Tanya Aguiñiga Sees Furniture A Little Differently Than Most

Tanya Aguiñiga (b.1978) is a Los Angeles based furniture designer/maker raised in Tijuana, Mexico. Tanya’s work is informed by border experiences: the interconnectedness of societies, the beauty in struggle and the celebration of culture. She uses furniture as a way to translate emotions into a three dimensional objects and tell stories trough color and touch. Her work encourages users to reconsider the objects they use on a daily basis by creating work that explores an objects’ unseen aspect, such as half chairs that rely on the wall to function and whose image is only complete as its shadow is cast upon the wall.

Hand-felted Folding Chairs:



The Lowrider stools:



The Modular Lounge:



She has also dedicated much of her time to using art as a vehicle for community empowerment. She has been a member of Border Art Workshop BAW/TAF, a bi-national artist collaborative for ten years. Through BAW/TAF she helped to build and run a community center in an impoverished area of Tijuana built on trash from the US. For the 6 years she worked there, she focused on bringing national and international attention to the community’s plight through arts only based programs.

The P Tree:


The Hole Table:



Seating trays:



In the US, she worked on diversifying audiences through arts education at the San Diego Museum of Art and at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum through outreach programs. She has also done a great deal of work for migrant rights through art installations across Mexico and the US.

The Embrace Lounge:




Tanya is now working on ways to combine furniture design and community activism. Her formal education includes a BA in Furniture Design from San Diego State University and an MFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design.

The Moño Table:


She was recently awarded a prestigious United States Artists Fellowship and was named a USA Target Fellow in the field of Crafts and Traditional Arts. Her work has been exhibited from Mexico City to Milan and included in major international publications such as Wallpaper magazine and “Pure Design, Objects of Desire” published by Monsa Editions in Spain.


Above: A permanent installation of her work will be part of the new Children’s Museum of San Diego as a “Texture Forest” for toddlers, scheduled to open in May 2008.



See more at her website.
Contact the artist here.

Bigger Than A Breadbox And Much Cuter: weeHouses by Alchemy Architecture

weeHouses are super cute, efficiently designed, boxy, little shippable pre-fab homes by Alchemy Architecture. They make great vacation homes, second homes, work or office space, starter homes, even multiple housing developments.

Run by Alchemy architects in St. Paul, Minn., weeHouse streamlines the entire process. Prices start at around $75,000 for a 341 square-foot studio, and go to about $320,000 for a bi-level 2,000 square-foot, three-bedroom, permits and delivery included. (You provide the land, septic or sewer hook up, electricity, landscaping.) You can even add to an existing weeHouse as your family, or budget, expands.

Each standard weeHouse comes ready-made. And yes, they have electricity. weeHouse standard floors are 1x4 tongue and groove bamboo (light or dark finish available); all interior walls are white gypsum board. They have integrated a curtain track into the perimeter ceiling as a standard feature that allows for privacy curtains or wall texture panels. Standard weeHouse bathrooms have tile floors and showers.

Each weeHouse also includes floor-to-ceiling glass doors, container siding (cement fiberboard with vertical battens), EPDM cold roof, tongue and groove bamboo flooring, primed gypsum board ceilings and walls, electrical and plumbing systems, fixtures, bathroom tile, cabinets, and the kitchen sink.

The standard homes are just the beginning, they have many custom homes and what they call not-so-wee homes as well. With tons of options, sizes, configurations, prices, appliance choices, tile and cabinet options, radiant heat flooring and more!


Some things come standard, some don't, you can see it all for yourself at their well designed site which includes many 3D renderings, interactive tools and all the info you could ever want.

To whet your wee appetite, here are a few of the weeHouses worth peeking at, with images and text taken directly from their site:

Arado weeHouse:





Stephanie Arado, violinist with the Minnesota Orchestra and her 2 year old son, Amery enjoy off-grid living in the original weeHouse. The exterior is clad in cemetitious siding painted with an oxidizing paint. The interior is completely wrapped in douglas fir, and features, floor to ceiling Andersen glazing as well as Ikea and custom built-ins by Alchemy.

Cawaja weeHouse
Time Out House: Cawaja Beach, Ontario, Canada:




Above: The 1200sf 3BR, 2BA house was designed as a weeHouse prefab prototype based on a 14' width. A common basement links separate buildings to aid in privacy and heating flexibility. Materials: stained pine Corncrib and oxidized copper green-painted Container siding, red pine interiors with copper painted walls, IKEA cabinets, storefront glazing.

