Inspiration

Last week, we kicked off our top articles with a recap of our most visited projects of 2014, and this week it’s time to get inspired. An artist who mixes her media with science topped our inspiration list, while our concept of “naked houses” (it’s a thing, really) also raised some eyebrows. Check out the top five most inspiring articles from the past year.

So, we revisited the year’s top projects and the most inspiring articles from 2014, so it’s time to turn to products. Bicycles, planters and rugs, oh my! Have a look at the top five products from the past year.

December is rapidly drawing to a close, which means it’s the perfect moment to revisit the most visited articles of 2014. From a Vietnamese house in Ho Chi Minh to the Mojave desert in Nevada, let’s take a little trip down memory lane. Here are the top five projects from the past year.

It’s no secret that Canadian winters are glacial, but life continues under layers of wool and fleece. However, Toronto’s city beaches become a desolate wasteland in winter’s icy grasp winter. In an attempt to breathe life into the beach-turned-frozen-tundra, Toronto’s international Winter Stations design competition was born. A joint creation of RAW Design, Ferris + A...

Although banana seats and streamers will forever be the cat’s pajamas, bicycle’s have reached new levels in style and technology in recent years. And We’re not just talking about the billion dollar bikes that are pedaling their way through the Tour de France at the moment. Even street bike design for us plebeians has progressed leaps and bounds! So while the professional...

When creating the Traits d’Union collection for an exhibition at Galerie Dutko in Paris, French designer Eric Benqué used quality materials and craftsmanship to guide his work. Due to his desire to create furniture without artificial glue, nails or screws, Benqué created furniture that functions as a puzzle. Each piece of the collection can be turned, deconstructed or r...

Love it or hate it, sometimes you need a bit of gold sparkle in your life. And sometimes you just need a lot. It’s the holidays, so we’re going to go all out before the sobering realizations of January 1st roll around. Most of these items are not made of gold, but they all have a bit of bling. Happy Holidays!

It’s Valentine’s Day, the most loved and hated holiday of the year. For singletons, V-Day can be a painful reminder of the numerous Friday nights spent alone on the couch with the cat and a pint of ice cream. For couples, it often involves paying exorbitant prices in restaurants and trying to ignore the obnoxious displays of public affection at adjacent tables. We,...

We like design /art that makes us cock our heads and turn round in circles, which is exactly why we so enjoy Norman Kelley’s Wrong Chairs. On display at Volume Gallery in Chicago through January 24th, Carrie Norman and Thomas Kelley revise the traditional Windsor chair. Using the American design ‘standard’, they explore and pry open what we perceive as ‘correct’ and ‘rig...

32-year-old architect Yener Torun has spent the last year seeking out and photographing minimalist buildings in Istanbul, hoping to show a different side of the city from the standard images of old streets and mosques along the Bosphorus. He claims that because there aren’t many such buildings in Turkey he spends most of his time searching, which turns his mission into a...

The next generation of Zaha Hadid’s Liquid Glacial table was unveiled yesterday at David Gill Galleries for an exhibition that will run until November 16th. A gravity-defying design, the table perfectly resembles a puddle of crystal clear water, frozen in time. At once fanciful and authentic, the table top is smooth and flat but reveals delicate ripples beneath the surfa...

An architect and urban planner since 1986, Edouard François is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. He established his own studio in 1998 and has since been infusing the likes of France, India and Sri Lanka with his sustainability-focused projects. It’s easy to describe the flamboyant French architect ...

Patrick Norguet has traveled an enviable, atypical path in his career as an industrial designer. He has worked with some big names in fashion like Louis Vuitton, Lanvin and Dior creating scenographies, already has an iconic chair as part of MoMA’s permanent collection and has been consistently churning out furniture for the likes of Glas Italia, Poltrona, Kristalia and C...

British artist Steve Messam is known for his striking, temporary landscape installations. Most recently, the artist completed PaperBridge, a crimson footbridge made from 20,000 sheets of paper. Currently open to the public, the bridge spans a babbling brook in the Grisedale Valley of England’s Lake District. Two footpaths lead up to the bridge on either side, making it l...

In the wake of his melting facade and upside down building, British artist Alex Chinneck continues to work large-scale magic tricks with his latest installation. Titled ‘Take My Lightening but Don’t Steal My Thunder’, the piece perfectly replicates London’s iconic Covent Garden Market building, making it seem as if the upper portion of the 184-year-old structure has deta...

Last week, Basque furniture brand Alki debuted the world’s first bioplastic chair, Kuskoa Bi. The impressively smooth result of the plant-based polymer got us wondering: what other intelligent bio-composites are out there? We rounded up five chairs by five designers use some unlikely natural materials. Terroir by Nikolaj Steenfatt and Jonas Edvard Nikolaj Steenfatt...

Some partnerships just produce great things. Peanut butter and jelly. Cookies and milk. Will Bryant and Eric Trine. Their Staycation already inspired us to take a (very) long holiday, and now, we are digging the bright shapes of their Alley-Oop II collection. As a continuation of their work with Los Angeles retailer Poketo, the designers filled the gallery with improbab...

As you may have noticed, our latest e-magazine has hit the virtual stands. We’re talking interiors, hotels, Scandinavian design and fabulous prefabricated houses. From the recent Pop Up House to Jean Nouvel’s prefab precursor, we selected seven noble representations of the genre. But there were many to choose from, and we couldn’t include them all, so we have created a l...

