This week, Dutch architect Haiko Cornelissen introduces picNYC, a clever grass-topped dining table designed to bring the experience of picnicking into the urban home. The lightweight aluminum tabletop and legs form a solid framework for grass, soil, and stones, and owners can transform their dining spaces as they wish through variations in flowers, herbs, or even vegetables, not to mention usage, sunlight, and season. As the firm says: “Suddenly spilling water becomes a necessity instead of a problem, and wine glasses need coasters not to prevent ring stains but to avoid tumbling.”

Photographs by Iwan Baan and Alan Tansey, courtesy of Haiko Cornelissen Architecten.

Studio DRIFT‘s latest commission is the stunning FLYLIGHT, an interactive light installation inspired by the seemingly random patterns of a flock of birds. Spanning two floors of a private residence in Moscow, the graceful, whimsical FLYLIGHT consists of over 200 glass tubes which light up and respond to the viewer. It was designed by Studio DRIFT designers Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, and produced in coordination with Philosophy of Design.

Check out a FLYLIGHT image gallery below, and the enchanting FLYLIGHT in action here:

All images courtesy of Studio DRIFT. For more information, visit www.designdrift.nl

Now Showing Antibodies (Anticorpos): Fernando & Humberto Campana, 1989 – 2009.

São Paulo’s Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil welcomes Antibodies, an expansive retrospective exhibit of work by the famed design duo, Fernando and Humberto Campana. The brothers have been designing together for almost three decades, and have collaborated on everything from furniture, fashion and jewelry, to products and interiors. The pair may be best known for their playful design aesthetic and projects developed from common but often unexpected materials – including waste products like cardboard, stuffed animals, rope, fabric and wood scraps, plastic tubes, aluminum wire. As curator Mathias Schwartz-Clauss says, “Together, the brothers ignore all the conventions of the traditional design, play with the notion of functionality, and form their poetic objects from contradictory realities.”

Antibodies was first displayed at the Vitra Museum in 2009, and texts, films, photos, and hundreds of designs (furniture, domestic objects, art, architecture models, installation pieces, etc.) by the Campana Brothers. The exhibit reveals both the diversity of the pair’s work as well as their design process and sources of inspiration.

Antibodies is on display through January 15, 2012.

Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil
Rua Álvares Penteado, 112 – Centro – São Paulo
Information: (11) 3113-3651 / 3113-3652

The fifth annual Vienna Design Week, a celebration of product design, industrial design, and furniture design, finishes up this coming Sunday. As always, one of the highlights of this year’s festival is the “Passionswege,” a design trail through Vienna featuring experimental, site-specific collaborations between designers and established Viennese businesses. This year’s “Passionswege” exhibits included works by Canadian designer Philippe Malouin for renowned glass manufacturer J. & L. Lobmeyr; Austrian designer Patrycja Domanska‘s collaboration with ‘dirndl’ [ladies’ folk costume] experts from Tostmann Trachten; and Tomas Kral, a product designer and instructor at the University of Art and Design Lausanne (ECAL) for fashion-forward milliner Mühlbauer, among others.

One of the most beautiful collaborations, “Brass & Crafts,” came from Udine-based design firm LucidiPevere, which joined forces with WOKA Lamps Vienna. The result was a series of four beautiful metal sculptures, which WOKA’s creative director Christiane Büssgen describes this way: “like over-sized jewelry or. . . Japanese fashion in brass, an homage to our craftsmanship.” See below for a slideshow of this gorgeous project’s process and final results.

For more information, on Vienna Design Week, visit www.viennadesignweek.at.

*Images courtesy of WOKA Lamp Design and Vienna Design Week.

In May of last year, the New York arts community was shocked and saddened by the death of thirty-five-year-old designer Tobias Wong. Blurring the lines between conceptual art and design, Wong’s work questioned the value system of objects and pretensions of designers with humor and wit. Now, in honor of his life and work, nine NYC-based designers have come together to create Brokenoff Brokenoff, an exhibition of new works that reconsider and reinterpret Mr. Wong’s design legacy, emphasizing the importance of self-reflection and humor. (Gallery slideshow below.)

