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.

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.

This is a piece by Dutch artist Semâ Bekirovic.

It’s just four shelves from a house that burned down, with the traces of objects that sat there at the time of the fire.

(via korut)

Awesome set of antique radio tuning dials, found at Indiana Radios.

Considering they all did pretty much the same thing, there seems to be a ton of variety in these things. I guess from country to country, or with different radio companies, you had a completely different dial.

From a graphic / typographic standpoint, they just blew me away. Such unconventional type, line, and color choices, but also really ubiquitous at the same time… like you’ve seen them all before somewhere, but also never really seen anything like it.

I also found it interesting because they represent an era of technological transition. As radio took off and people started to navigate the airwaves, the graphic identity of the radio seemed to neglect the state-of-the-art electrical nature of the instrument, and was more akin to the nautical navigation devices of the past. People understood the compass as the main way-finding interface, so I guess it was only natural to relate the radial knobs and dials to that graphic system.

An intriguing idea… that all those ham radio guys were actually mapping sonic space, dialing each other up, triangulating positions through concentric circles, writing down important headings or frequencies. Sounds more and more like the surveys of 15th century cartographers. Even the name Zenith (as in the amateur radio company from Chicago) is a direct reference to a projected line from the earth to the heavens, and has it’s origin in the field of Practical Geodesy - the science of earth measurement in three-dimensional space.

Today it’s just as commonplace for us to have a digital radio dial, since we navigate the world through the same kind of digital space, with electronic coordinates on our GPS.

But yeah, aren’t they cool? And as long as we are making connections about the graphic implications of such symbols, I’ll say that I’m not surprised at all to realize that the circular dials are also very reminiscent of other directional systems: the medicine wheel of the American Indian, or even the Mayan calendar. Alright, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but you have to admit, the colors and lines on some of these things seem to fit the description.

I think contemporary designers can learn a lot from the intuitive usability of analog displays like this. Then again, there’s so much beauty in the computer as well, so…

came across this incredible set of victorian-era microscope specimens over at the nonist.

immediately i was blown away by the state of the slides, given their age. then what i really started liking about them is the range of cataloging technique - the labels, numbering systems, and overall aesthetic of the objects themselves.

also i found it slightly ironic that these samples, collected and stored in what was once thought to be a standard and unobtrusive way, are now becoming objects of curiosity in and of themselves. at the time, the biological samples were a novelty of scientific breakthrough, and viewing such a small scale of life was a romantic escape for collectors. today, as microscopic imaging becomes commonplace, we look at these objects and are instantly more intrigued by the archaic way in which they were assembled… their aesthetic variety as compared to the sterility our modern slides.

as a basic record of man’s curiosity, i don’t think you can get any more iconic and elemental than these small glass strips. it’s a beautiful, human way of keeping things, little fragments of life and minerals… but the passage of time allows for another kind of specimen to emerge. as the scientists were recording their own observations of the earth, they were simultaneously documenting themselves, and their process.

it’s a clear moment in time, preserved by the same method used to save the natural samples. and it’s strange, because in an weird reversal, the timeless natural forms in the center of the slides can be read as the “control” - the thing which remains the same between that era and today. that leaves the words, the filigree, and the classification styles (the man-made elements) as a new specimen of ourselves.

when did they stop being current? was it as soon as they were designated historically valuable that the microscope zoomed out to look at the whole slide?

thought-provoking sculpture from Swedish artist Michael Johansson.

in our consumerist culture, we eventually face the accumulation of our possessions, and usually with our more valuable items, we’re forced to store these objects somewhere - in our home, in a facility, or any number of other indoor and outdoor spaces.

why Michaeal Johansson’s work appeals to me is that it speaks to the fact that, though strewn around and used in various parts of our homes and workplaces, the everyday objects of our lives are acutally taking up a significant amount of inhabitable space. collecting and meticulously (and beautifully) packing these things as discernable spatial volumes, Johansson allows an appraisal of the physical mass of those things that we supposedly “need”.

as an object made of objects, each piece is a microcosm of a life lived through a collection of utility. the kitchen table packed with kitchen supplies represents a condensation of every kitchen memory in a single orthogonal box, simultaneously expressing a reductive modernist efficiency (elevating the envelope rather than the aggregate) as well as a hyper-referential, almost ornate concentration of memorable uses.

his other series of sculptures are deconstructed appliances, recast as a kit of parts in reverse, and taking an aesthetic cue from the iconic twist-off component arrays of DIY model kits.

as the artist describes them:

everyday objects from mid-20th century housewives are taken apart, sorted, and repacked in an equally outdated boydream aesthetics.  these two worlds are merged together and the objects are frozen in their new shape - while the function is displayed, the functionality is taken away.

sounds like someone had a lot of fun at the thrift store…

but seriously i think this has some architectural value. it’s a strange kind of rearrangement of solids, where the volume of space that is freed by the consolidation of these disparate elements is simultaneously annihilated by the recognizable and somewhat more intimidating mass. it’s as if Johansson deliberately uses the the flush, clean forms to deny the accessibility of the things we have come to rely on. the contradiction of that uselessness is exaggerated since we clearly see that this pristine object degrades and breaks down into constituent pieces of very useful things.

so the question is, would you rather live with your current distributed mess, or have the illusion of more space around your Wes Anderson-ized Tetris block of belongings?

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.

i think i would enjoy making a home on this little red ship.

i like the idea of retrofitting, in general, but especially in something this iconic. also nice is the fact that like a typical houseboat, it can be moored anywhere, and leave whenever it’s convenient. although i think the london docks would make a perfect neighbourhood…

via jjlocations.co.uk.

EDIT: david reminded me that this plan could turn out very …chad.

1000 mile boots by Wolverine. available at Need Supply in Richmond, VA.

love the idea that these were designed for a certain number of miles walked, more than any other factor. i need to get in the habit of investing in fewer possessions with more lasting quality. wish i could start by buying these, but $350? c’mon. i guess you get what you pay for…

so maybe when i become rich.
or when i find them in a dumpster/yard sale because they outlasted their owner.