Clerkenwell Design Week 2012: Vienna designers Mischer’Traxler present a basket-making machine that stops working when nobody’s looking at Clerkenwell Design Week in London this week.

When sensors in the framework detect the presence of one person, a strip of oak veneer is drawn through a basin of glue and wound round into a basket.

If a second person is detected, colour will be applied to the veneer by a marker pen.

More spectators cause it to add more colour, so the resulting object becomes a record of how much interest was generated at different times during its production.

Called Collective Works, the machine only works while it holds the attention of its audience and if spectators completely lose interest, the piece will never be completed.

The project was initially developed for the W-hotels designer of the Future award exhibition at Design Miami/Basel 2011 – see our earlier story.

Clerkenwell Design Week takes place from 22-24 May and includes our latest Dezeen Watch Store pop-up at the main venue at the Farmiloe Building, 34 St John Street until 9pm tonight – more details here.

See all our stories about Mischer’Traxler »
See all our stories about Clerkenwell Design Week 2012 »

Here’s some more information from the designers:

‘Collective works’ is a production process which is just fully functioning when people pay attention to the producing machine. Reacting to its audience, the process translates the flow of people into an object. The resulting outcome varies in colour and size just like the level of interest is varying during the time of production.

As soon as one person is coming close and looks at the machine, the production process is started: A wooden 24mm wide veneer-strip is pulled through a glue basin and slowly coiled up around a 20mm thick wooden base. Since the turning platform with the base moves downwards the veneer strip slowly builds up a basket. A mould is not needed since the material supports itself and does not collapse when being coiled up. As soon as somebody else joins to look at the process, colour is added via a marker onto the veneer.

The interaction is possible due to sensors in the frame of the machine. If one sensor is activated/one person is watching, the machine starts winding. When two are activated, the marker with a light tone colour is pressed to the veneer to colour it. The third person results in one more marker with a gradiently darker colour. This goes up to four markers at the same time staining the veneer-strip black.

Depending on the overall interaction time the baskets’ height is defined. The more often somebody stops by to watch the process the higher the outcome gets.

The machine directly reacts to each observer and thus the outcome is as well directly depending on the audience. Every spectator leaves a mark on the object and therefore each basket becomes an unique record of the people’s interest in the object’s production. A basket – a vessel used to collect something, becomes a collection of data by itself. If nobody is interested in the project, it stops producing at all and the final object just does not get made. This can be seen as ‘production on interest’.

‘Collective works’ also questions the relation between man and machine. The audience is turned into workers even though their effort is basically just their time they spend with the machine – but time is what most of us lack. Somehow. Normally many machines in factories just need some technician to monitor the production and suddenly one machine needs some audience to produce colourful outcomes.

Dezeen promotion: this year’s DMY International Design Festival will take place at Airport Berlin Tempelhof from 6 to 10 June.

Above: From This to These by Atelier Yea-Yea

The festival is celebrating its 10th anniversary and will feature work from over 500 designers, firms and institutions, ten of which are shown in this selection of images.

Above: Emotional Dialogue by Svenja Keune and Larissa Müller

As well as showcasing market-ready products, the festival will focus on the processes and concepts that led to the final designs on show.

Above: Imagination Playground by Rockwell Group

For the first time in the festival’s history the DMY International Design Festival will also host the official Designpreis der Bundesrepublik Deutschland design award.

Above: Yesterday Today Tomorrow by Lund University School of Industrial Design

DMY International Design Festival 2012
Airport Berlin Tempelhof, 6 – 10 June

Above: Future Travels by Hanemaai

More details at: www.dmy-berlin.com

Above: The Redefinition of Everyday Objects by Excellent Elephant

Here is some more information from DMY Berlin:

Central Exhibition:

Located at former city airport Berlin Tempelhof, the central exhibition features over 500 international designers, studios and institutions showcasing pioneering products, prototypes and material innovations. Next to marketready products, the exhibition especially sheds light upon the concepts and processes that led to the final designs. Some exhibitors also open up their creative processes and invite visitors to interact with the designs, to take part in production processes or even to develop their own objects. 19 international design schools give insights into the latest design research, while design institutions from all over the globe showcase curated group exhibitions in-cluding numerous country and city presentations, for instance: Creative Design City Nagoya, Vienna Design Week, Premsela – the Netherlands Institute for Design and Fashion, Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design, the City of Poznań or dicenJalisco Mexico.

