TOY STORIES / ALED LEWIS

// London-based designer and illustrator Aled Lewis has created a series of images featuring plastic toy figurines ‘interacting’ with each other. Titled ‘Toy Stories’, the collection consists of toy unicorns, dinosaurs, rabbits and more. The toys are arranged to look as if they are speaking to other fellow toys, with speech bubbles containing funny and snarky comments. //
  [Sources: WHUDAT, Aled Lewis] 





PIERRE AND THE ALMOND TREE, HOMAGE TO AN ARTIST / TOMAS ALONSO

// Designer Tomas Alonso pays homage to French artist Pierre Leron Lesur, who passed away in the beginning of 2014, with a furniture series that gives a functional dimension to the woodworking technique called “Sylvistructure”.
Baptized with this name over 50 years ago by the artist from Saint Rémy de Provence, “Sylvistructure” is a practice at the crossroads between art and craftsmanship that aims at revealing the natural beauty of pieces of raw wood found along the country roads of France. Pierre developed a particular interest in the nubby branches of the almond tree, which is becoming increasingly rare in Provence.
This practice includes delicate techniques to protect the wood from decomposing, while respecting the unique forms of the raw material.
Inspired by the contorted shapes of Leron Lesur, Spanish designer Alonso - who is making a name for himself with his intuitive and linear objects - adds functional, essential and simple elements that augment and amplify the expressive potential of natural wood. Thus art design series "Pierre and the Almond tree" is born, now on display at Victor Hunt gallery in Brussels. //


























  






FOOD FOR THOUGHT

// A Buddhist scholar I know once explained to me that Westerners mistakenly think that nirvana is what arrives when all your woe is behind you and you have only bliss to look forward to. But he said that would not be nirvana, because your bliss in the present would always be shadowed by the joy from the past. Nirvana, he said, is what you arrive at when you have only bliss to look forward to and find in what looked like sorrows the seedlings of your joy. And I sometimes wonder whether I could have found such fulfillment in marriage and children if they'd come more readily, if I'd been straight in my youth or were young now, in either of which cases this might be easier. Perhaps I could. Perhaps all the complex imagining I've done could have been applied to other topics. But if seeking meaning matters more than finding meaning, the question is not whether I'd be happier for having been bullied, but whether assigning meaning to those experiences has made me a better father. I tend to find the ecstasy hidden in ordinary joys, because I did not expect those joys to be ordinary to me. //

PAINTING WALLS / THIERRY NOIR

Thierry Norir: // In Berlin, in London, you are pressed like a sardine. It's grey and you're tired, and suddenly you see a street painting... and you have one second of smile on your face... and this is, for me, the best //



ESTATE IN EXTREMADURA / ÁBATON

// Located in a privileged environment in the province of Cáceres, the goal was to transform an abandoned stable into a family home by completely renovating it in a way that would be consistent and respectful with the environment.
Problems relating to the electricity and water supply were solved through sustainability systems which ABATON uses in all its projects: a solar panel system with storage batteries was developed to supply energy during the summer; turbines were installed taking advantage of the course of the two streams that run through the estate providing electricity for the winter. 
//
 [ Sources: Ábaton, Designalmic ]
 


 



















FOOD FOR THOUGHT

// Look, I don't know where you rightfully live, but I know that there's something in this world that you love more than you love yourself. Something worthy, by the way, so addiction and infatuation don't count, because we all know that those are not safe places to live. Right? The only trick is that you've got to identify the best, worthiest thing that you love most, and then build your house right on top of it and don't budge from it. And if you should someday, somehow get vaulted out of your home by either great failure or great success, then your job is to fight your way back to that home the only way that it has ever been done, by putting your head down and performing with diligence and devotion and respect and reverence whatever the task is that love is calling forth from you next. //