ArchitectDesign Products

Finally! I found a great post from ArchDaily about some interesting architect designed products at Milan Design Week. This is something I was very excited to see being someone pursuing both architecture and product design. Some of the products look pretty interesting others not so much but I'm just happy to see some content outside of individual architects websites about their products be posted.

So lets dive in take a peek at some of these objects. I'm just going to talk about a few that spark my interest and you can read the full post from ArchDaily here.

What is pictured above is from OMA's Tools for Life product line. What is it exactly? It's clearly three beautiful horizontal bars. That move! They rotate off axis to form whatever the user wishes these bars to be: a shelve, a seat, steps, light (that's right they light up too!) Pretty cool and along the same lines of my interest in personal customization. Will we ever see these on display at the local Target I highly doubt but I guess were designed to be manufactured for Knoll, Inc. The other pieces other than the coffee table are nothing special but feel free to check out the line here.

Next up is this chair by nendo, a smaller Japanese architecture firm. What I really like about this minimalist design is not that fact that there is no back on the chair (looks not completely comfortable) but how the back legs reach up and hold the chair along it's back rather than the joint between the back and seat. It is a subtle move that makes the chair stick out to me. It's simple, but there is so much more there, at that non supported joint, holding on for dear life by it's thin vertical supports. The chair is struggling to hold itself up but looks as if it's is lighter than air. Really well done.

Finally let's check out the third contestant Zaha Hadid's auditorium seating. I may not be the most loving critic of Zaha's architecture but she makes some really interesting architectural objects. This may just be a rendering but they look amazing. What I really love about these seats are their asymmetry. Now most people may say that they prefer symmetry, in fact our brains are programmed to love symmetry (fun fact: we find my symmetrical faces more attractive) but there when it comes to architecture and design symmetry it reminds me of classical European buildings or our capital buildings; large baroque, overly ornate buildings that are great for their time and symbols of power but just not attractive in todays world. These chairs, in their asymmetrical form and repeated for an auditorium just seem to work. Now let's just hope in reality they can function.