Milan Design Week 2013 Showcase

Milan Design week took place at the beginning of the month, an event that showcases the latest designs from around the world, with a focus upon furniture.

Many architects have worked in collaboration with manufacturers to design pieces to be shown here, and so ArchDaily has compiled a list of what they feel are the Best Architect Designed Products from the week.

The list includes work by Jean Nouvel for Ruco Line, where he explored fashion, creating Pure - a high quality trainer that idolizes “purity of form”.

Also featured is Tools for Life,  a new furniture range designed by OMA for Knoll and Ron Arad’s 3 Nuns Stool for Moroso’s American Collection.


Take look at the full list here.

Designs of the Year Awards 2013 Nominations

The Design Museum has announced the nominations for Designs of the Year 2013. Seen as the Oscars of the design world, the nominations will go on display in the museum from 20th March, whilst the winners will be decided by a jury and announced to the public on the 17th April.

Last year's winner was the London 2012 Olympic Relay Torch, and this year still has some Olympic contenders with the Olympic Cauldron by Heatherwick Studio being nominated.

Other nomination's include:

Acrhitecture - The Shard, London, UK
Designed by Renzo Piano
 
Digital - Rain Room
Designed by rAndom International

Fashion -Prada S/S12 RTW Collection
Designed by Miuccia Prada

See the full list of nominations here.

Home: the must-see homewares and interiors event

Sunday 13th January see’s the opening of Earls Court’s anticipated homewares event, Home.

Running until Tuesday 15th January, the event managed to establish itself last year, and the second outing is promising to be even bigger, taking up both Earls Court 1 & 2 alongside Top Drawer.

The show hosts a compelling cross-section of stylish, design-led homewares and interiors products from the very best of UK and international companies, featuring over 220 brands, the majority of whom are making this their exclusive UK appearance. This is the ultimate buying destination for the trade, with the two events presenting collectively over 1000 design-led brands.

Register for free here.

Design comes to London

With the London Design Festival fast approaching we thought that it would be useful to highlight some of the key destinations for interiors, furniture and product design.  

The Festival runs from 14th until 23rd September and encompasses all forms of design from Graphic Design to Fashion. The key destinations below mostly cover interiors and furniture however for details of other design events you can view a calendar on the London Design Festival website.  

100% Design – 19th-22nd September, Earls Court  

Decorex – 23-16th September, The Royal Hospital, Chelsea  

Tent London – 20th-23rd September, Old Truman Brewery  

Design Junction – 19th-23rd September, The Sorting Office, W1  

Clerkenwell Design Week – 21st-23rd September, Various Venues, Clerkenwell  

ICON Design Trail, September, Various Venues  

Super Brands, 20th-23rd September, Old Truman Brewery  

Before 1980, 22nd September, Central Islington Library  

For full details of all these events please click on the event title to go to their websites.

Here’s to a great festival of design!

CAMAC's Student Wallpaper Design Competition

To celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of AWN Pugin, a master in the use of colour, pattern and ornament and who was an ardent campaigner for the Gothic style, CAMAC Design partnered with the Fashion & Textile Museum to organise a competition to design a wallpaper for the Palace of Westminster.

Best known for his interior designs of this iconic building, Pugin was one of the first to promote the idea of 'honesty' and 'propriety' in ornament and design, enlisting ornament as a moral influence in society.

CAMAC Design has partnered with the Fashion & Textile Museum in London's Bermondsey Village, which was founded by iconic British designer Zandra Rhodes. The museum showcases a selection of designs from entries to the 4th Annual Student Wallpaper Design Competition during its current exhibition Pop! Design, Culture, Fashion.

A second display of students' work is also on show at Ramsgate Library in Kent until 20th August. Ramsgate is where Pugin designed and built The Grange, his family home, and also nearby St Augustine's church.

The full exhibition will be held in London from 14th - 20th September, forming part of the 10th London Design Festival. Set up to build links between new designers entering the creative industries and the professionals already in it, CAMAC Design is a new company founded by Caroline McNamara, an experienced event and exhibition organiser, and Vice Chair of TEXERE, Textile Education and Research in Europe.

For more information please click here.

What colour is fashion across Europe?

This project by Pimkie called Color Forecast has been developed by Pedro Cruz and runs feeds from high definition cameras in Milan, Paris and Antwerp to track the colour of fashions worn across the cities.

The software analyzes the passing colors and shows in real time which colors are worn most often, then the colors are compiled into an infographic to see how trends evolve..

Can this forecast the trends and how our colour tastes change over the seasons? An interesting project.

See the website here and see how it works below.

Burberry goes on world tour

Burberry launched their flagship store in Taipei in April with Burberry World Live, a 360 immersive experience.

A custom-made cylindrical space was designed by Christopher Bailey and brought to life the Burberry worlds of British Heritage, Fashion, Music and Weather.

It combined an eight part 360 degree film, a live musical performance and digital weather experience. Burberry World Live will be touring the world, coming to cities including London, Hong Kong and Chicago later this year.The multi sensory experience blurs the physical and digital dimensions of the brand to great effect.

