Black and Blum’s inscribable Time Square clock and magnet board. Multi-tasking expands its reach to more and more products.
In the age of multi-tasking, it’s about time more of our domestic appliances caught up to our multivalent work methods. Sure, we’ve got fancy electronics that quadruple up as our mp3 players, telephones, internet browser and reading tablet, but a number of our long-standing devices at home have been slow in catching up to contemporary realities. Stuck and stoic with the progression of time, these laggards often serve the same function they’ve had nearly since their inception.
Speaking of time, wall clocks may well have placed been in this category except for a couple of recent additions to the genre. Black and Blum’s Time Square clock actually triples its purpose by serving as a timepiece, blackboard and magnet board all in one. Combining these particular functions in one device is not without reason, since the need to reinforce memory by quick notation is inextricably linked to keeping track of time. (Being New Yorkers and recreational punsters ourselves, we also appreciate the witty name, especially as it comes from a London-based design firm.)
Alessi’s Blank Wall Clock: no need to draw a blank anymore when there’s something you’re trying to remember to do.
Alessi’s Blank Wall Clock is the formal yin to Black and Blum’s yang, being white and circular as compared to black and square. It doesn’t have the magnet function of Time Square, but its whiteboard writing surface has a nice clean look and allows for the use of dry markers in place of chalk.
Looks like our appliances are finally catching up to our busy selves after all. It’s about time.
A classic shoe model with an innovative twist: interchangeable heels and backs.
The simple black dress, the classic white-T, the uniform leather purse – they all complement your wardrobe like peanut butter does to jelly. Ladies love them for their stylish functionality, and because literally they match everything they own. Unfortunately, what most ladies don’t possess is an all-encompassing pair of shoes that transcends every style and outfit that their wardrobes can generate. Hence the miles of shoe racks that clog their closets and destroy dreams of early retirement.
Heels will dress up an outfit, while flats dresses one down. If you’re not sure which way to go, you can always wear one of each!
With all of its adjustable parts, ze o ze, is really five pairs of shoes in one simple, yet evolving stylistic spectrum.
Until maybe now, that is. Thanks to young and aspiring industrial designer, Daniela Bekerman, ladies can finally say au revoir to the non-matching shoe blues. The young designer (and recent graduate of The Bezalel Academy of Art and Design) hailing from Jerusalem has designed ze o ze, a modular shoe system that comes with adjustable parts, including a heel, so that wearers can adjust the style and height of the shoes according to the look they are trying to achieve. Simply add on a heel to dress up an outfit, or wear the shoes as flats for a more comfortable and practical look. Change colors, look and style as the occasion dictates.
Quick, into a nearby phone booth – look, it’s Working Woman! No, it’s Party Girl! No, it’s the ze o ze modular shoe system!
Magnetic force let these flowers flow freely. Designed by Brandon Perhacs.
Whether we’re buying them for our own decor, or receiving them as gifts, we are among that large population who believe that flowers were put on this earth to give us pleasure. They add refreshing breaths of life and color to our office and homes, letting us put some of the outside world in. We suppose for that, we have Mother Nature to thank, but also, it must be said, our florists, who manage to bring out the formal variety that underlies so much of our appreciation for these beautiful living things. Not only the variety among the flowers within a particular bouquet, but the extraordinary variety of the kinds of flowers that Nature creates around the world.
If bringing out variety is one of the key characteristics of managing Nature in a human environment, then it’s curious how most conventional vases are quite the opposite – static, immobile, unchanging. Obviously, that’s not the kind of product we’d be interested in at MODULE R. Oh, nosirree! What we’ve collected in this category are a group of transformable vases that all allow us to shape them, adapt them, vary them to either change the look of an arrangement or be altered to accommodate different types of flower groupings. It’s co-creation taken to the level of Nature itself.
Adaptation
Set in a wooden base, the Adaptation vase comes with four glass tubes that resemble science class beakers from our high school science days. Simply insert the magnetic steel spheres into the tubes, and the vases connect to the wooden base so that the tubes can tilt, sway, turn or move in any shape or figure, giving your flowers the liberty to move in any direction they please. A kind of human heliotropism, you could call it.
Flowers grow in full bloom with this unconventional take on the vase. Each holder rotates on a threaded bases to point the flowers in a multitude of directions.
Adjustable Twister Vase
Perfect for the playful-minded, the Adjustable Twister Vase looks like a small tree sprouting flowers as they grow. The vase is designed so that the branches twist and rotate, giving any floral arrangement the illusion of a colorful flower tree. The vase’s durable plastic construction and playful shape makes it welcome in kids rooms, family rooms, kitchens, bathrooms and just about any room that has a sense of fun and lightheartedness.
This simple yet versatile vase system features a base with three removable top pieces. Change them as needed to handle whatever type of floral arrangement is at hand – stem, broad or vertical groupings.
FlexVase
Designed by the Dutch team of Arjan van Raadshooven and Anieke Branderhorst, the white porcelain FlexVase consists of a base and three interchangeable top pieces. You switch out the top piece depending on what type of flower arrangement you want to display. Caps are held in place by a strong clip reminiscent of those used in canning jars. It’s three elegant vases for the price of one elegant vase.
Showcase buds with these exceptionally slender vases that dress up the dinner table and have your guests in awe because they won’t topple over even when the subway rattles by. Designed by Shahar P. Studio, Tel Aviv.
Magnetic Vases
Perfect for the dinner table, Magnetic Vases are a series of slender, brushed aluminum stem vases that showcase flowers individually. The vases come with small magnetic plates allowing each holder to connect to one in any arrangement you please. Your dinner guests will be wowed away by their dexterity and ballerina balance when you hide the plates under a placemat, table cloth or runner. Clever!
This collection of elegant vases is designed to be bound together with the elastic bands provided. They work equally well in smaller groupings or individually.
Opaline Glass Modular Vase
The Opaline Glass Vase is a 10-piece vase collection that can be tied together to make one large grouping of vases, or broken up into single or smaller groupings of different sized vases. We think it’s perfect for floral arrangements that come with a variety of stems, plants and flora of varying heights.
The entire collection of vases you see here are on view at the MODULE R store.
Breakfast in bed takes on new dimensions when they both come in a box. Actually, several boxes. Several red boxes.
