The super-duper popular IKEA bookcase we all know and love by the name of Billy is turning 30 this year. IKEA is celebrating the occasion by releasing a couple of limited edition models. Fun!

Via Below The Clouds & Notcot.org

When designer Torgny Fjeldskaar isn’t designing bicycles (he is the head of industrial design at Cannondale), he’s making bad ass carbon furniture– all under the brand name Laisr.

Laisr is a furniture brand created and owned by Torgny Fjeldskaar and Javier Alberich. The company is based in Basel, Switzerland. We do high-tech furniture designed and hand-made to stand the test of time. Our current products are designed by Torgny Fjeldskaar, whose daytime job is to design high-end bicycles for Cannondale, a company famous for its innovative use of high-tech materials. Javier Alberich is the creative director. He also worked several years at Cannondale in the past. Currently he’s working as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator.

Wallpaper’s just launched a new interactive portion of their website which aims to catalogue and document a selection of products their editorial staff likes. They’re adding new items to it regularly so I’m sure it’ll come to be useful, or at least inspirational. Great selection of goodies which are browsable by room or product. Check it out.

The OneLessDesk we wrote about last April now has companions. Now joining the lineup is the computer desk/stand and OneLessFile for all your filing needs. Big fan of this easily stackable/configurable stuff. Great work Dean!

     

Dan Ziglam and Elliot Brook are the directors of UK-based design firm, Deadgood, where everything they make is “deadgood”. The young company has already made Elle Decoration's ‘Brit Talent Hot List' and Design Week's '50 People Making a Difference in Design' for their innovative Form chairs, wire table lamps, bookshelves and hangers. We, of course, love great furniture design, but Deadgood really made our radar when they announced an upcoming collaboration with Jon Burgerman. The doodle chair is screen-printed with a resin-impregnated craft core, overlaid with melamine and pressed at high temperature. It recently made a successful debut in New York and is expected to launch in September. Completely awesome.

Your urban sensibility is already apparent in mostly every aspect of your existence. Whether it’s the way you dress or the the music you listen to, everyone knows that you’re watching the streets. When you escape the sidewalk’s influence and return to the calm shelter of your abode, however, it’s a different story. Your staid coffee table only tells visitors that you’ve gotta put your feet up somewhere, saying nothing of how you’ve got your prescient eye on the hustle and flow of current culture. Well then maybe your furnishings could use a change that’s more in keeping with the tempo of the next song on your iPod. Might we recommend the incredibly hot Scratch DJ Coffee Table from the divine minds and able craft-making hands at Bughouse Art & Design. This pine turntable facsimile with chromed out legs and a glass tabletop allows a place to put your kicks up at the end of the day and to show off some choice vinyl without accidentally scratching it up with some faulty needle play.

Some might think having your own coffin in your house is morbid, but not William Warren. In fact, the furniture and product designer created Shelves for Life, a build-it-yourself Ikea style bookcase that, after you’ve expired, can be reassembled into a coffin. Not only is it good for the environment, it’ll be one less thing your family has to worry about when dealing with your remains. The kits sell for $579 (or 350 GBP) a piece and come stained in a classic blonde wood which just begs for some serious customization. Creepy and awesome.

I didn’t go to Milan Design Week this year, but my dear friend Kristina Dryza did. Her perspective is pretty great, and sort of what I expected to hear. Excerpt below:

In the West, we crave experiences that help us know ourselves better, and better express ourselves. The companies showing at design week needed to use ‘illumination' as the filter from which to deliver their brand experience as the world doesn't need another chair, light fixture or cabinet. The world needs design steeped in meaning. And as many social commentators keep reiterating, meaning is the new currency.

Read the rest over here.

  

Loving Mike and Maaike’s new DIVIS Dining Table– another collaboration with the über-talented folks at Council. Lots of character with what they call “planned imperfections”– the piece will debut at ICFF at the Javitz Center here in NYC May 16-19th. No word on pricing yet. I want one!

