Archive for the ‘Posted by Julie Taraska’ Category

Friday, May 11th, 2012

Product Placement 4.5: Heart of Glass, 5/20, with Harry Allen, Omer Arbel, Bec Brittain, Johan Liden

Product Placement 4.5: Heart of Glass
Sunday, May 20, 1-3 pm (presentations start promptly at 1:30pm)
WANTED Design
269 11th Avenue (btwn W. 27th and W. 28th Sts.)

As we continue with our spring term of guerilla Product Placements, we evoke our love of Blondie and invite you to our latest edition, held as part of ICFF extravaganza WANTED Design. This installment explores a range of innovative glass items and will feature:

• Product and interior powerhouse Harry Allen

• Architect and Bocci creative director Omer Arbel

• Lighting designer extraordinaire Bec Brittain

• Aruliden principal and product provocateur Johan Liden

Open to all with no RSVP required, although trade guests may pre-register for free at 2012.wanteddesignnyc.com/attend

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

Artist Paul Chan’s E-Book Designs

"Wht is a Berlusconi?” (part of Paul Chan’s “Wht Is...” series

Video, drawing, collage, installation and site-specific projects: Paul Chan’s art takes many forms. In 2010, after showing his work at both Minneapolis’ Walker Art Gallery and New York’s New Museum, he started the e-book imprint Badlands Unlimited (distributed through D.A.P.) to explore the expanded opportunities of digital publishing. His roster comprises books of multimedia work by himself and others, including the dancer and choreographer Yvonne Rainer. Yet the cornerstone of the endeavor is the “What Is…” series, each of which features layers of visual and textual information about subjects ranging from the Italian politician/media magnate Silvio Berlusconi to the nature of lust.

Interior pages of "Wht is a Berlusconi?” e-book

Chan’s inspired by his experience working with moving images to create not exactly 360-degree multimedia experience, but ones enhanced by appropriate additions: audio files of Rainer reading her work to video clips of a work at a gallery. Ironically, thinking about how iPads and Kindles give amorphous electronic files weight has led him to contemplate how the book might looked on paper—a medium he’s also trying out in the form of limited-edition paperback versions of some of the titles.

Other Badlands Unlimited titles

Monday, April 9th, 2012

Audi’s Product Placement: R18 Ultra Chair by Kram/Weisshaar

The prototype R18 Ultra Chair (photo courtesy of Tom Vack).

You’ve got to give a tip of the hat to luxury car brands. In their race to differentiate themselves and each new model, they’ve continued to experiment with different platforms and media, from BMW’s shortform films to Aston Martin’s art collection. Audi’s latest gambit—a chair made by the Munich- and Stockholm-based design duo of Reed Kram and Clemens Weisshaar—plays upon the auto manufacturer’s interest in products and technology. Dubbed the R18 Ultra (after Audi’s Le Mans-winning racecar), the seat will have its shape crowdsourced from users at next week’s Milan’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile. The chair’s final form will be presented to the public in December 2012 at collectors’ fair Design Miami.

The many sensors on the R18 Ultra prototype.


The R18 Ultra prototype chair comprises three main components: a carbon composite seat, a carbon-rubber composite backrest, and aluminum alloy legs. During the Salone, Audi and the designers will set up the chair in a testing booth in the courtyard of the city’s Palazzo Clerici and invite visitors to sit on it. Each user’s unique physical impact on the seat will be registered in realtime via industrial sensors integrated into the chair; the results will be displayed via a multi-colored simulation on a wall inside the booth. At the end of the week, Kram and Weisshaar will study the gathered data and optimize the final product accordingly, shedding every excess gram of weight.

A simulation of the Milan installation


The experiment, claims Audi, will elucidate Ultra (the car’s) principles of “state-of-the-art lightweight construction, technology, and design…[beginning] with the raw materials sourced for production all the way through various manufacturing stages.” Fair enough, but it seems like an awfully esoteric way to show off the auto’s gee-wizz advances.

The inspiration: the R18 Ultra race car.

