Union Panorama

The Jangir Maddadi Design Bureau, a Sweden-based furniture design studio, has established a line of luxury benches, lamps and planters for interior and exterior spaces that are clean, aesthetically beautiful and utilitarian.

All of the company’s products are crafted locally; using Swedish artisans to design and craft their benches, planters and lamps is a point of pride for the Jangir Maddadi Design Bureau. The company strives to compliment their prioritization of regional artisans and materials with designs that are organic and earthy. Innovation, they stress, and forward-thinking configurations and aesthetics are also vital in their products’ designs, though.

Their pieces are grouped into three categories. The first, the “Union Family” is a line that uses large circles singularly or grouped to create both benches and planters. The planters, available in poured concrete or fiberglass, are large circles that slope proportionally to the ground. The benches are more complex; they are available in a variety of one, two and three- seat configurations. The “Panorama” bench design aligns two or three of the circular seats linearly, but also allows the option for one of the circles to be used as a planter. This design is ideal for hallways and corridors, can seat up to 12, and is, says the company, “inspired by the natural curves of people in movement.” The other possible configuration for benches creates a new type of tripod: three seats are connected in a triangle configuration that allows for both privacy, letting strangers comfortably cohabitate, and also intimacy, allowing a close space for friends to huddle to converse. The bases of the customizable benches are made of fiberglass; the moulds are poured by expert yacht makers on the country’s east coast. The circular seat cushions can be made in a variety of colors from felt, hand-sewn leather made on the Swedish island of Öland, or, in the “yacht” design, teak wood. Read the rest of this entry »

The project was designed and produced by Matt Miller, Dale Fenton, Emau Vega, Aubrie Damron, and Adrian Cortez, all students at the Texas A&M University. Developing the idea of two opposite spatial and symbolic conditions, the team decided to emphasize the difference between them, instead of trying to blend them together. The resulting structure was marked by two polar personalities that defined exteriority and interiority. The Bi-Polar Project comprises three systems: the tessellated parametric logic performative exterior, the free-flowing sensual interior, and the in-between bladder system acting as a mediator between the two extremes. Read the rest of this entry »

A self-taught furniture designer and studio owner Joseph Walsh is considered one of the world’s most promising and forward looking young artists. The extraordinary quality of his craftsmanship is widely recognized, receiving critical attention of curators, academics and the media. The design approach is derived from a body of knowledge accumulated over the years, working almost exclusively with wood. This intimate understanding of the material resulted in a fluency with design and production techniques, altogether enabling him to take a more conceptual approach. Read the rest of this entry »

The Austro-Croatian design collective Numen/For Use was established in 1998, as a collaborative effort of industrial designers Sven Jonke, Christoph Katzler and Nikola Radeljković. Since then they have worked on numerous projects, some of which investigating ideas beyond the field of industrial design. From the scenographic project for the production of “Inferno” in the National Centre for Drama in Madrid, to the series of temporary installations under the common title “Tape Project”, their work seems to be continually engaging with issues of spatial experimentation. Read the rest of this entry »

There is the idea of floating in space: the impression of walking on air that is achieved by creating a network of balloons, suspended on spider webs. Technically, the project resembles Buckminster Fuller experiments on geodesic domes. There is also another layer to the exhibition: the idea of being able to physically experience the effects of somebody else’s movements in space. The concept evolves from an idea of coordinating behaviour and environment, without the didactics of the current environmentalist approach. The body is exposed to physical changes in the environment, directly caused by another human being. The installation explores what the author calls “a realizable utopia”.

The exhibition “Cloud Cities” is currently placed in the Hamburger Banhof in Berlin. Visitors are free to enter around 20 balloon models of various sizes-sort of a hanging settlement.  The transparent balloons are accessible through ladders. Seen from underneath, people seem to be walking on air. Read the rest of this entry »

This project designed by Cheng Gong and Jinming Feng received a honorable mention at the International School Museum of Flamenco Competition. Flamenco is one of the traditional Spanish dancing arts that still exists and is actively practiced.  Its most impressive aspect could be found in the strong rhythm that is generated between the synthetic reaction of music and dancing.

Based on the inspiration of the articulated expression of ancient ornamental iron patterns as well as the order of the columns and arches in Spanish churches, the architects’ strategy is to re-appear the exuberant atmosphere within the context. Architectural programs are mainly defined by the columns and the fluid partitions offset from the outer domain. At the same time, a more active and dynamic roof and vertical sub-structural system grow from the regular column matrix with the purpose of not only forming a highly rhythmic sound wave cover but also extracting people from the surroundings and gathering them into the site to have an interactive moment such as dancing and communication. The transformation of shading and light effects emphasizes the comparison between the columns and the mutated roof. Read the rest of this entry »

Presented at the recently closed Vienna Design Week, the self-powered chair is an object which brought a lot of media attention to its creators. Novague is a Prague based design studio founded in 2008 by Petr Novague. Their design philosophy evolves around the concept of energy, also the key aspect of their Rocking Chair design. The aim was to create a widely used object that would be able to produce energy as a by-product of its exploitation. Eventually, a rocking chair design was decided upon, connecting the act of relaxing to the process of producing energy. A simple steam engine like kinetic mechanism is set under the seat which works with a sliding lever that pulls a flywheel disc while the chair rocks. Read the rest of this entry »

Anisotropia is based on Klavierstück I, a composition for piano by Orproject director Christoph Klemmt. The piano piece uses a twelve tone row which is repeated and altered by the different voices, in order to create complex rhythmic patterns. Anisotropia becomes the physical manifestation of Klavierstück I, a frozen piece of music. The installation is based on a simple strip morphology instead of a twelve tone row, which creates the structure, openings and rhythm within itself, its repetition happening in space instead of time. Layers of the strips form the wall system, and the shifting and alteration of these patterns results in the formation of complex architectural rhythms which are used to control the light, view and shading properties of the structure. The system has also been used for our design proposal for Busan Opera House. Read the rest of this entry »

The design uses light and sculptural space in order to illustrate different aspects of druguse. It doesn’t include conventional tools accompanying similar events. It aims to become a mind-opening experience whose architecture lures the visitors in. Through the creation of a hallucinogenic space, chance is given to discuss drugs. Space, light and sound is interacting with the visitor, giving a personal experience created by the visitors movement and mindset. Only one person is allowed inside at a time and may stay for as long as he/she wants to.

The installation contains three continuously linked spaces – pleasure, repetition and awakening. Entering the first space, the door is shut behind the visitor, who is given beauty and tranquillity. Soft, crystalline music and subtle light phenomenons, bring peace and pleasure. Sliding into the second space, the surroundings are closing in around the visitor. A harsh sound and light environment is brought on the person, who is deprived of direction and is given heaven and hell in a quick rhythm. In the last space the visitor starts to reach for reality and a numbing bass is growing through the body, giving a will to leave for solid ground. The wooden floor hide triggers that activate different scenes manipulating the subjects experience of the journey through the container. Thus reflections on drug use and abuse are raised. Read the rest of this entry »

Augmented Structures: Acoustic Formations” is an augmented structure, an installation created through the use of innovative parametric architecture and audiovisual techniques. The projects deals with a new mediated space: how to translate the logic of media into architecture? In this first experiment field recordings of Istiklal Street were transformed in to parametric architectural structure. The recordings were also used to create an electro-acoustical composition. The project seeks interactions between space, sound, the visual and light (with a reference to the Philips Pavilion of Le Courbusier).

Beyond being an artwork this installation is an urban experience that will nest in collective memory of İstiklal Street visitors through its scale (200sqm of surface) and the dominance of the location (at the heart of Istanbul). Read the rest of this entry »