everyone can immerse into this temporary installation, for a minute, an hour or more, that is the idea. No efforts, no apprehension just contemplation.”

Textile Field, by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, in collaboration with Kvadrat, at Victoria & Albert Museum, Photography © Studio Bouroullec & V&A Images, Victoria and Albert Museum