Take the myriad of doo-dads and equipment and stuff you used to haul along when you went camping or on a road trip, and throw them out of the car: the Swiss Room Box wants to modularize the experience of the great outdoors. For aficionados of organized labors and any device that starts with Swiss, the great outdoors just got greater.
No more waking up in the morning covered with crab grass and red ants: hop into the mobile shower to get renewed.
The Swiss Room Box is a portable modular living system that enables families and campers to cook, eat, sleep and manage personal hygiene from an all-inclusive traveling device designed to fit into the trunk of a car.
A good night’s rest comes in the form of Swiss Room Box’s double bed.
By utilizing various boxed units in the system, campers will find a sink, cooking unit, dining table, picnic table, chairs, a double bed a shower and even a toilet at their disposal. All can be set up without tools or technical know-how in just fifteen minutes (longer if you first have to fight off a grizzly bear).
A portable picnic table makes dining outdoors a civilized pleasure.
The box units come interconnected and can be customized to fit into the back of just about any car. A simple pull from the rear of the vehicle is pretty much all it takes to get access to the equipment.
Now you can see it all on video.
To maximize on efficiency, the camping system can be recharged with batteries that charge while the car is running. More economics: the Box costs a tiny fraction of an RV (well, guess everything is relative).
What we appreciate are the evocations of mobility that something like the Swiss Room Box implies – not only the transformability of the design itself, but how its context is rooted in the car, the exemplar of latter-day nomadism. Mobile, modular, modern…where do we go from here?
Studio Aisslinger in Berlin. Man on left is in detention. Woman on right is watching a company ping pong game. The hex screen in foreground gives us a taste of the eponymous designer’s predilection for modular design.
In our gathering of modular product designs from all the world, it’s hard not to notice that many of them emanate from Italy. Just think Magis, B-Line, Kartell and already you’re talking about a slew of top-flight and enduring interactive pieces. Maybe it’s the climate, the food, the culture – who knows why such a regional concentration exists for this type of design? Still, it would be hard to develop a convincing theory on Italian supremacy without having to explain why, just a few hundred kilometers to the frozen north, the modular meter spikes again as we approach the Berlin studio of Werner Aisslinger.
Aisslinger is a very talented, multi-media and prolific designer who has generated some of the world’s most innovative product, interior and architectural design for brands such as Mercedes Benz, Swiss furniture company Vitra, adidas and Bombay Sapphire (Bombay Sapphire?). He’s got offices in Berlin and Singapore, so we’re talking about a global reach of considerable dimension. That’s good news for aficionados of customizable design.
Aisslinger’s chairs and chaise on display inside the Berlin studio. Below is his Plus Unit for Magis.
The company’s artistic philosophy focuses on making sophisticated new designs from novel materials and technologies, whether modular or not. Fortunately, this is not the stuff of geeky sci-fi fantasies devoid of the human dimension. Rather, the design firm says it wants to change the paradigm of modern product design by looking beyond purely functional capacities to integrate a “dialogue between emotions and technology”. Progressive? We’ve just barely scratched the surface. In an estimated 5 to 10 years the firm has plans to install a small chip inside every product that will generate product information (producer, designer and distributor) and an opportunity for instant purchase when scanned with any type of wireless communication device.
Aisslinger’s deep interest in repetitive, modular design is evident in some of the product displays in his Berlin office. On the left is Mesh, a 2007 concept design for a lightweight semi-opaque screening system (more on Mesh below). On the right is a 2008 modular bookcase made out of, what else, books!
We aren’t the only ones with an interest in this portlfolio: Aisslinger has had his furniture and product design featured at world-class museums such as MoMA (where he has a permanent exhibit on his chair design ), the MET, the French Fonds National d’Art Contemporain in Paris, the Musuem Nue Sammlung in Munich and the Vitra Design Museum in Weil, Germany.
What follows is just a sampling of the modular designs to have come out of his offices over the years.
Coral Seating and Lighting
TOP: Coral seating cushions lay on the beach as if they’ve been washed up from the sea. BOTTOM: Translucent Coral lights using a similar hex unit.
Inspired by the micro organisms emanating from the deep depths of the ocean floor, these modular seating arrangements and lighting fixtures from 2009 are composed of flexible hexagon funnels made from a mix of felt and polycarbonate that create a coral shape when joined in multiples. The sea-inspired pieces come in varying color schemes and, being modular, can be scaled to suit.
NetWork
Embroidered design enters the Age of the New Industrialism.
Perhaps you were under the impression that crocheting was culturally retrogressive. No more. Aisslinger managed to transform this traditional, old-school craft into a progressive, interactive and contemporary design form using high-technology and software. Its 2-dimensional embroidery designs are directly programmed into ‘smart’ machines that stitch the pattern together to make 3-dimensional objects.
Mesh
Your request for privacy should not result in staring at stark white walls!
Gone should be the days of the opaque wall divider or cubicle. For subtle separation with visual appeal, Aisslinger designed a lightweight textile structure evocative of honeycombs. The units interconnect to form customizable interior dividers with the potential to be bent into 3-dimensional shapes – distinctly unlike most separators, which are typically confined to straight planes. Made with three different types of relief structures, the hex motif and ribs were inspired by a blow-up of a vegetable organism. The color contrast of the fibers and directional changes in the weaving pattern add perforation, depth and texture to the dividers.
PLUS Unit for Magis
Stack up or down with the playful storage design unit by Aisslinger.
Similar to UP’s, the PLUS unit is a modular storage system that allows for customizable configuration of shelving units. Traditionally stacked or stacked side-by-side like a staircase, the aluminum drawers add a dimension of fun to functional design. Check them out at our store.
UP’s for RS Barcelona
Here’s how Studio Aisslinger explains the UP’s design:
“UP´s is a totally new modular block-system which integrates the open space between the attached boxes for the scheme: UP´s can generate endless modular sideboard landscapes or shelves always including the “free” space between the box-elements. These box-elements are offered in various types, such as the standard open box, box with sliding doors or boxes with folding wings. All these front-options can be later attached to the basic steel box-element. The visual “architecture” of the UP´s system is a rhythm of closed volumes with airy gaps in between”.
Loft Cube
TOP AND BOTTOM: Get sweeping views of any city with the 360 panoramic views of the Loft Cube. It travels anywhere you go and comes with a handsomely coordinated interior design. Will not fit into an overhead compartment.