Wong was a talented designer and provocateur, as well as a master of clever expropriation (take, for example, This Is Not A Lamp, his Phillipe Starck Bubble-Club-chair-turned-lamp, or his gold-plated McDonald’s coffee stirrers). He was also a dear friend to the nine Brokenoff Brokenoff participating designers, who include Todd Bracher, Dror Benshetrit, Brad Ascalon, Stephen Burks, Joe Doucet, Josee Lepage, Frederick McSwain, Marc Thorpe, and David Weeks.

Reflecting on his friendship with Wong, Todd Bracher says, “My relationship with Tobi was very subtle and unspoken. I’d known him for many years through his work and personally only for about a year before his death. In that year, I felt as though my exchanges with him were sort of out of body-from mind to mind, without sounding odd-meaning we just simply ‘got’ each other. He was a sincere person whose wit and spirit cut through everything, and if you were a like person the bind became instant and strong. He has been and will continue to be greatly missed.”

Bracher’s exhibition piece, called Secondhand Romance, was inspired by Wong’s glass candlestick and smoking mitten. “The concept is a revisited candlestick where instead the hero is the cigarette,” Bracher says. “It is about taking pleasure and finding intimacy in something some see as disgusting and others see as wonderful. The idea is as Tobi had defined in his work, crossing boundaries. Saying that cigarettes too are wonderful, beautiful and sexy. They are not to be seen as wholly negative, and in some ways, even worshiped, indulging in its odor and pattern of waffling smoke.”

Describing his piece, Dror Benshetrit says: “I met Tobi while I was working on one of my first products, the Vase of Phases. The project appealed to Tobi and he approached me about including it in the Terminal 5 show at JFK. I was excited about the opportunity, especially because I appreciated his work and his vision. I admired him as a designer, artist, and thinker. In this tribute to Tobi, the vase is a symbol for our first encounter, and plays homage to Tobi’s life as a phase.”

Various Projects and Bondtoo, a new creative space in Manhattan, were close collaborators and friends of Wong’s as well, and realized his The Times of New York Candle with a limited-edition run of 1000. Describing the history behind the piece, Josee Lepage says that Wong “thought of himself, more than anything, as an observer. One of his last concepts was The Times of New York Candle. Wong saw the candle as both a tribute to the iconic newspaper and as a nostalgic commentary on printed media. To capture the olfactory essence of black ink on newsprint, a candle scent has been developed that would include guaiacwood, cedar, musk, spice and floral hints, with a powdery note and velvet nuance.”

Other pieces include Frederick McSwain’s Die, a portrait of his friend made of 13,138 die (one for every day of Wong’s life), which references Wong’s early installation work and the concepts of uncertainty and risk taking so integral to his work, and Marc Thorpe’s Call Me or Copy Me, a version of Wong’s personal business card, which Thorpe transformed from plastic to gold. According to Thorpe: “I was introduced to Tobias Wong in 2001. He handed me his plastic stencil business card and said, ‘Call me or copy me.’ The business card was the essence of his design intention: to subvert the value of objects, challenge the definition of status and question originality.”

BrokenOff BrokenOff runs through tomorrow at:

Gallery R’Pure
3 East 19th Street
New York City

For more information, visit brokenoffbrokenoff.com.

Images courtesy of Gallery R’Pure, Todd Bracher, and Dror Benshetrit.

Trove, an NYC-based design house specializing in wall coverings, pushes the limits on scale and repetition with unexpected patterns running 12 feet high and 3-6 feet across. Led by artists Jee Levin and Randall Buck, Trove creates design-forward, eco-friendly and recyclable prints on commercial-grade paper, using high-quality, non-toxic, wax-based coatings and archival inks, which boast a lifespan of 140 years. Trove’s designs have decorated the walls of several high-profile locations, including Nobu Restaurants’ private dining rooms, Club Monaco, Fairmont Hotels, W Hotels, McCann Erickson, Suffolk University and celebrity residences.

Trove’s first creations were inspired by a 100-year-old flower market in the middle of Manhattan, and subsequent collections have been inspired by natural elements. Fuoco (below) is based on a historic photograph of Teatro La Fenice, the famed Venice opera house. Literally translated, “La Fenice” means “the Phoenix” or “rise from the ashes” – the photograph was originally taken after the theater was rebuilt following a fire that completely destroyed it in 1836. The rebuilt theater, from which the pattern is constructed, sadly no longer exists, as it also burnt to the ground in 1996. Fuoco addresses the concept of the beholder/beholden. Are we examining the audience or are they examining us?

