Copper in Motion by Larose Guyon

Larose Guyon developed a design for New York-based Rockwell Group’s brand new EMC2 Hotel in Chicago and came up with an interactive sculpture that combines ingenuity, art and science.

An Old Technology Born Anew
In revisiting the zoetrope, a forerunner to cinema invented in 1834 by William George Horner and Simon von Stampfer, Larose Guyon were inspired to create their own new way to animate objects. Forty-four pairs of laser-cut copper wings are arranged inside a large wheel which is cranked by hand. Looking inside while turning the hand crank will give life to the otherwise motionless display.

The usually cold and inert materials suddenly become light and alive. The crank handle, itself a lacework flower, brims with femininity and romanticism. The wings move in three dimensions, leaving the onlooker in awe of such a captivating sight. This work is a mere reminder that inventions of old are still something to marvel at, if you only let your inner child take over for a little while.

Copper in Motion, by Larose Guyon

Chocolatexture by Nendo

The 9 different types of chocolate are made within the same size, 26x26x26mm, featuring pointed tips, hollow interiors, smooth or rough surface textures and, while the raw materials are identical, the distinctive textures create different tastes.

Each chocolate is directly named after Japanese expressions used to describe texture.

1. “tubu-tubu” Chunks of smaller chocolate drops.
2. “sube-sube” Smooth edges and corners.
3. “zara-zara” Granular like a file.
4. “toge-toge” Sharp pointed tips.
5. “goro-goro” Fourteen connected small cubes.
6. “fuwa-fuwa” Soft and airy with many tiny holes.
7. “poki-poki” A cube frame made of chocolate sticks.
8. “suka-suka” A hollow cube with thin walls.
9. “zaku-zaku” Alternately placed thin chocolate rods forming a cube.

Chocolatexture, by Nendo
Photography by Akihiro Yoshida

Mizkan Vinegar Packaging by Taku Satoh

The simple wooden box has the company’s logo, as well as Matazaemon – the name of the founder – written in Kanji. The elegant package contains “ingredients” like a vinegar bottle, a rounded out block of wood that acts as a stand, and a booklet with an overview of the company, as well as various recipes.

Mizkan Vinegar Packaging Design, by Taku Satoh

Firefox OS Transparent Smartphone by Tokujin Yoshioka

In order to express the openness which is the most distinctive feature of Firefox OS, Tokujin captured the beauty of mechanicals inside and incorporated to the design. Apart from arranging its external, this is transparent and futuristic design expressing from its inside.

Transparent Smartphone Fx0 by Tokujin Yoshioka for the Japanese mobile phone brand au by KDDI

Project EGG by Michiel van der Kley

Project EGG is an object measuring 5 x 4 x 3 meter, composed of 4760 uniquely shaped stones, 3D-printed by Studio Michiel van der Kley together with hundreds of co-creators all over the world. The largest 3D-printing community art project so far. A new way of creating and collaborating. You could call Project EGG a poetic pavilion. The building has an organic form and structure where the floor, walls and ceiling fully and seamlessly merge. It has been constructed with 4760 open, elegantly designed stones, each one’s shape unique. Many small elements together forming a large structure, as in the objects from nature that designer Michiel van der Kley likes to look at, such as crocodile skin, corn cobs, coral. He finds in these a language of segmentation which he merges with the possibilities of desktop 3D-printing; when you see a large object as the total of many small elements the potential is limitless. The material is new, PLA, re-usable and biodegradable. Also the way this object is produced is new; not by a factory but by a community. Project EGG invites you to enter it and to be inundated by the play of light and shade, to see 100 shades of white and to experience space and emptiness at the same time.

This is the largest desktop 3d-printed co-creation art project so far. During his research on the potential of the 3D-printer, Van der Kley came into contact with bloggers and digital communities all over the world. He learned much from them and invited them to print one of the stones for Project EGG. Since each stone has to be printed individually, it is very easy to make slight variations in each design. Participants received the digital version for their unique stone in which their name has been included.

Project EGG, by Michiel van der Kley

Vertical Net Structures: DRX 2013

The focus on “Vertical Net Structures” for the DRX 2013 was a continuation of last year’s investigation into innovative structures for the design of high-rise buildings. Driven by the increasing demand for supertall buildings, we developed integral structures that define interesting interior spaces through controlled articulation without compromising the integrity of the system. Questions of structure, circulation and program distribution had to be addressed in a prototypical building of approximately 450m height.

The aim was to understand forces as vectors in order to develop 3-dimensional spatial nets. These systems were developed and based on profound research in various areas such as high-rise structural systems, natural systems as well as form-finding techniques. Throughout the DRX, these systems were further informed and transformed into highly constrained, feasible proposals for tall buildings.

Vertical Net Structures DRX 2013, at HENN

De-Evolution by Brad Ascalon

The new installation ‘De-Evolution,’ by American designer Brad Ascalon, is a thematic follow up to ‘The Dream,’ a piece which was created for an exhibition at Gallery R’Pure during New York Design Week in May of 2012. De-Evolution takes a critical jab at the increasing political, environmental and ethical deterioration that continues to be tolerated in America, while at the same time it pays homage to the country’s underlying beauty. The piece was created and will be exhibited with the support of the famed Italian fabric house Dedar, as well as the organizing committee of Moscow Design Week, which invited Ascalon to exhibit as the sole American design delegate for 2013.

De-Evolution, by Brad Ascalon, Moscow, Russia, October 11-17, 2013, Artplay Design Center

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