Meet the modern day mobile home. This architectural piece is so cutting-edge that it may still belongs in the future. Composed of four walls of either translucent, transparent or opaque material, the structure forms a mobile living cube with 360 degree panoramic views. Custom interior design options are available so that lucky cube-owners can turn the Loft Cube into any type of living or working space, anywhere they would like. Made with the highest quality lightweight materials, the Cube Loft takes only a few days to set-up.
Light Wave
Bombay Sapphire sets the mood blue with their lighting fixture designed by Aisslinger.
Created for Bombay Sapphire, this large-form lighting structure created the ultimate mood lightning for one of the gin brand’s events. Made of 50 x 50 cm modules, the communal lighting object can be arranged in a variety of pixel-like configurations to create larger formats. Each individual module is designed to create a 3-dimensional shape that allows for an infinite number of additional modules. When shaped together, the overall product is an installation of fluid movement among convex and concave shapes (that’s fluid, in case you didn’t see the connection).
And this just in:
Hemp House at DMY Berlin 2011
TOP AND BOTTOM: A structural system made from the cannabis plant. A modular Mary Jane anyone?
Exploring sustainable materials, Aisslinger presented his Hemp House at DMY berlin 2011. The structure is made of more than 70% natural fibers, such as hemp and kenaf, bound together with acrodur, a water-based acrylic resin from german chemical company BASF.
The compression of renewable raw materials forms a new environmentally-friendly composite that is lightweight yet durable. Says Aisslinger, “Design history is driven by new technologies and material innovation. For us designers, the advent of these technologies has always been the starting point for new objects and typologies in design”.
The units that make up Stitch Interlocking Rug system come in vibrant color shades suitable for both young folk and color-inclined grownups.
Finding the perfect sized rug to work in a space can be a challenge, especially when you’re also trying to find just the right color scheme AND find a pattern you like. Sure, your basic white rug is a convenient away to steer around at least the last two problems, but where is the fun in that? White is so…vanilla. Not to mention a bear to keep clean unless you force people at gunpoint to walk around in their socks.
Answer? Make your own rug, of course. Okay, so you don’t know how to operate a loom. Or fleece sheep. Big deal! Modular design comes to the rescue, as it often does. In fact, we’ve got two solutions to offer: the Stitch Interlocking Rug from Lithuanian designer Nauris Kalinauskas, and the Buzzi Puzzle Rug from our friends at BuzziSpace.
The Stitch Rug also comes in grays, blacks and neutrals for a more subdued palette, which can nevertheless be intermixed with strong stronger accent colors for some visual pop.
Stitch works pretty much the way the name suggests: you purchase rug components in 10-piece packages that you then join together to create the finished rug. This allows you to build whatever size floor covering you want and mix colors in whatever proportion you desire. Is your space irregular, open or complex in plan, meaning not a pure rectangle or circle? Egads, this really is your lucky day, because the contours of the Stitch rug modules lend themselves particularly well to making a rug with a non-rectilinear outline.
The Stitch Rug palette embraces a wide range of hues, so you can make sure it goes with your dog. Or child.
Our other customizable floor covering, the Buzzi Puzzle Rug, goes in the opposite direction in terms of shape; in fact, the modules are based on a square, which goes pretty well with the straight walls and rectangular perimeter that characterizes the large majority of interior rooms or areas. The pieces measure about 39 inches across, not including the tabs, which gives them a fun, generous scale. The palette tends toward neutral grays and off-whites. Made from up-cycled PET waste, you’re not only doing your toes a favor when you go this route, you’re helping the environment. And the rug has sound-absorbing properties to boot (get it, to boot?).
The Buzzi Puzzle Rug comes in four colors and is a cinch to put together. Even a grownup could do it.
Don’t know about you, but we’re positively floored by the idea of making cost-effective rugs to suit.
A chair for children, or a side table for adults: the Child’s Chair by ArchitectMade can grow with you to adulthood and even into your dotage, at which point it’s time to hand it down to the next generation. Image courtesy of ArchitectMade.
Ah, childhood. Frivolous days of frolic and not a single concern in the world. Not even for the awkwardly exponential rate at which we outgrew every pair of shoes, pants and shirt Mom bought for us. Problem for Mom and her wallet, big problem with conventionally static design.
Enter Kristian Vedel (1923-2003), Danish industrial designer and problem solver for fast-growing children worldwide (left).
Vedel was an influential member of the Scandinavian Design movement at its mid-century height, crafting furniture from plastics and woods in a classically modern design vocabulary that embraced ergonomics and pragmatics simultaneously. He incorporated these objective requirements with a personal design vision that sacrificed neither imagination nor practicality.
This balance of perspective made him an ideal designer of children’s furniture, since he resolved the obvious problem of accelerated obsolescence by designing children’s furniture that grew with them instead of them outgrowing it. This made him of one of the first architects to design children’s furniture that wasn’t simply a miniature version of grownup pieces. His Child’s Chair of 1957, currently produced by ArchitectMade, is a superb example of his insightful design philosophy.
A few key aspects of the Child’s Chair explain its success as a piece of children’s design. First, Vedel made the chair reconfigurable by the use of two removable and re-positionable discs that fit into any of four slots in the barrel form. Friction-fit and requiring no hardware, the discs can be handled easily by child and adult alike. That makes the chair more than just a piece of practical furniture – it also makes it an object of interactive play for the child. And once the child’s imagination comes into play, so to speak, the chair becomes potentially infinite in form (in other words, a toy).
LEFT: A sampling of the many configurations of his Child’s Chair from vintage photographs. We especially appreciate the image in the lower right showing a big old guy handing a bottle of beer to an unsuspecting child. Please do not try this yourself at home. Image courtesy of ArchitectMade.
Reconfigurability also enables the chair to serve multiple functions. Simply by altering the discs and orienting the barrel form in any number of directions, the Child’s Chair can function as a table, rocker, highchair, nightstand, storage or display piece. Its versatility is further enhanced by the abstraction of its geometry, particularly the fact that it has no visible base, middle or top. By contrast, imagine taking a traditional child’s highchair and trying to turn it upside down to use it for something than its intended purpose. The only thing you’ll get by doing that is a mess of split peas on your rug.
The absence of details that give a chair its scale – the turnings on a leg, the size of a fixed back, the height of a defined seat – is precisely what enables Vedel to avoid the problem of miniaturization we mentioned at the start of this post.