Ciel (also below) references the famous line, “There’s no place like home.” According to Trove, at a time when inclement weather displaces thousands – from Alabama to Japan to Italy, Indonesia, and Haiti – we’ve all come to realize just how important home is. It is a physical oasis where we take shelter from the world and, at the same time, the imaginative interior where we have the power to envision our own world.

Sargasso is named for the Sargasso Sea, “the only sea without shores.” According to Trove, this print speaks to the magnanimity of our natural resources. Again, we’ve recently witnessed the damage water can cause, yet ironically, one of the first needed supplies on disaster sites is water – both the profusion and deficiency were deadly. Water is powerful, dangerous, and crucial to our existence. Sargasso aspires to portray the tranquility, the beauty, and the healing force of water.

The company’s latest collection, which will debut at this month’s ICFF, returns to the elemental beauty of nature. Vertere (below), meaning to turn, references both the season’s changing leaves and the ever-changing human heart.

For more information, visit www.troveline.com.

*above: Fuoco

*above: Fuoco, detail

*above: Ciel

*above: Sargasso

*above: Sargasso, detail

*above: Vertere, from Trove’s latest collection.

*All images courtesy of Trove.

Simultaneously edgy and elegant, the “City Plates” collection was designed by California-based, multi-disciplinary design firm Rios Clementi Hale Studios. Celebrating over twenty cities around the globe, and grouping them into a range of themes that spans “Culture and Capital(ism)” to “Empire Building,” each plate features its city’s downtown core printed on a black background. Key buildings are represented with red icons, while rivers and public spaces are shown in blue and green.

Every plate comes boxed with a key to the buildings and spaces included on the plate. The 12″, porcelain plates (sold individually and in sets up to twenty) start at $50, and are available at notNeutral.

*above: New York, part of the “Capital Migration” series. Population: 8.2 million
Capital of the U.S. until 1790, New York long ago cemented its reputation as the ‘Capital of the World’. Its huge global influence on finance, trade, politics, and culture has been felt for more than a century, and it is seen around the world as the symbol of the American Dream. It is the most densely populated city on the globe. This fact alone gives New York its absolutely unique urban form. New York was first settled in Lower Manhattan, which accounts for the Old World European layout of downtown (in white). The entire island and parts of Brooklyn are dotted with historic landmarks and civic buildings (in red), including the United Nations building, Grand Central, Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden and the World Trade Center Memorial.

*above: Mumbai, part of the series celebrating past, present, and future innovations in architecture and design. Population: 13.5 million.
Mumbai (formerly Bombay) is the most populated city in the world. It is one of those cities constantly being listed as one of the ‘fastest/biggest/densest’ – a city of the new world order. It is the product of major feats of civil engineering that merged an archipelago of islands into an amalgamated mass of activity…features a dramatic blue swath of The Arabian Sea. Noted landmarks include the tony Malabar Point (in red) and the Gateway of India and Taj Majal Hotel (also in red) along the Mumbai Harbor (in blue.)

*above: London. Part of the “Empire Building” series, considering the global impact of empires on settlement patterns, national borders, cultural identity, and modern city form. Population: 13.9 million.
This former Roman outpost was established as the seat of British power by William the Conqueror. The city underwent two major catastrophes in rapid succession: a plague in 1665 and a fire in 1666 that wiped out 85% of its buildings. By the age of industrialization, London was not only a thoroughly modern city, but also the seat of a vast colonial empire that served as model for the development patterns of its new settlements. Today, London is a sprawling city, large enough to accommodate strikingly modern architecture along with relics of the past…The large white area ties together the location of the original Roman Settlement with the Tower of London (in red) to the center of the Empire with Buckingham Palace (in red).

*above: Dubai, part of the “Culture and Capital(ism)” series. Population: 1.5 million.
A city where man-made islands are fashioned in the shape of palm trees and plans for the world’s first rotating skyscraper are underway – Dubai is Las Vegas on steroids. The city’s erratic, spiraling layout is the combined result of a rich history that dates to at least 3000 B.C. and the contemporary drive to create and contain the perfect artificial environment.

