Barbed wires, prickly fences and mobiles

WEEK11- DAY3

1. Soundtrack of the day

Mr. Slinky

2. Places to go

DMZ or the “Korean Demilitarized Zone”

3. People to meet

Mikhail Kalashnikov - “life can make you do many things, even kiss a man with a runny nose”. Kalashnikov is the one who invented the AK-47. It is a special object because it has a very strong symbolic value of protest and revolt. 

4. Question of the day

5. Inspiration

When we talk about storytelling, there are different factors of conduction, of transmission. It all depends on your audience, your tone of narration, punctuation and evidently the overall coherence. How do you address a certain audience? How do you reach them? How do you trigger their imagination?

Marshall McLuhan - “The medium is the message.”

We say that “the community is the message”!

The Eames’ DKR (Dining Height, K-Wire Shell, R-Wire Base / Rod Iron Base) chair.

Bruno Munari - His Concave-Convex series of wire mesh hanging sculptures. His first spatial environment ever. And also, it is “one of the first examples of installation art in modern European art”! Munari was one of the first to create mobiles. Check out his Arrhythmic Machine series. They are related to chance, dynamics and spontaneous movements and things.

Another chap who made suspended mobiles out of wire -  Alexander Calder. 

How-to create a Calder mobile? 

Kim Jong Un

6. Homework

Our goal is to find the most efficient ways for transmitting our stories. Today, you will design your own story with metal wires. By definition, wires are flexible. Think about it. Either choose a single strand or a mesh.

Mobile - Crazy silly thing called love - Youtube video

I went to my child memories again. This was something I learned when I was a kid. Get a glass, a wire, bend it, glue a cut out animal in thin cardboard in it and spin the wire. Lots os stories: dog after a ball, wolf after a rabbit...All I did was to adapt it to today's homework.

7. Extras

Seung Mo Park - wire sculptures from his site and here

Five from the ground - here

Kinetic wire sculture

Alexander Calder - sculptures

Alexander Calder - Circus

Luis Lopez- bird wire crafts

Monkeybyz - the site  (Something a bit different but I like it)

Simple and beautiful wire art

More wire, and more and more and more crafts and some more here!

A store online

Amazing crafts

Wire art Penang 2013

You rock my world!

WEEK11-DAY2

1. Soundtrack of the day

Ancient Indians made rock music.

Hard as a rock - AC/DC
Solid (as a rock) - Ashford and Simpson
Steady as a rock - Clyde Ray
On the rocks - Rita Lee

Now, let’s rock and roll!

2. Places to discover

Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England

3. People to know

Michael Grabs - the site and the blog

4. Question of the day

5. Inspiration

Stories with stones.

Painting - Munari (From afar it is an island, book) and Max Ernst stones .

Domino stones - Painted stones for home

Any tool is good to storytell, but rocks are always a solid and steady option.

Rock art: A traditional “religious” art that involves human markings on rocks and that can be found in so many times and places. As a general, roch art can be divided into these two categories: petroglyphs (carved) and pictographs (painted). Rock art was (and still is sometimes today) used to record historical events or stories, to help enact rituals, for cartographic purposes (as territorial markers), “hunting magic” or weather control… The “art” can either be abstract or not.

Rock balancing: either an art, discipline, or hobby, it involves putting and  keeping them in a state of balance rocks, one on top of the other and in various positions. Nothing more is added to the “arrangement”. Nothing less.

For example, you could check out Cairns or inukshuk.

The rock balancing master Bill Dan teaches us how-to do sometricks here.

Then, Michael Grab and his Gravity Glue - site - and demonstration - video.

Michael Grab says:  

“The most fundamental element of balancing in a physical sense is finding some kind of tripod for the rock to stand on.” 

"Every rock is covered in a variety of tiny to large indentations that can act as a tripod for the rock to stand upright, or in most orientations you can think of with other rocks. By paying close attention to the feeling of the rocks, you will start to feel even the smallest clicks as the notches of the rocks in contact are moving over one another.”

“Find a zero point, or silence within yourself.”

“Become the balance”

On his website, he quotes Yoda: “Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try”...


A question of stability? Check out Fischli and Weiss’ 

“Rock on top of another rock” - here
Andy Goldsworthy - “You must have something new in a landscape as well as something old, something that’s dying and something that’s being born.” 

Ferdinand Cheval, a French mailman who spent all his life building a castle with found stones.

