Reinforcing steel was bent into shapes and welded together to create panels with a variety of patterns adapted from ancient Chinese designs, then hinged together.

The designs aim to contrast the intricate forms often found in oriental decoration and the industrial materials from modern day construction.

MICROmarco Lab exhibited the space dividers in the Caochangdi art district in north-east Beijing during the design week, where lenticular printed maps of the city's hutongs were also shown.

See all our stories from Beijing Design Week 2012 »

Here's some more information from the designer:

CONtradition by MICROmacro Lab

The use of construction materials complicates a dialogue between ancient Chinese motifs and contemporary furniture design processes.

CONtradition is design research inspired by the reaction generated in the exchange between design identities. Though inspired by traditional Chinese forms, the collection introduces construction materials to furniture design.

Led by the materials employed, the series instigates a dialogue between the roughness and strength of the materials and the elusive elegance of traditional Chinese design motifs. The apparent contradiction between the essentiality of contemporary design and the preciousness of antique style resolves to show that new and old can establish a deep and meaningful conversation.

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by MICROmacro Lab appeared first on Dezeen.

Competition: Dezeen readers can win one of ten copies of (un)Made in China, a book that features projects by western architects that ran into trouble for various reasons in China, published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name.

Congratulations to the winners! Kubra Karatatar Diker from Turkey, Robert Ware from the UK, Tieliu Wu from Switzerland, Chiara Grana from Italy, Danny Spitzberg from the USA, Nick Whittaker from the UK, Adam Sunderland from the UK, Sergio Mesa Ramos from Spain, Waimond Ip from China and Nicolae Petrencu from Romania all won a copy of (un)Made in China.

The book features images, diagrams and details about the failed projects, as well as interviews with their designers.

A feature page for each project embodies the essence of the proposed building, with some pages textured, laser cut or even woven.

The 12 projects in the book include the Dalian football stadium by UNStudio and Ordos Hilton Hotel by VMX, as well as a housing proposal by MVRDV.

Architect and project information is printed in both English and Chinese.

The book accompanies the (un)Made in China exhibition that was installed as part of Beijing Design Week and will be travelling to Europe and North America.

Listen to exhibition curator Mike Tunkey talk about the exhibition here and see all our coverage of Beijing Design Week here.

This competition is now closed.

Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeenmail newsletter and at the top of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.

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to be won appeared first on Dezeen.

Designed for running shoes, the Flyknit fabric is made from precisely engineered yarns and Nike have commissioned a series of designers around the world to showcase the material in an installation for the Nike Flyknit Collective.

This installation, named The Feather, was created by stretching thin strings of the lightweight fabric from various points around the tower in a pattern that looked like a drawing made by a Spirograph toy.

A circular pavilion made from recycled plastic bricks sat on the ground in the centre of the tower and contained a single pair of shoes suspended in the air.

Splayed metal rods folded over the pavilion walls, providing the framework for a two-layered canopy of tightly woven fabric.

Springs under the pavilion floor were connected to the metal rods so the strings moved up and down when people walked around inside.

The gas tower is located in the 751 art district in the north-east of Beijing, a former industrial zone that is now home to many galleries and studios.

Watch a movie of Nike's global creative director talking about the knitted Flyknit Racer running shoes here.

See all our stories about Beijing Design Week »

See all our stories about Nike »

Here is some more information from Nike:

Arthur Huang's "Feather Pavilion"

Taipai-based engineer, architect, entrepreneur and pioneer in sustainable thinking, Arthur Huang, sees the world differently. His interpretation of FlyKnit’s key tenets — performance, lightness, formfitting, and sustainability — created through his MINIWIZ company, is both metaphorical and literal, resulting in the Feather Pavilion.

This spectacular space is a platform for showcasing every value of FlyKnit in an interactive, innovative way, that lets multiple concepts take flight though inspiration from nature’s own mechanical masterpiece — the feather.

Itself encapsulating the four FlyKnit principles, the feather is reflected conceptually throughout as well as physically though the shape of the pavilion roof, resulting in a personalized journey for visitors that, like FlyKnit and the Nike philosophy, is part of something much bigger — portable and capable of being the centerpiece of a stadium or larger exhibition space.

After seeing FlyWire innovations, guests enter a second half where the concept surrounds them for a 360 degree understanding of the technology where they can revel in Huang and Miniwiz’s vision.

Performance is represented through every element of Huang’s work – just by walking into the pavilion, stepping onto the platform creates a sensory action elsewhere in the structure.

Kinetic energy changes the look and the actual architectural form of this building, The ceiling moves like a feather, sounds are emitted and light and video is transmitted both internally and externally throughout the walls and floors, resulting in a sense of technical and musical harmony.

Lightness imbues every element of the Feather Pavilion experience – beyond being visually themed on the very essence of lightweight, the lightweight feel and transparency of the recycled TPU POLLI-Brick construction twinned with the shifting ceiling makes it utterly immersive. Formfitting is embodied in the precision engineered, industrial and tailored spirit of this project.

