Archive for February, 2012

Contemporary 2.29.12

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Animal Wednesdays

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Web Submissions: Driade

One of my earliest memories dates back to when my grandmother prepared the homemade pasta. We were ecstatic by the ritual she staged: the wisdom of the dough, the homogeneous leveled mass, the domestication of the surfaces.

Gestures handed down for generations, unifying practice and imagination, codes and extemporaneousness. The world has changed so much since then, and practice and imagination refer less and less to a single actor.

I am free to roam the endless fields of fancy, building precarious bridges between conceivable and possible, in a process that ignores the temporal variation. On the contrary, those who turn my thoughts into substance, through manual dexterity and mastery of gestures, consider time as a plus value. The names of these two objects of memory, fellow adventurers in one’s raids of fantasy, refer then to the temporal element that each of them requires ,as a pledge in the hands of skilled craftsmen, in honor of their work and of the value that they’ll assume for those who will own them.

Usefulness is a concept that more and more fades away among the objects surrounding us. What we expect from these silent friends is to keep us company, make us laugh or in the best option, excite us.

Hormonal chemistry influenced by material chemistry.

Happy Pills are a placebo coming from Murano that, with shapes and colors, would substitute pharmacological solutions.

Driade and Happy Pills from Studio Fabio

Web Submissions: BLOOM

BLOOM: An eco-design jewel for your home.

Bloom draws inspiration from the blossoming and blooming of nature’s elements, as well as from Lucio Fontana’s reinterpretation of flat volumes in art: Like Fontana’s slash on canvas, in fact, Bloom goes beyond the two dimensions. Designed by Giovanni Tomasini as an explicit reminder of the universe’s organized chaos and primordial crystalline forms, Bloom wants to communicate the energy of a surface that opening, follows a geometric balance in order to offer all its warmth.

Bloom is a product designed to reduce waste, according to ecological values. In the hydraulic version, the heating circuit, wisely distributed, takes an amount of water 20 times lower than a conventional radiator. This is due to technology used by HOTECH, which requires a very limited involvement of the masses. Moreover, the use of noble materials such as aluminum and copper, allows quick and effective heat transfers in the environment, as well as a saving of energy and performances without parallel. Moreover, in the electric version a portable radio thermostat gives full control of the temperatures and complete functions programming.

Available in a wide range of colors, the varnishing is done with latest generation plants, and by using eco-friendly paints. Moreover, handmade sheeting in gold, silver or copper leaf are offered, according to Italian artisan tradition.

A design inspired by art and nature with a strong semiotic meaning and an advanced exclusive technology that ensures high performances and low consumptions; the use of noble materials and precious finishing details, assembled with the meticulous care that only "Made in Italy" can give you: all this is BLOOM.

100% Italian design by Giovanni Tomasini. More images.

Web Submissions: Vera

(click to enlarge)

Lisbon, Portugal, December 2011. From the 24th of February to the
25th March 2012, Fabrica Features Lisbon will present Vera, Chapter
One, a multi-disciplinary show evolving around a fictional character.
Orchestrated by Kirsty Minns (KM), one of the young designers
hosted at Fabrica, and French designer Érika Muller (ÉM). This first
chapter, was launched during the London Design Festival in
September 2011 and is part of an on-going project.

Exploring a literacy approach to design, this exhibition will show a
surprising and eclectic body of work, including product design,
illustration, graphics and olfactory design, by some emerging
international talent.

Stepping away from the mass-market design approach which mainly
produces for the average and standard end-consumer, the initial
thinking process behind each of these pieces is a response to one
individual. And that individual is Vera. Vera is a fictional character
based on a series of photographs from a girl’s family found a few
years ago in a second hand shop in Brighton. This group of artists
and designers have been commissioned to respond to one image
from the series in order to create the first chapter of Vera’s fictive
and collaborative biography.

Vera’s material and sensorial world is brought into reality through this
speculative body of work. The exhibition room is her intimate space
into which the visitor is invited to discover an original series of
suppositional artifacts.

www.verachapterone.com

Photo 2.27.12

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Corse

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Folded Apartment

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MC Happiness Drops Knowledge