Los Angeles-based REVOL Studio just unveiled a fascinating minimal pen on Kickstarter. Pen Comet is an elegant minimalist pen that re-thinks the traditional pen in every way. It featured an innovative all-magnetic cap connection that works like magic. Pen Comet is precision-machined out of space-grade aluminum anodized in three colors: space grey, gold, and black. An exclusive pen base complements the design for desk use.

The magnetic cap attracts the metal pen tip and protects it when not in use. This magnetic force is meticulously calculated so that the cap stays on when being transported, and effortlessly removed when needed.

-> Learn more about Pen Comet on their Kickstarter page.

Sofa “Corques” and lamp “Bella” from PER/USE, designed in 2014. Photo: Koelnmesse, Lucie Koldova, Martin Chum

“Das Haus – Interiors on Stage” is a special kind of installation. For the seventh year running, the international interiors show imm cologne has invited an international designer to use architecture, interior design and furniture in a simulated house in order to make a personal statement about contemporary living. At the next edition of imm cologne, the approximately 180-square-metre installation located in Hall 2.2 of the Pure segment will be built and fitted out in accordance with the ideas of the Czech designer Lucie Koldova.

“Following the transatlantic ‘Haus’ by Todd Bracher, we are returning to Europe with Lucie Koldova, and turning our attention to the Czech Republic – the home of superb glassware”, reveals the Creative Director of imm cologne, Dick Spierenburg. “We were particularly impressed with her lamp designs. They reveal an ideal combination of materials like wood, brass and copper with the lustrous quality of glass that has been blown to the limits of what is technically possible – they are remarkable. In 2018, we are focussing on the subject of light and emphasising its importance as a creative design element. With this in mind, we also want to let our prestige project ‘Das Haus’ shine in a special light – in the truest sense. And, as a highly talented designer of lighting products, Lucie Koldova is the perfect person to do this.”

Lucie Koldova’s poetry in glass

Bohemian glass, also known as Bohemia crystal, enjoys an unparalleled reputation around the world. In her designs, Lucie Koldova demonstrates how this tradition can be interpreted in a modern style and at the highest standard. In 2010, shortly after graduating from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, she achieved her international breakthrough with her lamp collection “Muffins” (for Brokis), produced in collaboration with Dan Yeffet in Paris. Their simple, elegant, sensual form and the attention to detail highlight the fine materials used and their high-quality workmanship. The designer’s knowledge and appreciation of the craft of glass production are expressed particularly strongly when combined with wood, marble or onyx. Lucie Koldova has been named “Czech Designer of the Year” and “Elle Decoration Talent”.

In 2009, the designer moved from Prague to Paris where, in 2010, she founded the Lucie Koldova Studio.She works for prestigious companies in the lighting and furniture sector including Brokis, PER/USE, La Chance and Haymann Editions. Today, the 34-year-old is once again working with her studio based in the city on the River Vltava. Her selection as the guest of honour for the internationally renowned, highly experimental design event “Das Haus” gives the designer from the Czech Republic a unique opportunity to realise the full potential of a structure’s interior design through the use of artificial or artistically arranged light.

A home: created by an atmosphere full of light

“Das Haus 2018” will be shaped less by walls than by lighting cells in which light, appearing in various forms and controlled in different ways, will not only mark out the space, but also support its function and a specific sentiment. “In my ‘Haus’, light will play the main role, and the furniture will complete the rooms – and not the other way around!”, says Lucie Koldova, summing up the new characteristics of “Das Haus” in a nutshell.

By designing different lighting layouts and specific light-related emotions in every lighting cell, Koldova is able to achieve interesting visual contradictions. Because we experience a variety of stressful situations in our everyday lives, the designer is trying to find a balance in her version of “Das Haus”. “People constantly swing back and forth between their feelings and moods; at home they should have the opportunity to feel calm and to rest. Light can help in these situations”, says Koldova. “An ideal living space therefore offers a wide variety of mood levels, because its rooms close the circle between the ideas in our emotional world and the demands of real life.” As a result, every room in Koldova’s “Haus” aims to represent a certain feeling and perform a practical role in everyday life in order to satisfy individual needs. Then, at its heart, a living room represents shared experiences.

