We’ll be back in 2010!

The japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka is responsible for the new Maison Hermès installation in Japan. The fashion windows, designed specially for the french brand famous for its purses and clothing, presentes a video that interacts with a scarf, bluring the frontiers between the digital world and the real one.

Yoshioka tried to express, by blowing air from behind the screen and moving the scarf, the movements that are hidden in our daily routines. When the japanese model blows the air, it simulates the idea of wind moving the scarf and draws attention from pedestrians to look at the windows. Of course the wind does not come from the video, even though it looks like it, because of the amazing way the video and the scarf are synchronized.

In way, this installation proposes a very minimalistic approach to the usual way fashion windows are decorated, normally overusing clothes, information and other things.

You can see the window for yourself unitl 29th of January in Tokyo.

CO2 Cubes is a 8.2m³ cube that represents in a physical manner the average amount of CO2 an average person produces montly. The project will be presented this month in Copenhagen, during ONU’s Climate Change Conference, in the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Besides drawing attention to the massive quantity of CO2 produced by humans, the creators, artist Alfio Bonanno and architect Christophe Cornubert, also embedded digital medias inside the installation, to be able to communicate with world leaders, using videos and sharing practical solutions for the climate change situation.

Those that cannot go all the way to Denmark, can participate through Hopenhagen,  a website created by volunteers from industries such as communication, advertising and marketing. They promise to deliver a petition to the leaders of 192 countries during the UNFCCC but, according to the site, this is just the beginning. Well worth taking a look and also participating.

Notícias em relação a convenção, os CO2 Cubes e a situação climática são atualizadas no twitter do projeto.

Because it is water-resistant and fireproof, Concrete Canvas, responsible for the product, is hoping that it can be used in disasters, military situations and commerical environments.

The fact that the material has come straight from the design world and also that it will contribute in a direct way to help the growth of the economy, the society and several types of industries only helps us believe that it will last for a long time.

Using 1000 recycled boxes from the Hasseröder brewery and concrete blocs that were taken from an abandoned warehouse, the group of architects Karo developed a pop-up library for the small german town of Magdeburg.

The invitation, just like the case of New York’s High Line, came from the community, that felt frustrated with the lack of options available in the city.

The structure, that had no cards and no taxes, was only active for two days, but the locals loved the initiative so much that the group of architects has already been invited to build a permanent version of the library.

The images displayed were made by Anja Schlamann.

Dieter’s work caused a revolution in the 50’s and 60’s when he was director of the german company Braun, a position he held for over 30 years. He is well known for creating designs that were not only elegant but also reliable and environment friendly, and for also writing down the 10 principles of good design:

• Good design is innovative
• Good design makes a product useful
• Good design is aesthetic
• Good design makes a product understandable
• Good design is unobtrusive
• Good design is honest
• Good design is long-lasting
• Good design is thorough, down to the last details
• Good design is environmentally-friendly
• Good design is as little design as possible

Dieter Rams has been pin pointed as the great inspiration behind the designs created by Jonathan Ive, that works at Apple, and is the mind behind the iMac, iPod and Iphone.

The Less and More exhibition is open until March, 7th of 2010

On november 14th the first TEDx in Brazil, more precisely in São Paulo, happened. The event invited 30 professionals from different areas of expertise to expose their theories about the theme: What Brazil has to offer the world now ?

Following the idea of the original TED, the talks were filmed and are being posted online for everybody to see, the first one is already online, and it is a very emotionally charged talk presented by Guti Fraga, creator of the project Nós do Morro, a theather group with young people from the Vidigal slum. Another speaker was João Cavalcanti, one of the founders of Box 1824, which talked about the importance of having a unifying  national concept. To help brazilians find that, the company, which speacializes in research, will donate to the country a study that tries to comprehend the national dream, the one that goes beyond the individual needs. Other speakers were actress Regina Casé which wisely proposed that Brazil cab become the “anti guetto vanguard”, Fernanda Viegas, which presented her data visualization tool called Many Eyes; Augusto de Franco, an expert in social networks, the 92 year old teacher Adozinda Kuhlmann, which said that ideias are a national treasure and Eduardo Moreira, founder of the Grupo Galpão, which reminded us of the power that art has to transform the world, along with many other speakers. Together with all of that, four musical attractions that were memorable: Rannieri Oliveira, Thalma de Freitas, Jarbas Agnelli and Vitor Araújo.  Watch more videos and images after the jump.

Fotos, som e vídeo capturados durante o TEDXSP 2009 por Mauro Rubens

Adidas, usually connected with expensive products and celebrities sponsorship, followed Yunus’ advice and plans to create the 1-Euro Shoes in 2010.

Even though the spokesman for the brand has said that it will be very likely that the shoe will cost more than 1 euro, the company has affirmed that they won’t profit from it and also that will be entirely produced in Bangladesh, in order to create jobs for locals.

We still don’t know what the sneaker will look like, it was not confirmed yet if it will carry the traditional three stripes or if it will be brandless.

In case it runs out of batteries, the Galaxy Dress still has around 4.000 Swarovski cristal decorating the areas that don’t have LEDs. 

The cabin comes eqquiped with an alarm clock, LCD television, wireless internet, electrical sockets for connecting notebook, a cellphone charger, a top ventilation system and as a special treat, a bed that automatically changes the bed sheets each time there is a new guest.

Created by the russian architects collective Arch Group, the idea reminds us of Japan’s capsule hotels and a project by the Atelier Van Lieshout.

The Organic Factory includes aromatic diffusers and little decorative gardens which mimic the natural processes of decomposition  and blossoming, among others. The project, that has won the Bourse Agora design award 2009, started as a project developed with the art center La Cuisine and the Laboratory of of Agroindustrial Chemistry of Toulouse.

