Great pieces by Japanese furniture company Truck.

A lot of nice clean lines, but there’s still a raw warmth to the wood and a nostalgia in the classic shapes they’ve appropriated.  It seems like a fine line between a bunch of thrift store gems and custom handcrafted objects, and the ambiguity of the collection’s origin seems to give that time-tested feeling to each of the pieces. 

I’d love to go to Japan and get any one of these. And I’d probably start with that table in the last image…

Nicola Enrico Staübli, previously mentioned in this post, has a new project.  It’s a system of universal furniture joints called INDIE FURNITURE.

The idea is a storage solution designed to reconnect the designer and the user, without a corporate middle man (read: IKEA). After receiving a set of aluminum joint components directly from the designer, and acquiring wood panels locally or from trusted carpenters, the individual consumer becomes actively involved with the creation of each unique piece, constructing it with his own hands. As the aluminum fasteners hold the custom wood in a strict grid, the concentrated design concept is translated across the entire piece, instantly regulating a wide variety of possible configurations and material requirements with one simple repeated form. Rather than disrupting the aesthetic of the wooden parts, the clamps serve to emphasize and highlight the connective details of the shelf as a whole, bringing a compelling and honest form that illustrates its own function.

As a flexible concept, INDIE FURNITURE is non-binding and reconfigurable from beginning to end. The freedom of the initial arrangement and assembly is carried through to the decomposition of the unit, as the robust components are easily dismantled and reused for other shelves. As a straight-forward and restrained design element, the aluminum joint offers an open versatility to a wide range of tectonic possibilities, only limited to the material thickness of 17-20mm. It is an open-source concept of furniture, in which the user’s specific need informs the design, and the language of construction is at its most basic.

INDIE FURNITURE is also a collaborative effort toward a more energy efficient assembly model. With a vast portion of the energy footprint of a product being caused by transportation, INDIE FURNITURE is an opportunity to challenge centralistic business models by outsourcing the heavy and bulky parts to the user himself. As only 6% of the total weight of the shelf, the aluminum clamps offer an easy and accessible solution for local man power to engage the process of design with their own resources and minimal assistance. Since parts and fittings are sold separately, the assembly concept also redirects patronage to community driven craftsmen and the immediate online marketplace. This integration serves to stimulate low-cost and environmentally efficient packaging, distribution and delivery, as well as to amplify the voice of the independent “furniture revolution” through word-of-mouth.

Nicola is one of my favorite young designers, and I’m happy to see that his work with INDIE FURNITURE is currently being exhibited at the Design Museum London.

Check out all of his projects at his portfolio website, Nicola from Bern.

The HMS Victory.

Drawn by John McKay in 1987, and published in the book Anatomy of the Ship: The 100-Gun Ship Victory. Even in poor quality reproductions, the drafting skill is amazing.  Click the pictures for better detail.

via the photostream of subnutty.

Nic Webb is an artist who collects wood from the British Isles or overseas, and makes spoons. He describes his process:

When I begin carving I look for the differing qualities in each piece, allowing the grain and character to influence the design. Each spoon evolves to have its own personality and when finished becomes a showcase for the limitless beauty of wood.

Some people collect sand from beaches, or rocks, or air, from different places. But I like this idea more – that you could take your souvenirs and make them an object of everyday use. Your past experience finds its way into your current activity through transformation by your own hand.

Reminded me also of the work of Andrew Montgomery, a fellow VT architecture alum who creates spoons and furniture from salvaged shipping pallets.

Found this at Feasting Never Stops, which is definitely my new favorite image blog. 
It’s basically the But Does It Float for culinary culture.

C-prints by Christine Nguyen.

What I like about her work (other than the fact that it’s gorgeous and natural and elemental) is that it’s right on the threshold of drawing, painting, photography, and science.

