This week at Milan Design Week British designer Bethan Laura Wood will be unveiling an installation of inter-stacking tables in the lower ground floor room at Nilufar Gallery. Called Spaghetti Junction, the installation will explore the balance between elegance and play. Read the rest of this entry »
Design duo Doshi Levien designed Chandlo, a prototype made by BD Barcelona for the exhibit Das Haus 2012 during IMM Cologne this year. The dressing table is made of a seemingly abstract composition of mirrors, cabinet and surface, but is thoughtfully inspired by the gestures and daily ritual of dressing up and grooming. An architectural composition of forms and planes are designed to be viewed from all sides, revealing different aspects of the object as you walk around it.
These drawings by Japanese New Media artist Macoto Murayama give us an insight into the staggeringly intricate architecture of the plant world. Murayama’s synthetic images combine the soft organic forms of flowers with the cold aesthetic of technical sketches. Through the use of cutting edge software and 3D modeling, his work blurs the boundaries between art and science bringing botanical illustrations into the digital age. Read the rest of this entry »
Ko Ware High-stemmed Bowl, Yüan Dynasty (1279-1368)
I’ve just returned from Taiwan for a family trip, and one of the many beautiful places we visited was the National Palace Museum. The museum holds an ever rotating treasure trove of Chinese antiquities that Chiang Kai-shek first safely stashed in the Chinese country side during the second Sino-Japanese war, and later shipped in unthinkably large quantities to Taiwan when his Nationalist party broke off from the Chinese Communist party. While Chinese arts and culture are beloved for its ornate beauty, I was somewhat surprised to find many pieces on display with a quiet, stark simplicity. Pictures are strictly prohibited within the museum, but the museum’s website has a healthy selection from the collections currently on display.