Monday, April 9th, 2012

Branding Trend: Chairs that ‘Remix’ Classic Designs

Front Design’s Collage chairs for Gemla

I’m all for recycling. But recycling design forms and ideas? Depending on your personal take—as well as the actual amount of originality involved—it can be an homage to an icon or sheer laziness masquerading as new product. Case in point: Front Design’s new Collage arm and lounge chairs for Gemla. Introduced in February at the Stockholm Furniture Fair, the wooden custom-made pieces combine classic and contemporary motifs from the 150-year-old Swedish furniture company’s archives. The chair’s seat and backrest are highly customizable, available in leather, fabric, or webbing and in a range of colors. The manufacturing methods echo Gemla’s traditional craftsmen-heavy protocols, as well as its wooden materials. The result is pleasant, but I can’t help feel that this is like a Mark Ronson remix of a PJ Harvey tune: a name-brand reinterpretation of something that didn’t need to be reworked—especially as so many elements stayed the same as the original for whatever reason. (more…)

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

Product Placement at MAD: Design for Kids Feb. 16 @ 7pm


What’s going to be the first Product Placement event of 2012? Glad you asked. Kimberly and I are talking the series to the Museum of Arts & Design Feb. 16 for a special fundraising version that’s part of the museum’s The Home Front 2012: American Design Nowseries. The evening’s topic is design for kids, and the speakers will be a mix of new names and old friends:

DwellStudio founder and creative director Christiane Lemieux
Rockwell Group principal and studio leader Barry Richards
• Furniture, lighting, and toy designer extraordinaire David Weeks

The details:
Feb. 16 at 7pm
Museum of Arts and Design
2 Columbus Circle
 New York, NY 10019
 


Tickets:
$12 general /
 $10 members and students
 / $6 Product Placement mailing list (use discount code MADPRODUCT). Call 800.838.3006 or click here to purchase tickets.

Architects & Artisans also just did a piece on us and the event. Check it out and leave a comment. And rest assured, we’ll be adding info soon about additional forthcoming PP events.

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

Product Placement 4.3: Texture in Design, Tuesday, Nov. 29

Have we saved the best Product Placement for last? I don’t know: It’s kind of like asking which of your kids you like the best. Or which trousers you’d save first if your apartment caught on fire. (Finding a pair that fit well? That’s no picnic for women, I tell you.) But fear not. You don’t have to choose, you just need to attend. So join Kimberly and me at the final Product Placement of the fall 2011 season:

Product Placement 4.3: Texture in Design

Featuring presentations by:

• Educator and industrial designer Rama Chorpash, who shapes minds as the Director of Product Design at Parsons The New School

Ross Menuez, the quicksilver talent behind the downtown-cool fashion label Salvor Projects

Stanley Ruiz, he of the quietly beautiful furniture and objects that fluidly meld art and technology

• Jewelry and product designer Alissia Melka-Teichroew (by:AMT), whose mischievous pieces delight the senses and the mind

Tuesday, Nov. 29, 6.30-8.30pm (Presentations begin promptly at 7pm)
Rockwell Group

5 Union Square West – 8th Floor

New York, NY 10003

The event is free but space is limited. Please RSVP with your name and number in your party to thisisproductplacement@gmail.com (Due to demand, only those who receive a confirmation will be able to attend.)

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Sunday, August 28th, 2011

Bau Pendant by Vibeke Schmidt

Part sculpture and part lighting fixture, the Bau takes its cue from Piet Mondrian’s visceral color palette. Yet there are no tidy rational grids here: Instead, the pendant’s interlocking circles—pieces of birch plywood painted red, blue, yellow, white, and black—sit off-center, sticking out in all directions. The result is a lamp truly organic in shape, and more like decorative topiary than a functional object. Which is how its Danish designer Vibeke Schmidt, aimed for it to be. “I want people to have to see [it] and wonder what it looks like from the other side,” she says. “It must appeal to people’s curiosity.” After making appearances at trade fairs for the past year, the fixture will finally be available in the U.S. in September from manufacturer Normann Copenhagen. It’ll come in two sizes, as well as in a natural version.

The Bau, lighting up the night

Photo: Dorte Krogh

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

TAF’s Adaptable Table for Muuto and DWR

I’m a woman who likes options. Always have, always will. And while customization has never been a problem for the high-end furniture industry, it’s been a bit more challenging for less affluent buyers. Enter the Adaptable table by Stockholm-based duo TAF Architects. The aim was to update the timeless Scandinavian wood table via a choice of new materials and detailing. The result is consumers can choose from four different table tops, four powder-coated metal frame colors, and four types of oak legs; in total the combinations allow for 64 different personal and unique pieces. Commissioned by Danish firm Muuto, the table retails for $1,995 at Design Within Reach.