Growroom by Ikea

Ikea has released free instructions to allow anyone to build The Glowroom, a spherical garden which allows an entire community to grow their own food and encourage socializing and community bonds to form.

SPACE10 envision a future, where we grow our own food much more locally. To spark conversations about how we can bring nature back into our cities, grow our own food and tackle the rapidly increasing demand for significantly more food in the future, we teamed up with architects Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum to create The Growroom. Standing tall as a spherical garden, it empowers people to grow their own food much more locally in a beautiful and sustainable way.

From Taipei to Helsinki and from Rio de Janeiro to San Francisco, the original version of The Growroom sparked interest and people requested to either buy or exhibit The Growroom. But it doesn’t make sense to promote local food production and then start shipping it across oceans and continents. That is why we now release The Growroom as open source design and encourage people to build their own locally as a way to bring new opportunities to life.

https://medium.com/space10-the-farm/space10-open-sources-the-growroom-aa7ca6621715#.d3k67ajwh

We love the work of Studio Fludd and their alchemic approach to design so were delighted by their latest project 'Poor Tools' exploring up-cycling, materiality and a touch of humour. Invited by the art collective How We Dwell ,they spent a week in November on an almost deserted island in front of Venice, Italy.

Whilst there they worked with the materials to be found on the island and the small kit of tools left for them. Collecting natural and artificial findings on the island (including rubbish) they created a series of objects that tell a narrative about the wildly chaotic environment that is the island with wild goats wandering around contrasted witt the new offices and hotel being built there.

They created a wunderkammer housing their engaging and delightful objects and tools which tell a story in their own right.

Shown as part of the Dutch Invertuals exhibition at Dutch Design week which explored how contemporary designers could update craft, these beautiful ceramics by Kirstie Van Noort are made by building up coloured layers that are then CNC milled to reveal the imperfect beauty of hand craft.

Continuing his quest for quiet relaxation in our busy urban environments, Harm Rensink's latest project shown during Dutch Design Week in an old church explores bathing in warm earth that covers the user. Taking inspiration from the Japanese thermal sand baths the firmness and the warmth of the sand stimulates the senses and enlightens the mind and in the words of Harm 'Leads you into a new reality'.

In keeping with the trend for New Porn that has been emerging almost as a counter reaction to the ubiquity of bad porn on the internet, we are seeing a rise in new magazines seeking a new perspective. The latest to emerge is from Future-Filter's very own creative partner Ed Vince in the form of TALC Magazine. TALC offers a new fresh concept and perspective on erotica shown as part of a celebration of general visual stimulation to include architecture, design and furniture, it is also key to Ed that it is an "antidote to lads’ mags".

Recently launched on Kickstarter to promote and distribute the magazine bi annually it will be a fresh and compelling addition to publishing.

There are a lot of designers, architects and restaurants that are going back to nature and exploring nature in new ways, but taking a really fresh approach to nature, sustainability and design is Moe Nagata who is soon to graduate from the Textiles Futures Ma. Her project was inspired by ancient tribal based craft design that was rooted in animism and a symbiotic relationship with nature. Traditional tribes hunted for food and then used every last piece of the animal to make products such as teeth necklaces.

Nagata has taken that consideration into a very modern look with her From Creatures collection that uses the natural materials discarded from the fishing industry. Using shells and bones she has given them a surprising twist using laser cutting, dyeing and printing.

Just opened in Paris is the Envie/Alive exhibition curated by Carole Collet which explores issues around synthetic biology. The exhibition begins with a statement  'A quiet revolution is happening. A new breed of designer has begun to reshape our world by re-orchestrating our relationship to nature'. Most of the work is not new, but it is for the first time that it is all under one roof.

Showing the likes of Emile de Vischer's pearling and Amy Congdon's biological atelier it also explores the work of architects and designers who are exploring the bio-engineered world.

Presenting a new design landscape with a glimpse to our synthetic future and a new ecological consideration the exhibition groups them under 5 headings

1/ The Plagiarists: (Nature as a model) those who look to nature to engineer man made and digital solutions.

2/ The New Artisans: (Nature as a co-worker) - those designers who are collaborating with nature to craft future consumer goods

3/ The Bio-Hackers: (Reprogrammed, ‘synthetic’ nature) designers working with synthetic biologists and who are engineering living organisms for a possible hybrid future

4/ The New Alchemists: (Hybridised nature) combining biological and chemical (non living) technology these designers merge robotics, chemistry and biology

5/ The Agents Provocateurs: (Conceptualised and imagined nature.) Pushing the boundaries to the extreme these designers explore the ethics around living technology as well as high-tech sustainability.

