Here is the optimal solution after a house party… Garbage Lamp by the student Peter Castellucci, an efficient and creative way to illuminate and pollute less, all at once.

[via Core77]

… This is the crystal clear message brought to us by PEACE of Cake.

Designed by the Dutch Paul Hendrikx, the twenty-six year old co-founder of Studio Mango, this silicone cake mold is a nice example of how simple objects that we use everyday can become the conveyors of a strongly ideological, humanitarian and cultural message.

The packaging is made of recycled cardboard so as not to forget the respect for the environment which, especially in these times, we cannot allow ourselves to simply fly over.

Find PEACE of Cake here.

Translated by Silvia — Surfing around the Internet yesterday looking for solutions for sustainable furnishings, we fell upon FLEXIBLE LOVE. We immediately liked the name and, indeed, it sums up in two words the philosophy which hides behind this project. It is, in fact, a fantastic example of social, ecological and philanthropic design that manages to mix concrete utility and love for the environment and for others.

It is born from a very simple but effective concept: a flexible chair that uses fully the structural properties of honeycomb, applied to the working of an accordion. An incredible result of extensibility, resistance and rigidity, considering that the material used is nothing more than… paper!

A myriad of used sheets of paper that are recuperated, recycled and reused in a completely new way by the new Taiwanese designer Chishen Chiu for an extendible chair that can also be compact and multiform to host anywhere from 1 to 16 people! A group of good friends, a soccer team, a school class…

Take a look at the 2 videos and the images you will find below and in the cut.

The birth of FLEXIBLE LOVE chair was greatly influenced by Chishen Chiu’s personal experience from when he stumbled into a cardboard factory in the suburbs on Taipei. Immediately intrigued by the use of the bee’s nest structure in the industrial production of cardboard panes as substitutes for wooden ones, the young Taiwanese student developed in just a few days the concept of a chair, transformable from a seat to a bench, exploiting the huge resistance and rigidity that this material can take on in this specific structure.

Using only eco-friendly materials such as recycled paper, post-industrially rejected wood (plywood panels, chipboard panels, OSB) and ecological glue matched with pre-existing production processes, FLEXIBLE LOVE chair is thought out, from its very existence, to be a chair with a low environmental impact.

It can take on different shapes: linear, S-shaped, etc. for an almost total interactivity and adaptability with the user. Produced in 5 versions (other than the 16-person model, there’s also the one for 12 people, for 8, Couple for 2 and Mini, a 25:1 scale rendition of the Flexible Love 16) its first editions were immediately snatched out of stores.

It deserves another few words for its dimensions: 64cm tall and 56cm wide, its extendibility goes from 22.5cm in the compact version to 720cm open to the max. It weighs only 25kg, but can take a load of up to 1920kg!

An interesting piece of social and democratic design: you just need to coordinate yourself with your seating companions so as to avoid unfortunate capsizings.

+ FlexibleLove.com

An interesting presentation (in Chinese) by the designer Chishen Chiu.

Translated by Silvia – The objective that designer Oskar Daniel fixed for himself was to create a “wall of sound” to enjoy the soundtrack of a good movie and his favourite music: he got exceptional results.

The young Swedish talent (class of 1983) conceived HIVE, a compact and modular sound system made up of hexagonal panels for acoustic diffusion, decidedly geometric and inspired by bee’s nests.

More images and details in the link below.

This modular system of speakers is a winning alternative in terms of space and aesthetics: compared to normal surround sound systems, usually cumbersome and hardly attractive to the eye, HIVE is ornamental and technologically effective. It can guarantee an entirely customizable propagation of sound.

Each cell is actually extensible and adjustable, complete with a switch on the back to regulate the sound (left, right, center). The connection cables between the various modules are then incorporated to the attachment structure on the wall and reduced to just one cable (audio + electrical).

Still in concept phase, this project already smells like success.

Translated by Silvia – A young and fresh duo, Puah Kim Sing and How Sim, industrial designers for Dremu Design, a newly created studio that’s been active for less than a year. Already 3 important awards received at the latest edition of the Furniture Design Awards in Singapore (FDA 2008): Most Honorable Mention for Mimo & Simi Bar stools, a pleasant couple of stools made of ABS, surmounted by hairpieces made of expanded EVA foam for a fun Playmobil look. Two Young Designer Merit Awards for the 2 seats TORS Chair and HAGE Chair. The last one, of which you can see an image above, is a wooden armchair with essentially balanced lines, made of a single rectangular sheet of plywood, at the centre of which was made an “H” shaped cut, and later curved and modelled for an interesting aesthetic result and robust but light frame, playing with the tension of the material used.

