Nika Zupanc returns to the design capital focused on distractions of all sorts, presenting an installation that elevates her insightful citations of everyday objects to a painfully new level. The installation is titled Selfdiscipline and is being launched at Spazio Rossana Orlandi, Via Matteo Bandello 14/16, on April 12th .

Nika Zupanc traditionally makes careful selections of her themes and forms. With them she offers an unwelcome look at the predominately male furniture-design market, where all the aspiration is poured into the technical, rational, sober, and utilitarian, as opposed to the intuitive, eclectic, vain, and hysterical. To accomplish this Nika Zupanc uses her poetic judgment, inner battles with stereotypes, and long-lasting affairs with technologies. She mindfully explores the limits of the industry when it comes to emotional effect and the juxtaposition of materials.

With her newest installation, the visitor gains insight into a kind of modern paradisus claustralis. If Sylvia Plath once found the worst enemy to creativity in self-doubt, Nika Zupanc is here to question selfdiscipline or the lack of it. Flirting with monastic asceticism, the installation of a chandelier, desk, and chair provokes the thoughts on today’s key values, needs, habits, and the minimalism of life choices we are able to choose from. All of the items are therefore designed with an afterthought, made from durable materials, bearing in themselves the possibility that an object could survive us all.

POM POM LIGHT

Pom Pom Light is part of the collection “Self Discipline” presented by Nika Zupanc during Fuorisalone week 2011 at Galleria Rossana Orlandi.

HOMEWORK TABLE

Homework Table, part of the collection “Self Discipline” have a mechanism that permits to opena secret folded space.It has been presented by Nik Zupanc during April 2011

Homework chair is part of the limited edition collection “Self Discipline” presented by Nika ZUpanc at Galleria Rossana Orlandi at Salone del Mobie week April 2011.

* Nika Zupan

Nika Zupanc graduated with honors from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2000. Her bachelor’s thesis received the prestigious university Prešeren Award for students for the highest achievement in industrial design in 2001. After graduating, she started working as an independent designer and today she is a regular member of various product-design projects throughout Europe.

In 2004 the British Council selected her as a talented young professional in the Rising Stars of New Europe project, and the next year she was selected as a national finalist in product design for the IYDEY (International Young Designer of the Year) award, organized by the British Council and 100% Design. Between 2005 and 2007 she showed off her range of works everywhere, from 100% Design and Designersblock in London, the Young Talent Show in Hong Kong, the Review Gallery at the Center for Architecture and Design, and the Lighthouse in Glasgow to Milan Satellite and gallery shows.

 In April 2008, the MOOOI furniture company presented a family of her Lolita lamps at the SaloneDel Mobile in Milan. In June 2008, her Maid chair was exhibited as part of the exhibition Backstage: A Sideview on the MOROSO Design Collection at Gallery 113, curated by Patrizia Moroso. In April 2009, Zupanc presented a range of objects from her own collection at Superstudio Piu; her exhibition was titled I Will Buy Flowers Myself. The exhibition was seen as one of the biggest hits of Milan Design Week. In addition, MOROSO introduced her Tailored chair at Fiera Milano. In April 2010, she presented a new exhibition of her work at the Temporary Museum of New Design at Superstudio Piu. 5 O’Clock table and 5 o’clock chair, designed by Zupanc, were introduced as a part of the new MOOOI collection.

In the international press, her work has been described as everything from “punk elegance” (Elle USA) and “Techno chic” (BusinessWeek), to “larger than life” (Clear magazine) and Zupanc as “the real star” (The Wall Street Journal).

www.nikazupanc.com

Born in Northampton and London respectively and trained at the Liverpool Art School, Clare Page and Harry Richardson claim that they explore the everyday with a mixture of “pragmatism and imagination”. At their studio, the designers hoard thousands of objects bought in street markets and antiques shops: a colorful assortment of pottery animals, figurines, boxes, vases and other bric-a-brac.

Committee works with the concept that these objects, which supposedly have already fulfilled the function they were created for, take on a new life. That is how they came up with, among other creations, their celebrated “kebab” lamps. These original compositions are a kind of “collage” of various ornaments that find an unusual, extraordinary type of beauty without moving away from the everyday. The spirit of the designs of this duo fits in to perfection with the philosophy of Re-Cyclos, for which nothing is destroyed and everything is transformed as it acquires a new meaning.

see more at : committee@gallop.co.uk

Born in 1954 in la spezia (italy), graduated in architecture in florence in 1978, he lives and works in milan. Since 1979 he has taught and done research first in the florence faculty of architecture and later, in 1989, at the domus academy in milan.

 He is professor at the project university in reggio emilio. He is one of the founding members of the bolidist movement and of “the king kong production” (with g. venturini).

 His interest is focused on cartoons, science fiction, celluloid mythology, and on the areas of the imaginary and artificial fictions. He is working as an industrial/interior designer and as an architect. He was awarded with several international design prizes and his works are part of the permanent archive of the ‘centre george pompidou’ in paris and the ‘moma’ in New york.

The design work of stefano giovannoni is part of following manufacturer’s collections:

Milan Design week | Interview with Stefano Giovannoni at Moooi, by DesignGallerist 

With grace and revealling an excellent sense of humour, the Master Designer shares his fears, dreams and some of his passions, revealing also some of his current (Mask Lamp, Moooi) and future projects.

