News: a nominee for the Design Museum's Design of the Year award has caused controversy by presenting 3D-printed copies of two of the other finalists' work.

Antwerp-based designers Unfold presented replicas of projects by fellow nominees Phil Cuttance and PostlerFerguson as part of their Kiosk 2.0 project that went on show at the London museum yesterday.

"Some people have reacted very strongly to it," said Daniel Charny, a curator who nominated Unfold's project for the exhibition. "This is part of what's going to happen with 3D printing. Is it a cheap fake or is it a new piece? When is it okay, when is it not okay?"

Kiosk 2.0 is a mobile 3D printing laboratory modelled on Berlin sausage-vending carts. The replicas were displayed on the cart alongside copies of design classics including Marcel Wanders' Egg Vase, Alvar Aalto's vase and Charles and Ray Eames' wooden blackbird.

Unfold's Claire Warnier and Dries Verbruggen created versions of Cuttance's Faceture Vase and PostlerFerguson's Papafoxtrot toys by watching online movies about how the products were made and downloading drawings from the internet.

"A lot of the classical stuff like the Eames bird, you can just download," says Verbruggen. "A lot of designers are putting a lot of information about their designs online. A lot of brands, especially in furniture, publish all the digital files because they want architects to use their renderings so they specify their furniture. They don't understand that a lot of that is production data. You can just replicate it."

To generate their version of the Faceture Vase, Unfold watched an online video of Cuttance making the product and then wrote a computer script to achieve the same effect with a digital file.

"We didn't have access to the vases so we couldn't scan them," said Verbruggen. "So we reverse-engineered them. Phil has this really nice movie where he details the whole process, so we started counting how many triangles he uses, how many cuts he makes. We translated that into a computer script and we made a programme that generates them."

Cuttance makes the vases by hand-scoring a sheet of plastic with a triangular pattern, then rolling the sheet into a tube and manipulating it by hand to create a unique shape. This is then used as a mould for a vase, which is cast in resin.

After his initial surprise that his design had been replicated, Cuttance feels that Unfold's project proves how much harder it is to copy craft objects compared to mass-produced items. "In trying to copy my vases they proved what I've been trying to achieve - that a slightly different product comes out each time," he said. "In craft there's an inherent value that is hard to copy."

The process of creating versions of PostlerFergurson's wooden boats was much simpler: Unfold simply downloaded PDF drawings of the products. After that "an intern modelled it in a couple of days," Verbruggen says, adding that PostlerFerguson were "kind of flattered" to see their object replicated at the museum.

"This is a project that's both critical and speculative," said Charny. "It questions intellectual property, the ego of the designer, authorship and authenticity".

Verbruggen said: "The kiosk is a platform for us to learn what are the characteristics of digital design and digital manufacturing and how does it differ from physical design. It's about our role as designers in a post-digital era. We want people to see opportunities, not only threats."

He added: "We want to visualise things that are brewing up on the fringes and put them in a recognisable scenario."

The Designs of the Year exhibition is at the Design Museum in London until 7 July. The winner will be announced on 17 April.

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Congratulations to the winners! Anna Ling from the UK, Ying Tong Tan from the UK, Lesley Bain from the UK, Dorna Eshrati from Iran, Tim Bastian from France, Dóra Balla from Hungary, Jessica Helmandollar from the USA, Marta Garcia from Spain, Anthony M Cooper from the USA, Tom Chung from Canada, Lee Baird from the USA, Lua Jin Wei from Singapore, Antoine Lesur from France, Olle Gudmundsson from Sweden, Jonathan Russell from the UK, Laurentiu Popescu from Canada, Zoltán Bozsik from Hungary, Jaco Kalfsbeek from the Netherlands, Delia Jerca from Romania and Nicola Antolini from Switzerland all won a Papafoxtrot satellite model.

Above: Speckt-R satellite model

The five different models depict the following satellites:

» Speckt-R - orbital radio telescope
» ORS-1 - American reconnaissance satellite
» GEOTAIL - observes the Earth's magnetosphere
» Dragon - shuttles crew and cargo to the International Space Station
» Cygnus - delivery and collection vessel for larger spacecraft

Above: Cygnus satellite model

Each model comes flat-packed in a box that includes assembly instructions and information about the satellite.

Above: Dragon satellite model

The visual identity, packaging and branding were designed by London firm Postlerferguson.

Above: GEOTAIL satellite model

Each satellite model costs £20, or the whole set can be bought for £80 from the Papafoxtrot website should you not be lucky enough to win.

Above: ORS-1 satellite model

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This competition is now closed. Twenty 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.

