Core-fave Subports, a text-to-buy retail platform aimed at helping artists and designers sell their stuff without needing four walls, a roof and a cash register, is ever present during this year's design week, partnering with Fair Folks & A Goat, the Joey Roth Sounds Like Show, Uncomfortable Conversations, and CITE Goes America. Many objects from these shows come with codes, allowing you to purchase them securely and on the spot with your cell phone. We love this—with Subports, exhibition spaces hybridize with retail spaces, helping young designers sell work while upping their visibility.
Subports' just-published first catalog is one of the more fun publications being tossed around at openings. Named Portal/76825 after their SMS number, the pamphlet indexes the newest Subports offerings with images, descriptions, and purchase codes. Many of these come directly out of Design Week, so it also makes for a nice souvenir. Pick one up at any of the Subports partner shows mentioned above. Or get in touch with them if you've got ideas for more retail experiments with SMS.
Design Deustchland's bright orange booth at ICFF was a big improvement on last year's. Instead of being arranged by category and hung on the wall, the objects were spread out in mini spaces that felt like small rooms, with lamps on tables, chairs on desks, and the odd car here and there.
The show encompassed both established companies and young designers. These weren't differentiated in layout, but the objects in prototype stage were marked with a tag that said "Looking for a Producer." Below, a few of our favorites from that category (like Slot, the dining table complete with Winter Wonderland centerpiece, by Matthias Ries Design Office and Studio Hausen's UDO Chair, a snap-together aluminum lawn chair).
UDO by Studio Hausen
Jörg Höltje (Studio Hausen) presents the UDO, an into four elements dismountable tube-chair. No additional procedures like welding, sanding or polishing are needed, as well as expensive tooling costs. All four elements can be customized coloured within a certain colour range and connected with blind riveting and screws. The dismounted UDO can be packed cost efficiently in a flat-pack and can be assembled by the customer himself.
Slot by Matthias Ries Design Office
Besides the classical linoleum bord Slot convinces due to its unreckoned leg construction. Their design provides structural strength in vertical, horizontal and diagonal directions, which additionally helps to strut the table. Due to additional corner caps the table can be easily color customized. For the Design Germany exhibition a special one-off with a little model scenery has been created. It plays with peoples perceptions and assumptiuons.
Henry Grid Rack by Kilian Schindler
The design of the hallstand is not unlike the trelliswork used for training garden plants, but in this case it is the tools, items of clothing and accessories that clutter up this powder-coated steel frame. The culmination of this assembly is a set of boxes made from different materials. Their purpose is to accommodate even the smallest of objects.
Bell Light by Sebastian Herkner
It's a luminaire inspired by spotlights and reflectors with changeable lampshades. This are made of copper or textile to influence the atmosphere, temperature and colour of light.
Miss Maple by Elisa Strozyk
The pendant lamp "Miss Maple" is showing the use of a familiar material in an unconventional way. We usually experience wood as a plain surface, but here it is broken down into a grid of triangles. This makes a flexible lampshade which can be transformed manually in three-dimensional ways. While the lamp generates warm light at night the surface outside becomes more evident with daylight and turns the lamp into sculptural object.
New York Design Week 2010: Student work at ICFF
Each year the ICFF invites design schools worldwide to submit student projects for juried review, selecting the best submissions for display at the fair. This year six schools had work on display; ArtFuture, Konstfact, Maryland Institute College of Art, Parson The New School for Design, Pratt Institute and Yale.
The work explored a range of subjects and themes and included housewares, toys and lighting in addition to furniture. Shown above are Neon Candlesticks, by Catherine Merrick,part of Pratt's Empathy for Culture project. The piece is inspired by the neon signage from Merrick's hometown of Las Vegas.
More pics after the jump.
At top, the Pratt Institute booth at the ICFF. Below is a set of acrylic color wheels, designed as a kinetic toy to teach the basic of color theory, part of the Parachute line of learning toys.
A student discusses the Yale School of Architecture's booth with a show visitor. The title of the installation is The Chair as Crucible, and students explored various essentials of architecture through the form of a chair. At bottom is one of the projects on display, a two-person conversation loveseat rendered in wood.
The Button Table, by Olga Prozorova, is part of the ArtFuture Design School installation. This piece explores scale, and uses the traditional Russian form of the mattryoska as the legs, and thread, of a table-sized button.
The Nucs are a bath toy in the form of a family. Kids will be delighted as they fill each character with water and watch them pee the liquid out through gender-specific openings. Part of the Flow exhibit from students at Parsons.
New York Design Week 2010: Endcap of all endcaps - LZF Lighting
The furniture fair typically hosts a ton of "veneer lighting" (most of it's pretty nice, actually), but LZF's floor-to-ceiling installation at the end of the Spain section was positively exuberant. Most of the pieces are by Luis Eslava Studio (their Agatha hanging lamp is particularly beautiful), and evoke one of those giant gift ribbons atop a car in an automobile ad. (Which would actually make some sense, given that this is the Javits Center.)
New York Design Week 2010: Core77's Kick-Ass Kick-Off Party Photos!
Core77 kicked off New York Design Week in full force last night at the Gershwin Hotel. The first 200 guests received our limited-edition "Instant Designer Glasses" Photopaddle designed by Chicago-based Steven Haulenbeek, a super low-tech pocket sized camera-phone accessory guaranteed to up your cred at any design event.
We'll be giving out more today at the Javits Center and at the parties tonight if you can find one of the Core77 bloggers. There's a live feed of the latest pictures here and we'll be featuring the best shots on Core over the weekend!
