WALLPAPERING / DEAR HUMAN

Wallpapering are hexagonal wall tiles, hand-made from recycled paper. Except from their decorative potential the they also have great sound absorbing qualities and are easy to install. The tiles are available in a gradation of colours from natural browns to bleached whites and have endless printing options. Paper used for production is 100% post-consumer paper collected from local businesses. Combining different paper types creates all sorts of variations. After shredding and pulping the paper, the production process involves air-release dies and then follows a long drying process. Once dry, tiles are screen-printed.

The tile collection has been created by Dear Human, creative studio founded by Jasna Sokolovic and Noel O’Connell in 2011. // Since then, the studio has developed a coherent body of work in various domains that include public space projects, product design and the applied arts. Their projects offer an alternative perception to overlooked everyday landscapes by revealing the hidden potential of places and objects. After meeting at a residency in Denmark, Jasna and Noel immediately began working on ideas together and haven’t stopped since. The collaboration is rooted in their common interests in craft traditions, sustainable making, and unconventional material (re)use. Noel’s material expertise and attention to detail and Jasna’s improvisational sensibility and exploratory nature have led to a diverse portfolio. //

[ Crowdy House, Dear Human ]

FUJI KINDERGARTEN / TEZUKA ARCHITECTS

Sapienti sat.

SMALLER AND UPSIDE DOWN / GODSHAW & HAWKINS

Smaller & Upside Down is a collection of custom designed, 3D-printed lenses that distort views of faces, each in a different way. The fabrication process was developed by Robb Godshaw and Max Hawkins.

// It’s not always easy to predict how a given lens will distort an image. To make prototyping easier, we employed ray-tracing software to see how our lenses might look once printed. Our process used Autodesk T-Splines to create lens geometry, and visualized its effects using Rhino’s raytracing renderer. With this technique, we were able to quickly create lenses that achieve a desired effect. We used the Objet 3D printers at Autodesk’s Pier 9 Workshop to manufacture half of the lenses. They were printed with VeroClear resin to achieve transparency. The rest of the lenses were milled out of acrylic plastic on a 3-axis CNC router. After printing or milling, all of the lenses were sanded to optical clarity. //

[ Smaller & Upside Down, Creative Applications ]

EVERYDAY OBJECTS / ITALO CALVINO

// With ice? Yes? I go to the kitchen a moment to get the ice. And immediately the word 'ice' expands between her and me, separates us, or perhaps unites us, but the way a fragile sheet of ice unites the shores of a frozen lake.

If there is one thing I hate it's preparing the ice. It obliges me to break off a conversation just started, at the crucial moment when I ask her: A drop of whisky? and she: Thanks, but really just a drop, and me: With ice? And already I'm heading towards the kitchen as though into exile, already I can see myself fighting with ice cubes that won't come out of the tray.

No problem, I say, it won't take a second, I always have ice with whisky myself. It's true, the tinkling in the glass keeps me company, separates me from the din of the others, at parties where there are lots of people it stops me from losing myself in the ebb and flow of voices and sounds, that back and forth she detached herself from when she appeared for the first time in my field of vision, in the inverted telescope of my whisky glass, her colours advancing along that corridor between two smoke-filled rooms booming with music, and I stood there with my glass without going to one room or the other, and she too, she saw me in a distorted shadow through the transparency of the icy whisky glass, and I don't know if she heard what I was saying to her because there was all that din or perhaps again because I hadn't spoken, had only moved the glass and the ice rising and falling went clink clink, and she too said something into her little bell of glass and ice, certainly I hadn't imagined she would be coming to my place tonight. //

[ Calvino, I., Parks, T., Numbers in the Dark: And Other Stories, Mariner Books, 2014. / p.203-205, Glaciation ]

DESIGN IS ONE: LELLA & MASSIMO VIGNELLI

// Collaboration is the trust in the other person. // Massimo Vignelli

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

//There's a certain kind of charm and comfort in disorder that, not everyone appreciates. To know everything is not good. To be in a state of pleasant confusion sometimes can be very satisfying. Especially if you're slightly crazy. But I must not lead on that I know this.// Saul Leiter

[Saul Leiter - In No Great Hurry / d: Tomas Leach / y: 2012]