Manilow weeHouse, Burlington, WI:





This 28' square two-module house consists of an open porch and an enclosed room with a woodstove and kitchen wall. The porch features a custom pivoting ipe door and a bug screen fabricated in the form of a operable weighted curtain with magnetic catches. Blue and yellow Container Siding with ipe floors inside and out, eucalyptus cabinets. A "folding" deck and dock in ipe and rubbed silver paint finishes the composition.

Marfa weeHouse, Marfa, TX:




Above: The house will serve as a simple retreat space for the fairly remote site outside the small arts colony in West Texas. It is the first of three weeHouse modules that are planned for the site. The module will arrive complete with an outdoor shed and a fully finished high-end interior and exterior, leaving only utility hookups, decks and sun-shielding canopies to be installed on-site.

McGlasson weeHouse, Two Harbors, MN.:




Above: The 756 sf 2BR, 1BA house is configured from a weeOne + extra BR on the roof with rooftop deck. Site-built stair way. Red siding inspired by local wood cabins and the image of a "tugboat" sitting atop the hill. Materials: stained pine Corncrib siding, maple floors, IKEA birch and white cabinets. Cost: $165k soup to nuts.

Saturn weeHouse:


Photos courtesy of George P. Johnson.
Above: This traveling, special narrow 12' wide weeHouse was built as a touring companion to Saturn's new Sky convertible. The weeHouse is an integral part of their marketing campaign linking high-end cutting edge design with their automobile. The weeHouse came 100% complete, and features a special steel frame with forklift pockets and removable casters to allow the house to be easily handled by hand or forklift on standard flatbed trucks, thus significantly reducing shipping costs.

Minneapolis, Minnesota:





Above: This 4 bedroom, 4 bath, 4-box weeHouse is located in Linden Hills on a mature, wooded city lot and contains many standard and custom weeHouse elements. This not-so-weeHouse will serve as a primary residence in an urban context. The 4-box layout celebrates the sculptural and playful quality the weeHouse system with glass end walls to expand the openness of the spaces. The first floor is an open plan wrapped in bamboo, and the 2nd floor is a very efficient 4-square layout.

They sell merchandise with their hip little wee logo and for weeHouse wannabes they sell their cute authentic doorbell:

see weegear here.


Above: The build a wee section isn't quite up and running yet, but it will be soon and you can sign up via e-mail to be notified. In the meantime, they still have pricing info and everything else you could want to know.

Visit their site here.
Or you can download a pdf of their brochure here.

UPDATE: iphone 2.0 rumors: look, apps, release date

Be sure to see the latest ways to pimp that new iphone here.

Updated pics, firmware and more rumors:

*A round up of spy pics on the web. Please note rumors say these pics are most likely fake or doctored:









* another update as of June 6th: Firmware update (thanks to Ryan Block) from Engadget:

All the dirty details:

• Infineon PMB6952 / S-GOLD3 six-band UMTS / HSDPA transceiver (as we'd heard)
  
• Murata LMRX3JCA-479 tri-band amplifier (we're assuming for the 3G)
  
• Sony SP9T antenna switch for GSM / UMTS dual mode
• ARM 1176JZF-S - Main CPU (same as in 1st gen iPhone)
• Skyworks 77427 chip - UMTS / HSDPA tx 1900MHz, rx 2100MHz
• Skyworks 77414 chip - UMTS / HSDPA 1900MHz
• Skyworks 77413 chip - UMTS / HSDPA 850MHz
• Internal build model number: n82ap (1st gen iPhone was model m68ap)
• UMTS Power Saving option - on or off
• Hooks for Global Locate Library (GLL), software that handles A-GPS related commands for the host processor

* Update as of june 1st: New iphone to be 22% thinner:



iPhone Rumors Gone Wild:
Plastic Case Photos, UMTS 'Test' In Austria And Chinese Handwriting Recognition

The difference between iPhones one and two? Speculation. Steve Jobs showed off the original iPhone six months before it shipped. This isn't Apple's usual modus operandi. Usually the company's products are top secret until launch day.

