Sauce

Launching this week as part of Milan’s furniture festivities, the latest collaboration with leading designers and the second with Karim Rashid and Veuve Clicquot is this reinvention of a chandelier in the form of a glowing pink champagne holder that doubles as a cooling tote. The design, an asymmetrical sensual ellipse, was the result of Rashid’s initial scribble after asked to meld the immaterial and the material like he’d done with his first project for Veuve, the loveseat. Realizing his doodle was “the idea in itself,” the Globalight literally circles the champagne and adds ambient illumination that plays off the pink hue of Ros champagne, for which it was designed.

Bringing lighting experts Zumtobel into the project, the lamp-cum-basket uses technology to light up without heating and in fact keeps bottles at the ideal temperature for up to two hours.

Limited to a run of 500 (only 50 of those will be available for the U.S. market), the Globalight will be available on Eclicquot in May for $4,000.

via coolhunting

Against a background of natural terrain and vegetation, is a “red ribbon” spanning five hundred meters, which integrates the functions of lighting, seating, environmental interpretation, and orientation. While preserving as much of the natural river corridor as possible during the process of urbanization, this project demonstrates how a minimal design solution can achieve a dramatic improvement to the landscape.

The Tanghe River Park, located in Qinhuangdao, China, features a new installation of red steel that stretches for 500 meters along the riverbank. It is made of fiber steel, and lit from inside so that it glows red at night.

Four pavilions in the shape of clouds are distributed along the ribbon, which provide protection from the weather, meeting opportunities, and visual focal points.

www.asla.org

Rice Gallery commissioned this installation in collaboration with The Museum Fine Arts in Houston exhibition, The Modern West: American Landscape, 1890-1950.

Rip Curl Canyon was a kind of mythical location in the American West where land and water collide, far from Houston’s flat drained swamps. From its highest point at the rear of the gallery, its steep, crevice-like formations sloped down and gained momentum before breaking apart to form ribbons of curling waves. Like rip currents – narrow, fast moving belts of water – the segments twisted and surged toward the front glass entry wall. The view through the glass provided only glimpses of the unfolding topography beyond and invited the visitor to probe deeper. The steady climbing exploring caused the raw cut cardboard to slowly compress with each footstep…over time this accumulation developed into subtle pathways.

The fabrication processes used to make the natural brown surfaces are in the lineage of those Gehry employed in his legendary “Easy Edges” line of furniture in the 1970’s. Expanding on this knowledge enabled us to create architecturally scaled cardboard structures and introduce double curvature. We used the properties and limitations of the material – determined through building full scaled mock-ups during development combined with a parametric digital interface - to shape the cardboard – ribbons.” The project required laminating over 20,000 strips (weighing approximately eight tons) of curved, industrially die-cut corrugated cardboard in twelve days. Incredibly strong and capable of supporting the weight of several people, the cardboard laminates operate as semi-monocoques with an intermediary plywood armature. The armature was made of standard wood materials – 2 x 4s and plywood – individually cut and CNC routered offsite to conform to the varying dimensions and curvature of the undulating cardboard shells. We digitally developed a language of slotting connections so that these non-standard parts came together like a giant puzzle in four days, required very little structural decision making in the field and gave us the freedom to make improvised choices when installing the cardboard.

Swedish furniture giant IKEA has converted the Kobe Portliner Monorail into a moving showroom before the April 14 opening of a new retail outlet at Port Island. The redecorated train, which features a colorful exterior, bright upholstery and fancy curtains, will carry passengers in style until May 6.

Is this the ultimate experiential catalogue for the time pressured urbanites. Ikea have mastered the art of ensuring anyone who interfaces with them at the store is taken on the choreograped journey. This just takes it one step beyond and gets it to us with little effort - great idea, although with Ikea being used to deck out most expats residences, seeing it all on the train too may be a tad too far.

How to convey luxury in a wine bottle? A perfect example - the poetically simple wine bottles from Buccella Wines.

Limited color palette (jet black bottle, creamy white label and rich red seal).

Texture (glossy bottle, uncoated paper label and deeply embossed real wax seal).

Less is more (the only clues about ‘who’ and ‘when’ are the logo in the seal and the artful ‘2005′ on the label).

via dieline

San Francisco-based Method has revamped the packaging for its popula Omop floor sweeper keit and Omop microfiber accessory pads.

Made specifically for Method from a combination of paper and bamboo the new brown packaging has an attractive unfinished quality to it - totally unique next to other products packaged in clear clamshells with bright labeling.

The packaging has a minimal quality to it that alone provides it a creative advantage - you want to look at the packaging, touch it and find out what is in it.

The packaging is both compostable and recyclable (mixed paper) and its creation has an interesting story behind it.

The idea for the new design came out of a “Design Safari” a regular creative departure held internally among Method staff. At the safaris staff members share examples of packaging or creative design they like and discuss it with their colleagues.

The new Omop starter kit packaging is compartmentalized. Everything has its own place in a logical easy to open format (unlike many clamshells).

Method’s Katie Molinari says - the internal layout of the packaging is a little like the experience of opening an Ipod box.

Open the lid of the paper/bamboo packaging on the starter kit to find a bottle of the Omop cleaning solution and a microfiber pad nicely laid out in front of you. Dig a little deeper to uncover the Omop unit itself. So simple its actually rather elegant.

The Omop starter kit and microfiber accessory packaging are both made from the new paper/bamboo packaging designed in-house by Method’s design team.

The new packaging replaces the clamshell style packaging the product used before and began appearing in stores across the country last month. Molinari said the Omop itself is basically the same as the earlier version with a few minor enhancements to its durability and functionality.

Consumers will ultimately judge the effectiveness of the new paper/bamboo packaging but from a creative and design perspective its bold and ambitious - fitting well with Method’s goals of continuing to green their packaging.

The packaging won the Institute of Packaging Professionals’ (IoPP) AmeriStar award.

The newly designed packaging is available for both versions of the Omop and microfiber pads.

via Sustainable is Good