island, furniture designed by Taipei based firm xrange

"hanna look what you could've done if you have proceeded with the chair"

Island is simultaneously room furniture, isolation space and
interaction platform for lounging, sitting, crawling and interacting.

It can be used either as seating, an open “room” or a “platform” within a larger space. Constructed entirely of 25mm layers of PU foam, the island is soft to the touch, yet rigid for firm support, and is easy to maintain.


company profile,

Founded in 2003, Taipei-based xrange is a multi-disciplinary architectural design office that is pushing to change the way design is done and realized in Asia. Combining advanced design and manufacturing technologies with concise strategic concepts, the work of xrange encompasses urban planning, architecture, landscape, environments, products and concepts. XRANGE operates between the largest (+) and the smallest (-) of project scales to consolidate aspects of business, technology, theory, culture and design into original built forms.

source: xrange

Grafitti artist Blu

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Climate Change: American Museum of Natural History

Climate Change: the threat to life and a new energy future, a new exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History, opens today and will be until August 16th, 2009. Pay your visit to the museum it should be worth a trip.

at the end of the exhibit there's a wall for the visitors to contribute how we can improve our current condition.

this whole exhibit is kinda like a condensed version of Murray's sustainable design class with delecately made models, videos and graphics. and it basically covers all the aspects of climate change from the possible causes and how we as humans can contribute to it.

the downside of this exhibit is that it's sort of expensive as an intention to make people aware of the problems we all share.

Source: American Museum of Natural History

lecture series at the d-crit mfa department

for those of you who might have heard about the new department: Design Criticism at SVA, they are launching a series of lectures on tuesdays at one of the west side buldings (the one next to davinci) Here's a list of topics for you to take a glance at:

Fall 2008 Lecture Series
Tuesdays, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
136 West 21st St., New York, 2nd Floor
RSVP to dcrit@sva.edu or 212.592.2228.

October 7: Jenni Sorkin, "The Pottery Seminar at Black Mountain College,1952"

October 28: Rob Giampietro, "On Design, Distribution, and Circulation"

October 31 (Friday at 4 p.m.): Rick Poynor, "The Observer Self-Critiqued: Design Columns and Design Criticism"

November 4: Elyssa Dimant, "In Rogue: Crafting Fashion Criticism"

November 11: James Sanders, "Begin with the Screen: Using Film to Explore Issues of Architecture and Design"

November 18: Eugenia Bell, "Design, Observed: Writing Design and Architecture"

November 25: Allan Chochinov, "Design and the Blog Space"

December 2: Pat Kirkham, "Writing Critical Monographs: Case Studies of Ray and Charles Eames & Elaine and Saul Bass"

December 9: Chee Pearlman, "Designing the Live Content Experience"

December 16: Cathleen McGuigan, "The Role of Design Criticism in the National Press"

source: SVA: D-crit

CultureNOW.

something to check out, arts education. a guide to public art around NYC.

"CultureNOW passionately pursues cultural tourism; firmly promoting the discovery of New York City as a citywide gallery that exists beyond museum walls."

enough said.

http://www.culturenow.org/

open house new york 2008

open house new york is here again, and it's this weekend, check out the link if interested. also check out LXTV for videos.

source: open house new york, LXTV