The break with protocol was ostensibly to stop the design being leaked by the FCC approval process (although why this hasn't happened for iPhone 2.0 is still a mystery), but had the side effect of quelling the inevitable rumor-hysteria that would otherwise have overshadowed the launch. Sure, the free publicity would have been great, but as groundbreaking as the iPhone was, it couldn't have lived up to a device dreamed up by bloggers and fanboys.

The Second Coming is different, and shows us exactly what would have happened the first time around if Apple had gone all Secret Squirrel on us. The speculation is going wild. Here is a roundup of what the web says just this week (and we've only reached Tuesday). A lot of it looks like junk, but who knows?

Plastic Case

The picture above comes from Chinese website, WeiPhone. In it we see the much rumored plastic case. At first look, I called "fake", and it might well be. But remember the leaked pictures of the Fat Nano? We commented that it looked ugly, but once we'd seen it, we'd love it. So, while this plastic case might be a mockup, it could equally be a new, uglier incarnation of the iPhone.

And it makes sense for a few reasons. Plastic is lighter and shows less scratches. It also means that the iPhone could be offered in multiple colors (aluminum would do that, too, but the current rear plate would look a little odd). The projection of the bottom looks fine, although those four surrounding holes look like the iPod remote sockets of old. Extra accessory ports? We'll see, but the plastic case seems to be the most consistently reported rumor, with our Bryan Gardiner kicking things off for Gadget Lab back on April 5th. Just one thing calls this into doubt: Apple has been moving away from plastic in a drive to make its products more recyclable (a new MacBook could be fashioned from aluminum, for example).

Specs

You can't ramp up production for a huge product launch without some leaks, even if you're Apple. One such leak is that there is some kind of sensor next to the earpiece. ILounge speculates that this might be a second camera to allow video calls, something we've thought about here on the lab.

To be honest, though, apart from a new camera and a slightly different case, there's not much more to be done to the iPhone on the outside. All the action is on the screen, and changing that needs only a software update, not the retooling of an entire assembly line. Today's iPhone 2.0 software rumor is all about handwriting recognition, something that has been clunkily implemented already by a third party developer. Version 2.0 is said to include Chinese character recognition as well as input for western characters.

These screenshots, from Chinese site Wretch.cc, show the input screen and preferences. The shots look terrible, but if this is indeed beta software we shouldn't take too much from the looks. The worrying part, though, is the name "Kenneth" where the carrier name should be. There are hacks to do this to the phone, but unless Apple is being paranoid and wants to discredit leaked photos (a possibility, certainly) then these pics have the smell of fakery about them. Even so, China is a potential market of two billion, so we won't discount some kind of special support.

UMTS iPhone in Austria

Lastly come the carrier leaks. According to Der Standard, T-Mobile made an official announcement at a press conference in Vienna, saying that a UMTS iPhone will be coming to Austria "soon". Apparently, Austria will be the "testing ground" for the 3G models. Yes, models, plural:

[I]t is also assumed that up to three new models for different target groups on the market.

This last comes from a source inside chip maker Infineon. Der Standard also reports that the 3G iPhone will sell unlocked, and contrary to widespread speculation, will actually be more expensive. Taken with the reports that AT&T will be subsidizing the new handset to the tune of $200, this makes a certain kind of sense. Instead of the subsidy making the iPhone cheaper, it could just be there to keep it at the same price if you sign up for a contract.

The only reality here is that of confusion. Trying to keep up with the rumors and make some kind of sense of them is a full time job (actually, my full time job). I really can't wait for the WWDC conference, the expected launch-pad of iPhone 2.0, after which we can take a brief vacation before the iPhone 3.0 rumors begin.

By Charlie Sorrel for Wired

And, another rumor about actual release date:
Last year around this time speculation was rampant about the launch of the iphone. And it was the fact that AT&T was canceling vacations between June 15th to July 15th that clued the industry in to an approximate time for the launch. It looks like we might be getting the same clue this year.

According to reports, just as last year, AT&T is asking for vacations to be rescheduled, and has said that no other vacations will be approved for the period deemed to be a "heavy selling period," June 15 to July 12.

Now, some are pointing at June 29th, which would be the one year anniversary of the iPhone launch, as the obvious day - but that happens to be a Sunday, so that's probably not likely.

Still, the timing is actually perfect, with WWDC this year running from June 9 - 13.