Spec Book Pro Blog

The video: HOW BUILDINGS LEARN: What Happens After They’re Built

Stewart Brand presented and co-wrote this six-part, three-hour, BBC TV series ; it was directed by James Muncie, with music by Brian Eno. The series was based on his 1994 book, HOW BUILDINGS LEARN: What Happens After They’re Built.

COLOURlovers: A website for Color Trends + Palettes

Here's a resource that might be useful for interior designers.

This website offers a wealth of resources for picking colors and staying on top of color trends. Go to the Palettes page to search thousands of color schemes developed by COLOURlovers community members, Trends to see where magazines and websites are going with color, and the Forums to talk color.

Link: COLOURlovers :: Color Trends + Palettes.

COLOURlovers™ is a resource that monitors and influences color trends. COLOURlovers gives the people who use color - whether for ad campaigns, product design, or in architectural specification - a place to check out a world of color, compare color palettes, submit news and comments, and read color related articles and interviews.

About Colour Lovers

There are currently 56,012 Lovers sharing 783,204 Colors in 267,052 Palettes. Lovers have scored the lovely Colors & Palettes 1,214,151 times and left 411,821 comments and created 27,011 Patterns. (1/30/2008)

Las Vegas Firm wins awards

From Brian Wargo, who covers real estate and development for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun.

Link: In Business Las Vegas

The Friedmutter Group Architectural & Interior Design was honored as the top architectural design firm at the American Gaming Association's G2E Institute.

The firm won four awards for its architectural and design work on the Red Rock Casino. It won 2007 Architectural Design Company of the Year for a casino/resort award, the Best Interior Design for a casino/resort.

It was also honored for its work on T-Bones Chophouse at Red Rock and Best Architectural Design for a casino over $200 million award for best interior design.

The company's founder, Brad Friedmutter, was honored with the 2007 Sarno Lifetime Achievement Award for casino design for his contributions to the industry.

Artecnica: Design with Conscience

Leonora Oppenheim at Treehugger talked to Tahmineh Javanbakht, co-founder and art director of Artecnica, about how they make beautiful and innovative products with a conscience. Excerpts below.

Link: Treehugger: Talking to Tahmineh Javanbakht of Artecnica about Design With Conscience#perma

Artecnica are a product design studio with a difference, not only do they make beautiful and innovative products, but they make products with a conscience. Artecnica’s Design With Conscience program started with the production of Tord Boontje and Emma Woffenden’s tranSglass series in Guatemala. This series of vases, carafes, drinking glasses, and candleholders made from recycled wine and champagne bottles, epitomizes Artecnica’s efforts in ethical production. The bottles are collected from recycling plants around Guatemala City, then they are cut and polished by specially trained artisans. These men used to work in the packaging factory that produces the tranSglass series, now they have a highly skilled job making top quality design products that are sold all over the world.

Tahmineh told me that at the beginning they weren’t sure if the workers could be trained to a high enough standard. When Aid To Artisans helped Artecnica find a suitable factory Tord and Enrico Bressan, the co-founder of Artecnica, went to Guatemala to teach them how to cut the bottles....The value of being trained in a skilled craft in Guatemala cannot be underestimated. This is just one example of how a product can have positive social impact even before it is sold to the consumer.

The Design With Conscience project not only works to create beautiful designs, promote traditional craftwork, provide sustainable incomes and use ethical production methods, but it also increases the longevity of the products. With such interesting and meaningful stories behind each design the consumer can make an emotional connection which will encourage them to cherish these designs for years to come. The new tranSglass series is now available to buy from Moss and the Beads and Pieces series will go on sale in stores next week. ::Artecnica ::Tord Boontje ::Hella Jongerius

Great Design is a Good Investment

In The Trend Desk column at Yahoo! Finance, Daniel Pink describes why great design is essential to great products, memorable buildings, and impressive profits.

Link: Good Investing by Design: The Trend Desk - Yahoo! Finance

Academics often describe graphic, interior, and industrial design as a combination of "utility" and "significance." Utility means that the product or service must work. Significance means that it must have some other, more transcendent quality.

Today, utility is abundant. We have more products and services than we can handle, and most function just fine. To stand out in a crowded marketplace, sellers must make a dramatic leap in utility -- or stand out in some other way. They can try to compete on price, but that usually ends in a downward death spiral.

So the alternative is to compete not on left-brain attributes like price and functionality, but on right-brain qualities such as emotion, meaning, and look and feel. Case in point: Target sells toilet brushes and vegetable scrubbers designed by superstar architect Michael Graves. Even the most mundane, utilitarian objects in our lives have been turned into objects of desire.

Yet the investing world has barely begun to grok this new reality. In most consumer markets, companies now make their money more from significance than utility. Motorola's Razr V3 doesn't work any better than other cell phones (trust me -- I own one). But it sure has a cooler look. And that's why it's been such a huge success. And there are other MP3 players besides the iPod and other online music services besides iTunes, so why does Apple dominate? Smart, compelling design.