Quite an experience. See how the event went below:

Design of the Year 2012 nominations announced

The Design Museum has announced its nominations for the Designs of the Year 2012 exhibition with a range of exciting designs that appeared in 2011. The work featured includes digital, fashion, furniture, architecture, product, graphic and transport design and is drawn from a wide variety of projects.

All the nominations will be on show at the Designs of the Year exhibtion at the Design Museum, opening to the public on 8 February 2012 and category winners and the overall winner will be announced at the Awards Night at the Design Museum on 24 April.

The Design Museum will be issuing details of each nomination daily on their blog,

Work shown here: Comedy Carpet, Blackpool by Why Not Associates and Gordon Young


Life-Size Paper Monster Hearse by Paul Sahre

The Christmas Party 'Walk of Shame'

Keeping the festive theme going is this ad for Harvey Nichols Womenswear by DDB London.

Quite humorous and I am sure we all have similar memories, either personal or third hand. It finishes by asking viewers to share their 'Walk of shame' moments.

Definitely worth 60 seconds viewing.

British Council launches ADF Papers

The British Council has launched the ADF Papers, a series of documents that explore new directions in British architecture, design and fashion.

They commissioned experts in the various sectors to write on particular issues that were key to current UK practice. They say that, 'Each paper includes an introduction, case studies, examples of recent projects and links for further information. The aim is to share our understanding of our sectors with our Arts Managers all over the world as well as design professionals abroad and in the UK.'

The papers were designed by objectif, and printed on Colorplan paper by GF Smith. Axel Feldman at objectif had to develop a unique typography for each of the papers.

Read more on the British Council website

British Council opens fashion exhibition in Kazakhstan

The first venue for the British Council's touring exhibition, Reconstruction: Cultural Heritage and the Making of Contemporary Fashion is the Central State Museum in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The exhibition features seven of the UK's leading fashion designers and offers a snapshot of some of the traditions and cultures that inspire these designers.

The British Council says, 'The launch kicked off with a packed press conference attended by Kazakhstan’s leading TV Channels and newspaper titles followed by the official opening by the British Ambassador and the Director of Central State Museum. 600 people attended the opening to see the work of seven of the UK’s leading fashion designers: Paul Smith, Vivienne Westwood, Hussein Chalayan, Marios Schwab, Peter Jensen, Sophia Kokosalaki and Osman Yousefzada.'

Read more here

Vintage Festival comes to the Southbank

The Vintage Festival ios coming to the Southbank, London in July celebrating vintage Britain - an event not to be missed!

This is what they have to say about the event,

'Whether your thing is swing, rockabilly, mod, soul, funk, disco, ska, electro, cabaret, film, art or design, or if you just want to dress up and get an authentic make-over for a day, Vintage at Southbank Centre is a sensual delight, a big dressing-up box, a collector’s dream and a joyous creative feast for all ages. For one glamorous weekend we celebrate the music, fashion, film, art , design, and dance from the 1920s to the 1980s (and maybe even a peek at the early ‘90s) that has made Britain the world’s creative and cultural hotbed....

The event takes place over the three days at the Royal Festival Hall which will be set dressed across the six levels. It will be transformed into a multi-venue playground where pass holders can ‘learn the dances’, enjoy a makeover take in the live performances, exclusive DJ sets, catwalk shows, wonderfully conceived food and cocktails, the cream of the crop vintage retailers and surprises galore. Vintage favourites The Soul Casino, Let it Rock, The Torch Club, The Leisure Lounge and The Warehouse are amongst the ten nightclubs contained within Royal Festival Hall.

To find out more visit their web site.

Category Winners for the Brit Insurance Design Awards 2011

The votes are in and a winner for each category of the Brit Insurance Design Awards 2011 has been officially announced today.

The winners for each category are:

Brit Insurance Architecture Award 2011: Open Air Library by KARO Architekten, Germany

Brit Insurance Fashion Award 2011: Uniqlo +J, Japan

Brit Insurance Furniture Award 2011: Branca, Industrial Facility, Italy

Brit Insurance Graphics Award 2011: Homemade is Best, Forsman & Bodenfors for Ikea

Brit Insurance Product Award 2011: Plumen 001, Hulger & Samuel Wilkinson, UK

Brit Insurance Transport Award 2011: Barclays Cycle Hire

Click here to learn more about each of these winners and for your chance to speculate who will eventually reign supreme.

Hottest new pop-up shop to open in Brompton Road

The Temporium is set to be London's hottest new retail space. It will open next month for 10 days only on the prestigious Brompton Road from 9th to 19th December and according to Dezeen, 'the Temporium is set to excite, inspire and delight in equal measure.'

The store will bring together some of the UK’s most exciting design-led brands. From fashion and fine jewellery, to watches, ceramics, glassware, books, furniture, lighting and more, The Temporium will offer a diverse range of stylish and innovative products for the discerning shopper.

Get down to Brompton Road for some great design in December.

See more on Dezeen