The Brooklyn-based design/build studio 4-Pli designs and manufactures furniture cut from sustainably-harvested plywood on their in-house CNC mill which are then finished with low-VOC paints and varnishes. Much of their collection has elements that repeat, slide together, or nest within each other. They’re not exactly flat-pack design, but they’re also not hand-carved one-of-a-kind pieces (luckily for us). Their work finds a wonderful balance between the two extremes, resulting in work that is simple and sophisticated. (more…)

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Good old Etsy is a massive market place for all things ‘hand made’. Now the concept of the hand can be stretched to the hand that operates the mouse, that designs the product, that clicks send, that, well, uses Ponoko..

Anyway, Soop is a London based design studio headed by top chef Wai-Lian Scannell. She’s forever rustling up new recipes in the Soop kitchen (literally). You can sample a few flavours in Soop’s Etsy shop. In this instance the result is super cute jewellery that can be combined (see customized) to make your very own farmyard scene on your finger.

And while at Etsy check out this, Object

What_
A geometric entity to occupy a desk, a shelf or any space in your life. Balances on several faces.
So the outer casing is made out of recycled cardboard coated in beeswax. The beeswax adds strength as well as a pleasant smell. The underside has two wells, both filled with a swatch of moss.
Why_
A stress reliever, something nice to look at and touch, or a little bit of the outside when you are stuck inside.

ok

Soop Found via Josh Spear

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New Zealand based designer Rachel Young, has produced a simple polypropylene bowl based on her research into origami, released under her banner of Fold.

After many hours of experimentation with paper, Young has patented the Fold dish, a delightful serving, fruit or display plate made from recycled plastic and available in black, white, red and yellow at Eon Design Centre.

The dish’s intended use is for storing fruit, although it can be used as a special serving dish for cakes, salads, bread or display of decorative objects and flower arrangements. It can also be used simply as a stand alone display object. Each dish is hand folded individually and can be stacked upon other Fold Dishes.

Also in the Fold range is a hand folded lamp using similar principles, there is a waiting list so place your orders now…
For more information, see www.fold.co.nz

While researching this post I also found an Origami Blog with loads of interesting origami based projects from hats to tea bag floats through furniture and window treatments by Dutch designer Hannah Allijn.

A bit sloppy on photoshop though.

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Ceramic artist John Balistreri wanted to explore the world of rapid prototyping and the ways it could expand the boundaries of ceramic art so, he teamed up with Gregory Little at Bowling Green State University and BGSU’s ZCorp 3D printer. Balistreri and the team at BGSU experimented with with various clays and binders to create finished, functional ceramic objects that are compatible with ZCorp’s printing process. ZCorp technology closely resembles current inkjet technology, the difference is instead of printing on paper, it prints on increasing layers of powder material.

The teacup was created by scanning a hand-thrown teacup with a 3D scanner and reproducing the teacup with the printer. The teapot, however, was printed directly from a digital file, which opens up a number of possibilities that aren’t possible with traditional ceramic techniques. With traditional ceramics, the rendering of an object is limited by the pull of gravity. Because printed ceramics are surrounded by dry media, they are able to ignore gravity to create structures that are currently either impossible or unfeasible with today’s production technologies, such as engine parts, or superior water filters. All in all, printed ceramics look pretty cool and they might change the world.

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WSJ’s Andy Jordan visited Maker Faire to discover what so many of “us” already know - there’s a revolution going on! Ponoko is given a big mention among the other fascinating exhibits (iron particles within oil and manipulated by magnets reminded me so much of Terminator), check out the video below!

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Boingboingtv has a good video up in which Phil Torrone, editor of Make magazine, shows us some of his favourite projects from Maker Faire 2008 last weekend. These include soft toy electronics, ‘fablabs’ and the “brain machine”. Phil comments a little on the links between the maker movement, the affordablilty of digital fabrication, and the future of product personalisation.

Its good to get a little insight into the goings on at Maker Faire when I’m stuck over on this side of the atlantic - there’s such a vibrant network of makers out there, hopefully one day I’ll be able to attend a Maker faire myself!