Reconfigurable, multi-functional, beautifully designed and made: sounds like something they’d carry at our favorite online store for transformable art and design. Oh wait…that’s us!
A vibrant bright green gives the old NYC Parks & Recreation logo a youthful – and modular – facelift.
As the weather starts to heat up, we at Module R are looking forward to our annual refuges of cool at our local New York City parks this summer. Shades on, refreshing beverage in hand (our current fave: Rieme Blood Orange Sparkling Limonade), passing away the dog days of summer under the city’s leafy shades of green has become a favorite, if not our customary way, to stay hydrated during the sometimes unbearably hot and sunny season. The only thing that may make our park experience even cooler this summer is the very fine redesign of the Parks Department’s logo by renowned design studio, Pentagram. And why are we feeling good about this? Because there’s a modular component to the new graphic that naturally brings a smile to our face, and a post to our newsletter.
The leaves in the Parks Department’s updated marketing collateral find some inspiration in wallpaper design.
First, the basics: the rather lengthy department name has been shortened to just “NYC Parks” and the leaf motif in the logo has been brought to a more modern look. This was achieved largely by smoothing out the rough edges of the old leaf and changing over to a fresher shade of green from the one that’s been in place since 1934. We’ll be seeing the new logo throughout the city parks and in brochures, event posters and other collateral materials.
A modular signage system for the NYC Parks.
Looking at some of the leaf patterns above, it’s evident the designers came into the project with a modular sensibility. That sensibility is most visible in the signage system that the department is rolling out for use in the parks and green spaces. Using a square module as a base unit, the signs will expand and contract incrementally depending on the amount of information that needs to get posted.
It’s encouraging to see municipal government retaining the talents of a world-class design firm to enhance the public domain. Now if we can just get them to do something with the airports…
Yedi’s Polka Dot/Red Tea Tower reminds us that we’re never too old to play tea party.
We think the Mad Hatter would just be mad (the good kind of mad, of course) about Yedi’s Stackable Tea Towers that make for the ultimate fine-porcelain tea set. Efficient and stylish, the tea towers come stacked with a saucer, teapot, mug and cream and sugar set that will make for the all-inclusive tea party. Just imagine all the tea goodness one could stack upon another!
Designed in varying colors and patterns of Olive Green, Cream, Brown/Teal, Dark Grey/Yellow and a festive Polka Dot/Red, the Yedi Stackable Tea Tower will surely brighten up any garden tea party or high tea at noon.
Yedi’s soothing Olive Green Tea Tower will surely fix a soothing cup of tea.
Check out the Yedi Tea Tower at the Module R store, where it’s available in an 8 oz. or 30 oz. size.
Bec Brittain’s SHY Light made of LED tubes for Matter are reminiscent of our playful days with K’NEX. The tubes can be detached and re-configured for endless configuration options.
Let’s recall our years of youth, specifically our formative years when team sports was considered the to-do as the after-school norm. Our nine-year old selves gathered around soccer fields and basketball courts as our coaches taught us the basic principals of what makes an organization, of what essentially makes a team. Some of us listened passionately, mentally noting down what was needed to make a great pass, while some, let’s be honest, were prone to daydreaming and annoying our friends. Nevertheless, our coaches tried to imbue us as best they could with the golden rule: there is no “I” in team. To succeed we had to work together in whatever position we were placed or in whatever order we came up to play.
Jason Miller’s Endless Lighting system defies space with limitless arrangements for the wall or hanging configurations.
We now know that our coaches wouldn’t lead us astray. After all, pop culture has proven to us that the most popular musicians, artists and casts would not be successful without the integrity of each part of a successful team. Would the Beatles be the Beatles without their essential four, would Andy Warhol have reached stardom without his entourage at The Factory, and would the crew of Friends be the same if they were missing a friend? Of course, we know that some of these pop culture references have more cultural importance than others, but the point is, without the entire ensemble of these groups as a whole, they wouldn’t be the same. Because one without the other does not make them great, but together as a whole they shine brighter.
TOP: Camp in the great indoors with Paula Sevilla’s Home Camping, a collection of porcelain hanging flashlights. BOTTOM: A naked bulb never looked so good: Frame cluster chandeliers by Iacoli & McAllister come in a variety of colors, frame and light sizes, and configurations.
We were thinking about how this strength in cohesion philosophy relates to modular design when we happened to come across several customizable pendant light fixtures that have recently come on the market. Each of them seem to embody the lesson of team playing in subordinating the part to the whole, thus making the whole greater than the sum of the parts. And of course, as is generally the case with modular and customizable design, the fixtures can be more easily harmonized with the physical parameters of the surrounding space by adjusting their size, color or shape than the static design typical of most fixtures.
Thanks, Coach. You really were the brightest bulb in the bunch.
Modular Screen by Moorhead & Moorhead. Click on image to enlarge. Get it here.
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Opening Lyrics to “At Long Last Love”
Is it an earthquake or simply a shock? Is it the good turtle soup or merely the mock? Is it a cocktail, this feeling of joy? Or is what I feel the real McCoy?
No, it’s just that the world’s first webstore for customizable, reconfigurable, modular art and design has now gone live.
BeadBrick: A Modular Building System by Rizal Muslimin. Ancient building technology in the modern world. (Click on images to enlarge and play slideshow.)
A few recent projects remind us how powerful and cost-effective modular design can be in creating aesthetic effect by means of pattern-making, both in terms of hard costs (physical production) and soft costs (design effort).
Let’s start with a just concluded design competition exploring the innovative use of brick, one of mankind’s oldest modular systems. The very idea of looking for fresh thinking in a building technology now some 7,500 years old is in itself an intriguing concept; not surprisingly, the various solutions offered by the entrants feel both emphatically contemporary and deeply grounded in traditional sensibilities.
That duality is most evident in the programmatic requirement that design solutions be environmentally sustainable. Only in a culture that has lost some of its connection to nature would such a requirement need to be imposed from without. It’s particularly ironic in the context of a re-examination of brick construction which, by its very “nature”, was a “green” building method long before green meant anything but the color of leaves. But we suppose it’s better that we have to re-discover what our ancestors knew thousands of years ago than to disregard it altogether, as had been the case until relatively recently.