6. Homework

Today, you design your own story with stones from the Stone Age and beyond! Are you ready? Ready for carvings, hammerings, engravings, inscriptions,
scratches, sculptures, drawings, paintings, pictures, records...? 

7. Extras

Man lifts big stones

Painted stones on Pinterest

Stone art blog

Sticks and stones on Pinterest

Suiseki or an ancient japanese art

Wimo Bayang - stones and an article

How to skip a stone

Telling stories

WEEK11-DAY1- Telling stories

1. SOUNDTRACK OF THE DAY

Imagination - Just an Illusion

Tracy Chapman - Telling stories

2. PLACES TO KNOW

Pastrengo, Milan.

3. PEOPLE TO DISCOVER

Escher’s work was “a game, a very serious game“.

Escher’s  impossible cube invented for Belvedere.

4. QUESTION OF THE DAY

5. INSPIRATION

Donato Bramante

The choir of Bramante’s Santa Maria presso San Satiro church. It’s choir seems to be at least five meters deep, but in fact, it is deep of only ninety centimeters!
Bramante was a true master in telling stories.

Here some people who are able to tell very refined stories with the projects they do:

Lisa Congdon - collection a dayJonas Mekas - diary
Iacchetti Coltelli Inutili - industrial design
The Eames - at Moma store
Yona Friedman - article
Dunne and Raby - projects


Design is first and foremost about narration.While a movie director shares his stories through movies, a musician with music, a poet with poems, a designer expresses them through objects, spaces and services.

Good Design tells good stories.

Carl Barks, Donald Duck’s father. Some of his old stories, the long ones, they are so nice! It was a world before the computer, at its best!

Maurice De Bevere(Morris) Have you ever heard about Lucky Luke? 

Moebius and Jacques de Loustal 
Louise Bourgeois

Coco Chanel 

Marcel Duchamp

Paul Klee 

Stanley Kubrick - movie

Le Corbusier’s Modulor

Carlo Mollino (a crazy guy) 

Kazuyo Sejima and her Sanaa’s office.

Issey Miyake 

Marimekko!

John Maeda 

Duilio Forte

Pierluigi Anselmi

Checking Design101 neighbours - where are you?

Finally I beated the silly Quiz!

- If we talk about design, if we talk about vases, if we talk about Japan, if we talk about life, we can’t avoid mr Shiro Kuramata.He is one of our long-lasting loves. Start exploring from this link… “The Temple of the Golden Pavillion” is a very good book by Yukio Mishima. If you haven’t read, it wouldn't be bad to do so...
- Mr Sottsass was one of the most influential designers of the whole XXth Century.We already shared the link to this video, but to see it once again, it isn’t a bad thing.
- We met mr Noguchi several times. Till now, it was about lamps.
Now, take a look to his vases… Here for instance. Or this other one, for example…If you forgot about him, here you have the link.
By the way, Momofuku Ando, is the one who invented the instant noodles.
- Dieter Rams is a very important designer, but he never had partners when working.If you answered C, you were close. Pierre de Meuron is a partner of Jacques Herzog, not Werner. To get in the right mood for this week class, take a look to this short movie: “The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner”. It’s a masterpiece. All designers should watch it!
- If you never heard about this Voynich Manuscript, follow this link and get lost into it...
- The one who came out with Taylorism was Frederick Taylor.
Mick Taylor was, for some years, the Rolling Stones’ lead guitarist. After Brian Jones, before Ron Wood. So good that one day he woke up and left them out of the blue.
- Although Queneau’s book is very nice, it was a way to introduce you to what we have in mind as our class' final exhibition.
- Check Kaufman’s website. A lof of special stuff there. The famous Israeli designer based in London is Ron Arad. While Bezalel, is an excellent school, but we don’t know the name of its dean.
- Kazuio Sejima. Check it out. Isn’t it special?
- Paolo Ulina. Here the link for you to check. Anyway, he is actually very good.
Check this other link. Here you have his website.
- Ecolo.Check it out!

About the process

WEEK10-DAY 7

1. Soundtrack of the day
Superstition - Stevie Wonder
Overjoy/ Lately - Stevie Wonder

2. Places to discover

The city of Milan

3. People to know
Stevie Wonder -  “Ya gots to work with what you gots to work with.”
Born prematurely, Stevie Wonder became blind just after birth. He played
instruments from an early age and nurtured his natural gift. His blindness
was never an obstacle nor a limitation:

“Do you know, it’s funny, but I never thought of being blind as a disadvantage, and I never thought of being black as a disadvantage. I am what I am. I love me!”