The information below is from Postlerferguson:

Postlerferguson is proud to announce the second series of products designed for Papafoxtrot London! We have selected the 5 most iconic unmanned spacecraft circling the earth and transformed them into Papafoxtrot's iconic design language which we developed with our series of wooden cargo vessels a year ago. From an interplanetary garbage collection to a future commercial spacebus to Mars these amazing machines are making the world go round day and night.

Postlerferguson has been responsible for the visual identity, packaging design of the series as well as the art direction, web page and brand system continuing our ongoing collaboration with Papafoxtrot.

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models by Papafoxtrot to be won appeared first on Dezeen.

If carrying a wet papery packet home puts you off fresh fish from the counter at your local supermarket, London designers PostlerFerguson have designed a series of sleek sleeves to promote the less endangered types.

"Supermarkets are expanding their fresh fish offerings to include more sustainable species like gurnard, mackerel and skate. These fish are cheaper and just as tasty, but customers often shy away from them because they are unfamiliar and occasionally just plain ugly," says Martin Postler.

Made from layers of polyethylene, the packs are resealable, airtight and can be topped up with ice to keep everything fresh until you're ready to cook it.

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Competition: Dezeen and toy company Papafoxtrot have teamed up to offer readers the chance to win one of six hand crafted wooden boats, each worth more than £100.

Papafoxtrot was founded by Ian Ferguson and Martin Postler of London design consultancy Postlerferguson.

The toy boats are designed in the shape of the most famous cargo ships in the world. A three-colour boat with container blocks stacked on top is in shape of the longest cargo ship, Emma Maersk.

The flat single-colour one is in the shape of the TI Asia cargo ship that used to carry 3 million barrels of oil.

The four half-spheres on the third product represent the gas containers on the largest gas cargo ship, Arctic Princess, which use to carry nearly 150,000 cubic meters of liquified natural gas.

This competition is now closed.

Congratulations to the winners! Ricardo Leon from Denmark, Viliam Zilinek from Slovakia, Mark Noad from the UK, Kevin Hirth from the USA, Antoine Chatiliez from France and Filip Strebeyko from Sweden all won a wooden boat.

Subscribe to our newsletter, get our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter for details of future competitions.

The information that follows is from Papafoxtrot:

Papafoxtrot

Papa Foxtrot plays with today!

Our wooden toys bring the amazing machines and global systems driving today's world into the home. Hand-crafted wood and a colourful, reduced aesthetic imbue Papa Foxtrot products with an engaging tactility and playful optimism.

Papa Foxtrot is an international organisation, working with a network of designers and manufacturers around the world. The same global systems that inspire our toys allow us to utilize the best craftsmen and sustainable material suppliers in order to create products of the highest quality.

For everyone who ever sighed at the site of a container ship, swooned over a satellite or wondered where electricity comes from: we make our toys for you.

Papafoxtrot is a wooden toy and lifestyle brand founded by Ian Ferguson and Martin Postler of London based design consultancy Postlerferguson. We think that wooden toys are great so is the world we are living in. Our wooden toys bring the amazing machines and global systems driving today's world into the home. Hand-crafted wood and a colourful, reduced aesthetic imbue Papa Foxtrot products with an engaging tactility and playful optimism. Our products are manufactured in small exclusive series and we work with our customers on bespoke uniquely designed special editions and seasonal collections.

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by Papafoxtrot to be won appeared first on Dezeen.

Vienna Design Week 2011: London designers PostlerFerguson have created a temporary Viennese coffee house for Vienna Design Week, which continues until Sunday.

They designed all the furniture to be flat-packed and flown to Vienna from their London studio, then slotted together on site.

Dark furniture and golden, reflective panels reference the opulence of traditional cafes on a temporary scale.

Cafe Sonja was one of five Carte Blanche projects at Vienna Deign Week, which invites designers to create urban scenarios in forgotten spaces.

See all our stories about Vienna Design Week here and all our stories about PostlerFerguson here.

Here are some more details from PostlerFerguson:

Cafe Sonja is a temporary cafe we designed for the 2011 Vienna Design Week in the second district of Vienna. Drawing on the unique aesthetics and feel of the traditional Viennese coffee house we designed a space which uses dark colours, complex, interlocking structures and high reflective gold surfaces to create an almost Brothers Grimm like atmosphere.

All furniture and fittings where produced by us in London, flat-packed and flown to Vienna where we set up the Cafe within 3 days.

Cafe Sonja welcomes guests from the 29.09.2011 until 10.10.2011 and operated by the legendary Cafe Drechsler.

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