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 .

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.”

for more information

accommodating poverty

Sean Godsell an amazing architect designer, has found a clever solution for a humane cause. Designing emergency shelters for the displaced or homeless people in urban environments. The design converts into an emergency overnight accommodation. The bench lifts to reveal a woven steel mattress and the advertising hoarding is modified to act as a dispenser of blankets, food, and water. It also acts as a small gallery space where art can be exhibited. The shelter has the potential to be solar powered and its glass roof and back double as a digital projection screen.

The first prototype is located in Melbourne, Australia
For more information Sean Godsell Architects

lite2go No Packaging Required

Lite2go is an all in one lighting solution where the packaging becomes the product. An energy efficient light bulb and an electric cord are included, allowing you to setup straight from the shelf to light your home.

The design is a components are either biodegradable or recyclable. No adhesives or extra packaging is utilized so the lamp is non toxic. The light bulb included with the package is a compact, fluorescent bulb that uses less energy and lasts longer than a comparable incandescent light bulb.

VilLA NM house

In the design for this single family house the sloping site is used as a device for programmatic and volumetric organization. A box-like volume bifurcates into two separate volumes; one seamlessly following the northern slope; the other lifted above the hill creating a covered parking space and generating a split-level internal organization. The volumetric transition is generated by a set of five parallel walls that rotate along a horizontal axis from vertical to horizontal. The ruled surface maintaining this transition is repeated five times in the building. From inside the huge window strips from floor to ceiling allow a fluid continuity between interior and landscape. From the exterior the reflective glass seams to become one with its surroundings.

enter Holiday Home

Institute for contemporary art, Philadelphia

The Holiday Home is an experiential installation exploring areas in which the holiday home departs from modern design conventions. The orthogonal surfaces of the archetypal house are extruded and skewed creating the sculptural armature within which the dichotomies of home and holiday home are played out. The new architectural shape emulates escapism, the expectation of a holiday as removed from everyday routine. Visitor movement through the installation activates unexpected view corridors and the multi directional shadows create unpredictable perspectives. The perception of time is intrinsically interwoven into the project as light conditions subtly modulate; the sense of season and time of day become more abstract, as you may find on holiday where time is unbound by the frameworks of contemporary patterns of living and dwelling.

Unique ceiling structure

 

The project is a 3500 sf art gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. The client requested two gallery spaces, an office area, a storage packaging area, a reception desk, a meeting table where clients could scan the website for other pieces in the collection and finally a bar area for art openings. The existing space had a beam and column configuration that ran down the middle north south in a wiggly line. Initially, this existing condition was thought to be a problem. The solution was to use the pattern of the existing beam and columns to organize the space and direct the form.

Primarily the existing beam and column pattern was used to create a custom luminous ceiling that contains all the HVAC, sprinkler and lighting elements. The lines in the ceiling are made of mill finish aluminum flat bar that hold up translucent panels and, in some instances,  extend from the ceiling to become light fixtures over key locations in the space. The office and packaging area were placed in the middle creating the division between front and rear galleries.