product design

Among our favorite finds at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, which wrapped up Tuesday at New York’s Javits Center, is the new Broom chair from Emeco and Philippe Starck. “It’s made of nothing,” says Starck. Well, almost. The latest addition to Hanover, Pennsylvania-based Emeco’s largely aluminum line-up consists of 75% reclaimed polypropylene, 15% reclaimed wood fiber, and 10% glass fiber—a new chair material composite derived from a compound of industrial waste from lumber factories and plastic plants. That’s where the sweeping up comes in. “Imagine a guy who takes a humble broom and starts to clean the workshop, and with this dust he makes new magic,” Starck says. “That’s why we call it ‘Broom.’” First shown last month at Salone Internazionale del Mobile di Milano, the chair is part of Emeco’s ongoing efforts toward zero-waste (remember that snappy variation on the 111 Navy Chair made from recycled plastic bottles?). “Philippe Starck and I have always agreed that it is not about recycling, but about restructuring production,” said Emeco CEO Gregg Buchbinder in a statement announcing the Broom chair. “Our aim is to prevent waste from being manufactured in the first place. Instead we use discarded materials to make things last.” Hear more from Starck in these three short films by Eames Demetrios, who as the grandson of Charles Eames knows a little something about chairs.

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“Ladies and gentlemen, design is a popular subject today. No wonder, because in the face of increasing competition, design is often the only product differentiation that is truly discernible to the buyer.” That this sentiment came from Dieter Rams comes as no surprise. What’s striking is the date of his remarks, delivered to an audience at Jack Lenor Larsen‘s New York showroom in December 1976. He ended on a cautionary note: “I imagine our current situation will cause future generations to shudder at the thoughtlessness in the way in which we today fill our homes, our cities, and our landscape with a chaos of assorted junk,” said Rams. “What a fatalistic apathy we have towards the effect of such things. What atrocities we have to tolerate. Yet we are only half aware of them.” The full transcript of this disturbingly prescient speech is now available online thanks to Vitsœ, for whom Rams designed the eminently modular 606 Universal Shelving System in 1960. The big occasion is the legendary designer’s birthday: he was born 80 years ago today in Wiesbaden, Germany. Celebrate by treating yourself to Sophie Lovell‘s masterful monograph Dieter Rams: As Little Design As Possible (published last year by Phaidon) or a gorgeous poster of Rams’ famous “Ten Principles for Good Design,” available exclusively from Fab.com.

Because we’re good and gracious people, we’re not going to cry foul on the Design Museum‘s Design of the Year prize, which just this week awarded its 2012 edition to the studio Barber Osgerby for their work on the London Olympics torch. If we weren’t so wonderful, we’d bring up how convenient it is that the London-based museum is giving the prize to an object related to the event London has spent nearly a decade preparing for, and how that might seem a bit biased (here’s where we might also mention that the London 2012 Velodrome won the architecture category). We then might also bring up that the torch, while very attractive, has such a very limited purpose, and an even shorter shelf life, that maybe something with a bit more longevity and wide-spread usefulness deserves the win. No, instead we are genuinely happy for all the winners (really, honestly, all snark aside), and leave you with a quote by London 2012 Organizing Committee co-chair, Sebastian Coe, about the torch’s big night:

The Torch is one of the most recognizable symbols of the Olympic Games and we are thrilled that our design has won this prestigious title. I am delighted we have such a brilliantly designed, engineered and crafted Torch that will help to celebrate the amazing personal achievements of each of our 8,000 Torchbearers and give them their moment to shine. It is also fantastic news that the stunning architecture of the London 2012 Velodrome has won an award and welcome recognition of the landmark new buildings the Games are bringing to London.

The internet was suddenly abuzz late last week, just before the weekend, when everyone’s favorite French designer Philippe Starck told a newspaper that he was working with Apple on a revolutionary product that would be out in the next few months. That certainly would be exciting, given that the internet nearly implodes when there’s even a hint of something Apple related in the works, and due to Starck’s long legacy in product design. Unfortunately, Starck also sometimes seems to mangle his words a touch, or exclaim lofty ambitions that maybe aren’t so grounded in reality. Over the weekend, Apple released a statement saying that no, they weren’t working with Starck on anything. Shortly thereafter, the Wall Street Journal reports that the designer laid everything out a bit more clearly, explaining that he’s working with Steve Jobs’ family on building a yacht. All of this, of course, makes much more sense, given that Apple generally keeps their product design very in-house (and certainly away from chatterboxes) and Starck now has something of a history building eco-friendly mega-yachts. We liked these couple of sentences the WSJ put together, summing up this recent there-and-gone story:

This episode has proved two things. Anything said about Apple provokes a huge buzz among the company’s followers. And Mr. Starck, who has waved his minimalist magic wand over everything from a toothbrush to a lemon squeezer to a mineral water bottle to penknives to hotels, likes to talk about himself.

