natural beauty : design : sofa xxxx by Yuya Ushida

sofa xxxx by yuya ushida via the method case

A chair becomes a sofa, and a sofa becomes a chair. Whenever I see it the beauty of the simple geometrical structure and its repetition always fascinates me. SOFA_XXXX is made of just 4 different lengths of sticks, rings and joints. The parts on their own don’t seem to be special, but when put together in a regular pattern their beauty appears. It can be contracted, which makes it easier for transportation. While contracted it can be even used as a chair.  When you saw SOFA_XXXX, you might have thought it is an art piece. However he prefers to focus on our daily life rather than making an art. They chose to use plastic injection molding. And you can click in to build it up. It consists of only 8 elements, you can make many shapes. Examples; Sofa, Stool, Table and Bench etc.

a match made in france : architecture & furniture design : Le Corbusier & Charlotte Perriand

When 24-year-old Charlotte Perriand walked into the studio of Le Corbusier looking for a job, he turned her away. “We don’t embroider cushions here,” the master said. His mind quickly changed when he saw the Bar Sous le Toît rooftop space she created in aluminum, nickel-plated copper, and glass for the Salon D’Automne in Paris. The two embarked on a ten-year collaboration—along with Corbusier’s partner and cousin Pierre Jeanneret—that produced such pieces as the iconic Grand Comfort, a leather and metal chair that debuted at the 1929 Salon d’Automne. “The smallest pencil stroke had to have a point,” Perriand recalled of her time in Corbusier’s studio, “to fulfill a need, or respond to a gesture or posture, and to be achieved at mass-production prices.”  via somewhere i would like to live                                                                                                                                        .

solid base : art & design : rhombic oath : bojan sarcevic

rhombic oath : bojan sarcevic                                                                                                                  .

tradition of beauty : wire weaving and design : kanaami-tsuji : kyoto japan

Kanaami-Tsuji via somewhere i would like to live

It is said that the history of wire netting ware (“Kanaami” in Japanese) in Kyoto goes back more than ten centuries. Used as kitchen utensils in Kyoto cuisine, these tools have been cherished by chefs in the city through the ages.

At Kanaami-Tsuji, using the wisdom and experience of the past, our concept is to produce handmade utensils that can be also used in contemporary lifestyles.

At Kanaami-Tsuji, using original techniques such as kiku-dashi (“chrysanthemum pattern”) and kikko-ami (“tortoise shell netting”), we offer tofu servers and tea sifts that are individually handmade. We also accept custom-made orders for metal grills to match specific bowls or vessels.

Furthermore, we also produce ceremonial keko dishes used in Buddhist rituals.In these ways our hand woven metal products take a variety of shapes and are sold in various retailers around the country. In recent years, we have actively incorporated new metal weaving techniques.                                          .

the day i fell in love : design : Home Around a Void by Giacomo Ravagli : at Nilufar Gallery Milan : notes from an e-mail conversation with Andrew Trotter

in january i was in milan, and i had long heard about the nilufar gallery. it was way at the top of my long list of places to visit. started at the end of the 90′s, nilufar has become one of the top galleries of furniture and design in the world, why? because it is a reference point of the best design in the world, past and present.

it is not often i fall in love. design and architecture is my passion, and there are projects and pieces that i find beautiful, but in the second i saw the table “home around a void” by giacomo ravagli, i was mesmerised. marble has always struck me as a magnificent part of nature. a material that in its simplest form has so many qualities of life, movement, weight and elegance. “home around a void” is cut from a single piece, simple, with perfect proportions. i was in love.

after finding little information about giacomo ravagli, i wrote to nilufar. i have now had a two month e-mail conversation with giacomo, to find out more about his, work, life and what makes him tick.

Ciao Andrew ,

Unfortunately (or luckily) with my kind of life I often put myself in very uncomfortable situations. Following the works I spend a lot of time in the production workshops, whether in the dusty and noisy marble studios or the chilly metal factories or in the hot and wax-smelling foundry or also up in mountains beside the quarries.. I have my laptop and my smartphone always with me but often a good internet connection is needed and I don’t have much time for office work. So when I come back to my base in Venice I have a lot of work that has been piling up. Actually I believe that limitations are the best friends of artists, because only going through uneasy circumstances you can find new creative ways. Putting myself on the line is the main goal. I want to keep the uncomfortable around because it is fascinating and complex and contains a mysterious power that make people aware.

I am happy of your enthusiasm about the piece. It has been a technical challenge to built it, because it’s one single block of marble, but luckily everything went on the right way. I am a marble sculptor before to be a furniture designer and I’ve worked as an artisan for many years, carving sculptures for many important artists. They were making the drawings, I was making the final marble piece. I know this material pretty well and honestly I can carve everything in every way. Figurative, abstract, furniture of whatever, it’s just a question of time and technique. And nowadays  we have also the robotic machine. It’s good when you have to carve an architecture like *home around a void*. I am in Tuscany now, doing some production. I am working on some prototypes in stone and also bronze and I in this cases I prefer myself to deal directly with the material especially if I work in direct cut without a model, drawing on the marble or modeling the wax.