4. Question of the day

5. Inspiration

A little about the Letters's process:

Pierluigi and Carlo use After Effects to animate the various photoshop layers we send them. Then, Mr.Duccio adds the special sound effects, music and voices over the whole thing.Regarding our letters, we prepare our stickers and “santini” (our little saint cards of our favourite people and designers) in photoshop. Then, we edit the letter, add the hyperlinks etcetc. in InDesign.

To make flowchart  - mural.ly

Explaining things is the best way to test and measure your own understanding.

Free on-line tools to create flowcharts and diagrams.

“My father had a Super 8 camera when I was a kid and sometimes he would use it. I did some animation with it. I did a lot of flipbooks,” says Michel Gondry.

This camera was first manufactured in 1965 by Kodak for “amateurs” to use. 

6. Homework

How you generally proceed when doing a Design 101 homework. Do you always
follow a certain workflow?

This is the simple flowchart

A tin toy Zeppelin!

A tin toy Zeppelin!

It's the color game!

WEEK 10-DAY 6

1. SOUNDTRACK OF THE DAY

2. PLACES TO KNOW

Weimar, Germany

The Weimar Republic documentary

3. PEOPLE TO DISCOVER

Josef Albers - taught at Bauhaus and at the Black Mountain College. Josef Albers studied and explored colors and their interactions. Experiments relating to perception and resulting into optical illusions.

4. QUESTION OF THE DAY

5. INSPIRATION

Bauhaus -  the very first design academy in the world. A very special school where students got basic training in the properties of colours, forms and materials.
 
Short video about “Homage to the square” paintings’ series.

A pdf with some extracts of the book

Enter the realm of colors.

“Interaction of Colors” application for ipad 

“Interaction of Color” -  the link to the pdf or the whole book: 

 An article on the Interaction of Color

“A color has many faces...”. Colors is about relativity.

 Albert Einstein  - the proof

The Magic and Logic of Color: How Josef Albers Revolutionized Visual Culture and the Art of Seeing.

The work of Johannes Itten, another one who was associated to the Bauhaus.

 “The Art of Color.” - a book to read

 J. Wolfgang Goethe’s “Theory of Colors.”

A nice article about it.

A nice color matching game!

Corrugated cardboard style

WEEK10 - DAY 5

1. SOUNDTRACK OF THE DAY

Just starting over - John Lennon

2. PLACES TO KNOW

Weil am Rhein, Germany

Vitra Design Museum 

3. PEOPLE TO DISCOVER

4. QUESTION OF THE DAY

5. INSPIRATION

Frank Gehry was probably the first to have introduced cardboard as a material to make objects and furniture.


“One day I saw a pile of corrugated cardboard outside of my office – the material which I prefer for building architecture models – and I began to play
with it, to glue it together and to cut it into shapes with a hand saw and a pocket knife.”


Frank Gehry wiggle side cardboard chair.

The fruit bowl 

How to make the fruit bowl?

Hippocrates -  “the life so short, the craft so long to learn…” 
- “it takes a long time to acquire and perfect one’s expertise and one has but a short time in which to do it”.
Mr. Isamu Noguchi - lamps and vases and again vases. The link to Nogushi org

Yaacov Kaufman - the “studies” section of his website and the “personal exhibition” part.

Mr Kaufmann -  a fantastic vase. 

Kazuyo Sejima’s Hanahana!

6. Homework

This is Holdmykey. An object to protect furniture made of wood from scratch! I will put it near my street door so I can leave my key there everytime I get in the house. I had a few problems doing it. I was out of corrugated cardboard halfway so I went to my neighbour's house and he gave me a box. The cardboard was different and thinner! Next time I want to use just one kind of cardboard. I aslo did not plan it fully and I had to adapt along the way. Next time I'll know better. I wanted it to look kind of organic, like a sea shell or a shell of an animal.

7. Extras

Cardboard for the homeless - Cardborigami ( Suggestion from Priscila Cortez)

This was my second piece made of corrugated cardboard. My first one was a hammer. Not thor's hammer. This hammer.

