Jun Aoki

Part good neighbour and part recluse, N is a house with a split personality. The latest from Tokyo architect Jun Aoki, this two-story block adorned with a pitched roof, brick chimney and mullioned windows greets the street amiably. But the heart of the house is a cavernous, underground box completely sequestered from view. While the iconographic upstairs contains just bedrooms, the buried inner sanctum downstairs holds the combined kitchen, dining and living room.

KEMISTRY,Pure Yet Complex

 if you are in or around East London in the next week and a bit we suggest that you pop into Kemistry gallery for their current exhibition ‘Pure Yet Complex’ by Sanderson Bob.

Kemistry is small independent gallery dedicated to exhibiting the work of outstanding designers both past and present, located in Shoreditch, London. 

Forms of Inquiry Project

London based designer Zak Kyes, Forms of Inquiry: The Architecture of Critical Graphic Design brings together new works by a range of international graphic designers who base their work in critical investigation. The exhibition features projects that have originated as self-propelled inquiry, either professional or personal, and have been developed into a myriad of media and forms including typography, writing/curatorial projects, installations, interactive works, publications and speculative proposals, that draw a relationship between architectural and graphic design.

The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines

The recent resurgence of interest in the architecture of the 1960s and 1970s has largely neglected the role of the many experimental publications that were the engine of that intensely creative period. Assembled together for the first time, these remarkable documents offer a unique view of a key period of architectural innovation and challenge today’s architects to provoke a similar intensity. This exhibition tracks the critical function of the little magazine in architecture during these years.

CCA  

The 63.02° apartment

63.02°, built in a densely residential area in Nakano, Tokyo, is a small building of a SOHO and an apartment for rent. The front road is really narrow, but the next apartment has a big open space between the road and the building. In order to this situation, the facade of 63.02° is inclined 63.02 degrees toward the front road, so that a wide and deep view is acquired. From the large windows that are opened on the inclined facade, you can see neighbour’s cherry tree and the cityscape.

Ronel Jordaan’s approach to fool the eye

 Seen on the pages of Australian Vogue Living and in showrooms around the world, South African Designer, Ronel Jordaan’s rock and scatter cushions and pebble carpets are whimsical but made out of sustainable felt, also have a warmth to them. Ronel, a textile designer for 28 years is primarily inspired by nature and her preferred medium is felt. Ronel has also trained a group of South African women in the art of felting, who produce the designs with her and have now started creating their own designs with her help.

IDS08

The people at IDS08 have been very busy at the Direct Energy Centre, in Toronto. Ending up the event this week . We’re always amazed to see how an empty show floor is transformed in a mere three days into these amazing spaces.

This year, IDS has decided to share some of the action that goes behind the making of the show and isdesign got the exclusives in the next coming days .

Yael Mer’s volume

There were some interesting ideas and structures in terms of seating at IMM. Yael Mer’s Volume, which is a paper chair shell that is filled with expanding foam that reveals a unique shaped chair was one that grab our attention. Although there wasn’t a lot information about the chair, it was one of our favorites.

Yael Mer is an exciting and humanitarian designer, who is always keeping function on the forefront of all her designs. For more of her work

Florian Kräutli curtain design

young designer Florian Kräutli developed a curtain which you can shape to any form, magnets embedded in the curtain fabric allow the user to shape the curtain innumerable ways, both open and closed.

Paul Williams,first African American member of the American Institute of Architects

Here in Isdesign we enjoy sharing accomplishments of designers and their work because they inspirer and motivate us. this month we will be introducing profound black designers and their creative works.

Paul Williams became renown for designing major buildings such the Los Angeles International Airport and over 2000 homes in Southern California. Many of the most elegant houses in Hollywood were created by Paul Williams.

Williams was orphaned when he was four, and received little encouragement for his artistic talents. Nevertheless, he enrolled in engineering school at the University of Southern California and won an important architecture competition when he was only 25. When he was 28, he opened his own practice.

Williams’ famous ability to perfectly render drafts upside-down was a tactic for dealing with racism – this ability allowed his clients to sit opposite from him and see his rendering right-side-up on their side without having to sit next to the Black architect. Williams never complained on his own behalf, but the sting of racism was something he made sure his family could avoid to a small degree, by empowering his children with good educations and a solid upbringing that had compassion and respect at its core. He once stated that “White Americans, in spite of every prejudice, are essentially fair-minded people who cannot refuse to respect courage and honest effort. They will, therefore, give me an opportunity to prove my worth as an individual.”

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