Minimalissimo asks well-known designers, architects and artists about their personal views on minimalism. As a result, we should be able to compare views – and you can form your own. Today: Rocha Tombal Architects.
Besides taking care of a minimal ecological footprint, the DBA Pen is a every day object touched by minimalist design.
New York based company DBA has the goal of developing products that combine aesthetic strength, technical innovation and ecologically effective principles. DBA’s products standout by an honest simplicity and a heightened sensitivity to user needs. DBA is committed to the awareness and application of responsible materials, efficient construction and intelligent packaging.
The DBA Pen is 98% biodegradable with a body composed of an innovative new bio-plastic, an ink reservoir made from a – renewable – biodegradable fiber and using a custom-formulated ink composed of simple, pronounceable ingredients.
Besides it’s package is composed of 100% recycled content – FSC certified paper – printed with vegetable-based inks and is 100% recyclable.
I love the fact that an every day object like a pen – of which I cannot even count the number I use every year – nowadays can be manufactured with such a minimal impact on the environment. Besides I like the total simplicity of both pen and package.
During its almost 100 years of existence, Dutch manufacture Pastoe has made some great furniture design. These minimalist cabinets named Horizontals are obtainable in two height sizes and are suitable for storing such items as CDs and DVDs.
In Horizontals, coloured metal sliding doors are mounted on a warm wooden or aluminium base. The elegantly extended cabinets may be joined to create a clear geometric object invisibly attached to the wall, functioning much like a painting. The sliding doors, which may be opened on both sides, can be used to highlight the horizontal play of lines. The bodies are divided in the middle by a partition.
Horizontals are designed by Japanese Shigeru Uchida who has cooperated with several leading clients, including Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto. Uchida and Pastoe began working together in 1988. Japanese and Dutch design both distinguished themselves through modesty and an eye for detail.
Marc Schömann brings us his homephone concept—a sleek, almost totemic piece of telephony porn.
The calling method is simple: just rotate each numbered vertebrae to the corresponding digit of the number you’re calling, then when you are done, twist the top to connect.
Here’s hoping for the daruma otoshi version. Or the Tower of Pisa model.
Here at Minimalissimo, we are fascinated with Japanese designer Tokuyin Yoshioka’s simplicity and poetry. He lets white or transparent materials appear as airy forms closely resembling coincidences.
“In my opinion art is more about grabbing someone’s heart than design,” he claims. As if emotions could be designed, the rainbow church installation encourages transparent thinking.
An 80 foot wall of crystal prisms that captures a moment of sunlight and sparkles. Tokuyin Yoshioka’s experimentation with transparency, using crystal prisms reminds me of an imaginary world – almost invisible.
Growing up, I always thought that invisible = way cool. I mean appreciation for nearly unnoticeable spaces. We are obsessed observers. Maximalists or minimalists? But it’s ultimately not about the label, is it?
Minimalissimo reader Stijn tipped us about the work that designer Jess McGeachin did for the Melbourne Minimalism Festival 2009. A festival on minimalism! Yay! After some digging, I learned that the MMF was actually an imaginary festival, part of a university project for RMIT students in Melbourne. Their assignment: to create the festival’s visual identity. I [...]
A chair you can’t see, isn’t that minimalist? Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka has created a collection of ‘invisible’ furniture pieces for Kartell, employing their pioneering polycarbonate technology.
Yoshioka explains: In the last few years I have been thinking about a design that would include natural phenomena and invisible elements such as senses, wind and light. The ‘Invisibles’, a special collection launched from Kartell, only leaves the sense as if seating in the air. The presence of the object is eradicated and it will create a scenery of a sitter floating in the air. It is as if the physical presence of the object has been uprooted and gives life to a ‘floating’ scenario. Even the installation itself gives visitors that extraordinary sensation of entering an unreal world.
The Invisibles collection encompasses tables, occasional tables, sofas, armchairs and benches which will be on show during Milan Design week 2010 at the Kartell flagstore. To be continued…
Moon – a simple and magical lamp, designed by Davide Groppi of Italian design studio Davide Groppi attracted my eye.
Designed already a few years back – 2005 – but nevertheless a great piece of lightening I wanted to share with you.
A miniature version of the ‘big brother’ out there in the dark sky of the night … Hand made of pure Japanese paper, in a 60 centimeter sphere, the light is softly muted, showing the great texture and overlays of the material.
This is House W, located somewhere in China. Just two open boxes and a stair case connecting them. And don’t you just love that tiny little tree in the back?
House W was designed by Hong Kong based Fuquan Junze, who’s a furniture, interior and industrial designer. Junze started his own firm, Oil Monkey, back in 2007.
Interesting little fact about this Junze is that he never had any formal training. Before entering the design profession, he worked as a mechanical engineer, administrative manager and even school coach… Amazing.
I’d have to be very thirsty to buy fancy bottled water. But there is no way I could have missed this creative packaging act: a no-label look with Paul Smith colorful trademark stripes.
British fashion designer Sir Paul Smith philosophy is about colors, full of energy and fun. “Youth is a question of attitude,” he says. Sir Paul designed an understated, limited edition Evian bottle, accented with his personal statement—famous vibrant stripes to echo Evian‘s slogan, “Live Young”.
A dual emotional positioning for a no-label look: purity and color. I think that color can soften the precise and hard-edge purism of minimalism. Water with a bit of the unexpected. Thirsty now?