(Photos courtesy Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec)

It wouldn’t be the Milan International Furniture Fair without a slew of smashing new creations from Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec. At this year’s mega-show, which kicks off next week with an eye-watering 1,400 exhibitors, the designing brothers will debut their glossy storage nooks for Vitra, a textured textile/shelving system hybrid created for Established & Sons, and assorted objects for Magis and Mattiazzi. Those who can’t make it to Milano can get their Bouroullec fix in the pages of Works, out next month from Phaidon. “Works is a comprehensive monograph featuring a wealth of images of our projects, models, drawings—that is to say all visual material we found interesting to dig out from the archives of our workshop,” said the brothers in an e-mail. “It documents what we do by proposing an intuitive understanding, a flowing journey from one project to another.” Organized thematically and designed by Sonia Dyakova, the book spotlights the Bouroullecs’ greatest hits—including collaborations with Vitra (Algue makes the cover), Flos, Alessi, Cappellini, and Kvadrat—and reveals previously unpublished images and drawings alongside text by Abitare alum Anniina Koivu. Also weighing in on the designers’ first dozen years of projects, which are all doumented in a catalogue section, are the likes of design critic Alice Rawsthorn, Vitra CEO Rolf Fehlbaum, and Didier Krzentowski of Galerie Kreo.

Copenhagen-born Jens Risom designed the first Knoll chair in 1941, which puts his age at roughly “two-hundred! Well, that’s almost right,” he said, seated in a high-backed rocking chair of his own design on a recent visit to the Stamford, Connecticut headquarters of Design Within Reach (in fact, he’ll turn 96 next month). This latest DWR Film features morsels of Risom’s chat, in which he discusses his storied career, interrupted early on by a stint in Patton’s Third Army; his creations; and that famous 1961 Playboy photo (above) in which he played musical chairs with George Nelson, Edward Wormley, Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, and Charles Eames. Sure enough, he’s still the last one standing.

Ron Arad’s 1992 “Narrow Pappardelle” chair. (Photo: Bruno Scott)

“People in the art world are happy saying ‘I’m a designer’ and architects are happy saying ‘I’m an artist’ but I’m not allowed to be all of the above. If I do a sculpture it’s written about as ‘designed by Ron Arad‘ but if my friend Antony Gormley does one, no one ever says he ‘designed’ it. I thought it would get easier to escape these kinds of distinctions, but no. Frank Gehry told me he didn’t get taken seriously as an architect until he stopped designing furniture. I understand it: if you are doing these huge buildings it is difficult to accept that someone who isn’t an exclusive member of your club can do it too. Personally, I have no problem designing stuff for Vitra or Moroso that is made to be sold in shops, but I also like to do big projects or products that cause people in the bolshevik art world to be uncomfortable. But that’s a problem of their perception. I don’t want to stop doing anything. I want to do it all as seriously as I can, whether it’s industrial or a useless installation.”

-Ron Arad, in conversation with Reed Krakoff in this weekend’s Financial Times

So many art fairs, so little time. Between Armory week and the highly anticipated New York debut of Frieze comes the fourth annual Dallas Art Fair, which opens to the public on Friday the 13th, tornadoes be damned. Triskaidekaphobics will want to make a beeline (avoiding black cats and ladders!) for the VIP lounge, where superstition-dulling champagne from lead sponsor Ruinart will be flowing freely, chilled in “Miroir” ice buckets freshly commissioned from designer Hervé Van der Straeten. Manufactured by Christofle, the fetching vessels are silver-plated and angular, a bubbly contrast to the signature smooth lines and golden hue of Ruinart bottles. “I wanted to create a conversation between the bottle and the object,” said Van der Straeten in a statement announcing the collaboration, “like a dialogue between the light, the mirror, and the reflections.” The ice buckets were created in a limited edition of 50, but Van der Straeten also whipped up a matching coaster—look for it in “fine wine retailers” worldwide in a special gift pack, as if you need another reason to visit a fine wine retailer.

And speaking of mod marvels, our fontastic friends at House Industries (makers of a swell set of Eames House alphabet blocks) have teamed with Japan’s Medicom Toys to celebrate the ubercollaborative company’s fifteen years of creating unreasonably covetable figurines. Meanwhile, Medicom’s iconic BE@RBRICK line hits the double-digit mark this year. Both occasions called for fresh logos (get your limited-edition print here), the creation of which House illustrates in the below video. That coppery creature is a giant BE@RBRICK customized by Adam and Angelo Cruz in what House’s Rich Roat describes as “a multigenerational merger of hand-rubbed copper metallic lacquer and hand-striped One-Shot enamel.”

It’s a project of firsts: Marc Newson’s first crack at camera design, Pentax’s plunge into design world collaborations, and the first time a Pentax product will be sold at retail outlets other than camera stores. Behold, the Pentax K-01, a 16-megapixel digital SLR hybrid that uses sleek interchangeable lenses (the world’s thinnest, according to the company). Envisioned with “clean and simple lines that create an elegant graphical composition,” the new model was developed in line with Newson’s design themes to be “timeless, trusty, and touchable,” which translates to features such as original-design push buttons and control levers, a mode dial and power switch in his beloved machined aluminum, and a rubberized grip. Newson’s touch extends to the product logo, camera strap, and start-up screen.

“The inspiration behind this design, like many projects that I work on, is simply the desire to create something which as a consumer, I myself would like to own or would like to purchase,” says the designer, who describes the K-01 as “not gimmicky at all.” The camera has already sold out at Colette in Paris, where its release was feted by the likes of Karl Lagerfeld and Dior jewelry designer Victoire de Castellane at a bash hosted by Olympia le Tan. Take one for a test drive at A+R, which is hosting a “Shoot+See” event this Saturday, March 17, at its Venice, California store. And click below to watch Newson lovingly fondle the “compact and trim” body of the K-01 as he answers questions about its development.
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