Two winning entrants to the 2011 Brickstainable competition embody the new synthesis of past and present. MIT student Rizal Muslimin’s proposal calls for a roughly triangular brick system that can form 2- and 3-dimensional assemblies by variously joining the bricks along vertical and horizontal axes. Bricks are fabricated using both digital and analog fabrication methods, another reflection of the dual character of the project brief. A second team comprising Kelly Winn, Jason Vollen and Ted Ngai of CASE New York was awarded a prize for their Climate Camouflage system. Drawing on recent developments in biomimicry, their submission explores the potential value of applying the age-old art of ceramics to addressing issues of thermal dynamics, self-shading, moisture reduction and other techniques needed to reduce our carbon footprint.
Winning entry to Brickstinable by Jason Vollen and Kelly Winn of CASE (New York). Once again one of nature’s signature modular geometries – the hexagon – is successfully applied to architectural design. Architects are drawn to this pristine geometry like bees to honey!
Beyond their shared ecological investigation, the Muslimin proposal is notable in expanding the traditionally humble, human scale of modular brick to the urban dimension. Unlike the banal repetitive grids of International Style architecture, or the scale-less wrappings applied to many contemporary skyscrapers, however, his imaginative eco-brick generates architecture that appeals to human sensibilities visually as well as empathically, in large part by the repetition of scalar, modular elements.
The newly launched DIY software Repper is as emphatically 2-dimensional as the Brickstainable proposals are 3-dimensional. If the name of their product doesn’t make it obvious, their tagline certainly does: “Everybody Loves Patterns”. They apparently like them so much they’ve developed the software for you (and us) to generate patterns of your (and our) own making that can then be applied to websites, products, interior design components and graphic design. Particularly appealing is that they don’t just leave you hanging with some pretty pictures on your screen, but have set it up so you can take your designs into production by linking up with various manufacturers and production facilities able to turn your visual patterns into a 3-dimensional reality.
We have no idea what this video is about, but it’s on the Repper site so we thought we’d share it with you anyway.
One of the marvelous things about modular pattern-making is that if the originating designer has done the job well, it’s rather difficult for the likes of us (and you) to generate patterns that are, well, downright ugly or mis-conceived. That’s because an aesthetic safety net is, in effect, built into the design unit, whose positive aesthetic qualities are retained when multiplied into a larger assembly. Coupled with the democratizing capabilities of mass customization, the promise of modularity as a tool for broadening the reach of good design continues to be fulfilled.
The ones, the only, the original Tetris tetrads. Click on the images to enlarge and play slideshow.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know about the computer game Tetris. But did you know that it was originally designed and programmed by a Russian scientist named Alexy Pajitnov in the country formerly known as the Soviet Union? Did you know it was released on June 6, 1984? Did you know it derived its name by combining the Greek numerical prefix tetra with the word tennis, Pajitnov’s favorite sport? And did you know that it may be the only computer game to ever inspire a slew of sophisticated design products (okay, the smiley face guy shows up in a lot of merchandise too, but that’s not a game and that certainly ain’t what we call sophisticated!)?
Tetris planters. A design project from the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn.
For us aficionados of modular design, of course, Tetris is a wonderful and even addictive game of recombinant play, a model of interlocking problem solving. Some studies have even shown that repeated episodes of Tetris playing can develop brain facility, although we suspect that many of the people involved in those studies have been subsequently placed in rehab centers for treatment of recurring game-playing syndrome. Anyway, as we’ve been gathering some of these Tetris-inspired design pieces in our Atlantic Avenue gallery, as well as discovering others in our search for great works of customizable design, we thought a quick survey of some of the more eyecatching examples might be worth a read. Here are just a few of them; no doubt, like their progenitor, they’ll be multiplying in fours for years to come.
Top row: Tetris mirror by Julia Dozsa for Fiam. Middle: Tetris couch by Stefano Grasselli. Bottom: if you can’t afford the couch, maybe you can still get a Tetris chair by Gabriel Cañas.
BraveSpace Tetrad Flat Modular Shelving System. A favorite design featured in our Atlantic Avenue gallery.
C’mon baby light my Tetris-inspired fireplace…made by Fontana Forni.
Make no small Tetris-inspired plans: Tetris Architecture. Look out beeelllooooooow!
The Morgan Bracelet by Klik Klik. Klik – er, click on any image to enlarge.
It’s struck us, as we continue to populate our gallery of customizable art and design with new pieces, that quite a few of our designs work on the basis of magnetics. Were we not so busy serving our customers this might have occurred to us this earlier, since magnetics are an almost perfect mechanism for achieving customization. They create just enough of a connective force that pieces will hold together even under stress and motion, until finally releasing when a breaking point has been reached simply by pulling on them. They can be embedded in other materials or left exposed, cast in almost any shape (including ones that allow for movement), do not require specialized skills to connect, do not require adhesives or other secondary materials to assemble, are a natural, sustainable and non-energy consuming material, never lose their attractive force, and are not terribly expensive. In short, they’re a customizers dream come true.
Magnetude by the Starut Group. A modular magnetic toy.
Not surprisingly, magnetics are particularly prevalent in things involving play – for children and adults. Kids take to them naturally because they’re so low-tech and physically undemanding at the same time they allow for total free play. With children prudence requires that the pieces be of a sufficient size that they not be swallowed along with their oat squares, so many toys implant the magnetics in a larger envelope. Magnetude is a good example of a play object that implants magnetics inside a traditional form of toy, in this case the wood block. The designer also had the smarts to make the blocks quite large and colored, which means they can be used at a relatively early age.
Imaginets (left) has been another popular piece. Here magnetics are fixed to the underside of variously shaped colored wood pieces, which are then placed on a magnetic board encased within a fold-out wood frame. The child is encouraged to move the pieces around to create a kind of two-dimensional drawing using pre-formed shape and color. Included in the package are some printed cards with suggested arrangements for children to follow in case the creative juices are running a bit dry and need a jump start. Imaginets augments this compositional function by making the underlying surface not only magnetic but an erasable whiteboard as well, which allows the child to draw on it with markers – a nice combination of linear and surface techniques. And for extra measure the whole toy folds up and can be carried around by a handle. Do we hear rooooaaad trip?!
Above, top: Stix + Stones, a reconfigurable choker necklace by Brendan Perhacs. Below: a Klik Klik bracelet: magnets in motion.