An intricate pulley system mirrors the motion of a loom, similar to the looms that create FlyKnit, while the building adjusting in line withthe form of its occupants, taking the form of a feather in the wind, transforms pure physics into an expansion of Nike’s breakthrough.

Sustainability is more than just a buzzword. It’s a testament to MINIWIZ’s work in the field that the sustainable nature of this entire structure, with the POLLIBrick compression walls, might go unnoticed.

This is the art of turning trash, something of no perceived value, something seen as primitive, into something awe inspiring. Made entirely from recycled TPU, each POLLI-Brick interlocks to create a resilient structure. To add further 100% organic reinforcement, recycled rice husks continue this design’s merger of tradition and the future of creativity.

Made with specifications from Nike’s R&D lab after a visit to Nike WHQ in Beaverton, a yarn runs through the pavilion in a Volt Green colour that matches the smaller scale version, turning into rugged caribiner cables that tie, with the threads becoming rope. This is function and beauty on a scale never before seen. And at the end of its own journey, the Feather Pavilion is capable of being recycled to create the next visionary MINIWIZ structure.

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Arthur Huang appeared first on Dezeen.

Above: Burnt Sienna - sound frequency 440Hz

Each set of pigments was laid on a white surface above a speaker, through which different sounds were emitted to disperse the colours.

Above: Cobalt Yellow Lake - sound frequency 493.88Hz 

"We were exploring the relationship between colour and sound," David Tanguy from Praline told Dezeen at the exhibition.

Above: Old Holland Golden Green - sound frequency 523.25Hz

Seven colour hues were used for the seven musical notes, and each sound moved the particles into different patterns.

Above: Cobalt Green - sound frequency 587.33Hz

Short photographed the patterns in motion, which were then blown up and printed onto 14 floor-to-ceiling fabric banners that were conceived as "an homage to traditional Chinese hangings".

Above: Old Delft Blue - sound frequency 659.26Hz

They were exhibited during Beijing Design Week at The Factory, an old bicycle factory in the Dashilar neighbourhood of the city that also hosted an installation of illuminated ceramic yoghurt pots.

Above: Ultramarine Red-Pink - sound frequency 698.46Hz

We've featured a couple of other stories from Beijing Design Week, including an exhibition about the problems faced by international architects working in China and maps that chart the disappearance of Beijing's ancient hutongs.

Above: Alizarin Crimson Lake Extra - 783.99Hz

See all our stories about photography

The text below is from John Short and Praline:

Colour Space, an installation by design studio Praline and photographer John Short explores the relationship between sound, colour and form.

The exhibition takes an existing idea, of sound being represented by colour, one step further and shows how various sound frequencies create their own individual patterns.

Passing seven frequencies that correspond to the seven musical notes through coloured pigment created unique ‘audio explosions’.

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and Praline appeared first on Dezeen.

Beijing Design Week: design studio Instant Hutong created changing maps of Beijing's disappearing ancient alleyways using lenticular printed panels as part of Beijing Design Week.

The project explored the fragility of the densely populated neighbourhoods that surround the alleyways, called hutongs, which are constantly threatened with demolition to make way for high-rise development.

"We wanted to create a representation of the hutongs using an urban planning language," Stefano Avesani from Instant Hutong told Dezeen at the exhibition where the project was displayed.

The panels appeared to change colour when tilted, rotated or walked past, and some of the blocks disappeared when viewed at certain angles.

While the colours did not act as a key to the maps, they served as a reminder of how lively the neighbourhoods are.

Instant Hutong have been mapping the old areas of the city since 2006, and have completed a range of related projects that include sewing maps onto fabric and hanging them from washing lines across streets.

The figure-ground drawings have also been printed onto wrapping paper and pizza boxes, which were displayed alongside the panels at the exhibition.

The exhibition was held in Caochangdi, an arts district in the north-east of Beijing that is home to a number of galleries and art and design studios and was due to be demolished until it was spared by the government in May 2011.

See all our stories from Beijing Design Week 2012 »
See all our stories about Beijing »
See all out stories about maps »

The text below is from the designers:

Instant Hutong is getting more visual in occasion of Beijing Design Week 2012! Italian designers Marcella Campa and Stefano Avesani's participation at BJDW 2012 consists of the Blinking City Project, a multimedia setting made of interactive maps based on collages of historical Hutong neighbourhoods of Beijing. We played with our work, usually street-oriented and mostly focused on the daily interactions of people and their city, designing a unique exhibition environment made of maps and colours.

The project is composed of diverse parts, each of them using a different media to better express a sense of rapid change. In the exhibition space visitors will be surrounded by interactive maps and urban patterns that will progressively define an aesthetic merging of forms and colours inspired by a nomadic and itinerant urban geography.

The exhibition will feature a background wall composed by 32 new digital printings on lenticular panels, which vary according to the movements of viewers; a long map on paper roll to take away by the metre; video animation with relax area and an Urban Carpet by Instant Hutong which will change every day.

Blinking City project investigates the capability of maps to describe city environments characterized by fast pace development and urban growth. In such kind of urban context, as soon as the map is done the city it depicts has already gone.

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Instant Hutong appeared first on Dezeen.