I presume you all are out watching Robyn’s boss new interactive video for the song “Killing Me” but if you aren’t, you should click here and then think about how THEY JUST GIVE THIS STUFF AWAY FOR FREE! How great is the 21st century, people! Even if it’s a thing that makes you use hashtags which are something I always mess up. #worldcup
Okay, we’ve seen a lot of not-so-great designs with an “all-inclusive-furniture-environment” theme – looking in your direction here, “XZipit” - but! Check this one out. It’s a dense foam cut-out-office-slash-wheelbarrow by Dutch designer Tim Vinke. What’s a giant mobile office set used for, you ask? I don’t know either! But look at how great it looks, and it has not only a fold out surface but also an ottoman or something. Take that, Äpplarö!
Okay, I know you might have seen this one with the cigarette floating around everywhere, but did you see this one with the skirt lady?? Maybe! But since you are delighted by it, here it is again. You’re welcome, everyone.
Everyone’s favorite Dutch designer-slash-heartthrob Maarten Baas designed a new thing! Find out what those funny horn things are after the jump!
Today we learned that Tobias Wong passed away early last Sunday morning, May 30 2010. He was 35.
Our regular readers know that on this blog we normally keep things pretty light. We draw on pictures to make them better, we make up fake trends, and we barely get let into shows to “review.” The strategy here is something that we felt was underrepresented in art & design writing: take a passion for a serious, academic topic and present it in the conversational style that we use in our actual lives. That concept-based objects can be both inclusive and taken seriously, and that the public is smarter than they’re usually given credit for. They don’t need more pedantic curators. What they need are friends that respect their intelligence and that can lead them toward real ideas in an engaging way.
Tobias was one of the people who made us think this was possible.
Tobias’ creative work was a constant source of inspiration, and that was the idea. In a design landscape where much success can be had using juxtaposition & irony without conceptual backing, he held strong that “leaving room for meaning is a cheap cop-out—the best designers/artists have always been focused on what and how they want to be read. Leaving room for meaning is for those not so confident with their ideas.” Again and again, he managed to present us with objects that hooked us with beauty, challenged us intellectually, and sent us a tiny shiver of danger. Aric Chen put it well in the press release:
… [Wong] held a mirror to our desires and absurdities; upended the hierarchy between design and art, and the precious and the banal; and helped redefine collaboration and curation as creative practices. Working within what he termed a “paraconceptual” framework, Wong prompted a reevaluation of everything we thought we knew about design: its production, its psychological resonance, its aesthetic criteria, its means of distribution, its attachment to provenance, its contextualization and its manner of presentation. Wong was a keen observer, an original mind, a brilliant prankster, and an unerring friend.
Thank you, Tobi. You will be missed.
-Andrew
“Room dividers” as a furniture type seem a little strange, right? Like, that category can basically include any vertical-ish group of craps. So there are no rules. And since there are no rules they’re hard to judge, which makes us uncomfortable because arbitrarily judging things is really what we do best. It’s like how the “no rules” nature of other people’s dreams makes them not interesting to hear about unless you’re in them. Or maybe I’m overthinking this. In any case, WHAPOW, look at this new thing by Mike and Maaike!
(See also: our 2010 ICFF coverage)
Alert! From 6-9 pm tonight is the opening reception for Uncomfortable Conversations, a design week offsite show curated by bffs Design Glut featuring some rare No Smarties inhouse design, the Mind the Gap bird-spike gloves you see above. I’d write more about this, but I’m stuck in Scotland because of the ash cloud (le sigh). More soon! Go! Go!
Or read more about the show over at Fast Company.
Uncomfortable Conversations
May 15-18, 2010
10am – 6pm
803 Washington St.
New York, NY
Yesterday we caught the tail end of BKLYN DESIGNS 2010, which marked the beginning of New York design week! Check out our favorites from the show, and stay tuned for some more in-depth posts about some of these pieces.
I’ve started blogging for Metropolis magazine, y’all! My first trend report was just published. It is called: Piles of Chairs.
Those of you who went to Milan this year had a lot on your plates. You navigated the ever-expanding array of booths. You deduced which satellite events were skippable. You managed to get some interviews amid exhibitor-buyer talks that increasingly resembled Hungry Hungry Hippos. You even found your way back to the hotel, despite the trains shutting down before you finished your prosecco! And this was all before some volcano erupted!
With all of the distraction, you could be forgiven for overlooking a trend or two. Particularly this one. It’s the latest example of an obscure-but-intriguing furniture-design trope that I would hereby like to dub Piles of Chairs...
Metropolis is one of my favorite magazines and I’m delighted to contribute to their blog. You can read the whole piece here.
Manifestos are unbecoming on people our age. Luckily, blogs aren't! Objects, culture, art & lies collected by a group of young'uns who should probably know better
On the cover: Smartie Anna got married!
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