She says:

..the photo-based work is a combination of drawing and a photographic processes. “Negatives” are drawn on layers of Mylar, which are projected onto light-sensitive paper.  The paper is developed in a color processor, creating a camera-less, photographic image. What you are seeing is a negative of the drawing. I use paints, inks, pens, pencils, and also grow salt crystals on the mylar to create my drawings…

Geez. Love that process…
Just taking your work and subjecting it to the optical rigor of projected light.

Makes me wonder what other artistic works have this kind of potential when put under the darkroom enlarger.

(By the way, I think they should have commissioned her to do the opening titles for Avatar…)

when i think of the type of industrial design objects that i would like to own and use everyday, i think of the work of Nicola Enrico Stäubli, from Bern.

they are the kind of products that i could see myself making at home, on the fly, for some specific use. it’s the sense that the products were directly born from the lack of an existing tool for that job. only the objects have more depth than just being useful in one particular scenario. Nicola has created a collection that is not only finely crafted and gorgeously utilitarian, but the pieces are as flexible as the user - reconfiguring themselves to meet the needs of a multitude of domestic conditions.

what i admire most about the designs are the economy and efficiency of such restrained components. he reduces the product to the exact degree that it provides as many configurations as possible while only including the forms and nuances necessary for that fexibility.

as prolific as he has been in such a short professional career, i’m looking forward to some really nice stuff from him in the future.

located in a small mountain village of Bistrica, now a quarter of Sofia, Bulgaria, this house is a simple volume floating over the steep triangular plot. the open space below is intended as a martial arts training hall hidden in the slope. the plan is organized between the two solid walls, the veranda, the intermediate space of the stair and the small courtyard/opening in the centre.

a suspended hand-woven wooden sticks wattle unifies the external and the internal spaces, serving both as cladding on the blind walls and shading in front of the glazing. the elevated position of the house reveals unexpected views over the surroundings.

realized by Viara Jeliazkova and Georgi Katov at I/O Architects.

nominee for the Mies van der Rohe Prize 2009.

very exciting development by Frederic Gmeiner, Torsten Posselt & Benjamin Maus.

their project, “Extracts of Local Distance” involved building a program which assembles collages from a huge pool of images which are dissected and organized by common perspective viewpoints. the result is an interface which allows generation of a new architectural environment derived from the construction of vanishing points by the user.

it reminded me of a set of images by Laura Kicey which she called “Construct”, where she pulled fragments of architectural detail from her bank of old found walls… she was creating a new wall - an imaginary surface - but based in reality and directly stemming from her choices of composition and color.

where these techniques intersect is in the collection of conditions, the finding and cataloging of architectural moments in the world through photography. both of the methods allow a kind of representation of the world through fragmented assemblage, and offer an alternate yet familiar perception of the same things we’ve seen in reality.

but where the “Extracts” project differs from Laura Kicey’s work lies in the fact that it is almost completely generated by the computer. pieced are cut from photographs by an algorithm, cataloged with metadata with a script, and repositioned into place based on an rather arbitrary input from a user. the “Construct” series is decidedly different in it’s unmistakeable and imperfect human touch; the compositions are made with distinct consideration and taste which come directly from the mind of Laura Kicey.

now the question is, does it matter how it comes to be? can the computer generate a more attractive “space” than the product of the sensitive and vague thoughts of an artist?

obviously the technology is there, in fact in some ways it’s more efficient - in remembering meta data and calculating sheer thousands of positioning elements in seconds… but at the end of the day, does it even matter what the computer makes if it doesn’t contain the memory and contextual relevance of collages made by human hands?

anyway i definitely appreciate both ways, and applaud the guys above for innovating new ways to see the built environment and inventing new places of their own.

“bad penny” by custom steel track bike fabricator peacock groove, based in minneapolis.

the frame is completely copper-plated, so whoever owns this thing is going to be riding on a beautiful green patina in a few months. i don’t think any paint job can stand up to that. i especially like the coordination of the bar tape and saddle, chosen with the final color in mind…

well done.
now if only i had 140,000 pennies to spare!