Alongside the exhibition ‘En Vie-Alive’ is hosting 4 designers and architects who are already working with synthetic biology or tissue engineering and has them set up in a lab style scenario showing the new tool kit for designers of the future - DNA and bacteria.

Soon to be graduating from Central St Martins, Textile Futures Course, Amy Radcliffe has designed an analogue device that  captures scents that can later be retrieved to exist as an olfactory memory of a time and a place. Questioning 'How can we archive personal memories through captured scent?' Amy is drawing parallels to the way that we consumed our memories through photography in a pre digital era drawing comparisons with lomography and 35mm film. Photographs were precious and faded with time.

Utilising the Headspace Technology to capture 'scents' Amy's project explores the poetic narrative of the time it takes to capture the scent and considers how in the future we will 're-experience the moment' through the emotions that a scent captures.

Her device is beautifully crafted using ceramics, leather and blown glass - all skills that she has acquired during the project to enable her to develop a sensitively designed analogue system that would allow us to capture scents - one that could in turn profoundly change the way we experience scents in our daily life engaging with our memories in an entirely new way.

Titled 'Madeleine' Amy makes reference to Proust and his works 'In search of lost time' where explores he the experience of 'Involuntary Memory' - one that Amy believes her device will elicit.

With the build up to Milan next week there are a plethora of exciting and some not so exciting projects that are being exposed to tantalise the design industry to visit during their time in Milan. Tom Dixon's MOST currently offering Robots and Design looks set to fully take over from the lure of Lambrate and one of those designers who will be making waves showing at MOST is Emilie Grenier a graduating student from the Textile Futures Ma at CSM.

Her project is not only pertinent, but it is also beautifully executed. Here is a sneak peek at what she will be showing during Milan at MOST next week.

She explains her project so well I have simply lifted the copy (with permission!) from her site.

'Disquiet Luxurians explores alternative trends for the production and consumption of rare and luxurious objects. This has led to a new definition of the current state of luxury, one which (re)places most emphasis on meaning, craft and provenance. The resulting collection focuses on the material feldspar - the world's most prevalent mineral which makes up 60% of the Earth's crust. If we define ourselves by what we achieve with the materials that surround us, then let the times of the Disquiet Luxurians be those of more meaningful value'

Image Credits Tristan Thomson

Craft and artisanal design explorations have been gaining favour for many seasons now and the hand of the maker does not seem to be abating, it is infact even more interestingly evolving with the hand of the machine too and creating entirely new aesthetics. Recognising this and seeing the importance in the 'art of the maker' is the current exhibition Hand Made: long live crafts at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Holland.

Interestingly the exhibition carefully puts at the centre the notion of the hand crafted myth of imperfection and one offs to try to contextualise craft in the modern day.

Showcasing pieces from the middle ages to the modern day they have curated the objects in seven sections: Crafsmanship, Honesty, Art, Tradition, Unicity, Virtuosity and Handicrafts.

Amongst the pieces on show are the modern day Dutch craftspeople such as Iris van Herpen with her digitally crafted garments and Studio Job.

There are also a series of videos accompanying the exhibition that can be viewed here.

Hand Made Long Live Crafts runs until May 20th

Transnatural are showcasing their latest exhibition titled 'Still Unidentified Objects' which as the name suggests explores unidentified forms of collaboration between man, machine and nature. Showcasing her Emotional Dialogue video, Svenja Jeune questions real and artificial, textile and nature with her communicating textile forms that transform and morph as they detect the emotional mood of the viewer. The well documented Energy Collection from Marjan van Aubel is also shown and fits nicely with the messages from Transnatural to do with harvesting energy from natural sources be it in her case food, or in the case of Trap light, via sun light.

The brilliant Thomas Vailly is also showing his work that explores our mortality and the reality of the waste that we leave behind such as hair whilst the slightly disconcerting living organism dress 'Like living organisms' is a skin dress that expresses excitement and emotion between two people when they first meet.

Open until 1st July at Workspace, Lijnbaansgracht 148a Amsterdam.

http://vimeo.com/43997522#at=0