A similar emphasis on play is prevalent in a second major category for magnetics: jewelry. Since it’s expected that adults will refrain from treating magnets as digestives, designers can use the magnets in their inherently metallic form and at the small scale needed for this genre. Shapes tend to be either cylindrical or spherical, since rounded surfaces allow for rotation and movement among the pieces. Necklaces, bracelets and rings lend themselves well to magnetics. One of our favorites is Stix+Stones, a choker necklace formed from the two aforementioned shapes. Another is Klik Klik, which has developed a reconfigurable jewelry system, with a cubic component added to the standard formal repertory. Klik Klik has really studied the creative possibilities at length, their website showing quite a few stunning configurations crafted from their pieces.
Have a ball with Bucky Balls.
Adult magnetic products are not restricted to jewelry; some of them position themselves as intended for the kind of purely formal play that we typically associate with children. Bucky Balls are one of the best known in this category. They concept is as simple as it gets – take a collection of spherical magnets and configure them however the imagination dictates. One distinguishing feature of Bucky Balls, besides the alliterative roll-off-the-tongue name, is that the magnets come in several different finishes other than the standard chrome plate.
The modular picture frame system GrowFrame (left) employs a similar technique as the Magnetude product in embedding magnetics inside wood pieces. In their case the purpose is to allow for the combination and reconfiguration of multiple picture frames. We really like how this concept takes an existing, static type of product and re-invents it in ways that open up whole new approaches to the genre. For example, one can assemble and stack the frames in ways that give them a three-dimensional sculptural quality quite different from the typical two-dimensional character a frame exhibits when hung on a wall or placed individually on a table top.
Perhaps the most intriguing area where magnetics are being used is in the field of fine art. An artist we admire, Susan Weinthaler, has been exploring the theme of artistic interactivity in a series of magnetic wall sculptures which she calls BITS. Her work is very closely aligned with the aesthetic philosophy of A.R.T. | Module R, as is clear from her own description of the series:
Each individual BIT is unique. They magnetically adhere to large steel canvases attached to the wall. By combining a large number of BITS together into a collection a work of art emerges that is not intended to be static. My work is indeed meant to be rearranged, therefore redefined. Constructed and deconstructed. This simple mounting system makes for infinitely variable compositions that take on a life force of their own as they migrate around the steel canvas manipulated by the hands of others. Life is not rigid, why should art be? I am completely taken with the idea of the potentially infinite and am creating an art form that is capable of it.
Susan Weinthaler, BITS: CURRENT (2010), hand-finished magnets on steel plate. Private collection.
Hey, Susan – in the spirit of the upcoming Valentine’s Day, we love it!
There’s an old saw in advertising that a person needs to see an ad as many as five times before it will sink into the fleshy tablets of their memories and actually affect their buying patterns. We’re certainly no experts in this field, but we get the point: like memorizing the lines of a play, one generally needs to repeat an experience in order to fully absorb it. We wonder if these days the figure of five has been bumped up owing to the seemingly intractable wave of sensory input we regularly confront in the media-drenched world of the 21st century, but that’s a topic for another day.
Now, from this observation we could presumably arrive at another truism: when you’re trying to sell people goods or services, don’t move the target. If you’re a bricks-and-mortar retail operation, don’t go changing your location just as people are getting used to your being there. If you’re building a brand, create a distinct graphic identity, get it out there as much as you can and then stick with it for as long as you can (witness Coca-Cola). Familiarity breeds recognition, and vice versa.
So it comes as a pleasant surprise to discover a young designer throwing out the rule book (or maybe a chapter or two of it) and devising a modular logo as the basis of a graphic identity package for a fictitious client. Understanding that modularity implies changeability, the designer has deliberately presented the logo not as a fixed entity to be stamped into people’s consciousness but as an endlessly reconfigurable icon that manages to preserve its identity while morphing into something slightly different with each take. In terms of a user experience, the results are just what one hopes for when following the standard wisdom of repetition: we remember it. Not by the force of repetition, mind you, but by standing out from the crowd as a fresh idea and a rebuttal of received wisdom. Experience may be the best teacher, but smart thinking will get you to the head of the class every time.
The Architecture Foundation (UK) has launched an international design competition for a modular and portable bike shed at Bankside, south London.
With up to 17 per cent of regular trips to the area made by bicycle, the competition is part of Better Bankside’s EU-funded Smart Green Business strategy which aims to boost local businesses’ eco-performance and promote further cycling in the area.
Open to architects, designers, artists, product designers and other disciplines, entrants are encouraged to produce ‘flexible and innovative yet realisable’ proposals.
A prototype of the winning entry will be built with Better Bankside keen to establish the bike shed in the western end of its zone by March.
Entries will be judged anonymously by a jury featuring Deborah Saunt of DSDHA; Ashok Sinha, chief executive of the London Cycling Campaign; Sarah Ichioka, director of the Architecture Foundation and Jonathan Bell, architecture editor at Wallpaper* magazine.
The deadline for registration and payment is 16 February, 2011 with Architecture Foundation members exempt from the competition’s £30 entry fee.
The final deadline for submissions of ideas is 18 February, 2011.
Climb every LEGO, ford every stream…and you’ll probably find a square somewhere. Bodo blocks by Seletti. (Click on images to view slideshow.)
If there’s one shape that embodies the essence of modular design, it would have to be the cube, and its two-dimensional progenitor, the square. What’s that, you say? You beg to differ? You think the hexagon deserves this coveted designation? Because the hexagon appears in nature in such forms as the honeycomb and snowflake, while a true square is nary to be found among living creatures and organisms? Well, we must admit, your argument does have a certain weight to it, as there is a line of thought that regards Nature as a kind of Supreme Artist by virtue of the boundless creativity evident in the natural world. Take Frank Lloyd Wright, for example: he used the hexagon quite a bit in his architectural designs as a way to connect his work to nature and validate it as a result. One of his disciples, Tony Smith, picked up on this thread and incorporated the shape in his great sculptural portfolio. The list of smart and talented people who’ve used the six-sided shape as a generator of form in their work goes on and on (unlike this post).
The Vitruvian Man by Leonardo after Vitruvius after somebody else long ago.
