Useful goods
Library of material, people & things
HeijltjesAkkaya R16 light: speaks for itself, does the job, is quiet enough to fit in anywhere and when you do notice it, makes you smile.
A new material, a commercial collaboration & shopping trollies: does anyone cares about circular design and how might that change?
Modular box system, easy to put up, take down and relocate, with simple connections and easy adaptations to suit any space, inside or out or out. Brilliant.
Raw collect, make, repair and recycle furniture and timber, looking after precious material and people in equal measure.
Less miser, more piggy-bank: old lamps reclaimed from disused buildings and restored, preserving heritage, supporting skills and B Corps too.
Quick guide to making sense of myriad tags and accreditation systems, variation between and within countries and a total lack of consistant info.
The ingenious solar powered Seatrac with its beach jetty and elegant Marcel Breuer-inspired chair makes getting into & out of the sea possible for everyone.
Notebook
Teaching, society, art, typography & cities, amongst other things
3-screen film installation describing home, education, social & public spaces across the globe using architecture as a form of care rather than exercise in style.
New job, new studio: designed in 1976 to meet sustainable criteria, relevant today as a blueprint for adaptable construction & masterclass in how to be a client.
A timber box in the park designed by Konstantin Grcic, recalling 18th century reading rooms & part of Bordeaux’s Cultural Season dedicated to Freedom.
5 lessons in commerce, nature and innovation: a crash course in contradictions and how & why we can thrive and continue in business.
Lacaton & Vassal less-is-more low budget redevelopment with a new facade & restored interiors, no displacement and minimal waste or environmental impact.
An easy-access programme with hands-on projects for kids to explore spatial design, the designers' day job and career options within the industry.
A vast, staggeringly beautiful, revealing, even hopeful exhibition examining damaging human behaviour & the counterbalance of restorative design.
An unexceptional building on an industrial estate houses a remarkable business, making & documenting fine fabrics for over a century.
Subtle bookshop redesign to help juggle staff & customers safety with the urgent need to get the business working again as we work out what new normal will be.
Agnes Martin solo show at the Tate, an artist who did her own thing, master of the barely-there with her faint and broken marks and translucent layers.
Prints, giant pastels and works on paper spanning her career and a beautiful summary of Rego’s storytelling, influences and mastery of different media.
A new model for sociable fitness with light-filled studios and a fresh finish inspired by the feeling of dancing in the street or skateboarding downhill.
Architecture & mega-bucks art collide at a new Damian Hirst gallery by Caruso St John; pared-back, highly refined & ready for whatever gets chucked at it.
Successful day with students working on stretching a brief to find a thread, and different ways of looking at colour which in turn translates to material choice.
Paul Smith in the FT How to Spend It magazine advising contrarily exactly how not to, by embracing slow design, imperfection and the art of collecting.
Fishing facility aesthetics: a composition of vitally functional material & graphic colour make a beautiful addition to the landscape rather than an eyesore.
Vessels resting on their sides, smooth, stretched and pinched-in forms and stand-out use of dazzling yellow, brown and pink: a wake-up combination.
Borrowing techniques from artists using stock materials, fluorescent lamps & acrylic paint to disrupt space for physical and emotional impact.
Economic painting described as single-minded, reclusive & chic by Kate Kellaway in The Guardian, words that apply to both person and work.
Building signs at RCA by Cartlidge Levene avoid bland corporate with an informal & flexible approach to how & where information appears.
A day out in search of artwork for a hotel project: mono and limited edition prints by Jasia Szerszynska at Project Art & abstract landscapes by Julia Wilson.
While thinking about the proliferation of plastic green walls outside public buildings I saw this sweet outburst on my street. Two days later it was gone.
It’s all here at the Tate, occupying several spaces and moving from hot water bottle to staircase without blinking, both mind-tricking and utterly familiar.
A quick look at the baffling, contradictory business of accreditation & one beautiful example on the Costa Brava to illustrate the point.
One real piece of news this week amid the strangeness that is contemporary politics, Cornelia Parker has been appointed official election artist. Good!
Typography developed for transport & navigation, used to help make sense of extraordinary shifts in culture, industry and society, still relevant & in use today.
One Paved Court gallery & studio converted from an empty shop with much of the original fabric undisturbed in contrast to the all-white convention.
Robin Day much in the press with a relaunch of the 1952 reclining chair joining the fantastically useful 675, both of their time & still perfectly good today.
Urban fabric, small scale business, family life and the inevitable tensions between civic/social ambition and the might of the developer.
Modern manufacturing at Marset & Apparatu thriving in the city centre alongside culture & commerce: lessons in family businesses & urban planning.
Further reading
Books, sites, articles, guides
Everything you need to know about different timber types and products, plus the things used to work it: machinery, hand tools, connections and finishes.
Info-packed site placing environmental health at the centre of design decision-making: learning hub, material collections, tool kits & case studies.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation explains circular principles, how-to & business benefits with examples of application across consumer society.
Sustainability is so much more than recycling, energy and carbon: it’s huge. The United Nations has seventeen goals, all connected and they effect everyone.