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.

Interactive sculpture in motion

A new collaboration between Hyundai's Advanced Design Centre and Berlin-based WHITEvoid, an interactive art and design studio, has created Fluidic.

The project sees 12,000 suspended spheres acting as 3D pixels or voxels which are illuminated by an array of high-speed lasers. The magic happens thanks to 3D cameras that detect a person and react creating patterns and shapes based upon their movements.

The piece was part of Hyundai's involvement with Milan Design week, the third time it has participated in the show, and was housed at the Temporary Museum for New Design. The interactive sculpture was inspired by nature and its ability to continuously adapt to a changing context, which Hyundai think of as part of their general design philosophy.

On April 8, the day of the preview, the German choreographer Nikeata Thompson directed a special performance featuring art, music and dance in the presence of the press and opinion leaders. In the days dedicated to the public Jan Jelinek of SCAPE, a seminal figure in contemporary electronic music, gave a special performance describing the rhythmic confluence between design and sound titled "Fluidic Art meet Fluidic Sound ".

Whilst many would have missed the chance to experience this for themselves, as it was only open to the public on the last weekend of Milan Design Week, 13th -14th April, there are plans to take it on the road, updates to be posted on the Fluidic page.

Watch a video of the sculpture in action below and visit the Fluidic page for more information and images.

FLUIDIC - Sculpture in Motion from WHITEvoid on Vimeo.

Photosynthesis conveys link between nature and man at Milan Design Week

This year's Milan Design Week sees an installation by Japanese architect Akihisa Hirata who has designed 'Photosynthesis', an installation for Panasonic that celebrates the biological process of storing solar energy.

Panasonic wish to show a potential link between nature and man-made materials through the installation and  'Photosynthesis' will be exhibited at Interni Legacy from the 16th until the 30th April. The installation will transform the Cortile della Farmacia courtyard into a space in which the visitors can experience the natural and technical, futuristic and traditional simultaneously.

The installation creates an artificial ecosystem with solar panels representing leaves, energy storage batteries as the fruits and LEDs and OLED panels represent the flowers.

Find out more on Design Boom.