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 [...]
The Boat Project
‘When you design a boat you normally know what materials you are going to be building out of – we obviously didn’t,’ says boat designer Simon Rogers, surprisingly exuberantly as he starts to describe The Boat Project. Part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad – a festival of arts linked to and culminating at the same [...]
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 [...]
Ways Of Hearing
Sound enhances the way we perceive and understand space. In the city it does this by connecting the realm of public space to the private and intimate space of our minds. Sound gives any space, interior or exterior, its identity and is an important navigation and orientation tool.
Yet actually identifying a space aurally is difficult, [...]
Nintendo’s Game Changer
‘Real 3D Graphics. No Glasses Needed’ is the tagline for the much vaunted – well, much advertised – launch of the Nintendo 3DS hand-held games console. Blueprint handed over this piece of cutting-edge technology to Cinemod Studio, a London-based architecture and interactive design company, to offer an insight into the potential of this increasingly prominent [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Launch of the Alessi Utensil Series
Next week, Alessi – the Italian kitchen product design company – are launching a new series of abstract metal bowls, baskets and centrepieces. Black and white squares and rectangles that look like business cards, are stuck together seemingly at random, forming a bowl or basket shape. Created by artist, architect and graphic designer Mario Trimarchi, [...]
Vitra/CIRECA Workshop Diary: Lessons in Porcelain
Porcelain; the ‘white gold’, a precious material originating in China, brought to Europe by Marco Polo, and whose recipe was a royal secret for many years. It is distinguished by being the only one of the fired-earth family to have a translucent quality, and when tapped it rings like crystal. Its composition was discovered in [...]
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 – [...]
New Work from DesignedMade
DesignedMade is the recently launched British design label from product designer Jonathan Krawczuk. A talented young graduate from Central St. Martins, Krawczuk believes in seeing the product design process from start to finish, assuming the role of designer, producer, and in some cases manufacturer. In so doing, he is committed to supporting the UK manufacturing [...]
