Connor Renwick: April 2021

Friday, April 30, 2021

The Lexus LF-Z Electrified Interior as a Virtual Canvas

A footwear designer, an artist and fashion label all walk into a Lexus design studio…

It may sound like the start of a joke, but Lexus did in fact invite a trio of creatives well outside the realm of automotive design to imagine what the auto brand’s battery electric concept vehicle, the LF-Z Electrified, might look like once liberated from the constraints of both industry and safety standards. The blue sky results as explored by sneaker designer Salehe Bembury, digital artist Ondrej Zunka and Japanese fashion label Hender Scheme are all wild and wildly different…

Salehe Bembury
The footwear designer’s brightly colored virtual interior juxtaposes “machine and nature” with a unique use of speckled sandstone finishes and other natural tones introduced with the use of natural materials like cedar, cork and granite. Bembury’s approach borrows from his background in sneaker design, covering his seats with “hairy” suede and a fingerprint motif upon the vehicle’s control panel, ornamentation often found in the designer’s work and applied here for a personalized control panel.

“Just as he has done with footwear, Salehe has pushed the envelope of what design can be in terms of material selection, silhouette and storytelling,” says Brian Bolain, general manager at Lexus International, “He is one of the most exciting designers in the sneaker space right now, and he embodies the bold thinking and energy that we see in Lexus’ future.”

Ondrej Zunka
“This interior design is purely speculative so I allowed for free associations and pure imagination and creativity,” says Zunka. “I wanted to make the interior feel as if it wasn’t made by humans, but maybe designed by a sophisticated artificial intelligence. I wanted to go past any known language and design concepts and forget about what is usually used in automotive interior design.”

Hender Scheme
Tokyo-based Hender Scheme’s virtual leather-embellished interior is arguably the most sedate of the three, with a monochromatic coverage tying back to Lexus’ own vaunted takumi craftsmanship – specialty craftsmen from Asakusa, Tokyo who’ve earned elevated respect and status for the 60,000 hours of experience under their belts.

For their LF-Z Electrified virtual interior, Hender Scheme imagines an entirely leather interior that has been left untreated, with the intent of the space taking on a deepened patina over time as a conceptual nod toward “the passage of time and the driver’s relationship to the vehicle.”

Just don’t expect any of these three designs to see the light of day, as they’re purely reflective of an effort from Lexus to showcase the LF-Z Electrified as a future-glancing symbol, one recognizing the wildest concepts today may become the standards of tomorrow.

via http://design-milk.com/

from WordPress https://connorrenwickblog.wordpress.com/2021/04/30/the-lexus-lf-z-electrified-interior-as-a-virtual-canvas/

Single-Use Food Containers You Can Compost and Eat!

April is when the world not only commemorates, but pushes initiatives to help restore mother Earth. At Pinch, our work is as much about sustainability as it is about taste + presentation. And thus, we are always looking for ways to keep our upstream supply chain as clean as possible to ensure we provide the same great parties, and a healthier planet.

Now, in this pandemic time of individual portions and take-out culture, we are seeing the desire for single-use products rise. Dedicated to our zero waste pledge, we are constantly on the lookout for alternative solutions. And so when the Design Singapore Council shared Forest & Whale’s most recent project Reuse, officially launching in August 2021, to combat the use of single-use plastic in Singaporean food courts, we couldn’t keep it to ourselves.

Founded in 2016 by Gustavo Maggio and Wendy Chua, Forest & Whale is a multi-disciplinary design studio based in Singapore. They design products and spatial experiences, with a focus on social and sustainable design and are passionate to bring circular thinking to products and systems through good design, ethnographic research and material exploration. Their work has earned the accolades of industry excellence awards including the Red Dot Design Award, Japan’s Good Design Award and the President’s Design Award from Singapore.

Over the past year Forest & Whale has been attempting to transform the convenience mindset ingrained in throwaway culture. Currently the studio is exploring compostable and edible materials to create takeaway containers to replace existing plastic versions. The plastic waste generated by single-use food containers aggravates ocean pollution, harms our planetary health and stresses waste management systems.