Or take the Dr. Skud flyswatter, crafted by French designer Philippe Starck. This $12 device kills flies perfectly well (trust me -- I own one of these, too). But people buy it not for its bug-annihilating functionality, but for its aesthetic je ne sais quoi. Indeed, I think this flyswatter should be included in every MBA curriculum in America: Selling five cents worth of plastic for twelve bucks is further confirmation that today's margins come from significance, not utility.

SUPER SMART PRIVACY GLASS

Inhabitat describes glass that frosts at the flick of a switch. Pictures and excerpts below.

Link: Inhabitat

Imagine a high-tech glass that you could change from transparent to frosted with the flick of a switch... You could use it for home windows (eliminating the need for blinds), for store fronts (at night), and even for bathrooms (requiring users to stretch for a new level of trust in technology). Although Privacy Glass is not in common use yet - the technology has actually been around for quite a few years, and there are many stunning examples of this smart material in use all over the world. French company Saint-Gobain produces an "intelligent" glass called Privalite, which can be switched from an ordinary-looking clear glass to a foggy-looking frosted glass by running an electrical current over a polymer liquid-crystal film sandwiched between two plates of glass.



+ SwitchLite
+ Privalite
+ Landmark Glass

Bucuti Beach Resort Design Wins LQ Atelier Interiors The 2005 Hospitality Project Design Forum Award from the IIDA

Link: Bucuti Beach Resort Design Wins LQ Atelier Interiors The 2005 Hospitality Project Design Forum Award ~From The International Interior Design Association~.

EAGLE BEACH, Aruba (PRWEB) January 3, 2006 -- Bucuti Beach Resort and Nhora Quintero of LQ Atelier Interiors are proud to announce that Bucuti Beach Resort design garnered the 2004 Hospitality Project Design Forum Award from the recent International Interior Design Association Florida Chapter, 8th Annual Forum Awards that took place in Tampa, Florida.

“The challenge was to create an unforgettable honeymoon experience, representing the modern style of today with classic undertones” states Nhora Quintero, principal of LQ Atelier Interiors. “Resort owners Ewald and Susan Biemans have a very innovative and clear vision for their property. Romance is of the utmost priority, however we had to consider things like durable fabrics and on-task lighting. It was LQ Atelier’s mission to make it all work together,” continues Quintero.

From design to delivery, Bucuti Beach Resort has stayed ahead of trends and anticipated guest’s needs. The resort was the first on the island to feature king-sized oceanfront suites and now offers a Divine Dreams mattress in every room. Made for Bucuti Beach Resort by Simmons®, the Divine Dreams mattress is 12 inches thick, features 850 Pocketed Coil® springs and plush top layer offering a supple surface with firm support beneath.     Another significant amenity offered at Bucuti Beach Resort is advance check in via the Internet. Additionally, the resort features three webcams that broadcast live from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm and a web cam zoom from 9:00 am to 9:15 am every morning where guests appear from all over the island to wave ‘live’ to family and friends while celebrating honeymoons, anniversaries and vacations. Bucuti’s webcam has also broadcast live weddings throughout the summer.

Inverview with Founder of OHIO Design

Source: Inhabitat

If you haven’t yet heard of OHIO, it’s time. Founded by David Pierce, the San Francisco-based design studio is turning out some of the most stunning, innovative and diverse modern furnishings anywhere. From a starkly minimalist steel and wood bench to a printed bedframe so seductive it was too sexy for an SF magazine’s sex issue, David Pierce tries everything. And succeeds.

Early in his career, David worked as a landscape architect and crafted outdoor furniture for clients on the side. Enamored with the potential of steel, he taught himself to weld and began creating simple pieces, which he sold from a storefront alongside a friend’s handbags. He soon partnered with designer Lian Ng of Publique Living (more on them in a future feature) to grow his business, which is now on Fillmore Street in San Francisco’s Lower Haight neighborhood.

OHIO made a big splash last spring at ICFF in New York, with the debut of a collection of photo-printed wood pieces. Jill covered these soon after the event, and was as captivated as I was, not only by the designs themselves, which are subtle, enigmatic and alive, but also by the rarity of stumbling upon something truly new. When I commented to David that I hadn’t seen much of this, he enthusiastically corrected me: "You haven’t seen it at all!" And it’s true. He’s landed on a fresh, untapped technique, and the results are breathtaking.

I had the pleasure of sharing a long dialogue with David, which I’ve distilled below. Read on for the details on how minimalist roots grew into the inspired fruits of OHIO.

Meta MoCo - 24 SEP 10

Link: MoCo Loco: Meta MoCo - 24 SEP 10.

+ IFM's electronic textile POM POM dimmer senses your touch; "Gently touch the soft, fuzzy POM POM to dim and adjust the light levels in any room."

Stuff from MoCo Loco

Link: MoCo Loco: Meta MoCo - 17 SEP 05.

This week's MoCo picks + submissions.

+ Harry Allen's product design. <BLDT>

+ Studio Job's Nynke Tynagel and Job Smeets Swarovski crystal Roses on the Vine lamp (see more Studio Job here). <design*sponge>

+ Powder room night light by There Design. <architechnophilia>

+ D'Arcy Jones Design architecture and product design.