Media Centric Design Magazine
In conjunction with this year’s Milan International Furniture Fair, Moroso unveiled a new line of furniture including the Panna Chair designed by Tokujin Yoshioka. Tokujin presented the chair within a remarkable installation in Moroso’s Milan showroom. The set consists of over three million carefully arranged and glued transparent straws. Dependent on perspective and light, the effect surprisingly ranges from cloud-like to crystalline and compliments the chair beautifully.
Ahead of its official May 1st street date release in the United States, bookstores including Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Borders are carrying The Spider-Man Chronicles: The Art and Making Of Spider-Man 3.
Concept design publisher, Design Studio Press just overhauled their website and released a 2007 catalog revealing several new titles.
An impressive line-up punctuated by the first monograph of Patrick Tatopoulous and his Production Design and Creature Effects work on films including Dark City, Stargate, I-Robot, Pitch Black, Independence Day and Underworld.
The eight other newly announced titles are Counterweight: The Art and Concepts of Rick O’Brien, Structura: The Art of Sparth, Daniel Simon’s Cosmic Motors, Alp Altiner and Liam O’Donnel’s The Art of the Unknown, Alien Race, The Art of Midway Games, Concept Art of Aaron Sims and Alien vs. Predator: Survival of the Fittest.
Designer furniture retailer, Design within Reach, has been publishing an easily overlooked newsletter since 2005. It’s clearly evident that founder Rob Forbes relishes classic modernist design and its roots. His infectious enthusiasm and quality prose propels Design Notes to one of the premier newsletters your bound to find on the internet.
Subscribe and peruse their newsletter archive. If you’re seeking a starting point, Mystery City Identified: Zurich includes a piece on Peter Zumthor’s famed Therme Vals and The Character of Color discusses Rem Koolhaus’s February presentation at the San Francisco Art Institute.
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Yesterday the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) announced their selections for the best environmentally friendly buildings in the United States.
The Augmented Cognition Society website is hosting a short film set in 2030 entitled The Future of Augmented Cognition. AugCog science is a burgeoning field whose mandate involves the development of methods and tools that counteract the inherent bottlenecks in human-system interaction. Commissioned by DARPA and created by director Alexander Singer (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager), the film postulates a potential market manipulation scenario prevented with the aid of AugCog technologies.
Many of the world’s canals are exceptional feats of engineering. It is a rarity when they also offer inspirational design. One such example is Falkirk Wheel, the world’s only rotating boat lift that reconnects Union Canal to Forth & Clyde Canal in Scotland. The wheel elevates boats approx. 25 meters (82 feet) in four minutes using a mere 1.5KWH.
Anyone actively involved in design should note the proliferation of design collaboration software. While commercially available for several years, these realtime tools have to some extent, stayed under the radar.
The most universally accessible and useful is a highly lauded web based package, ConceptShare. For more specialized design tools, VFX Compositors can call on Autodesk’s Toxik and 3D enthusiasts have Caligari’s triumvirate of trueSpace, truePlace and truePlay.
One of the early fads produced by industrialization was the postcard. Only fitting that some would depict cities and societies of the future. Clearly extrapolated from existing technology and designs, these transportation centric concepts were chaotic and exaggerated. More fantastical than visionary, one of the more recognizable examples is from the series, Boston in the Future. That collection of postcards printed by the Reichner Brothers in 1910/1911 are held by the Boston Public Library.
A more fascinating set circa 1900 depicts future Moscow. Brief prophetic glimpses reside within immense detail in these postcards published by Einem and housed in the State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia.
A month ago NBC launched the mid season drama Raines starring Jeff Goldblum as the titular detective. Airing 9pm EST on Fridays, Raines suffers from post traumatic stress disorder and hallucinates the homicide victims he investigates, his perception of them evolving as the investigation progresses.
Especially noteworthy is the inspired opening title sequence, perhaps the best since A52’s designs for HBO’s Carnivale and Rome. Considering Executive Producer Graham Yost’s previous series Boomtown had an equally creative introduction, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.
