Wednesday January 20th 2010, 12:05 pm
Filed under: Furnishing
Lines are the simplest of design forms but are so versatile. Lines can be manipulated and transformed into amazing shapes yet still maintaining that simple form of a single line. When the Finish design duo Aamu Song and Johan Olin from Company decided to play with the lines of a simple railing, they came up with new shapes that lended themselves to various uses in addition to just looking cool. The sketch below shows some of the different shapes that came from pushing or pulling at the traditional lines and how they are intended to be used.
These rails in a new Helsinki housing project also provide lovely artwork in addition to their utility. This project has been called Kaide-Taide or Art-Handling. The 8 stories of metal rails are bent into shapes that follow in the footsteps of form follows function to create shapes for leaning, sitting, and viewing.
Ideas like these simple line manipulations could be incorporated into the urban landscape to facilite quick lunches (like seen in earlier post on urban lunches), gathering and seating spaces without taking up too much valuable space.
These aluminum and steel tables by Shanghai designer Zhili Liu are part of a collection called Shrub. The naturally inspired branching legs are attached to the table tops by exposed sunken screws which create a decorative detail in the surface of the aluminum table top.
With bikes attached to both ends of every bench in this courtyard in downtown Portland as well as any available pole including some on the other end, perhaps there is a message here.
This repurposed design by Polish designer Pawel Grunert called the SIE43 Chair, reimagines the use of some PET bottles into a luscious form. It might be called a chair but I can’t really imagine anyone sitting on it without leaving a big dent behind. Although the design of it is quite ingenious in that the bottles all attach to the steel frame via there lids which could then simply be unscrewed and changed out should they show signs of wear. The only trouble with that is, who just has a bunch of the same bottle sitting around? Or if you’re like me, you don’t typically get your water from a bottle. But that’s beside the point. The point is that it’s a lovely form and an inspiring idea.
This particular chair was produced for the ‘Eco Trans Pop’ exhibition of ecological design to be showcased in the Colombari Gallery in Milan, Italy.
As the second Wave Deck on the Toronto Harbourfront, the Simcoe Slip has officially opened for public enjoyment! I’m absolutely in love with West 8’s super sexy form designed to emulate the natural form of waves that make up this amazing deck.
The last time I wote about this, it was still under construction. Of course, the first thing I thought when looking at the construction photos was that there’s no way it would be near as cool once they start sticking all those darn safety features on. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that the rails totally work and in fact, actually add to lovely curving form.
However, eventhough there are rails in the area of the steepest portion of the curves, the railing then dives behind the backless seating benches to allow people sit such that they can face inward towards the deck or outward towards the water for a direct engagement. Amazing! I saw several examples of waterfronts in Europe that had details like this one that I drooled over…knowing full well that we’d never get to build something like that here the US. Instead we would have benches set back and with rails between the people and the water.
With the steep slopes of the curves, it would seem an obvious question as to whether people could actually walk up and down the deck safely. One flickr member took a picture of the detail and points out that the “seemingly impossible slope at the newly opened Simcoe Street wave deck [is] easy to walk up and surprisingly safe to walk down due to the tilted hardwood boards. The whole effect is gorgeous and unexpected.”
Adriaan Geuze, landscape architect and urban designer from West 8, said that the wave deck has no specific program. West 8 wanted the deck to inspire and enourage people to step off their normal path and engage themselves with the waterfront. But I bet that no matter how they thought people would use it, they didn’t expect kids to treat it like a slide! It’s always amazing to see how the public ends up using new spaces and what kind of unexpected events begin to form.
The first section of New York’s High Line is open. A friend and fellow Landscape Architect currently living and working in New York city recently went to check out this super cool park. She got some great shots of some of the fun details seen throughout the park. I particularly love the way in which different materials mesh with each other, how new and old details blend like the rails with the benches and things like the walls blend right into parts of seating elements. I wanted to post some of her photographs that shows this amazing attention to detail.
These are some great and apparently quite popular loungers that have some great details in how the chairs actually attach to some old rails.
Some images of the wooden benches that merge with the pulled up flooring…
The Composition Chair was designed by Japanese designer Kouichi Okamoto of Kyouei Design and created entirely by bent aluminum wire without the use of any bolts or welding. The wire is crossed, one by one, using only a jig and a pair of pliers for tools in the process.
These chairs remind me of a design project I did a long time ago. When I was in college I took a series of art classes, one being 3D design and we had to create a sculpture made completely out of wire and nothing else, that had to express the essence of another person. At the time, my roomate was a drama major who’s closet wall full of bright colors and highly textural fabrics but her favorite piece was a bright pink feather boa. So I chose to create a feather boa out of wire. I spent days sitting on my bed with a big role of wire and pliers. By the end my hands were raw. I created it one little section at a time so that when the whole thing went together, it was flexible and moved like a real boa. It looked pretty awesome and had an organic feel to each piece like the interesting nest-like chair below.
