Monitor » Tableware

Wood is everywhere

Paula — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:31:09 +0000

Wood, laminated wood, is always a great option to express your creativity, especially when a reduced budget doesn’t allow the use of particular machinery. The results, depending on the designer can be exhilarating, or just boring. But from a wide range of products, starting with the stand’s decoration, passing through lamps and furniture (these last ones being a more elaborated version, than simply dye cutting and joining) here below are some examples of the diffused use of laminated wood during this past year.
Hoping to see the developments in the case of the school projects, and fresh and new products in the shops.

Stands

Lamps

Extras
The pieces seen here come mostly from design schools: the french V.I.A., the Dutch Design Academy Eindhoven with the artEZ; and in the “Salone Satelite” Milan 2009.

Bucolic Empowerment

Paula — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:49:39 +0000

“the agricultural community will become the planet’s new elite, dominating our essential needs and inspiring years of farmer styles. After all, the farmers of the future will clothe us, house us, feed us, fuel us and hopefully even heal us. Ultimately they will be able to engineer design and grow furniture in a symbiosis of technology and biology, and therefore rural and urban lifestyles will merge and become one; resulting in an inversed social landscape with a greener city and a more contemporary countryside”

This statement by Li Edelkoort, makes us aware that more than a trend, returning to nature, is a life choice to which we will have to get accustomed if we really want a healthy future.
But, not every one interprets trends, some designers and producers, just follow them, as mere aesthetical rules, giving birth to a very wide range of products, you can choose between honest and responsibly made products and those that just apparently (thanks to there natural aesthetic) satisfy the need to return to the essentials, to respect life and nature.
The next posts will be therefore, be dedicated to this present cycle, with its pure aesthetical trends, and to the different objects that really go beyond the “throw away culture” to become true life companions.

Richard Ginori

Paula — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:31:29 +0000

During the hectic days of the “salone del mobile”, visiting the Richard Ginori exhibition at the Ex Ansaldo space, couldn’t be anything but a pleasure. This ample space, was offering the possibility to sit comfortably, have a healthy meal (not be taken for granted between all the panini and cotoletta kiosks, newly appeared during the design week) and a break from all the design world to enter that of one of the most well known Italian porcelain producers.

The taste of the company, was perceived in every detail of the show, Paola Navone’s creation, a mix between art, industry, history and daily life.

Fuori Salone

Paula — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 13:33:10 +0000

The very best of Milan’s furniture fair is what you see during the design week, outside the fairgrounds, the “Fuori salone”. Young designers looking for companies, new companies trying to become visible, and the really established companies doing their best to captivate the public.

Above: Pieke Bergmans bases for Rosenthal, and works from the French V.I.A. (Valorisation de l’innovation dans l’ameublement)

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Japanese designer Nendo combines the simplicity and elegance of nature with technology. Hanaby is a lamp that follows the natural cycle of light, made in shape-memory alloy, when the bulb gets hot the lamp opens, and when light starts to dim, the temperature triggers the closing.

Madeindhoven, Drinking glasses and ”One of a kind” these are two rings produced in one piece, that becomes unique when two people decided to share it.

Cinderella, by Jeroen Verhoeven. Project “Industrialized Wood”, Demakersvan
Table with hanger. Agape

Patricia Urquiola and Benedini Associati for Agape

Zaha Hadid for Wallpaper magazine’s 10th anniversary.
“GlobalEdit/06”

Antonio Citterio for B&B

Drinks are too hot?

Paula — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 22:28:18 +0000

Design by Stephen Reed, this “Hot stuff mug” is the alternative to not to burn your hands. On show at “Talented Graduates 2006” British Council.