The square and cube? Well, as we’ve admitted, we’re hard put to find parallel examples of their visible manifestation in the organic world. But we’d be wrong if we thought that they were simply absent. In fact, they’re there, but in a more immanent, below-the-surface kind of way. Perhaps the most famous representation of this notion is the Vitruvian Man as depicted by Leonardo, who based his drawing on a passage from the only text on architecture to have survived from antiquity. In this image we see the human figure embedded in the outline of the square, thus reconciling natural and geometric form. This iconic image positions the square as a modular figure equally rooted in nature as the hex, and therefore ripe for use in the creative arts. Josef Albers, Michael Graves, Sol LeWitt and yes, Tony Smith and Frank Lloyd Wright again, all utilized the square to drive or define their designs.
Top: Eames House Blocks by House Industries. Bottom row left: Twist Lamp. Middle: Rotational Paintings by Studio for A.R.T. and Architecture. Right: BuzziFloor by BuzziSpace.
But here’s why we think the square tops the hex when it comes to modular design: the square is just a lot more artistically friendly than the hex. Its simpler, purer geometry makes it more fluid, flexible and versatile when it comes to combining multiple units. Having only right angles between sides means we’re not forced into accommodating sharply angled or ragged edges at the perimeter, nor are we necessarily dealing with irrational numbers when dimensioning among modular clusters. With its centralized forms and repetitive dimensions the square is a potentially very restful figure, whereas the hexagon seems to defy resolute closure and stasis by virtue of its open faces. And the square generates a perfect three-dimensional volume in the form of a cube, whereas the hex cannot.
Top row left: Cella by Naef. Middle: Modulon by Naef. Right: Modular Candlesticks by Shlomi Schillinger. Second row: Nolastar wallscreen. Third row: Optics Cubes by Kartell. Bottom row, left: WayBasics storage cubes. Middle: BuzziCubes 3D by BuzziSpace. Right: Modular hanging sculpture by Studio for A.R.T. and Architecture.
Not surprisingly then, among the designs and artwork we’ve gathered at our popup gallery the square and cube are the most popular forms to be found. Some of the pieces even define themselves according to their geometric identity by incorporating the terms into their names (Kubes, for example). Examples run the gamut from children’s blocks to artwork, from wall screens to storage bins. The concept behind the Vitruvian Man clearly lives on millennia after it was first articulated. In fact, with so many attractive, contemporary designs deriving their beauty from these singular shapes, perhaps it’s time to stand the world on its head and declare that if you want your work to be hip, be square.
Top: Modular picture frames by GrowFrame. Center row, left: Cuboro marble run. Middle: Kube storage bins by P’kolino. Right: Travel Menorah by Laura Cowen. Bottom: PaperForms wall paneling by MIO.
It takes a village to make a meal: The Palace Collection by Seletti (above and below). Click on any image to enlarge and view slideshow.
Perhaps in no other room in a residence are the qualities of modular design more consistently applied than the kitchen, and its offshoot, the dining room. In fact, the kitchen plays an historically important role as the setting for some of the earliest examples of industrially produced modular products. In the 1920s Belgian architect L.H. de Koninck developed a prefabricated modular kitchen system featuring standardized cupboards and equipment; a prototype was exhibited at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1930, during the second international congress of modern architecture (CIAM), and put into production two years later. Sometimes referred to as the Rational Kitchen, de Koninck’s concept highlights the widespread desire to make this room as efficient a workspace as possible, both in terms of construction and operation, and the ability of modular and interlocking design to achieve that goal.
That impulse has continued and even accelerated in the present day, extending beyond the built-in components of the kitchen proper to include presentation cookware and servingware for use during meals. Not surprisingly, architects and architecture play a strong role in these newer products. In fact, pride of place in our popup gallery in Brooklyn is given over to perhaps the most exuberant invocation of the intermingling of buildings and food you’re likely to ever see: Seletti’s smile-inducing Palace Collection of tableware. De-constructed, these four miniature ceramic palazzi outfitted in classic Renaissance architecture yield dinner plates, soup and salad bowls, tureens and serving bowls for six settings. An accompanying set of Seletti silverware – correction, make that goldware – finished in matte gold makes you imagine you’re dining in a 16th century Tuscan villa even as the Fresh Direct truck is pulling away outside.
LEFT: Adónde Modular Tableware by Javier Gutiérrez and Laurent Serin.
Achieving spatial compactness and a sculptural presentation by stacking repetitive components similarly drives the design of Adónde’s Modular Ceramic Dinnerware Collection. Conceived, produced and distributed by French duo Javier Gutiérrez and Laurent Serin, this visually restrained earthenware ensemble realizes an additional efficiency in endowing many of the pieces with multiple functionalities. In other words, a plate doesn’t have to be just a plate – it can also be the lid on a container vessel to keep food warm or moist. Meanwhile that container can be a soup bowl or serving dish. Fewer things doing more work: one of the quintessential characteristics of modular design.
Adónde’s modular strategy has ample precedent in Alessi’s Programma 8 Collection, designed in the 1970s by…guess who? An architect! Born 1940, Franco Sargiani graduated from the Milan Polytechnic and later set up his studio there to pursue a multi-disciplinary practice in architecture and design. The exquisitely interlocking geometry and maximum flexibility of use characteristic of the Programma 8 design are certainly products of an architectural mind. One writer went so far as to describe it as “the most evolved system of household objects ever created on an international level,” and while we might detect a whiff of hyperbole, frankly, we can’t think of a more deserving one (sorry, Tupperware).
TOP: Alessi’s Programma 8 Modular Serverware Collection by Franco Sargiani. BOTTOM: Stackable Modular Ovenware by Christian Bjørn for Menu.
Programma’s architectural approach is echoed in turn in the award-winning Menu collection of stackable porcelain oven-to-table cookware. A simple progression of three modules successively divided in half generates neat formal patterns when dishes are stacked. But designer Christian Bjørn is no pure formalist: our well-fed staff of culinary experts tell us that the scalloped cut-outs in the sides of the dishes allows air to circulate while in the oven, ensuring food is evenly heated, while heat-resistant silicone feet protect the dishes from scratching each other. You can also put tea lights in a base dish under a serving dish to keep food warm. And oh yeah, they’re dishwasher and microwave safe but are not for use in gas ovens.
So what’s on your Menu? Whatever it is, bon appétit!
Morpheo Modular Candlesticks by Seletti. Click on images to enlarge and play slideshow.