AT : where are you from in italy? is this the reason you work often in marble?

GR : I was born in Pistoia, Tuscany. Carrara and the marble quarries are about 100 km far from Pistoia but i didn’t get into marble until I was 18-19 years old, when I actaully moved to Pietrasanta, a little village near Carrara, where there are the most important sculpture studios. Carrara business is more about the blocks excavation and cutting.

There is no a singular reason why I started to work with marble, except the fact that I wonted to learn a craft to realize my ideas. For a young italian boy like me who wanted to be an artist or whatever it means, the influence of Renaissance and old masters has been always the condition to be confronted with. marble is a very noble and versatile material and you can do almost everything with it, but you must to know how! I knew that I had to lear the techniques first.  And before to be a sculptor I had to be an artisan. it was good though because I got to know and work with really passionate people and for great artists from which I learned a lot.

AT :  you told me a while ago that you are currently in Venice, and you will spend the summer in New York. it seams a nice life, but are you folling work in each place, or as an artist you can feel free to spend time where ever you want? do you have a solid base or are you always moving?

GR : I have no fixed home and I am bounding around Europe and United States since 2007. In the last 2 years I have lived more often in Milano and now  in Venice since last spring. I feel free to spend my time and live where I want and the strategy of my work is about this, so I follow each piece  where actually it’s realized.I just need a telephone and good internet connection. I will go to NYC in September, after the Salone, the Biennale and all the Fairs in Europe. I would love to go back to New York more steady and face productions also there. Sincerely I really miss that dirty town! She could be so cheap sometimes, so meretricious. But nevertheless she makes me feel at home.

AT : after seeing your pieces in Nilufar, i tried to find out information, i couldn’t find too much, and you don’t have a web. why keep such a low profile?

GR : I think you can easily find infos about me on internet, through Nilufar website or my old press office. A lot of magazines and newspaper have been publishing my work, among the others World of Interiors, il New York Times, Design Today, AD France, TL Magazine, Abitare, Ansa Design, Casamica, Corriere della Sera, Designboom, DLux, Domus, Interni, Kult, Vogue.

I do design but I am a sculptor and in my pieces there is also much architectural influence or even randomness, so I don’t really now how to define myself and my work. That’s why I don’t have a website (unless someone do it for me) and I prefer others talk about my work rather than myself. Of course I want to sell my work and be acclaimed for my efforts but  I believe the vehicle that makes all this things come real is true connection with what I am doing, and not superficial desire for fame. I do not pretend to be famous. I am not power-hungry. I do not delude myself with this grandiose idea of movements. The smell of success is the the type of bad I keep thinking about, the kind I run away from because I am so anxious to be forgotten.

I like the tiredness that come from hard work, from being hungry. Real hungry and real tired, physical tired. No that sort of tiredness that come from feeling the pressure of something that you know deep down doesn’t exist. I am not so ambitious, I am though exigent with myself and the only exposure I crave is for my work. I mean professional recognition, not myself or my private, although I can realize that I can be quite charming sometime! Seriously, internet is a quite strange tool, I want to keep a low profile because I believe there is a limit above which I don’t want to banalize my work and become the parody of myself.

AT : how did your career take of, and how did your relationship with Nilufar start?

GR : Beside working for others artists, I never abandoned the parallel activity of doing sculptures on my own and it’s thanks to that part of my life (that I didn’t want to throw away although very frustrating sometime) that now I do what I am doing. My career took off in 2010, when I started to make design pieces and working with Nilufar. My relationship with Nilufar started in a singular and funny way: I met Nina Yashar, the director of Nilufar gallery, in 2010 in Miami, where I was exhibiting in Design Miami Basel with a gallery from New York. We met after a dinner or something and we matched right away! I didn’t know who she was for the entire time of the conversation and only in the end when we exchanged the telephone numbers I actually realized that. ( I’ve never had a business card, so neither Nina, so we wrote the numbers on a piece of ripped paper that I still keep). The funny thing is that the week before that encounter I gained a meeting with her in Milano through the gallery staff to show her my work ! I told her that that night and we laughed. When we met again the week after in Milano the ice was already broken and she bought the exclusive of my first design collection, the Barometro lamps made in copper and marble.

AT : what makes you tick ? what are your inspirations?