His simpathy allied to his enormous experience in different areas, ( ” from toothbrush to car”) makes him one of the most interesting Designers of the moment.

the ‘job cabinet’ is the first product for ‘job office’, a new collection designed by the antwerp-based studio job (nynke tynagel and job smeets) for dutch furniture company lensvelt.
the storage unit features an over-sized polished bronze key with the mechanism of the lock, transforming the metal powder coated furniture piece into something that exhibits the unmistakable aesthetic nof studio job. each has four shelves that measure the half depth of the cabinet which can be arranged individually or coupled as needed. overall, ‘job cabinet’ measures L70 x D50 x H180 cm with shelves L65 x D21cm in size.

concept sketch

Gothic Chairs for Moooi 

Neo-gothic chair which he brought to the table at moooi, proposing that the complex, handcrafted archetype be produced by industrial means of rotational moulding.

The Gothic Chair was bom lucky right from the beginning. An affordable and functional archetype for indoors and out. Gothic Chair is available in a bright spectrum of 10 colours.”

concept sketch

At the Milan Furniture Fair Dilmos presents a series of mirrors that contain historical references combining the present with the past and that, like the nine lives of a cat, represents the possibility of inner lives. In the series 9 mirrors, Ron Gilad suggests that the mirrored image contains a hypocrisy which reflects only our exterior selves. The title, like the nine lives of a cat, represents the possibility of inner lives or the soul of the mirror. Gilad’s mirrors are simple rectangular wooden frames that have been injected with stories. The reflection of the spectator is no longer only objective but contains more than the present. The functional aspect becomes secondary; the cords over the glass, the voided gilded frames and the bronze sconce in front of the user’s face are not here to decorate the mirrors. Some of the mirrors contain historical references combining the present with the past; a reference to other lives besides our own.

www.dilmos.com

Jane Atfield |Sebastian Bergne | Adam Brinkworth | Konstantin Grcic | Thomas Heatherwick| Victoria Jessen-Pike | David Keech | Wakako Kishimoto | Tom Lloyd | Kevin McCullagh | Corin Mellor | Peter Naumann | Ben Panayi | Luke Pearson | Sonya Winner

The THEN-NOW Show is an exhibition of 15 designers who were originally amongst the graduates selected by Zeev Aram to take part in the Aram Design’s Annual Graduate Shows in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This exhibition revisits the work of these designers to show the development of their career over the last 20 years or so. Their work will be represented by their designs at graduation, THEN, alongside recent work, NOW.

Zeev Aram opened his first store on London’s Kings Road, Chelsea, in 1964 at a time when there was very little in the way of modern furniture on the market. He had a real passion for design and was the first to introduce the works of designers such as Carlo Scarpa, A & P.G. Castiglioni, Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier and V. Magistretti to the UK market. These were truly radical designs at the time and it may have seemed a gamble to show these works as part of a commercial venture. Aram however, believed that here were pieces that were important, beautifully designed and well manufactured that would stand the test of time. And so they have.

As the years went on, Aram noted that there was very little in the UK in the way of support for emerging designers and there was a real gap between designers and manufacturers. So he decided to host a yearly exhibition that would act as a platform for young graduates to show their innovative designs to the public, but principally to INDUSTRY. The exhibition was an attempt to bridge the gap and form a dialogue between a young generation of designers and manufacturers: a platform for engaging with creative ideas. This became the raison d’être for the Aram Graduate Shows.

Each year, Aram would spend the summers on the road, visiting end of year shows at over forty/fifty design colleges around the UK. The works he selected came from all creative disciplines: graphics, fashion, product/industrial design. There was no limit neither in the breadth of the disciplines nor in the quantity of designs. What mattered most was that the designs to be shown would represent the thinking of the young design graduates and their innovative solutions.

Each year there were between 70 and 90 participants, sometimes even more. The exhibitions would take over the entire Showroom for nearly a month with students and their colleges helping to mount these large shows. There was no charge made by Aram neither to students nor to colleges for participation in these exhibitions.

While looking through his archives recently, Aram noticed that many of the graduates whose work he showed are now established and well respected names in the design field. As a result, The THEN-NOW Show was born.

The main objective of this exhibition is to show to the public, undergraduate designers and designers in their early careers the progress these 15 designers have made over the last two decades.

www.thearamgallery.org

  An extension of his ‘crystal candy set’ for baccarat, jaime hayon’s new lamp series juxtaposes  white, platinum, or copper ceramic with the refractive textured crystal.

Jaime hayon‘s ‘candy light’ series, designed for baccarat, juxtaposes the bright finish

and solid form of ceramic with the clarity and cut of textured crystal.

hayon’s first lamps for the company, the series is an extension of his 2009 ‘crystal candy set’, covered in this designboom article. the pieces are designed with a ceramic base of copper, platinum, or white, and a crystal shade modeled after baccarat’s juvisy pattern. a red crystal pendant at the lamp’s base serves as the switch.
when the lamp is lit, the crystal shade casts its waffle reflection onto the base, and scatters light onto the surrounding surfaces.

the works were on display in the baccarat exhibition during milan design week 2011.

via@designboom