Your bookshelves are bursting at the seams. You frequently walk into traffic because you just can’t put down the latest bestseller. Good news, bookworms. You can now put your hobby (read: addiction) to use! Create a distinctive headboard out of old books! You probably don’t even have to stop reading while you do it. Not into DIY? Check out the headboards on ArchiExpo.

Blurring lines can be a messy business, but some do it well. Sebastian Errazuriz would be one of the skilled few. Born in Chile and based in New York, he dances between art and design like he dances between two continents. His exploratory and experimental work can be found in New York’s Museum of Art and Design, the Mint Museum, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santia...

For the second installation of our Dutch Design Week favorites, we’ve chosen to focus on the crazy cool lighting designs that were making Eindhoven a brighter place. Enjoy! Fresnel Suspension Lamp by Dirk Vander Kooij Dirk Vander Kooij’s golden lamp could have descended from the heavens, but it’s actually made from recycled CDs and metal. The lamp gets its shape an...

With Bentley Elements, the British luxury automotive brand Bentley has launched a series of artistic collaborations imagined by creative directors Duncan Campbell and Charlotte Rey of the agency Campbell-Rey. Each year, the company will commission a new piece that represents the brand’s values and illustrates elements of the car’s construction. The first installation de...

From May 16th to June 20th, Chinese artist Jacky Tsai will present his work at Scream London for an exhibition called Eastern Orbit. Based in London since 2006, Tsai is trying to create a link between the two cultural worlds he has been evolving around all his life. Mixing several techniques and styles along with those two strong cultural influences, Jacky Tsai achieves ...

Carl Kleiner’s Postures series is a collection of pictures of tulips held in various positions with wires. Documenting the surrounding world with his camera, he lets his photography serve as a medium for bringing his insightful visions to life. The fragility of the flower figures contrasts with either a black or white background, and as they hang in the air the flowers ...

As tradition stands, IMM Cologne annually nominates a new designer to create a “house in a house” in the Pure Village hall. A grandiose space of 240 m² welcomes furniture, colors, materials, lighting and accessories by the chosen Guest of Honor. This year they welcomed architects Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu from Neri&Hu Design and Research Office based in Shanghai. The de...

With the holiday season coming (and a massive advent calendar in our office), it was hard to resist talking about this beautiful initiative by Studio Wessels Boer in Amsterdam. Indeed, when you look at “It Started With a Dime“, it’s hard not to be reminded of the small doors of an advent calendar hiding 24 tiny treasures. However, the goal here is a little different. Wi...

Contrary to mass-manufactured goods, handmade goods imply time, effort and thus a higher price tag. Swedish designer Jenny Nordberg decided to see if she could apply the speed and turnover of mass production to a handmade product. Her experiment, “3 to 5 minutes – Rapid handmade furniture”, demonstrates a handmade manufacturing technique that produces furniture in 3 to ...

For last October’s Science Festival, French photographer Romain Giusiano was able to capture an unusual performance. During the visit of a waste processing plant, comedian and dancers started interacting with the extraordinary venue, exposing the plant from a brand new angle. The photo shoot resulted in a series of almost surreal images. But the interesting aspect of Gi...

The Stockholm Furniture Fair is officially in full swing! Each year, the Greenhouse serves as a “Garden of New Ideas”, displaying new talents from around the world. For the second year in a row, Stockholm-based Note Design Studio designed the hall. Intent on representing the social aspect of the event, the Swedish design studio put participant and customer interaction a...

New York artist Karen Margolis has a profound fascination with the inner workings of the mind. Her art, through a beautiful and almost obsessive repetition of circles, is actually a calculated expression of human psychology. Circles of shadow, color and absence map out the thoughts and feelings flying through our gray matter. Drawing upon her background in psychology,...

What looked like a great exhibition turned out to be more than that. From January 25th to April 6th, the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is hosting one major event. A few figures can sum it up: 7 architects from 6 countries and 4 continents have the task of filling more than 2,000 square meters with one monumental exhibition. The point is to make architecture interact with ou...

Adding to his body of work titled An Aggregation, Seoul-based artist Seon Ghi Bahk is currently presenting his latest installations at the Zadok Gallery in Miami. Known for his delicate charcoal installations, Bahk hangs the substance from nylon threads to create concrete and abstract shapes that simultaneously seem to be crumbling, floating and flying away. More specif...

“It is not about what you see but how you see it.” And from behind the lens of Lebanese photographer Serge Najjar, Beirut’s concrete jungle flourishes with unexpected geometric patterns, contrasts, colors and stolen moments. If such elements exist outside of Najjar’s digital world, his patience and timing are impeccable. Every Saturday, Najjar drives without aim, until s...

A temporary home has found its place in the center of the magnificent Cortile della Farmacia at the University of Milan. Presented by Panasonic, Sliding Nature is the design of Torafu Architects. It is being presented as part of the Feeding New Ideas for the City exhibit at the university and as part of the iSaloni satellite, Fuorisalone. Sliding Nature possesses the es...

Raise your hand if you often eat in front of the television, or at the computer, or standing in the kitchen, or in your bed. Okay, maybe that last one is just us, but the point is that many individuals no longer sit down at a proper table to eat. Mealtimes are often used for multitasking, however eating is also a profoundly social act. In order to bring the focus back o...

Some may say Rhode Island School of Design graduate Annie Evelyn has a thing for chairs. After creating a chair-shaped ring called “Sit on My Finger” and an “Impolite Chair” with pompoms, we were right to expect interesting things from New Colony Furniture, her Brooklyn-based company, but she produced more than expected! There’s a reason why the Squishy chair made quite ...