Another Parisian exhibition here, showcasing 15 years of design by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec has opened at Les Arts Décoratifs museum. The exhibition consists of a number of beautiful and inspirational textile dividers. Making use of pattern, texture and bold colour themes.
Currently exhibiting at the Centre Pompidou until 20th May 2013 in Paris, is the confrontational work of Jesus-Rafael Soto (1923-2005). His work begins to explore art through participation rather than perception, using colour in a three-dimensional structure to create an ‘optical vibration’ with the use of colour.
We LOVE the way the colour is seen to jump out, or as Soto put it, into an ‘unpredictable dance of retractions or projections in the ‘Ambivalences:Senegales’ piece.’ The colour appears playful yet sensitive when the viewer is challenged to interact with colour.
His work is an ambience of colour and movement combined.
The Poke Stool is the first furniture piece created by a typography designer, Kyuhyung Cho. Cho’s inspiration was to develop furniture for adults but keep a spirit of child like play in the form and function. This is evident in the playful, ‘building block’-esque colours in the set.
Not only is the stacking method clever and unique, it also creates interesting sculptural forms as additional stools are added. Cho describes it “as creating a rhythm as the stack grows higher. The addition of the fourth stool establishes a new layer with a different tempo. The composition of different colours and variations to the rhythm lead us create our own structure, like a geometric sculpture.”
The Stool is made from natural birch and oak and is finished with a hard wearing coloured lacquer to create a solid and smooth surface to make stacking and unstacking work effortlessly.
Fresh from success in Milan the Medici chair, designed by Konstantin Grcic for Mattiazzi has just been announced as the winner of the furniture category in the ‘Design of the Year’ competition by The Design Museum London
http://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/2013/designs-of-the-year-2013
We love the irregular angles and the geometrics of this chair, we also applaud its brave use of colour, this is definitely a design I would have expected to see in wood, white and black.
Infamous for its concrete supremacy and muted monotones, London based architectural studio Haworth Tompkins give the South Bank a much needed colour infusion with The Shed; a temporary auditorium for the National Theatre. The structure is covered by rough-sawn timber cladding painted in a striking and vivid red. In our mission statement; a Block product must be bold, brave, and a colour focus point. So if there was ever a Block building it would probably be something similar to this.
The tape installations by Rebecca Ward were a strong inspiration behind our wire products, in particular our wire fruit bowl. She has taken something as simple as a line and made it into an elegant, intricate three dimensional sculpture.
The works by the Texan born artist are beautifully elegant and have an intriguing use of colour, they are bold, sometimes brash and demand attention. They are carefully planned geometric installations which force people to reconsider the space they are in.
‘I think about space all the time,how people interact with their surroundings,how we create environments that suit us. Architecture would be meaningless without people’ Rebecca Ward
ColoRing by schemata architects / jo nagasaka is a furniture series that uses a traditional wood craft technique; Udukuri, of polishing a wood surface with a brush made of sew grass, to scrape off soft tissue so that coarse grain pattern is revealed. This is where the traditional ends and Schemata / Nagasaka combine the process with layers of colour (leftover paint from other industries) to create truly unique colour infused grain patterns. The finished surface is polished flat, creating a highly textured grain effect on smooth and useable surface. The range portrays their technic over the full range from the bolder contrasts (which may not be to everyones taste), to more subtle mixes. Set to be unveiled at the Milan Design Week 2013 next week (9th-14th April). Pictures of their process below:
We’ ve always admired Cristian Zuzunaga’s work particularly his use of colour so we are really excited to see he will be taking part in Clerkenwell design week. 21-23rd May www.clerkenwelldesignweek.com
We love the commission he recently did for the wool house in Somerset house, his London brick sculpture has been a great inspiration to me, I’m always on the look out for a ‘ready-made’ we can add colour to.
Its amazing to see how an artist/designer can master so many mediums with clarity and integrity.
Bold & beautiful, colour inspired chairs here from Berlin-based designer Werner Aisslinger. Set to be released for the Italian furniture brand Moroso at Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan from the 9th to 14th April. The collection, along with the chairs, includes modular furniture with a strong and considered colour theme throughout. Aisslinger is certainly no stranger to the use of colour in his work. An image here of his Cube Play furniture system for Interlübke:
images: Werner Aisslinger
Colour gradients have been quite a strong inspiration in our recent design work. One such product recently released has been our new necklaces that combine the familiar block colours in complimenting combinations:
This Spring Tate Modern presents a retrospective of one of the great American artists of the twentieth century.
Lichtenstein is renowned for his works based on comic strips and advertising imagery, coloured with his signature hand-painted Benday dots.
We celebrate his bold use of colour with a selection from our range in Blue, Black and Orange.