With the approach of Hanukah and Christmas, we’re naturally inspired to assemble this collection of modular candlesticks and menorahs, several of which we’re displaying at our popup shop on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. For even in the age of pixels, LED’s and CFL’s (compact fluorescent lights, for those who haven’t had the displeasure of using them yet), there remains something enduringly and sensuously human about the simple flickering flame at the end of a candlestick. And of course, the association of fire not only with our antediluvian forebears but with the gods themselves carry us to a time and place not of this world. Plus you can roast marshmallows with them.
Top row left: Morpheo Modular Candlestick in clear. Middle: Modular Candlesticks by Museum of Robots. Right and below: Modular Wood Candlabra by WUDA.
As with all things modular, these designs beckon the user to participate in form-making by determining how the pieces are to be arrayed. In the case of our secular candlesticks, such as the Museum of Robots and Seletti designs, this typically means choosing in what order the components are to be vertically stacked on their stem. The elaboration of silhouette and the rhythmic sequence of superimposed three-dimensional shapes constitute the principal design challenges in their case. Still, if the modular system has been designed well, it’s hard to come up with something truly ugly, and the necessity of skewering the pieces on a fixed vertical centering pin means people have little room to completely lose their formalistic minds.
Top: Slide Magnet Menorah by Laura Cowen. Bottom left: Concrete Menorah by Marit Meisler. Middle and right: Modular Menorah in aluminum and brass by Ian Milne.
By contrast, the menorahs are oriented horizontally so as to accommodate the multiple candles required by the eight day holiday. Unlike the secular candlesticks, however, once the connecting pieces that normally hold the individual candleholders are done away with, there are few constrictions as to where the candles can be placed in relationship to each other. It is interesting to observe that most people, when bequeathed the gift of almost total design freedom, nonetheless still compose the individual pieces of the menorah in some kind of geometric arrangement (have a look at the product illustrations in this post, for example). Perhaps it is our innate desire for order, or our respect for the decorum of a religious object, but we’re just not ready to treat the emblem of Hanukah like the inside of our closets. And for that, we can be truly thankful.
Top row left: Hex Enamel Modular Menorah by Jonathan Adler. Middle: Cube Menorah by Shlomi Shillinger. Right: Shapes Menorah. Bottom: Travel Menorah by Laura Cowen.
This is the first of several posts we’ll be doing over the next few weeks to highlight some of the customizable product designs we’ve assembled at the A.R.T. | Module R popup shop, now running at 400 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, New York.
Jewelry is among the most intimate of wearable objects, often placed directly against the skin and in some cases actually piercing it. What better article, then, to endow with the properties of co-creativity than jewelry, the ornament of the self? Indeed, one of the principal attractions of co-creative, participatory design is that the interaction between user and object bonds the two in a more direct way than is the case with things acquired in a fully formed state. That’s only natural where there develops a feeling of co-ownership, a sense that the user played some part in the conception of the object. With its small scale and simplicity of function, jewelry would seem to particularly well suited to formal manipulation by the non-expert. (Not to mention the fact that reconfigurable design gives the user a lot more bang for the buck as well as flexibility when it comes to accessorizing different outfits.)
Brandon Perhacs: Stix+Stones
Designed by Brandon Perhacs, Stix+Stones is a line of jewelry that gives the wearer the ability to create a diverse array of sculptural compositions using the two fundamental geometries of sphere and rod. The innovative design potential of Stix+Stones is hidden inside the hand-brushed stainless steel rods, or “stix”, which contain invisible magnetic stops positioned at precise intervals along their length. The magnetized design allows the user to play freely with the components, while at the same time ensuring that the parts array themselves in an elegantly symmetrical manner.
The full necklace cord comes with six brushed stainless steel stix of assorted lengths, and six magnetic spheres of silver and black nickel. The length of the cord is 16″ long. Custom lengths are available upon request for an additional charge. .
Hila Rawet Karni: Industrial Jewelry
Hila Rawet Karni is a jewelry designer whose works have been featured throughout the world, from Tokyo and Design Basel in Miami to Tel Aviv, Milan, and London. Combining her background in industrial design, her knowledge of origami, and her impeccable fashion sense, Hila incorporates unusual materials to create unique, wearable pieces. Her Kishut collection is notable in utilizing a single module rendered in an industrial material, in different colors and with assorted connection hardware to form an unlimited number of necklace, earring and brooch designs.
Naturally, we find the idea of conjoining the somewhat oxymoronic terms “industrial” and “jewelry” very appealing, since it aligns with our own ideas about “industrialized art.”
Q: You are an industrial designer by trade. What prompted the interest in jewelry?
Hila: “In my work, I use silicon, paper, grommets, and stainless steel. As an industrial designer, I am fascinated by the idea of taking raw materials that are not usually used for jewelry and transforming them into wearable objects. I want to create jewelry that is beautiful and luxurious and is not made out of gold and silver.
A lot of my inspiration comes from my family and my childhood. My father is an industrial designer and my grandfather was a jeweler and woodworker. I have vivid memories of looking through albums of my grandfather’s works, and going through his origami books, trying to create the designs myself. Those experiences stuck with me, and influence my work.”
Hila’s pieces were featured in the recent exhibition “Technocraft,” curated by Yves Behar and held at the Yerba Buena Arts Center in San Francisco.
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OHptions Modular Earrings by Ciclus
Ciclus is a design studio in Barcelona, Spain whose philosophy is grounded in the principles of sustainability, namely, to “reduce, reuse, and recycle.” Their fashion portfolio includes a design for modular earrings called OHptions (not sure where the unique spelling is coming from, but we get it). The components are made from recycled paper and silver. With a detachable circular disk ornaments and removable chains, the earrings can be configured in a variety of arrangements and graphic patterns. The interchangeability of the disks, of course, solves the age-old problem of color coordinating one’s apparel: rather than having to set aside a piece because it does not “go” with the current color scheme, one need only change the details of the piece, and then go.
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Henry Ford, move over – the era of mass production has come to a close! Personalization is the name of the game now. People want a role in shaping the physical world around them to suit their individual needs, tastes and resources; to satisfy that goal they're looking for works of art and design that are reconfigurable, interactive and scalable. This blog explores how creatives are responding to the quest for customization, as well as the impact customization is having on the creative disciplines themselves.