Update:

There’s also an interesting perspective from the businessmen at Forbes.com here. Some chat with Make magazine, Bleep Labs and Mitch Altman on the reasoning behind DIY product success stories. The emphasis on the need for building a product community and sharing (and thus flexible licensing I surmise) is interesting.

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I love cardboard furniture. There’s something alchemic about turning such an omnipresent, mundane material into something other than a box. Cardboard furniture is really great for temporary purposes such as outfitting a dorm, traveling, and in Green Lullaby’s case, providing for rapidly sprouting children. Green Lullaby has designed a small series of cardboard furnishings for children of various ages that are eco-friendly and damned useful, often incorporating storage space in their design. With a cradle, bench, table, and stools, each piece appears to be sturdy, beautiful, and functional, although I would hope the cradle is at least water-resistant. (more…)

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I’ve often wondered what life is like for a designer maker. Luckily most of my questions have just been answered after reading a fascinating post at indie quarter blog. It’s a day in life of designer maker Rachael Lamb of Hannah Zakari online store.

Here’s a taste of what it’s like:

I’m lucky enough to have a big office space, so I have separate areas for different tasks - a table for cutting fabric and sewing, my jewellery area with all my beads, chain and pliers and another bit for packing up orders. Despite this, I always seem to run out of space and no matter how much extra storage I buy, I outgrow it in a matter of weeks. The first thing to get neglected when HZ really took off was my own line so now I try to make time each week to work on my own designs and to look through my favourite internet shops for fabric and supplies for that - I have favourites that I could spend hours on if I let myself and am totally addicted to searching for (and buying) vintage/interesting buttons!

She spends a lot of her day on the net (but don’t we all) checking various websites and ordering stock, and a lot time packing orders and posting them off. She confirms what I’ve heard others say; when you have some success designing and selling your own products you don’t actually get much time to design.

Read the full article here

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Michael Kutshbach is an Australian born, Berlin based artist who has consistently used emerging technologies and processes in his art practice. His work crosses over from abstract painting, to interior and graphic design, animation and sculpture.

For years Michael Kutschbach has explored an extensive array of diverse techniques, mediums and artistic approaches: from his beginning as an abstract painter to the ever-developing, pop-esque, self-sticking vinyl plots that cover walls, furniture and windows or, in a similar form but different materiality, appear on wallpaper or are applied to textiles, to the blobs that are formed from plaster. Over a longer period these appear in various sizes and groupings- – mono- chrome, colored or chromed, and their formal language is repeated contemporaneously in his digital animations.

Dorothea Jendricke, Berlin 2007

Having worked with Michael on a number of projects I am always inspired by his curiosity in approaching new technologies, materials and processes, and thought he would provide some great insights for Ponokosters.

Q1. Why did you switch from painting and traditional sculpture to using laser cutting and 3d modeling tools to realize your projects?

It was more the work that took me there than an interest in using the technology or a conscious shift. close to ten years ago now i was painting abstract pictures using the palm of my hand. pretty simple stuff, but it felt deeply connected to the history of modernist painting as i understood it.

I never really know what i am doing in my work. it is often very intuitive. So one of the strategies i employ is to flip the method (not the intent or subject matter) in order to get a better understanding of what i was doing at that time. in this case i wanted to go from a very direct and tactile way of working to a method that had some distance to it. keeping with the idea of the hand made gestural mark, i used a wacom tablet to draw lines and shapes that came to resemble the painted marks in some way. the tablet drawings were made as vector drawings and were later sent to a signwriting company to be plotted from adhesive vinyl and were then applied directly to the gallery wall.

this was my first step toward using new technologies in my practice. since then i’ve played around with laser cutting, rapid prototyping (although always too expensive for what i wanted to do), 3d animation and so on.
in the end i like to think of technology as a tool and not the subject. this way i have the freedom to keep flipping or negating the methods i employ and the format of the work.

More in next post

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Because We Can is a design-build studio that has created some really amazing work. Their flat pack designs are especially interesting, such as the flat pack couch, designed as a place to rest your feet and store your vinyl. equally cool is the flat pack furniture system designed for Sunpower, Inc. The system consists of tables, stools, & signage, and is fit together with no adhesives, requiring only a few hard smacks with a mallet. (more…)

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