New Talents:

The New Talents, also known as the DMY Youngsters, have been with us since day one, when DMY started out as a small exhibition of experimental design. In this section, young, up-and-coming designers showcase forward-thinking design approaches and research-based works. Since 2010, the IKEA Stiftung facilitates the New Talents platform as its main supporter. As the exhibition space and participation fee is kept affordable, young designers, students and graduates are able to exhibit their future-oriented works and share their knowledge with the public.

Above: Gravity Stool by Jólan Van Der Wiel

Symposium: Designing Business

In the light of current economic crises, environmental challenges and demographic shifts, the focus of this year’s symposium is concerned with the development of new ideas and practices in the context of global business. Design and design processes can assume a key role in solving complex problems posed by a world on the move. Designing Business is less concerned with the design’s market success than with »design thinking« and the changing role of the designer shaping economic processes and social change.

Open Talks:

In the speakers’ corner of the festival, selected participants as well as designers, journalists, entrepreneurs and experts from different fields present open lectures at the central exhibition. The Open Talks offer a forum to present new concepts, recent projects and alternative business models. The Symposium as well as the Open Talks are conceived and hosted by newthinking communications GmbH and DMY.

Above: Agri–Expo Yunlin by Farmer’s Creativity

DMY Award:

Acknowledging outstanding and exceptional works, DMY yearly awards the most forward-thinking concepts and approaches among all festival submissions in cooperation with Bauhaus Archive / Museum of Design, Berlin. The international festival jury, consisting of Werner Aisslinger, Dr. Annemarie Jaeggi, Jerszy Seymour and Jurgen Bey, has already preselected ten works to be nominated for this year’s DMY Award. The three winners will be announced at an evening Award Ceremony at the festival’s central venue on Friday, June 8. This year, an additional award will particularly honor the best presentation by a design school, academy or university.

Designpreis der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

For the first time, DMY will also host the official German design award Designpreis der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in 2012. Considered as Germany’s most prestigious design prize, it is awarded by the Ministry of Economics and Technology since 1969 honoring excellence in product and communication design. For the first time, all submissions will be exhibited at Airport Berlin Tempelhof during the festival.

Above: Mobile Gastfreundschaft by Chmara Rosinke

Nightshift: Long Night of the Design Studios

Another first this year is presented by DMY and the designers’ network CREATE Berlin: Nightshift – a long night of open design studios. In the evening of Thursday, June 7, the city’s studios and ateliers will keep their doors open inviting visitors to product launches, concerts and studio tours. Visitors can meet the designers and gain insights into their work processes and creative environments.

Satellites:

During the course of the entire festival contemporary design branches out into the city: galleries, museums and design institutions all over Berlin host design-related satellite exhibitions and events. Bauhaus Archive / Museum of Design, Berlin exhibits Chairs without Legs, UDK’s designtransfer focuses on design that improves life with their exhibition DO GOOD, while the exhibition Helsinki FRESH showcases design from Helsinki at Direktorenhaus Berlin – just three of the numerous stops that invite festival visitors to go out and explore the city. With our most comprehensive central exhibition to date, four consecutive days of programs and events, and over 80 external venues throughout Berlin, we hope to have compiled a worthy anniversary edition of our festival. Thank you for celebrating 10 years of DMY with us.

Above: Knitted Army by Andrea Brena

DMY International Design Festival 2012
Airport Berlin Tempelhof, June 6 – 10

More details at: www.dmy-berlin.com

Designed to mend or customise anything, the substance has the consistency of modelling clay when it’s fresh from the packet but cures at room temperature over 24 hours to become a tough, flexible, heat resistant and waterproof rubber.

Examples of some of the most original uses of the product are featured on the company’s blog.

Surgu is based in the east London borough of Hackney and you can see all our stories about the company here.

