Tuesday, May 04, 2010

MILAN: Salone del Mobile 2010 - Ventura Lambrate design district


Lambrate Ventura - Autofficina.  Visiting the Autofficina exhibition is like walking into a storyline, which just came to a pause.   A group of young Dutch designers are fascinated by the keen attention to detail and composition originated from still life paintings.   During the Salone they created their own compositions in a one time setting in a decayed Italian car garage.



Lambrate Ventura - Autofficina. Some of the pieces displayed designed by young Dutch designers.  In the foreground a free standing radiator designed by Bas Van Raay for Studio Vraay.


Lambrate Ventura –The architects and designers - Maarten Baas. Every year in Milan, Maarten Baas surprises and confuses the design audience by coming up with unpredictable concepts, which often shake up the fixed borders of design.  Baas is known for his handmade limited pieces, mostly made for museums and private collectors.  This year, he didn’t work on a new collection, but developed his Analog Digital Clock into a one Dollar iPhone app. Advertised right behind him in the photo above on a sheet of paper taped to the wall.


Lambrate Ventura – Analog Digital Clock.  The Analog Digital Clock designed by Maarten Baas as an iPhone app, costs one Dollar. The clock is a re-reading of the old-school alarm clock, yet every minute an actor changes the numbers manually. Instead of a presentation space, Baas rented a private apartment for a week, to show his app.
 

Lambrate Ventura: Design Academy Eindhoven – Projects the ‘Questions’ exhibition.  The Design Academy Eindhoven exhibition, entitled Projects the ‘Questions’ presents works by graduate students of the year 2009 and its curator Ilse Crawford.  This leading British designer is associated with the academy as head of its design department ‘Man and Well Being’.
Where do you like to take a bath? Was designed by Anna van der Lei. She believes that the bathroom as a fitted room is too restrictive.  Having a bath is more than a physical cleanse; a good bath in the right place will be relaxing and refreshing.  This Dutch version of a Finnish sauna can be placed outside as well as indoors. The Larchwood cupboard has custom made joints that will expand, as they get wet, making it completely watertight.  You can hang your clothes over the bath, where the steam will freshen them up while you sit and soak.


Lambrate Ventura: Design Academy Eindhoven – Projects the ‘Questions’ exhibition.   How can our measurements connect to the resources we use?  Was designed by Digna Kosse.  Is our use of resources still in proportion to our own measurements in relation to the world?  Our consumerism has grown out of proportion Digna Kosse believes.  She has sought a way of visualising an exact human measure.  Using water, she has determined the volume of her own body parts and taken this as a measure for a series of 25 bowls.  The largest bowl shows the volume of her torso, the smallest one represents her little toe.  If you were to fill each bowl with food, you would be eating an entire body.



Lambrate Ventura: Design Academy Eindhoven – Projects the ‘Questions’ exhibition.   Can art be functional?  Was designed by Carolina Wilke.  Art is something functional, too; it will make a person happy or it will serve as decoration in a room.  On the other hand, utensils can also be used as art.  Carolina Wilke has created a tableware range in which these two characteristics complement and find each other.  This creates a tension between the decorative and the utility functions, with the objects taking on meaning through their context or the situation in which they have been place.


Lambrate Ventura: Ten Small Atlases/Ten Processes Behind Ten Objects – the curators.  The curators of the exhibition Ten Small Atlases/Ten Processes Behind Ten Objects, Barbara Brondi and Marco Raino.  The exhibition shows the experience of the IN residence project, a thematic workshop that involves young international designers of recognised talent and even younger students, held in Torino every year.  The exhibition focus is the design process; the way things come to be made.   Ten designers showed their visual vocabularies, creative strategies and dictionary of allusions based on which are conceived their displayed works.


Lambrate Ventura: Ten Small Atlases/Ten Processes Behind Ten Objects – Water.  Water designed by Pieke Bergmans.  The most fascinating moment in the transformation of glass – that is like water when it becomes fluid, vivid and takes form in a quick change – is when the material searches its balance facing force of gravity.  With the prototype series of glass water carafes, the designer tries to freeze this instant in a shape that is natural, almost liquid.  Once the carafe is filled with water, it can be confused with its container in a play on reflections that makes it hard to distinguish the edge between shape and content.


Lambrate Ventura: Ten Small Atlases/Ten Processes Behind Ten Objects – Coiling.  Coiling was designed by Raw-Edge Design Studio. An easy seat created by the simplicity of using two characteristics of woollen felt, a material with a soft surface that is suitable for seating and absorbent fibre that, combined with acrylic resin becomes a hard shall.  In this way the felt becomes both the structure and the ‘upholstery’.  The coiling process enables to sculpture the felt into evocative ergonomic design.

Pin It