Best of Student Shows 2012
This year the Blueprint team and a panel of 14 critics traveled to student degree shows around the country. After viewing hundreds of presentations from a diverse range of disciplines, we have compiled our findings, bringing you some of this year’s best work from the designers and architects of the future.
Here, the graduates explain each [...]
New Designers – Discounted Ticket Offer
New Designers, an annual showcase of up-and-coming creative talent, returns to the Business Design Centre in Islington, north London next week, and the organisers are kindly offering readers of Blueprint a 25 per cent discount on tickets.
The show is in two parts with part one taking place between 27 and 30 [...]
Review – Eames: The Architect and the Painter
It all began with the moulded plywood chair. Voted by Time Magazine as the greatest design of the 20th Century, and conceived for a competition at MoMA in 1940 with Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames attempted to reinvent the very idea of the chair. They wanted to mass-produce compound curves without any upholstery, for [...]
Event: HEL/LO – Let’s Talk – 24 May
Thursday 24 May, 6–9 pm
The Gopher Hole
350–354 Old Street,
London, EC1V 9NQ
Blueprint and The Finnish Institute in London is delighted to announce a series of four events called HEL/LO – Let’s Talk. They will bring together architecture and design professionals from London and Helsinki for a lively discussion and exchange of ideas throughout the year. The [...]
Jólan van der Wiel’s Gravity Stools
Amsterdam-based designer Jólan van der Wiel delights in calling his products ‘freakish and organic’ and he’s not wrong. They also beg the question, ‘How on earth did you do that?’ The answer, magnetism.
Essentially, for his stools, van der Wiel mixes a large amount of iron filings – around 6kg – with some liquid plastic, then [...]
The Bouroullec Brothers: Fox and Hedgehog
In a bizarre and endearing moment of self-definition, the Bouroullecs once described themselves the ‘Fox’ (Ronan) and the ‘Hedgehog’ (Erwan), employing philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s categorisation of intellectuals, which divides them into ‘Foxes’, who know ‘many things’ and ‘Hedgehogs’, who know ‘one big thing’.
We used this as our starting point…
The Fox: Ronan Bouroullec
The elder of the [...]
Asif and Pernilla
Asif Khan is a young architect in an enviable position. He’s been hailed by Design Miami 2011 as a ‘Designer of the Future’, written up in the New York Times as one of five designers to watch this year, and awarded a prestigious ‘designer in residence’ slot at the Design Museum – the first architect [...]
Terence Conran Exhibition: Win Tickets and Books
The Design Museum marks Sir Terence Conran’s 80th birthday with a major exhibition that explores his unique impact on contemporary life in Britain. Through his own design work, and also through his entrepreneurial flair, Conran has transformed the British way of life. As well as this, his design studio and architectural [...]
Best of the Student Shows 2011
This year the Blueprint team and a panel of 14 critics travelled to student degree shows across Great Britain and Europe. After viewing hundreds of presentations from a diverse range of disciplines, here we have compiled their findings, bringing you some of this year’s best work from the designers and architects of the future.
Click on [...]
Packing It In
This project, The Crate Series, first planted itself in the consciousness of Studio Makkink & Bey in India. Architect Rianne Makkink witnessed the humble crate defining all measure of everyday environments for inhabitants of the cramped cities, and wondered how this might be tested in her own familiar surroundings. Upon returning to the Netherlands, Makkink, [...]
Are You Sitting Sustainably?
Creating something new for Herman Miller could well rank as one of industrial design’s more formidable challenges. Just look at the heritage. The Eames Aluminum Series, first produced in the late 1950s is still a desirable (if pricey) office option. The Aeron, created by Bill Stumpf and launched in 1994, shows no sign of losing [...]
Modern Tradition
‘The Swedish have a tradition of industry, the Danish have a tradition of woodworking and Finland has a tradition of craft,’ says Magnus Englund, founder of Skandium,
the British-based retailer that specialises in bringing Scandinavian design to the British market. At the London Design Festival (LDF) this year, the Finnish designer Harri Koskinen will be launching [...]
Industrial Craftwork
It was fate that bought together Japanese furniture brand Maruni and London furniture showroom Viaduct at the Milan Salone del Mobile in 2005. The director of Viaduct, James Mair, stumbled upon Maruni’s stand at the show and was impressed by its 2004 Nextmaruni series, a range of furniture by Japan’s leading contemporary designers.
Unbeknown to Mair, [...]
Thomas Heatherwick’s first art show
While still a postgraduate student at the Royal College of Art in 1993, Thomas Heatherwick had the idea of making a piece of furniture from a single material, all components extruded in one piece. He began looking for an aluminium factory to achieve this end. At the time, a visit to Alcan in Banbury got [...]
Vitra Workshop Comes to London
Vitra and Blueprint present the Audile Interpretation Workshop: An Exploration into Sound and Environment.
During the London Design Festival, the spirit of the Boisbuchet workshops will be recreated at Vitra’s base in Clerkenwell. Architect ODA, in association with sound artist Craig Vear and designer Andrew Lock, will explore sonic experience with groups of students and professionals. How [...]
Zona Tortona 2009: What not to miss
Next week sees the 48th year of biggest event in the global design calendar: the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan. Around 88,000 visitors are expected to pour into the area around Via Tortona in the southwest of Milan during this week of the Salone del Mobile. Originally an ad-hoc happening, Zona Tortona Design – [...]
Baroque at the V&A
As part of a season of events celebrating the Baroque, the V&A has curated an exhibition entitled ‘Style in the Age of Magnificence’. Drawn from all over the world, this collection of relics, artefacts and images is impressive in scope, but somehow fails to convey the essence of the movement itself.
The displays are organised by [...]
Interview: Konstantin Grcic
Konstantin Grcic may be disenchanted by the industry, but his Myto chair, is furniture category winner of the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year, and shortlisted for the overall prize which will be announced next week. Caroline Roux interviewed him for the October 2008 issue of Blueprint
I suppose if you’re going to create an instantaneous design icon, [...]
Interview: Gary Hustwit, director of Helvetica and Objectified
When Helvetica, a documentary about the ubiquitous and famously functional typeface, was released in 2007, it gained more mainstream success than anyone expected. While it was never going to challenge Spiderman III for box office receipts, the film has been shown at film festivals around the world, won rave reviews – particularly from graphic designers [...]
Blueprint Open Studios – Tomoko Azumi
Open Studio 6.30pm Wednesday 15th August
This month will see Tomoko [...]