“Das Haus” – half portrait of the designer, half future-focused concept

The “Das Haus – Interiors on Stage” installation is a simulated residential house at the international interiors show imm cologne. Every year, a new designer is nominated and, based on their plans and designs, the fair organises the erection of an approximately 180-square-metre house in the Pure Editions area, Hall 2.2. The furniture, colours, materials, lighting and accessories are also selected by the designer, rendering the finished house an individual configuration of interior design. The integrated concept should not just be future-orientated, but also practical and, above all, authentic. “Das Haus – Interiors on Stage” is therefore a portrait of a designer as well as a visionary concept; an example of how one can create one’s own world as an expression of one’s own personality. The project deals not just with contemporary furnishing trends but also with the aspirations of the viewing public as well as social change.

-> More information

Rug “Brush” from Chevalier édition, designed in 2016. Photo: Koelnmesse, Lucie Koldova, Martin Chum

Lamp collection “Muffins” from Brokis, designed in 2010 in collaboration with Dan Yeffet. Photo: Koelnmesse, Lucie Koldova, Martin Chum

imm cologne has named the Czech creative talent Lucie Koldova as the new “Das Haus” designer. Photo: Koelnmesse, Lucie Koldova, Martin Chum

RetroCOuleur

Two Weeks starting the 11th of December until the 21st of December.

ArchitectScripta is organizing an international workshop of Advanced Architectural Design, part of an ongoing academic research, which introduces participants into contemporary discussions of formal exploration in Architecture and Art, through technical attainment of design and production. The Precise Inaccuracy by ArchitectScripta is under the auspices of Benaki Museum, the Hellenic Institute of Architecture and the Athens School of fine Arts. It is an opportunity for architects, students of Architecture and Art, professionals designers and artists to join and exchange ideas.

GUIDELINES

The Workshop will run primarily using AutoDesk MAYA and Rhino GRASSHOPPER, including other fundamental software digital design tools.

1.The main aspiration of this workshop is to precisely develop a critical argument based on an individual research, which will translate into pure geometrical-formal exploration; the format will be an ongoing deskcrit symposium.

2. Rather than assignments, the research will be divided into stages, tactics and strategies.

3. The students will develop an expertise in a specific Topological territory; this territory will emerge for a hybrid between 4 main intellectual fields, from the following menu:

TOPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS AND STRATEGIES OF

A. STRUCTURAL-RIGID-EfficienciesFilms, Case Studies, A topological development of, Dynamics Techniques, Corrupting structure, prosthetic, rigid structural system with soft components – paradox.

B. SKIN-SURFACE-MASS EfficienciesWe will approach ideas of Color, Transparencies, Reflections, Refraction, Textures, patterns, textile animals skin, surface effects, skin as mass, skin as volume, transparencies, opacities, corrugations.

C. GROUNDSCAPE Efficiencies Plug into, dig in/out, scratch, stitch, seams, corrode, erode, articulate organization, heterotopia, dystopia.

D. MULTIPLICATION-REPETITION-ACCUMULATION EfficienciesCalibration of systems, quantification of parts, behavioral mechanism efficiency, Defensive mechanisms, attacking methods, attaching.

The multiple level of experimentation will occur incrementally every week, but each segment will have a clear main topic of investigation, these are the reasons for the 4 legs sequence, so everybody can have the proper time for each aspect of the problem (intellectual, technical, abstract, physical, etc).

INTENTIONS

The workshop is a discourse based in the use of multi-layered techniques and production processes that allow for control over intelligent geometries, calibration of parts, and behavioral taxonomies, normalizing an innovative field of predictability. Our goal is to explore innovative, potential architectural expressions of the current discourse around form through technique elaboration, material intelligence, formal logic efficiencies and precision assemblies as an ultimate condition of design.

The workshop will develop and investigate the notion of proficient geometric variations at a level of complexity, so that questions towards geometrical effectiveness, accuracy and performance can begin to be understood in a contemporary setting.

Within this context, our work will turn into design and production; each student will operate within an expertise towards intuition by means of software and advancement of the discipline through a precise contemporary understanding of Architecture’s reliance on surface performance, unspecified systems, scale within the scale, mechanical parts and absurd precisions to expand its discourse. We will focus simultaneously in the attempt to negotiate the question of topology vs. typology, odd genus (Greek. γένος) and species within the condition of space and how fragmented surface state emerges through, constituting a potential assembly of parts and quantified normalities.

-> APPLY