More images and information in the link below.

Original Edition – Mimo & Simi designed by How Sim

Unfortunately their site is not surfable yet. We will have to wait for June this year in order to see other interesting novelties from Dremu Design, like the next series of Mimo & Simi dedicated to mythological creatures, celebrities and superheroes in limited editions.

+ dremudesign.com

[via DremuDesign e Culturepush]

TORS Chair designed by How Sim

Translated by Silvia — Modern and essential design were put into use for this wrist-watch on which the lines of time run through chromatic and technological paths, giving a determined style to the more researched feminine look.

ORB Bracelet Watch is born from the creativity of the very your Serbian designer: Djordje Zivanovic (Djo:Djo DSGN). He is an industrial design student in Turin’s IAAD, and his watch is available in 2 versions: clear black or white plastic, while the 3 linear displays give the time with the maximum precision made available by digital technology with the hour, minutes and seconds, and can take on different colors according to the software. On the side, an important button to adjust the time easily during our journeys from one time-zone to another.

To be worn, admired, consulted… Nice!

The project is on contest at the moment at the 2008 Signity Watch Design Competition. Other pictures in the cut below.

Translated by Silvia – Rise and Sigh, a collection of sheets that leave on our skin intriguing and intimate messages about the night we just spent at the hotel is the amusing and tantalizing suggestion made by Martina Carpelan (class of 1979).

Presented for the Helsinki Hotel project, the young Finnish designer has literally transformed the candid, but often anonymous, hotel sheets into typographical models that will temporarily stamp phrases on our skin according to where and in what position in the bed we spent the night.

Translated by Silvia — A touch of moon light for furniture which reminds us of the Thai Full Moon Parties at Ko Phangan down the Haad Rin beach, and of full-moon summer nights from when we were kids, rocked by a story and the hypnotic sound of the sea.

Fullmoon is born from the creativity of the Greek designer Sotirios Papdopoulos for the Italian company EnneZero from Pordenone (the same one that created the furniture collection for Giuseppe Canavese, dedicated to the fascinating and sensual Valentina of Guido Crepax): a 24 piece limited edition piece of furniture with luminous special effects that recreates the luminescence of the full moon thanks to an ecologically safe varnish (ELI: “ecolightinside” created by Papadopoulos himself) of a gelatinous consistency. Thanks to the addition of a special ecological power, it takes on light-in-the-dark properties, to give the home the suggestive lunar influxes to which Man and nature have been attracted since the dead of time.

This novelty will be on show at the temporary SOHO gallery that will be held during Milan’s Furniture and Design week, for the “dEMOsign” exhibition from the 18^th to the 20^th of April 2008.

More pictures in the cut below.

Translated by Silvia – Designers of Frank O. Gehry’s calibre (since the beginning of the 70’s) and recently ever more representatives of the new generation of industrial designers from the whole world have brought forward new materials like cardboard, scruff paper and polystyrene for creative experiments in the field of furniture, often winking back to sustainability.

And it is to their seating solutions, obtained from economic or recycled materials, that we are dedicating this post.

Easy Edges Wiggle Side Chair. Photo: Courtesy of Frank O. Gehry & Associates.

Cabbage Chair by Nendo

Old News chair by Ezri Tarazi

Paper Mache Arm Chair by Majid Azif

Soft Polychair by Max Lamb

Styrofoam Sofa by Kwangho Lee

Translated by Silvia — A fairy-tale inspired suggestion, with a touch of dreaminess that reminds us of the atmospheres in Michel Gondry’s “The art of dreaming”: Space Book, a huge human-sized 3D book! When looking through it, one is welcomed by inviting, entirely furnished environments.

Who knows if more will be made from more resisting materials, that will work the same way as three-dimensional books, off of designer Jin-Hui Kim’s concept. They could become an effective and poetic furnishing solution for improvised guests or even just to live with a touch of extra fantasy in our everyday domestic lives.

In the cut below you will find more pictures of the Space book and 3 beautiful videos dedicated to the fabulous world of pop-up books with an interview of Robert Sabuda, a real paper engineer, made by the Wall Street Journal.