The expression “black gold” has traditionally been associated with mineral oil. It is the burning of oil for energy that produces carbon, that has become public enemy no 1 with environmentalists. So it is with sweet irony that Ingo Schuppler, who works out of Leipzig, Germany, designed this lamp using carbon to evoke that heavily weighted expression.
Whilst the cultural rehabilitation of a blackened phrase may not have been his primary objective, the designer has shown a flash of creative genius that should inspire us all to find new ways to do familiar things with lower environmental impacts.
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Carpet, annihilated in the popular markets by a shift in taste to hardwood flooring, is being reinvented.
Not that these carpets designed by the artist Alexandra Kehayoglou with the Design and Sustainability Lab of Spartan, a Brazilian company founded by his grandparents in Buenos Aires 70 years ago, will change that.
But these carpets help to rekindle an interest in the art form that has been out of fashion recently. Read more
Stereo music systems in the 1980s and 90s were often composed of a stack of individual components such as an amplifier, a radio tuner, a record deck and …a tape deck. Each component was housed in a box around 400mm x 300mm x 60mm. The individual boxes were tethered to the amplifier and usually stacked on top of it. Remote from the stack were a pair of speakers that were sized in direct proportion to the size of the owner’s ego. The idea was that if you wanted to add more functionality to your system, such as a reel to reel tape player, and later a CD player, you could simply plug-in another component to the stack. Yes, I know this sounds bizarre in the age of the smartphone where all this functionality resides in a couple of apps, but I promise you it is true!
Well the same idea has been revived in this heating system designed by Adriano Design. Read more
Photos: Peter Bristol.
Looking at these products, both designed by Peter Bristol in the USA, one is struck by the clear continuity of thought running through them, that contains humour and sophistication.
The products themselves have extraordinary power in their simplicity, and seem to represent a touchstone from which the designer draws inspiration for much of his work. Read more
People living in tight spaces have been waiting for a sofa like this. It is designed by Matthew Pauk and is known as the Slot sofa. It combines the Ottoman, drinks table and a comfy sofa that seems to epitomise a fashionable urban lifestyle. It would certainly grace any modern city apartment. Read more
