Over the weekend I’ve had some time to question particular design thoughts that have been playing on my mind, it’s not unusual for me to hit a stumbling block every so often where the thoughts become complex and I can’t get my mind around certain concepts. One that I’ve been watching quite closely is based on ‘design dissolving in human behaviour’, at first I was a bit perplexed by …
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Ever since I discovered Alejandro Sticotti, a leading residential architect and furniture designer from Buenos Aires, Argentina, I’ve really been fascinated by his work. He studied architecture at the University of Buenos Aires before establishing his own line of furniture, NET, twenty-five years ago. Ever since the beginning, Alejandro has expressed his preference for simple lines and their affinity with the funcionalist ideology. For him …
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The function vs non-function debate is one that I regularly battle with, as a designer my urge to make things structural and quite conformative is a very natural one, I like the idea of ordering disorder. But one thing I’ve been trying to do lately is to step outside this mindset and be more free and creative in other fields where it sees fit. Obviously, I’ll still have that element of functionality inside of me …
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Maybe we’ve gone a bit pottery made over here?! It seems like it’s taken the reigns slightly and has grabbed hold of us, although to be fair I do feel like we’re doing a pretty good job at keeping the blog well balanced and unique. Especially this week with Daniel including some nice culture type films into the mix. Partly the reason for todays post is through my research into different techniques and processes. I take quite a lot of inspiration from …
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It’s not often that I come across shops or creatives in New Zealand, we’ve swayed towards Japan in recent months but there are also some fantastic things going on in other parts of the world. Particularly that side near Australia is where I’m seeing lots of creative communities pop-up and exhibit exciting work, this store that I’ve know about for a while named Everyday Needs is …
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It wasn’t that long ago that I entered another small business into the archive named M.Saito Wood Works, and today it’s quite ironic that I’m placing another in called SAITO WOOD, which is quite close but not exactly the same. To be honest they’re on different sides of the spectrum but they do have a few small things in common, plus when I saw the fantastic photography by Taro Hirano I had to place it up for all of you to enjoy. Japanese …
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It’s amazing to see such style and simplicity in makers situated on our own turf, unfortunately it’s not something that we come across here on a regular basis, but these works made by Manchester based Jill Shaddock are very eye pleasing indeed. I originally came across her works on the Snug website, a shop for contemporary craft in
Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, and the mixture of porcelain ware really blew me away. I’m not …
My latest explorations revolve around a trio of books that I purchased delving into the art of the tea ceremony in Japan and the concept of life over there in general. One particular book that has gripped me over the past few days was written by Junichiro Tanizaki titled ‘in praise of shadows’, it’s actually quite a short publication but I was entranced all the way through as he mentioned architecture, food, lacquerware and an array …
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If you’re anything like me every so often you’ll come across a designer or artist who seems to create work that’s near enough perfect. It doesn’t happen all that often but when it does every photo you view just seems to hit home, and when I bring it across here to showcase it’s impossible to pick up a small selection of imagery to sum up their portfolio. This happened to me earlier when I …
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Even though we don’t necessarily work on weekends here I’ll still keep my eyes open for inspiration, beautifully designed objects and information that’s new and exciting in the design world. Sometimes it’s just luck of the draw to what you’ll find but generally I discover something that’s really intriguing or positive, I guess that’s the nature of the web right now, since it’s so big and so vast. Plus, so many creatives are updating their …
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Who doesn’t love the Bauhaus? I’m certainly an admirer and in the next week I’ll be looking to venture out towards the Barbican before the ‘Bauhaus: Art as Life’ exhibition finishes in London, it would be a great shame to miss it since it looks fantastic. I’m one of these guys who’s got an obsessive compulsive disorder in terms of design, I’m constantly learning off new creatives from all different sectors, I’m quite the book worm and …
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I’m not really a specialist on silverware as such, I have a bit of a push pull relationship with objects of shine and that element of lure. Although I’m quite the functionalist at heart I’ve been drawn to objects with that in-between for a fair while now and this tableware by Magnus Stephensen for Georg Jensen is a perfect example of that. Magnus was a bit of a legend in my eyes, he graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of …
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