GR : Well, inspirations.. sometime I need nothing, sometime I need much. I am a whimsical being. I draw a little and unwillingly, so not much inspiration from it. i read a lot when I need answers but in general I think my real inspirations are people. I long for community and its noise. I feel like a sponge, ready to catch every glimpse of life from the others. I care very much about the opinions of the others, friends, assistants, colleagues, the clients, the artisans I work with, so much that I believe in the end the final product is the result of a team work. feel more like a director than a designer sometime. I’m actually the author but I’m like a catalyst, the person who make the connections between others ideas and opinions. The fact is that I built such a strong relationship with the people I work with, that often I totally put my trust in them to solve the problems that are necessary to solve to make those ideas come true. I would be nothing without the others.

thank you Giacomo for take your time to talk with me.

solid folds : architecture : general trade school : hermann baur : basel switzerland

hermann baur was the designer of the general trade school, now the basel college of art and design and the industrial trade school. it was completed in 1961. the maurer halle is one of the four buildings grouped around a courtyard with a hans arp sculpture. its vaulted ceiling is spectacular. the walls of the art college are raw concrete both exterior and interior. the general trade school is one of basel’s best pieces of late 1950s architecture. text and photos via architecttuul                             .

fine bone china hit with a hammer : crockery : design : max lamb : 1882 ltd

text and photos : max lamb

crockery available through : 1882 ltd

a collection of fine bone china tableware slip-cast from plaster models carved by hand, with glazed interior for functionality and raw exterior reflecting the modest surface texture of the plaster original. the process of slip-casting begins with the creation of a three-dimensional model of the design known as a ‘master’ by a professional model-maker, from which the production mould is cast. crockery bypasses this process by placing the responsibility of both designer and model-maker in the hands of max lamb. using the tools of a stone mason lamb chips and carves a solid block of plaster to make a jug, bowl or mug, the design of each formed quite simply out of their own making. from the ‘master’ one or more plaster production moulds can be made, often consisting of three or more parts to enable the cast to be safely removed in one piece. crockery is now ready for casting in fine bone china.

cutting edge : design : kamikiri-hocho sakai paper knife : yosuke inui

living with a japanese chef, i know quite well how sacred their knives are. we have quite a few rules in our house, when it comes to using nobu’s knives. we are allowed to use them, but with care.

the thing i love about many japanese designers is the vision for the future, without forgetting traditions and the past. this morning i received a mail from yosuke inui, who has designed this paper knife for morimoto hamono. and this is what he had to say                                                                      .

museum road trip : madrid to castellón : architecture : mansilla + tuñón : photo : luis asín

text : mansill + tuñón architects  photo : luis asín

on the first of july 1999, five trucks transported five letters from madrid to castellón. the five letters had been built in white reinforced concrete, in the city of madrid. the five trucks were the same, the five letters were different. the drivers carried telephones so that they could attend to the orders of the directors of the action. as they moved through the landscape and the towns, the five letters formed a word. the emergence of a word, an intruder, implies a culturization of landscape through thought. a culturization in motion that leaves no lasting mark. an ephemeral action, limited to four hundred and forty kilometres and ten hours of travel. nature is what a person sees through experience. the task of art is to generate thoughts able to propose new experiences. the task of photography is not to represent or imitate what exists, but to summarize an experience. therefore, the pictures of this travel reveal the process of a different experience –just a few documents are left as a trace that freezes time, catalyses memory and at the same time challenges the disappearance of the ephemeral. the movement of the five letters on trucks must be understood as a “travel with weight”, reminding us of the mass of the earth that claims for itself everything that moves on its surface. the aim of this ephemeral installation has to do with the earth (two ways of colonizing: the gaze and the footprint) and with time (two ways of measuring: distance and movement). the emergence of these intruding letters, before the changing eyes of people, provokes a transformation of the different territories that are crossed by the road. a sort of spatial appropriation through the footprint and the gaze –a material confrontation between the language of the particular and the language of the universal. the continuous and accelerating frictions between the language of the particular and the language of the universal, between simultaneously being one and part of a group, inaugurate the moment of invisibility. the globalisation of culture and the respect to difference call for a wordless consensus. today it is necessary to make ideas invisible, in order to clear the path for an architecture made from the frictions of living as presentation -not representation- of life… the architecture of tomorrow does not ask for forms, but for the marrow of forms, an architecture with a succinct body, just enough to stand up. if something characterizes today’s architecture, it is the architect’s capacity to explore and exploit, with a critical and ironic attitude, preferably with a sense of humour, the apparent restrictions and difficulties of the profession in our time.

 

architecture excursion with miquel subiràs #5 : espai cafe : olot

our last stop before heading back to barcelona was the espai cafe in the center of olot. this is a wonderful space miquel has made. at first you wonder if a space hard and brutal can work in olot, yet it is here, and with the work of rcr, that it seems that the people are open to new ideas. also this space works wonderfully with the light, and the rows of seating with the back just high enough to create the feeling of privacy for each table, yet still being open. thank you miquel for a wonderful day.