READ MORE…

When emerging designers submitted hundreds of furniture pieces to Thursday's Modern Design Function exhibition at San Francisco's Design With Reach, judges from Dwell Magazine and the SF Museum of Modern Art selected not one but three pieces from local applicant Dylan Gold. Gold used plywoods, plyboo and other responsible materials to create Stink Tree, the Cornered Table and Twisted. The latter is a reaction to Gold's observation of how regimented people can be. “I like things that fall out of line and definitely buck the trend a little bit, but not so far as to lose balance,” he said. “I wanted to see something hard like wood used in a way that people were not used to seeing it, like crossing a plane into the spatial boundaries of another piece.”

The 2,200 square feet of work space that Gold shares with seven other creators is blocks away from the Potrero Hill DWR where the showcase will take place. (Talk about knowing where your purchases originate.) The wood and metalworking shop is also a network for the tenants' artist and fabricator friends “where just about anything can be made,” the designer says.

When we think of a rocking chair, a memory springs to mind of grandma knitting while emitting creaky sounds with continuous reclining effort. Rainer Mutsch has erased those images with his fresh take on the familiar furnishing. Rather than focus on the literal action one experiences while seated, the Austrian designer goes with a bolder (or boulder) approach by fashioning a seat in the shape of a rock formation. However, there’s more appeal to this piece than the ability to sit on a pseudo stone. The chair is designed using a polgyonal structure that puts the accent on the most vital ergonomic sections, which helps minimize the material and weight of the structure and makes your sitting experience all the more comfortable. Rock on!

Via MoCo LoCo

It would be easy to be blue about the lack of eye-catching public design in many city centers if it weren’t for gems like Slovenian design consultancy Asobi’s outdoor chairs placed along the main street of the city of Ljubljana. The Slovenska Street revitalization project features transformable orange benches and chairs that were designed to be light but durable. The ARPRO material the chairs were created from is completely recyclable and has been used in everything from Volvo cars to baby car seats. Another approach to introducing seating space and blocking local traffic may not have received the same public welcome, which has encouraged the chairs to be made available for sale on the modular furniture site Movisi.

One of my favorite things to do is read in bed. If I can get comfortable enough, I’ll go so far as to even work on my laptop there—a no-no for psychiatrists advising sleep-deprived patients that a bed should kept associated as a place to rest. After about 15 minutes though, I have to plump up that pillow on my back again. Though this process isn’t that much trouble, the only problem with having the Cama Clina from Faro Design in Brazil is that I’d likely permanently give up the work table for the work bed. The company tapped into a system they developed in 1988 for canvas patio chairs for this ultra comfy recliner bed, which works via hinges that move a leather piece that works as back support to the front. When not in use, it’s incorporated into the aesthetics of the wood headboard so you wouldn’t even know about its hidden other use. Rad? Yes. Dangerous to productivity? Likely. But what’s a bed for then?  

All chairs are not created equal. Especially not if you’re short. So we give props to Alice Wang. The brilliant mind that thought of a friend-calling alarm clock brings us her ingenious line of conceptual chairs for the dysfunctional.

Beyond her Equality Seeker (pictured), a chair with adjustable legs that allows everyone to sit an an equal height of 140cm, there’s also a seat for fidgeters that will record the calories they burn as they just…can’t…sit…still. But, our favorite? The Silent Farter. For those who like to stink up the room and get away with it, this tattletale chair amplifies your gaseous problems to the rest of your dinner company so you can’t blame the dog. Which is really quite unfair to the canine.

Sometimes conceptual artists make pieces you would never consider actually using in your home. In fact, we’ve featured a couple of those on this site. But we could see ourselves finding a place for nearly each of product designer John Caswell’s items in our own abode because they aren’t terribly intrusive. In fact, they would probably make mundane tasks easier, or at least more pleasant. For instance, his “taps” transform common water faucets into new, useful products like bottle openers and corkscrews. The “60 bpm” clock combines the great taste of laser-etched vintage records and telling time. A handful of his pieces are in production, but for other items such as the ceramic, ghostlike speakers, the English artist is still actively seeking out manufacturers. We can’t imagine he’ll be waiting long.