Leaf House by Undercurrent Architects
Leaf House is building that allows users to be inside and in-the-garden at the same time. It is a self contained cottage forming part of a coastal residence in Sydney; a Pavilion for experiencing Nature. The building integrates the environment and reflects qualities of the landscape: its canopy structure blends into the foliage; its podium base shapes the terrain. The design is characterized by curved copper roof shells resembling fallen leaves and a vine-like structural system channelling dynamic growth inside. Daylight filters through porous roof shells onto a podium deck and the open plan living areas. Views and reflections subtly modulate the surrounding garden through an enclosure of moulded glass. Private spaces offer introspection inside the sandstone podium buried in the terrain.
Via & more: ArchDaily
New Packaging Design – book from Laurence King Publishing
You can buy this book in our on-line design bookshop
Packaging is everywhere. Through boxes, bottles and bags, we make our products and services desirable in the global marketplace and celebrate our design capability, innovation and cultural diversity. Traditionally a means of preserving, protecting and promoting the products it contains, the rise of environmental issues and globalization mean that today’s packaging designers must do more to create innovative solutions that are also sustainable. This book shows how packaging design has changed to meet the demands of its new context. It takes the reader behind some of the world’s best-known brands to meet the designers, clients, marketers, technologists, scientists, environmentalists and retailers, to tell their stories about the development of some of the most remarkable packs of our time. Showcasing the best packaging design from around the world and presented through new colour photography, it also features in-depth case studies of some of the most innovative design processes in the field, with interviews illustrated by details about the design.
Janice Kirkpatrick graduated in graphic design from Glasgow School of Art and in 1985 co-founded the international design consultancy Graven Images where she is Creative Director. A writer, broadcaster and lecturer, she has also curated several exhibitions including ‘The Good Buy Girl’ for the Design Museum, London, and ‘UK Style’ and ‘UK PackAge’ for the British Council.
Material Immaterial: The New Work of Kengo Kuma
You can buy this book in our on-line design bookshop
Material Immaterial: The New Work of Kengo Kuma presents more than thirty of the architect’s recent works, including high-profile commissions such as the Suntory Museum in Tokyo and the Ondo Civic Center in Kure; the exquisite Lotus House in Zushi; large-scale urban developments like Sanlitun Village South in Beijing; as well as tea pavilions and installations that have exhibited in the United States, England, Italy, South Korea, China, Germany, and France, many of them never before published. The book also includes an extended essay on the evolution of the architect’s work, from the founding of Kengo Kuma and Associates in 1990 to the present. An accompanying exhibit—the first retrospective of the architect’s work, also titled Material Immaterial—displayed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in late 2008 and will travel to locales around the world over the next two years.
Botond Bognar is the author of numerous books on contemporary Japanese architecture, including Kengo Kuma: Selected Works. He is currently a professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Art-Campus by Pott Architects in Berlin
Art Campus is the new location for contemporary art in the central urban development area Heidestrasse in central Berlin. Pott Architects gave the first impulse for the new urban district at the interface between culture, science and government with its master plan. Now after more than two years of planning and construction a public multifunctional square for cultural use and the new exhibition forum “Halle am Wasser” has been realized.
Via & more: Yatzer
Ice Cream: new Camper store by TAF
The first Camper shoe store in Sweden recently opened up in Malmö. The design concept of the store derives from the well known truth that “everybody loves Ice Cream”. Several scale models were built by real Ice Cream sticks to be re-scaled into full size furniture. The furniture collection is made to expose at least 40 pair of shoes and consists of tables, stools, benches and one cash desk. The tabletop and the sticks are made out of color stained solid birch. All the used colors come from different tastes of Ice Cream. The curtain walls are made out of vanilla colored sliced rubber to hide the stock of shoes on the backside. The floor is vanilla colored concrete. All the existing walls and the ceiling are painted in matt vanilla color.
Via & more: TAF
Design Ecologies: Essays on the Nature of Design
You can buy this book in our on-line design bookshop
Design Ecologies is a ground-breaking collection of never-before-published essays and case studies by today’s most innovative designers and critics. Their design strategies—social, material, and biological—run the gamut from the intuitive to the highly technological. One essay likens window-unit air conditioners in New York City to weeds in order to spearhead the development of potential design solutions. Latz + Partner’s Landscape Park integrates vegetation and industry in an urban park built amongst the monumental ruins of a former steelworks in Duisburg Nord, Germany. The engineering firm Arup presents its thirty-three-square-mile masterplan for Dongtan Eco City, an energy-independent city that China hopes will house half a million people by 2050. An essay by designer Bruce Mau leads off a stellar list of emerging designers, including Jane Amidon, Blaine Brownell, David Gissen, Gross.Max, Robert Sumrell and Kazys Varnelis, Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake, R&Sie(n), Studio 804, and WORKac.
BassJump subwoofer for MacBook
Designed exclusively for MacBook, BassJump is a sweet, one-of-a-kind, go anywhere, USB-powered subwoofer that turns your MacBook into a mini sound system. One single USB cable delivers power and sound. Custom software blends the music coming out of your built-in speakers with the sound output of the BassJump for dramatically enhanced audio performance. BassJump makes those great sounding, built-in MacBook speakers sound even better by adding mid- and low-frequencies through one well-designed, travel-sized subwoofer. It’s a smart, simple way to dramatically improve the sound of your MacBook without cluttering up your workspace with a clunky set of replacement speakers and cables. Once the BassJump software is installed, simply connect one single USB cable, launch iTunes and enjoy the new and improved sound of your MacBook, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air.
Via & more: Twelve South
Tokujin Yoshioka: Maison Hermès window display
Based on a window display he first presented in 2004, the Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka has now restructured it using a Japanese actress currently being presented at Maison Hermès, Japan. The installation will run from now until January 19th, 2010.
‘On designing a window-display of Maison Hermès, I intended to express people’s daily ‘movements’ with a suspicion of humor. There are moments when I perceive a hidden presence of a person in the movements born naturally in daily life. I created a design where one can perceive someone behind the scarves as if life were being breathed into them. The window is designed with an image of woman projected on to a monitor. The scarf softly sways in the air in response to the woman’s blow.‘ – Tokujin Yoshioka
Via & more: designboom
30km of coconut husk string inside the new Aesop
Melbourne architect, March Studio’s Rodney Eggleston has recently completed the third Singapore store at Millenia Walk for Australian skincare brand Aesop. In collaboration with Aesop’s founder Dennis Paphitis, the store features a significantly mesmerizing mass of coconut husk strings suspended from the ceiling. Referencing Aesop’s subtle and understated method of gift wrapping using the humble ball of twine, and drawing inspiration from the region; thirty kilometers of coconut husk string were suspended from a meticulously detailed grid frame fixed to the ceiling. The results are simply captivating.
Via & more: Yatzer
University Library of the University of Amsterdam by Roelof Mulder & Ira Koers
A library whose decor no longer consists of books has been turned into a ‘home’ in which to study. The UvA’s enormous collection of books is kept in closed repositories, book depots and at various open locations. A growing number of students, anywhere from 1500 to 5000, visit the University Library every day in order to study and pick up their digitally ordered books. Despite plans for a new building in the future, the university wished to have a new, temporary interior design for the 2,500 sqm space that would comprise study rooms plus 235 extra workspaces, the canteen, the information centre with its desk, the hallways, and an automated lending area.
Via & more: ArchDaily
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