To understand the process of harvesting the energy, you have to imagine the human body as an energy plant: while we sleep, the heat produced is transfered to the bed sheets. The metal teddy bear, which is cold, when put in contact with the bed, has a small thermic shock. That shock is what produces the electricity, in a precise representation of the Seebeck Effect, where electricity comes from the clashing of temperatures. After that, the energy is stored in the metal bear, and can be used to power the electrical outlet situated on its belly.

To use the human body as a mean to produce energy is a clean and sustainable way to do it.

Following that line, Fastrounauts is a collection of toys that store energy produced when kids play and use them. In a bigger scale, Pavegen is a model of pavement that produces kinetic energy generated by pedestrians.

The 32 meters installation is called “Interaction” and it sits in the brands headquarters, full of house decorative objects organized with tags. When one pulls one of these tags, the machine moves, bringing all the products that are tagged with one particular word closer to the person. Illustrating the idea of connection using ropes allows for anyone to “navigate” the installation like we would browse a website, link by link.

Besides that, they also build a mirrors and furniture installation called “Home Reflection”, where cushions, cloths and table cloths get mixed together and appear to float, in a very eclectic and surreal tone.

H&M is one of the biggest fashion retailers in the world, and is well known for the collaborations, which have included names likeMadonna, Rei Kawakubo and Mathew Williamson, among other personalities and studios. It is considered a pioneer because it is the brand that best manages to bring together the idea of fast-fashion together with design, as we can see in the photos bellow.

A while ago, Medellín, in Colombia, was easily described as a synonym for the violence and drugs combo. Things are changing fast partly because of a revolutionary project that has brought together social participation, art, education, safety, amongst others. One of the highlights is the design project, which has just received the Curry Stone Design Prize 2009.

Taking a different approach, the city’s rennovation plans were not restricted to a couple of regions and the most beautiful architectural projects were destined to the poorest neighborhoods. Former mayor Sergio Fajardo explains: “People that say that a good looking building does not improve education don’t understand something critical. The first step to a higher quality education is a space that has quality. When the poorest children of Medellin get into the best classroom in town, this works as a powerful message of social inclusion”.

Alejandro Echeverri was the architect responsible for the urban planning.

The numbers give credit to what the pair believes: the number of deaths have dropped from 381 dead in each 100.000 inhabitants in 1991 to 28 in 2004. That is lower than cities like Rio de Janeiro, Washington, Cali, Caracas, San Salvador, and others.

To learn more about the rennovation process of Medellin, access the website Laboratorio Medellin.

This way of painting with video works like this: a painting roll with green indication LEDs is traced in X and Y coordinates with a video camera. Then the camera sends the values and information to a projector, which then draws the shapes on the surfaces. This shapes have patterns, colors and textures definied eletronically, and the art dissapears as soon as the machines are turned off.

The collective, which has been filming the interventions and the actions, has been leaving their mark in the virtual world, mainly uploading videos on the internet, and gives up the idea of an intervention leaving permanent marks like when someone uses traditional paint. Art is momentary and only lasts for the duration of the performance, the only way to see it afterwards is accessing the web, where the artists maintain their presence using vimeo and myspace.

From light sprays to a plataform that uses Wii and Flash technologies, the new ways that have been flourishing in graffitti art are usually free from pollutant paints, reach high levels of luminosity and allows to interact with surfaces that are much bigger than we were used to, and in different situations would be way too big to be worked on.

SWEATSHOPPE, The Landing from SWEATSHOPPE on Vimeo.

SWEATSHOPPE, 4spots, the landing extras from SWEATSHOPPE on Vimeo.

SWEATSHOPPE-Whip It from SWEATSHOPPE on Vimeo.

Kosse has used  as little material as possible in her dresses, only lines, to approach the excessive use of material in fashion collections, which become obsolete in a very short time. For her, the idea of changing looks should not be literally so material.

The photos are by Lisa Klappe.

The company maintains the idea to recreate objects, exchanging classic construction by technological solutions. Like their paperless hand dryers or, their cyclone vaccuum, which didn’t have a traditional bag or filter system, and was presented by James Dyson, the founder of the company, during the 80’s.

Besides that, the James Dyson Foundation promotes the James Dyson Award, which we have already mentioned here.

The site is not only good looking but also has innovative functions build into it, one of them is the search which is based in a feeder style, where the user can read several news without leaving the same Busk page, just opening new tabs, with photo, text and a link to the original post.

Besides that, the news are presented in a cronological order and the search can be filtered by language, categories and date. It is not necessary to register, but registered users can use it as a feeder with the additional advantage that you can save personalized URLS, and then share them with your friends.

Busk helps us to see the positive side, which sometimes is forgotten, about the enormous quantities of content one can find online. Brings to mind the theory of the psycologist Barry Schwartz which, in his book The Paradox of choice, affirms the critical role of making choices to express our autonomy and our freedom. According to Barry, the problem is the filter: having to choose among too many options makes us miserable and constantly feeling like we are missing something or that we have made the wrong choice.

Because it is an excellent mixture between search engine, feeder and a social network, is extremely practical and tailored to anyone who loves to keep updated with the best news.

Read more about another great Busk feature after the jump.

With so many different aspects, it is not surprising that Busk wants to be more than a search engine, it also donates 1 gram of food in your behalf to NGOs that fight against hunger. And they explain the option: “Organize Internet information isn’t our sole goal. We are interested to understand how we can improve society directly from web browsing. For that, for every search performed we will donate 1 gram of food in your behalf to NGOs that fight against hunger (if you know and trust in any NGO having this profile, please, refer us).Doesn’t look much, but with only a fragment of access that the great search sites have, would be already possible to donate tons of food by day.”

O site está disponível em português, inglês e espanhol.