For cities that have organic composting facilities, Forest & Whale designed a salad container that is edible and can also be composted together with food waste, thus minimizing its end of life impact. Made of wheat husk for the base and PHA (a bacteria based composite) for the lid, both can be composted as food waste, without the need of any special infrastructure or industrial composting facility. And if the material accidentally went into the ocean it will fully decompose within 1-3 months, without any microplastic left behind.

via http://design-milk.com/

from WordPress https://connorrenwickblog.wordpress.com/2021/04/30/single-use-food-containers-you-can-compost-and-eat/

F5: Carl Baker Admits One of His Favorite Things To Collect

Carl Baker, West Coast Director at Ike Kligerman Barkley, grew up with a passion for residential design. After studying architectural history at Vassar College, he earned his Bachelors of Architecture at UC-Berkeley and his Masters of Architecture at the University of Washington – Seattle. At UW – Seattle, he was the recipient of the Valle Scholarship, giving him the opportunity to study sustainable design in Stockholm, Sweden. But before he ever practiced architecture, Carl apprenticed with a wooden boat builder in upstate New York. There he crafted his own skills as a woodworker, seeing how finely crafted machines come together. He also honed his ability to collaborate, all experiences he brings to his architectural work today. In the past, Carl worked at ROMA Design Group, where he was on the winning project team for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial at the National Mall, as well as for Melander Architects in San Francisco.

Today Carl joins us for Friday Five!

1. Grado SR80e Headphones
These are really well-designed and comfortable, not that expensive and feel great about the ears. Really refreshing to listen through these after dealing with earbuds all day, it feels like you are listening for pleasure’s sake rather than for work.

2. Sheaffer Leather-Bound 7×10 Notebook
The perfect notebook for me, which took about 20 years to discover. I can elaborate: it has a thick but flexible leather cover, which really protects it in all environments. At about 7×10″, it’s a great size, not so small that it gets lost but not so big that it is hard to carry around. Inside, the pages have a grid of very light dots – so helpful for laying out a drawing or drawing something to a specific scale. Completely background and you can completely ignore them, they don’t interfere with the drawing and just provide a loose structure for whatever you want to draw or write. Pages are perforated so you can tear out a sheet.

3. Micron 005 Pen
I’ve been teaching myself to draw ONLY with this pen, so that I can minimize the number of things I need to carry around or keep track of. It’s so fine that you can create very light outlines on which to build your sketch, but with shading you can build up depth and darkness as needed.

4. Old Design or Illustrated Books with Hand-Drawn Graphics
A sampling of my collection here, a 3rd edition of the Architectural Graphic Standards (1938), a set of Camping and Woodcraft books (1906 and 1916) that thoroughly teach how to be a successful outdoorsman and The Blue Book of Birds of America (1931).

5. Transportation + Travel Passes
I collect these from wherever I travel. As well as being reminders of specific days (or trains or buses or trips), the graphics and branding of differing countries’ and states’ transportation fascinate me and I come to associate these places with their graphic representations. And yes, there is an old San Francisco monthly muni pass in there – I loved these graphics and held onto every one I had from the mid 90’s onward!

Work by Carl Baker:

Photo: Douglas Friedman

Photo: Douglas Friedman

Tasting room rendering

via http://design-milk.com/

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Thursday, April 29, 2021

The Ori Cloud Bed Table Edition Is a WFH Solution for Small Spaces

The Ori Cloud Bed, Table Edition gives off all appearances of a contemporary home office desk (or dining table), a surface that would naturally blend into an apartment, loft studio or even within a hotel room. It’s also a design harboring an impressive hideaway feature nobody would suspect until set into motion.

A follow-up to the brand’s Cloud Bed, Sofa Edition, this latest table edition operates with a similar push button ceiling drop mechanism that would make Kanye proud. The wall and ceiling unit houses either a queen or king sized Cloud Bed in a ceiling mounted position; at the push of a button the bed descends from the ceiling space while the table tucks down to floor level.