For those who aren't Portuguese, we have a huge street festival in Portugal, it's called S.João, it's in June. We eat roasted sardines and drink, we dance, we watch fireworks. One thing we also do on the crowded streets is hammering eachothers heads with colorful plastic hammers. They make a squeak sound! Oh, yes, it's weird and lots of fun. (Yeah, you don't believe me!!) So this cardboard hammer was a participation in a creative contest of S. João's hammers. By that time I was living in the city of Oporto and I found homeless persons sleeping on the streets on cardboard every night. Winter nights are cold in the second biggest Portuguese city. That affected me deeply. I called this hammer The homeless to honor those people. S. João is a night where homeless people are not alone in the streets because everybody is on the streets! I hope you don't mind me sharing this story but I really liked doing this hammer even if I knew he would not stand a chance at that competition.

A vase out of paper

WEEK10-DAY 4

1.Soundtrack of the day:

I picked Nino Rotta 15 minutes of music

2.Places to go:

Carrara

A marble world

The transportation of marble

3. People to discover:

Paolo Ulian  site

A  link  about Paolo's work

4. Question of the day:

5. Inspiration

David Hockney - “you can’t teach the poetry, but you can teach the craft”

Vase and flowers - D. Hockney

“Craft” is an activity that involves making something in a skillful way. By using our hands!

“Life Support” by Oscar Medley-Whitfield: “The stem vase life support machine was created in a sporadic 24 hour challenge. It is designed to provide the best possible conditions for keeping a cut flower alive longer.”

Vases and earthquakes - a video

Properties of paper

6. Homework - Today, you will have create one vase with card (thin cardboard) or paper. Cut, paste, staple, glue, do whatever you need to render your paper material concave! You will turn a flat two-dimensional material into something concave. Something that can “hold” three-dimensional things. Not easy.

I learned to do this when I was a child. I use this whenever I need a glass to drink and I don't have one. All we need is a square of paper. If the sheet of paper is too thin I use two sheets. To make a glass you don't need to fold the bottom. The water inside will unfold it. As an evolution of the cup I decided to make it a bit bigger than I usually do. I used thin cardboard. And invented a bottom for it so it can stand on a surface. This was the result. It gets more stable once filled with stuff! I had big ideas of trying stuff for this homework as I love paper... but no free time at all and terrible weather to glue paper together, so...

New Year, new stuff to learn! What else?

Houston, we have a problem!?

What's this?!! It keeps poping up!

 Here it is. It's fun!

 Looking closer...

Gone Sketchup

WEEK10-DAY 3

1. SOUNDTRACK OF THE DAY

2. PLACES TO KNOW

Savoy Restaurant in Helsinki.

3. PEOPLE TO DISCOVER

Shiro Kuramata - the site and more

Shiro Kuramata went to great lengths to create works of simple beauty and elegance
Dominic Wilcox’s website.

The war bowl - here

4. QUESTION OF THE DAY

5. INSPIRATION

Terry Gilliam’s greeting card. 

“Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.”
Sigmund Freud 

About psychoanalysis

Alvar Aalto’s Iittala vase 

Contemporary design is made by layers and layers of old and new things. The past creeps into today. Tomorrows are here, mixing everything in a fantastic soup.

Look at this canopic vase: it’s an Etruscan example, out of an older Egyptian tradition. Here, in China, you have a Jue vase, while in Persia, they were busy making these other extraordinary objects (called Amlash terracottas). The
Greek aryballos. 

6. Homework
Today we want you to sketch one vase, an existing one or one of your own creation. If you feel like it, you should sketch two vases. An existing one, and a new one, a modification (of yours) from the first one.

Google Sketchup here

Tutorials

http://www.mastersketchup.com/sketchup-tutorial-how-to-create-a-vase/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PziwoZZSX64
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ah6NZadu70
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkY8wf4SJCI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j80WxZzrTdM
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/computers-software/Google-SketchUp.html

Measuring attitude

WEEK10-DAY2

1. SOUNDTRACK OF THE DAY

Happy New Year!- Abba

2. PLACES TO KNOW

Milan

3. PEOPLE TO DISCOVER

Ettore Sottsass and his ceramics

4. QUESTION OF THE DAY

5. INSPIRATION

Design always starts from observation. When we look at the world, we are already designing. Our mind has to select where to focus, what to cut out and so on. We observe, we focus...The next step is to compare. We understand things because of differences. In order to go through this process, this is now
the moment to take measures. I measure, hence I am. As Leonardo da Vinci famously drew... (From the Letter Course)

Thomas Alva Edison - “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration”. 

“Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.” Shakespeare

Sottsass said: “When I was young, all we ever heard about was functionalism,
functionalism, functionalism. It’s not enough. Design should also be sensual and exciting.”

Carlton bookcase... Kitsch, appealing to the masses and fun, it embodies colour and energy, revolting against conventional good taste!

The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner, an amazing movie by Werner Herzog. 

6.Homework

Choose a vase that you like, and start looking at it with a “measuring” attitude. Remember: the first step to understanding something is to observe and then to measure it. Take out your ruler, measuring tape, or any other measuring tool, and creatively write down or illustrate the dimensions of your vase. Then, share a picture of your measurement system (not the vase) with us! You have to measure quick things around you, you have to figure out possible proportion: height, width, depth. Relations between them, relation between them and our body (if we are talking about a vase, to relate the vase itself and our hand is generally a good thing).

In the Zone

WEEK1-DAY 1 - Making things

1. SOUNDTRACK OF THE DAY

Stalker soundtrack

2. PLACES TO KNOW

The Zone

3. PEOPLE TO DISCOVER

Russian moviemaker Andrei Tarkovsky.

A poet in the cinema - video

Eduard Artemyev - the composer

The good news about Tarkovsky's movies ost  here

4. QUESTION OF THE DAY

5. INSPIRATION

How to deal with our desires? How to deal with other people desires?

Movie Stalker - Solaris - Nostalghia

A link to watch him talking about arts, solitude and life.

Franco Albini and Franca Helg silver Pannocchia. 

A link to Franco Albini’s (Mr. Pannocchia) website.

A bowl is something we need. But a bowl can be something we desire. Probably, it is both. Desire and need. It has to function (the organic ribs, guarantee its resistance and allow to have a very thin section). But then, its functional element, can become a very precious decoration. A magical world where craftsmanship, function, decoration, need, desire... they all overlap in one simple thing. (From the Course Letter)

John Cage: “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”

To design, does it deal with satisfying needs, or does it deal with satisfying desires? Excellent design deals with the invention of new desires. The politically correct answer would say that design is there to fix problems and satisfy needs.

To think about design through some conceptual glasses. This week we will have to make a vase. A vase can be intended as something we need (I need a vase to
hold apples). But, at the same time, a vase can be intended as something we want, without a specific need. I would like to have a vase to hold some beautiful flowers. Is it need or is it desire? Is it decoration or is it function? Where is our vase? Where are we? Why do we do this? Design is to make things with a clear idea that those things we make always carry some meaning. We have to make a vase. If we do it in paper it means something. If we do it in steel, it means something else. Materials do carry a meaning. The same goes for form, dimensions, formal qualities. (From the Course Letter)


“Let everything that’s been planned come true. Let them believe. And let them have a laugh at their passions. Because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy, but just the friction between their souls and the outside
world. And most important, let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it’s tender and pliant. But when it’s dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death’s companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.” Tarkovsky

“For me the most interesting characters are outwardly static, but inwardly charged by an overriding passion”.Tarkovsky

Bom ano novo!

The world of 100

Check the posters

Go

WEEK9- DAY7

1. SOUNDTRACK OF THE DAY

2. PLACES TO KNOW

Astana Cemetery, China

3. PEOPLE TO DISCOVER

4. QUESTION OF THE DAY

5. INSPIRATION

A woman playing Go

The world of Go. “Go uses the most elemental materials and concepts: line and
circle, wood and stone, black and white, combining them with simple rules to generate subtle strategies and complex tactics that stagger the imagination”, Iwamoto Kaoru

“While the Baroque rules of Chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go”,
Edward Lasker

“Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to double-entry accounting”, Trevanian

“Whether you win a game or lose it is a matter of fate at the time. What really counts is whether or not you played good moves”, Kajiwara Takeo

Computer/Man and Go - Man wins

“The master of Go”. It was written the Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata - Nobel Prize for Literature) 

Vivre sa vie - the cafe scene

Confucious - “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”

In the design world of the XXth Century, there were two stunning and absolute breakthroughs:Henry Ford coming up with the Ford T, and Coco Chanel pulling out the Little Black Dress. It was about putting together technology, production, style, mass-production and democracy. 

The little black dress

As the Duchess of Windsor said: “When a little black dress is right, there is nothing else to wear in its place.”

Audrey Hepburn’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s opening scenes. A special design
by Hubert de Givenchy...