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Heavy/Light
They say good things come in threes. Here, Architonic brings you five of the best concrete lamps on the market. It's all about contradiction.
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The Milan Conversations: Part IV – Ferruccio Laviani and Luca Nichetto
In this final installment of the Milan Conversations we catch up with renowned product designer, architect and artistic director of Italian manufacturer Kartell Ferruccio Laviani at the Barovier&Toso showroom in Milan and talk to him about lamps, light bulbs, and the significance of going back to basics. We also meet young(ish) Venetian designer Luca Nichetto (whose client list already reads like a 'who's who' of high-end design manufacturing) and find out his take on this year's Salone.
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Tropical Modernism: The masters of Brazilian Modernism
As part of this year's 'Fuori Salone' in Milan, the 'relics' of the Brazilian Modernism were displayed in a church near the city's Porta Romana: rare pieces by the so-called 'Tropical Modernists' of the 1950s, 60s and 70s...
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Yachting – Design
Modern design, beyond teak and brass fittings, has, however, been around for a long time in the world of yachting. Innovative boat-builders and designers work with new propulsion technology, materials and formal languages.
Yachts are perfect for this kind of experimentation: often commissioned and completed as a prototype, they lend themselves to new developments and are at the same time one of the last bastions of bespoke handwork.
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Herbal Architecture
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon went down in history as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Vertical gardens were then, as they still are today, signs of innovative architecture.
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The Measure of Success: INCH Furniture
Architonic talks to Basel-based design label INCH Furniture about their distinctive collection for the Swiss Pavilion at Shanghai's Expo 2010
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Making an Exhibition of Ourselves: Architonic deciphers some of Expo 2010 Shanghai's architectural offerings
No form of architecture is perhaps as loaded with rhetoric as the expo pavilion. With hundreds of countries currently jostling at the Expo 2010 in Shanghai to attract visitors into their little piece of home, Architonic takes a look at what's at stake in such an enterprise in terms of representation and national identity.
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"...with the level of quality our grandparents demanded"
"Cecilie is just like her furniture," a friend of mine who works as a designer told me when I mentioned I was going to be interviewing the Copenhagen-based designer Cecilie Manz. And, indeed, Manz exudes a calmness and composure much like her pared-down, uncomplicated work.
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The Milan Conversations: Part I – Konstantin Grcic and Sebastian Wrong
As the metaphoric dust settles following another Milan Salone del Mobile (not to be confused with the ash from that pesky Icelandic volcano, which did its best to keep the great and the good of the international design press stranded in Italy), Architonic brings you a series of engaging interviews with some of the most influential designers working internationally. We're calling them the Milan Conversations.
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'Harmonious Anarchy': revisiting Hak Nam, Hong Kong's slum city
When photographer Greg Girard decided to visit the notorious, citadel-like 'Walled City' slum in Hong Kong's Kowloon, where the daily lives of 35,000 people played out, he was told he may not come back alive. Luckily for him, he did. And, luckily for us, he brought with him a series of compelling images, showing just how close the relation between architectural space and social behaviour can be.
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Milan Means...
It's almost a cliché now to say that the annual Milan Salone del Mobile has become a behemoth of a design fair, eclipsing every other major show in the design calendar. (Personally, we at Architonic feel that a number of the other large design events such as Stockholm and the imm cologne have a lot going for them when it comes to relevance and business.) Given Milan's elevated status, both in real terms and in those of the imagination, we asked eight leading design practitioners what comes to mind when they hear the name of that Italian city...
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'Lobmeyr Glass' exhibition at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York
“Ted Muehling Selects: Lobmeyr Glass from the Permanent Collection” is the 10th installment in an exhibition series devoted to showing rotations of Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s permanent collection. The exhibition celebrates the museum’s recent acquisition of an extra-ordinary collection of 162 rare glass works from J. & L. Lobmeyr of Vienna, Austria, which dates from 1835 to 2008...
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The Milan Conversations: Part II – James Irvine and Naoto Fukasawa
In this second installment of the Milan Conversations – a series of discussions held at this year's Salone del Mobile with some of the most celebrated designers working internationally – Architonic talks to British designer and long-time Milanese James Irvine about the privilege of, and the sensitivities involved in, working for a heritage brand like Thonet, and to master of formal simplicity and beauty Naoto Fukasawa about the relation between mind, body and design.
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Getting high in London: the 2012 Olympic city's controversial new tower
When Mayor of London Boris Johnson unveiled the design of a 115-metre-high steel tower by renowned sculptor Anish Kapoor, which is to be built next to the city's new 2012 Olympic Stadium, the reaction from press and public was one of emphatic disapproval. London-based architecture critic Tim Abrahams, voice of the minority, mounts a defence of the 'Orbit'.
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"Passion is the most important thing"
Jörg Boner gibt viel Preis über seine Produkte – er haucht ihnen Leben ein. So beleuchtet er im Gespräch gerne den Werdegang eines Produktes, seine Hochs und Tiefs sowie seinen Neuanfang. Die Parallelen zu ihm als Person lassen sich wie von selbst ziehen.
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