The Crochet Crochet chair, designed by Ruth Fore, was featured as part of the Immaterialize student showcase from the Rhode Island School of Design’s Department of Furniture Design. The emphasis was placed on exploring the specific qualities of materials rather than their most familiar and typical applications.
From the designer: “Crochet Crochet was created through a material exploration of aluminum wire. The initial idea was to create a stable structure using a material known to be soft and flexible. By experimenting with crocheted stitches a woven structure was created that could support a significant amount of weight. The piece evolved into a spherical form as aluminum loops were crocheted three-dimensionally in space transitioning from small to large gauges. The total wire amount ended with 3000 feet. The final product was anodized giving the overall structure more stability. Upon first glance Crochet Crochet appears to be composed of a chaotic mess of wire but when viewed in closer detail the organized woven structure is revealed.”
The Cafe America chair from Grain Design is inspired by the chain link fence. While the material is often an eyesore in the landscape, here it’s reused and repurposed to become an interesting little chair. While the chain link is a flexible and supportive material for the seat and back, I think perhaps the spaces might be a little big for ultimate comfort. Something with smaller gaps, or maybe just a seat pillow, might help.
From Grain Design: “Café America is a surprisingly comfortable indoor/outdoor chair. Taking inspiration from ubiquitous chain-link fencing, it recontextualizes the unsung material. A unique cushioning effect is created by the lightly tensioned chain-link seat and back. Café America is made of recycled chain-link whenever possible and flat-packs for efficient shipping and storage.”
…Is what I would say to the girl in red who looks a little suspicious of the black tubing hanging over her. This particular piece is part of a temporary installation in Berlin, Germany in the Info Art & Furniture Gallery by Sebastien Wierinick, Belgian designer who creates furniture out of interesting materials and sculptural forms for interior spaces and public seating as well as temporary artistic installations.
OnSite Studio “characterises itself materially by the use of industrial flexible tubes, formally by its fluid and organic forms and conceptually by a variable design and production process. Using the principles of ‘programmation’, the system offers a huge range of applications in term of typology, function and scale. The studio can thus respond to most demands, by an appropriate and individual proposition.” via their website.
The images above and below are of a bench in the restaurant Tokyo Eat of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, France. I love the way the flexible tubing wraps up and around to form some nice tush-sized spaces and arm and back rests. It seems very well molded to the human body.
Next is an interesting integrated bench and reception desk in Lyon, France. The long fleixible tubing creates one long form that is molded and warped in opposite and complimentary directions.
This temporary installation in Brussels, Belgium features red variation on the black bench. Somehow it seems less threatening and alien-like in red. It takes on a wave-like pattern that flows up and down and side to side to form benches that face in both directions and different molded shapes. I love the different spaces the bench creates for different sized groups.
Former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne is no stranger to the biking scene as he’s been pedaling around New York for thirty years. He wrote an article in the Times recently about the book Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities by Portland-based author Jeff Mapes.
Byrne agrees that a revolution is coming but that it also isn’t here quite yet. Since he’s been using a bike as his primary mode of transportation for three decades, he’s seen the changes first hand and how it’s gone from only the people that have to bike to adding the people that want to bike and actually enjoy it as a mode of transportation in an urban area.
Many cities have made changes to accomadate those on wheels like here in Portland with new additions like the big green bike box and trading out vehicular parking for bike corrals.
But not everyone has taken the leap, more often than not, people still look at biking as a recreational outing like a weekend trail ride and not as a mode of transportation. And many bikers feel that drivers only tolerate bikes and still don’t fully know how to live with them in harmony on the streets. The more people on bikes creates safety in numbers, which helps, but there’s still a ways to go both in infrastructure and the mental shift from what is currently still predominantely a car culture.
Also, here’s an older video from the time of the design competition New York City held for the design of some new bicycle racks. David Byrne, a judge for the competition, decided he would make some of his own, as seen in the picture at the top of this post, which he had made and installed in various parts of the city:
Dutch designer Nic Roex has taken some ordinary garden shovels and turned them into a curving, double-sided seating structure with a light and whimsical feel that can seat up to 8 people. This would be seriously fun in a park area with a community garden.
This shiny metal bench is an ingenious design also by Nic Roex. From the front it looks like a sleek and smooth, molded seating element. I love the use of the bright color, it works well.
From the rear, the structure of the bench is revealed and you can see that it’s actually a repurposed car hood. I like how it seems like a total behind-the-scene, peek behind the curtain kind of thing as if you’re not really supposed to know that it’s a car hood. The metal frame feels like scaffolding holding up the structure. Super cool.
