House IJburg

The most wonderful in a room is the light that comes through the window of the room. The sun never knew how great it was before a room was built – Louis Khan

This beautiful quote is mentioned on Rocha Tombal’s website, the architects of this amazing House IJburg, located in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Ana Rocha and Michel Tombal are masters of light, which is something that any house in the rainy Netherlands is craving for, most of the year.

Paradoxical to the closed façade (which I really love, such a bold statement!), the house really embraces natural light.

Through the careful placement of windows and walls, each floor and room has its own light intensity: very light on the ground floor, slightly darker on the first and second floor, and again bathing in light on the top floor.

Almost a shame to add furniture!

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Corona

Our beloved Japanese design agency Nendo brings us yet another gem: a set of globes called Corona.

Rather than the common blue and green, the Corona globes have white oceans and black land masses. Furthermore, the globes show country names, but no borders. The purpose of this simplification was to:

…create a new kind of globe that would be more emotional, rather than simply presenting information.

I love how the designers reduced the amount of information – even though some African countries seem to be missing…?

The globes were designed for Japanese globe manufacturer Watanabe Kyogu.

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Mash Creative Calendar

East London / Essex based design studio Mash Creative designed an A1 calendar poster in a limited edition of 100. Okay … we kicked-off 2010 already almost 2.5 months ago, but it is never too late to put a nice calendar on your wall.

These nice, typographic, minimalist calendar posters are lithographs printed in two colors on 170gsm Cyclus offset with a 60% cyan shiner to achieve an extra rich black. Each poster is hand numbered and signed by the designer.

The calendar is available for purchase at Counter-Objects.

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Lotta

Minimalist design, beautiful form and color, comfortable feel, and a sense of fun that’s the new Lotta mobile phone. It sits firmly in your hand and casts a delicate, trapezoidal silhouette. A two-tone contrast plays on its bright surface and features a matte finish and polished texture.

Ichiro Iwasaki has designed this new mobile phone for the Japanese company iida. He initially worked at the Sony Design Center, later moved to Italy.

After having experiences at design studios in Milan, returned to Japan and established Iwasaki Design Studio in 1995. He received a number of awards including the design award of the Federal Republic of Germany, the iF design award, the red dot award and the G-mark special award.

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Balloon lamp

Kyouei Design have a number of ingenious yet simple ideas among their product range; the balloon lamp is one that really caught my eye. They’ve been on the market for a while, but time hasn’t ravaged their ability to impress.

The lamp itself comes flat-packed and is merely made up from a standard balloon, a high-intensity, low energy LED bulb and a couple of lithium coin batteries. Once the the balloon is inflated you have a great temporary, wireless lighting solution that lasts for around 100 hours.

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Jil Sander Fall 2010

Pared-down with a slight techno vibe. And—who knew? Creative director Raf Simons was inspired by Lara Croft for Tomb Raider. His vision for the Jil Sander fall 2010 collection: “Women who have a target, and go for it.”

Jil Sander is a German fashion brand known for understated, minimalist design. The fall collection included form fitting mini-mini dresses, retro plaid and super cool, flat, velcro-strapped leather boots; the girls wore the ‘no make up’ make up look. Mr. Simons’ aesthetic is very futuristic and intellectual. He has an analytical mind for practical design.

Fashionably stark and seriously cool. A stripped-down look for a woman who has an incredible self-consciousness about everything. In some ways, I am suggesting a feminist view toward minimalism. I think I am testing the structural foundations of minimalism. Nothing about simplicity is easy, is it?

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OLA folding table

I love small space solutions, and when you live in a small apartment without a dining room. The OLA folding table looks like it can double up as a desk or dining table in just a few seconds of set-up, with barely any effort.

Designed by AKKA, the table is not only functional, but when put away, it actually looks like an interesting piece of home decor.

AKKA is a pleas­ant design-studio started by Peter Danielson and Oscar Ternbom and is located in Göte­borg, Swe­den. They do indus­trial design, fur­ni­ture, illus­tra­tion and graphic design.

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Plus House

High in the Izu-San hills of Japan sits this amazingly simple house called Plus by Mount Fuji Architects Studio.

The brief was to design a house that sat ontop of the landscape, proving a difficult task considering the complex topography of the mountain.

Perched on a peak overlooking the Pacific ocean, these two perpendicular rectangle boxes sure stand out against the green tree tops and the surrounding traditional Japanese architecture.

The inside is just as clean, featuring a white and cool grey interior complimenting a minimalist take on furniture and fittings. The use of large windows emphasizes the weightlessness of this house, whilst recognizing the Japanese design rule of ‘bringing the outside in’.

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WE Collective opening posters

Israelian friends Luka Or (multi disciplinary designer), Orian Canetti (interior designer) and Elad Ziv (developer) joined forces to form WE Collective, a new design studio.

To celebrate the start of this new venture, Luka Or designed these colourful minimalist posters.

I love how they do away with the popular notion that minimalism has something to do with the absence of colour, which is completely wrong of course (it’s merely the number of colours).

So: hooray for colour, and welcome WE!

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Blob VB3

Everyone needs a little extra space in their home and maybe you thought about an outdoor office as a solution. You will already know that most outdoor offices on the market are either badly designed, extremely expensive or both.

Belgian architectural firm dmvA designed Blob VB3, a mobile unit for the office of XfactorAgencies as an extension to the ‘house’.

The blob is mainly made by polyester, and holds all necessary items one could possibly need as bathroom, kitchen, lighting, sleeping space and several niches for storage. Moreover, the nose can be opened automatically and functions as a porch. While being closed, it blends into a complete smooth blob. It easily transportable and can also be used as an office, guestroom or garden house.

It is an impressive creation for mobile unit. You could easily use it as an office, a garden-house or whatever you want. The most exciting thing is that it can be moved to any place. Your outdoor lives will be more convenient and of homey comfort.

Photography by Mick Couwenbergh, Rini van Beek and Frederik Vercruysse.

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