Designed for both residential and hospitality interiors, the transforming unit optimizes usable square footage by creating two spaces – a bedroom alongside a home office/dining room – all within the footprint of single space. In an era of working from home, the Ori Cloud Bed, Table Edition seems to arrive as a solution literally descending from above.

The entire system is UL certified with built-in safety features that include constant monitoring of the motors and obstacle protection to prevent accidental sandwiching between the desk and bed.

The architectural system includes three built-in outlets, hidden dimmable LED lighting, and the option to use either a physical button control or an app or voice operation (Amazon Echo or Google Home).

Now more than ever we need our living spaces to better accommodate our many needs for working, sleeping and living. Ori’s new Cloud Bed, Table Edition makes the limited square feet of our spaces more usable and flexible – more livable. Adding the Cloud Bed, Table Edition to the Ori collection means developers have one more solution that can turn even the smallest apartment into a flexible and versatile space that adapts on demand to the needs of its residents.

– Hasier Larrea, founder and CEO of Ori

Ori says the Cloud Bed, Table Edition can be retrofitted into existing building layouts or incorporated into interior designs from the ground up. The system only requires a minimum 8’6’’ ceiling height, part of an entire suite of space saving and transforming solutions able to eke out every square inch of functionality and storage with a handsome selection of designs.

via http://design-milk.com/

from WordPress https://connorrenwickblog.wordpress.com/2021/04/29/the-ori-cloud-bed-table-edition-is-a-wfh-solution-for-small-spaces/

ECO Solidarity Unites 8 Designers + 8 Institutions to Address Climate Change Through Sustainable Design

The following post is brought to you by the Polish Cultural Institute New York, the Czech Center New York, the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, and Wallonie-Bruxelles International New York. Our partners are hand-picked by the Design Milk team because they represent the best in design.

Last week’s Earth Day reminded us that there are few matters that are as urgent and in need of our attention than those related to the issue of climate change. We are excited to share that sustainable design is tackling these issues head on with the return of ECO Solidarity, a groundbreaking international initiative that unites eight institutions and eight designers behind the goal of addressing our most dire humanitarian and public health crises through human-centered design. The project will launch at CLOSEUP, ICFF + WantedDesign Manhattan’s joint trade event running May 17-18, 2021. ECO Solidarity will be presented on May 18th in two 45-minute sessions where the designers will showcase their work followed by panel discussions. The first session is titled Design with Empathy: Public Spaces and Social Impact (10:15 AM ET to 10:55 AM ET), and will feature AHA Objects, Atelier Ad Hoc, EOOS NEXT, and Herrmann & Coufal. The second session is titled Sustainable Material and Process: Research and Innovation (11:00 AM ET to 11:40 AM ET), and will feature Algaeing, Livable, NAS-DRA Conscious Design, and Studio Plastique. ECO Solidarity will also be featured at WantedDesign NYC’s expanded online exhibition running June 15 – August 15, 2021. It’s not hyperbole to say that the world is running on borrowed time, and we need to make significant changes in order to preserve a livable planet for future generations.

Project Designer: Eduard Herrmann of Herrmann & Coufal

Project Designer: Lotte Kristoferitsch of EOOS NEXT

ECO Solidarity was created by the Polish Cultural Institute New York and Studio Rygalik in partnership with WantedDesign in 2020. In this year’s second edition, eight forward-thinking designers have partnered a global institution from their respective countries to create sustainable design solutions focusing on ecology, climate change, public health and well-being, and the socio-economic impacts on these changes.

These featured designers are: Lotte Kristoferitsch of EOOS NEXT, selected by the Austrian Cultural Forum New York in cooperation with the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber/Creative Industries and the Vienna Business Agency; Sep Verboom of Livable, selected by the Delegation of Flanders to the USA; Theresa Bastek and Archibald Godts of Studio Plastique, selected by Wallonie-Bruxelles International New York; Eduard Herrmann and Matěj Coufal of Herrmann & Coufal, selected by The Czech Center; Renana Krebs and Gal Abelson of Algaeing, selected by the Goethe-Institut New York; Anna Horvath of AHA Objects, selected by the Arts Council Malta in New York; Paulina Grabowska of NAS-DRA Conscious Design, selected by the Polish Cultural Institute New York; and George Marinescu and Maria Daria Oancea of Atelier Ad Hoc, selected by the Romanian Cultural Institute New York.