*above: Shanghai, part of the “City as Gateway” series. Population: 19,213,200
Shanghai, the largest commercial and financial power in China, is one of the largest ports in Asia. Its central location on China’s Pacific coast has made the city a major gateway between China and the Western world. The city’s urban center has a unique organic form, caused in part by the wide curve of the Huangpu River, which bisects the city and comes across as a dramatic swath of blue on the plate. The areas allotted to foreign powers after the Opium Wars – the British, French, and Americans – reflect the grid-form of traditional Western city planning.

To see more City Plates, visit notneutral.com.

Artwork courtesy of Rios Clementi Hale Studios.

Brooklyn-based designer Orlando Dominguez mixes color and function for playful yet purposeful home decor pieces. Some of our favorites include his revamped traditional chairs, sporting bold paint and fabric combinations. Dominguez is the creative director and CEO of GIN Art & Design.

This month, Design Within Reach hosts “Brooklyn on the Verge of Spring,” a solo exhibition of the designer’s vibrantly colored, urban-inspired pieces at its Brooklyn Heights studio location. The exhibit runs through March 17th, so there are just a few more days to check it out!

To learn more, visit ginartdesign.com or dwr.com.

Design Within Reach:
76 Montague Street
Brooklyn, NY

*above: yellow front chair

*above: blue front chair

*above: Pink Chic chair

*above: Om Tea Table

*above: Buddha Tea Table

*above: one of Dominguez’s metal yoga sculptures

*above: one of Dominguez’s metal yoga sculptures

*Images courtesy of White Noise Showroom.

Though many of us now communicate primarily via iPhones, Skype, and the like, there is still – to my mind – something lovely about the handwritten note. And Japan’s Winged Wheel seems to agree. The third generation, family-owned paper goods company creates beautifully simple pieces, all with a sense of style that seems to say that stationery should always complement – not dilute – a writer’s sentiments.

The company manufactures and sells cotton paper and traditional Japanese paper from mulberry trees, and boasts original, modern designs as well as traditionally-inspired Japanese motifs. Check out a handful of their offerings below, as well as their gorgeous Osaka and Tokyo retail shops.

To learn more, visit winged-wheel.co.jp/en/

*above: series 602

*above: series 331

*above: series 50

*above: series 321

*above: series 321

*above: series 610

*above: series 601

*below: Winged Wheel Omotesando (Tokyo store)

*below: Winged Wheel Shinsaibashi (Osaka store)

*All images courtesy of Winged Wheel

Debuting this past week at Cape Town’s Design Indaba and now stateside tonight at New York’s New Museum, Israeli-born, New York-based designer Dror Benshetrit presents his latest design – a versatile support system called QuaDror.

Four years in the making, this unique structural support geometry is made by assembling four identical, interlocking, L-shaped pieces. Initially, the designer was excited by the system’s flexibility and aesthetic. Upon further exploration, though, he soon recognized its structural integrity and broad potential applications, and began working collaboratively with a variety of experts to determine its capabilities.

The collapsible system allows for rapid assembly (from closed and flat to open and self-standing) and easy transfer (less volume in transit without giving up great load-bearing capabilities), and adapts to a variety of conditions, making it a fit for everything from product design (lamps, etc.) to trestle structures (bridges, saw horses), dividing walls, sound barriers, and architecture (frame and relief structures, and high-end dwellings, pop up structures, public art installations, emergency structures, etc.). And the collapsibility of the units and the potential use of local materials allow for low-carbon footprint and energy efficiency. In fact, according to the studio, 1750 QuaDror relief structure kits (each one creating a new emergency relief home) can fit in one 40-feet container. The studio is currently in the process of manufacturing the “QuaDror Home,” and hopes to construct the first QuaDror houses in Sierra Leone.

According to Dror: “Our goal is to inspire change. Working with creative and innovative experts from various fields, we aim to share and implement this geometry in urban design, architecture, philanthropic work, and public art. When realizing that the system could potentially bring a groundbreaking solution to the global issue of habitat, we were eager to complete our experimentations and share this discovery with the world.”

Check out the video demonstration below, plus several possible applications for QuaDror’s design. And if you’d like to learn a little more about Dror, check out studiodror.com or my recent interview with him for Dwell.com.

QuaDror from Dror on Vimeo.

*above: QuaDror table

*above: QuaDror Volume MGX (lamp)

*above: QuaDror PopUp Building

*above: QuaDror building

*above: QuaDror villa

*above: QuaDror bridge

*Images and video courtesy of Dror Benshetrit.