The interview was filmed as part of our Dezeen Space series last autumn.

Milan 2012: London designers Doshi Levien have designed an armchair and sofa for Italian brand Moroso that’s inspired by Modernist architect Le Corbusier and the Indian city of Chandigarh that he masterplanned in the 1950s.

The sofa consists of large upholstery pieces, covered in leather or fabric, sitting within a delicate steel frame.

Doshi Levien have also designed a Chandigharh-inspired fabric pattern for the sofa as well as a series of coffee tables to compliment the collection.

Their work was displayed at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in April.

See all our stories about Milan 2012 here, plus photos on Facebook and Pinterest.

See more by Doshi Levien on Dezeen »
See more about Moroso on Dezeen »

Here’s some more information from Doshi Levien:

Chandigarh Sofas and tables for Moroso.

The city of Chandigarh in India, known for the architecture by Le Corbusier, is the subject and name of the new collection of sofas by Doshi Levien for Moroso.

The principles of modernism, apparently totally unrelated to the city of Chandigarh yet deeply rooted in its identity, have inspired Nipa and Jonathan in the creation of a quintessentially modern seating collection, with a contemporary approach.

“For us the Chandigarh sofa is the coming together of modernity, sensuality, graphics and eccentric qualities”, claim the Anglo-Indian designer couple.

The Chandigarh sofa is soft and comfortable yet at the same time compact, visually slim and lightweight. The seat is in moulded foam and rests on a frame in iron like a precious stone set in a ring.

” The covers are in leather or fabric with a printed pattern designed by Doshi & Levien which pays homage to the memory of the city of Chandigarh.

A series of tables compliment the Chandigarh collection, further enriching the architectural material palette using a combination of glass, terrazzo, polished metal and tubular steel.

Clerkenwell Design Week 2012: Clerkenwell Design Week is underway and visitors to the main venue arrive through an archway clad in 20,000 wooden hexagons by London designer Giles Miller.

The installation is positioned inside the gates of former merchant’s warehouse the Farmiloe Building at 34 St John Street.

Although each laser-cut wooden component is identical in size, they’s set at different angles to catch the light and depict architectural detailing and lettering that’s similar to the Victorian stone facade outside.

Miller also created a bar covered in swirling yellow tiles for last year’s event.

Dezeen Watch Store is hosting a pop-up at the Farmiloe Building until Thursday 24 May – more details here.

Photography is by Petr Krejci.

The text below is from Miller:

Giles Miller Studio has created the entrance to Clerkenwell Design Week in the form of a timber archway made up of 20,000 angled wooden pixels. The archway sits inside the original concrete arches of the Farmiloe building, a 150 year old warehouse that has become the hub of the Clerkenwell Design Week.

The Clerkenwell Archway has been built from thousands of hexagonal pieces of laser-cut timber, set on wedges and angled to give differing shades and create light-based pixelation. The surface has been manipulated to show classic architectural detail and reference the original detail of the building, but also to show a contrasting geometric pattern in the centre of the installation. Each of the pixels has been hand-stuck to their individual 20 degree wedge, and then stuck in turn to the walnut veneered surface.

The concept of pixelating the reflection of light has become the main focus of Giles Miller Studio, which strives to develop new surface finishes that incorporate not only texture and depth, but also the ability to represent graphics, pattern or any image that a client might request. The studio also used their own in-house laser-cutting facility, Beam laser cutting to cut the walnut-veneered material, which was supplied by UV Group veneers, one of the worlds leading veneer suppliers who are based in Loughton, East London.

London-based design practice Giles Miller Studio develops a range of innovative surface materials for use in interior and retail design projects. The studio is based in Spitalfields and uses the medium of pixelated light reflection to generate imagery and graphics to suit individual projects and client requests.

The archway, which was originally intended to sit outside in the external corridor of the Farmiloe Building, but now acts as a second layer to the buildings internal archway and functions as the entrance to the event, which will see some 25,000 visitors over the next three days. This is the second year running that the studio has created an installation using angled surface pixelation for the event; last years bright yellow tiled bar-front was situated in the old garage on Clerkenwell Road.