Project Designers: Theresa Bastek and Archibald Godts of Studio Plastique

Project Designers: Renana Krebs and Gal Abelson of Algaeing

Studio NAS-DRA Conscious Design investigates and designs circular economy schemes, climate change mitigation processes, bioelectronics, and urban farms. By having a holistic approach in each of their projects, they are looking for interconnections and interdependencies between ecology, health, industries, businesses, phenomenons, and art.

Open Design Mould by EOOS Next enables local craftsmen to produce a urine-separating squat toilet. Urine separation reduces nitrogen in aquatic systems and prevents eutrophication. It improves sanitary conditions and prevents pathogen outbreaks, thus contributing to environment protection and public health.

Herrmann & Coufal’s project highlights the benefits of the DIY phenomenon for both individuals and society and brings a human element into the process, creating a shared experience. The making becomes an integral part of the final product, showing users hidden ideas and fostering their appreciation.

Studio Plastique combines imaginative scenarios and critical reflections with in-depth investigations of complex material supply chains and technological infrastructures. The studio builds up networks of collaboration around significant themes for contemporary society, strategically positioning the role of the designer in an evolving landscape of industry, culture, and human experience.

There are also eight field experts nominated by each participating institution that will make up the show’s Advisory Committee, which includes: Martina Fineder (Austria); Axel Clissen (Belgium/Flanders); Giovanna Massoni (Belgium/Wallonie-Bruxelles); Danica Kovářová (Czech Republic); Dunja Karabaic (Germany); Dr. Jevon Vella (Malta); Ewa Bińczyk (Poland); and Adriana Blidaru (Romania); along with special advisor Tomek Rygalik.

Project Designer: Anna Horvath of AHA Objects

Project Designers: George Marinescu and Maria Daria Oancea of Atelier Ad Hoc

The name ECO Solidarity is actually inspired by Solidarity, a social and political movement which united displaced communities and various disciplines in a common cause. It led to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and set the nations on a course toward democracy. Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the Solidarity formation (in Polish, Solidarność).

The coming together of these different countries, designers, and institutions is tremendous as we have already seen this past year what the world can do when it puts its differences aside, prioritizes its most pressing issues, and unite behind a single goal. To have ECO Solidarity launch at CLOSEUP is exemplary of how committed WantedDesign is towards promoting active change in issues relating to sustainability and the circular economy. WantedDesign founders Odile Hainaut and Claire Pijoulat shares further:

The ECO Solidarity project emphasizes the common thread between sustainability and people. It is a priority for WantedDesign to continue the conversation around why we should all care, and how design is one of the answers to the current issues humans face, to reconcile with a more sustainable, conscious and harmonious way of living. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to bring eight European countries and regions together for the ECO Solidarity project at CLOSEUP in May and the WantedDesign Online Exhibit in June.

Project Designer: Sep Verboom of Livable

To learn more about ECO Solidarity and to attend either or both sessions, visit CLOSEUP or here to register.

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Norwegian Design Expands to the US With the Arrival of 4 New Brands

The design industry has always looked to Norway as a constant source of inspiration for contemporary design, sustainability practices and its holistic approach to manufacturing. With Norwegian design gaining more popularity, it is exciting news that the Norwegian Design Industry, a division of The Federation of Norwegian Industries, will be expanding its presence to the United States this year by introducing four innovative interior design brands to the U.S. market. At ICFF 2021 in November, Dyfosit, Fram Also, Heymat, and Northern will showcase the very best of Norwegian design.

What makes Norway stand out from other design countries? Norwegian design takes its cues from Norway’s natural environment, including the northern skies and landscapes, the native materials and the colors found in nature. Norwegian designers also consider the environmental impact of manufacturing and strive to create long-lasting products that don’t end up in the landfill using modern and traditional engineering technology. With these four Norwegian brands soon arriving to the U.S., it won’t be long before we see more Norwegian design in the home, public space and office.