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Electrolux Design Lab - Call For Entries for 2009

Electrolux Design Lab
Design Lab is an annual global design competition open to undergraduate and graduate industrial design students who are invited to present innovative ideas for household appliances of the future.

The brief for this year's competition: Designs for the next 90 years

Electrolux Design Lab 2009 invites undergraduate and graduate industrial design students around the world to create home appliances that will shape how people prepare and store food, wash clothes, and do dishes over the next nine decades.

The design ideas should address key consumer insights such as being adaptive to time and space, provide learning and allow for individualization.

Deadline: May 31, 2009
Finals: London, September 24, 2009
Prizes:
•1st prize 5,000 Euro and a six-month paid internship at one of the Electrolux global design centers
•2nd prize 3,000 Euro
•3rd prize 2,000 Euro

Need some inspiration?
Here's last year's winning design, The Flatshare:

above: Stefan Buchberger, from the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria, was chosen winner of the Electrolux Design Lab 2008 competition for inventing Flatshare.

Register for the competition here

Sneak Peek at Edward van Vliet's Sushi Collection For Moroso

Not yet on the market, Moroso's newest collection of seating, pouffes and rugs is named the Sushi Collection. This special combination of different elements is indeed the key characteristic of this collection, which unites simple, clean lines with exquisite patchwork embroidery, evocative of Japanese or Moroccan moods, and embroidered, ultra-modern geometric patterns.

The pieces, as well as the fabrics in the collection have been designed by Edward van Vliet.

Above: Dutch designer Edward van Vliet

Edward van Vliet is a Dutch interior designer who started off as a fabric designer before moving into interior design and large-scale furnishing projects, including Derlon Hotel and NL Hotel in Amsterdam.

He worked with Patrizia Moroso on this collection (shown above). She describes her perception of the creativity of a designer she has known for years: "Edward has a very light, free and easy approach to designing, and he also has a talent for amalgamating very different elements. The contrast highlights their differences and, as in life, it becomes the most attractive and interesting side of things".

The Sushi collection is a sophisticated wrapping concept inspired by universal layers, found also in nature and architecture.

The Karmacoma from this collection is a sofa with a hard shell, medium firmness support pillows and comfortable pillows on the surface. Each layer distinguished by a different sort of upholstery:

The donut pouffe incorporates some of the same geometric fabrics:

The Sushi seat

The Juju seat

Lighting
The large and small geospere Rontonton lamps are three dimensional geometric bodies made out of plastic and aluminum perforated sandwich sheet. The light radiates through the perforated sheets adding an additional layer onto all other designs.

Rugs
The Spirocube rug is another interpretation of modernistic folklore. It shows a two dimensional pattern of geometric spiral figures.

The Sushi light carpet for Moroso incorporates the Carp design seen on their sushi seat:

The full Sushi Collection will be previewed in the Moroso showrooms in Amsterdam on the 23rd of February, in Milan on the 25th of February and in Miami on the 5th of March.

Moroso Spa
Via Nazionale 60
33010 Udine
Italy
Phone +39-0432-577111
Fax +39-0432-570761

www.moroso.it
images of the collection courtesy of Moroso and Edward van Vliet

A Peek At Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now

This exhibition, organized by Carol Squiers and Vince Aletti, presents the most innovative fashion photography of the last few years, from photographers who draw on a range of influences, including art, sexuality, narrative, digital media, and youth culture. It also considers the impact of graphic design on the way that fashion photography is presented. Along with original photographic prints, the exhibition features hundreds of tear sheets and magazine covers from both mainstream and independent publications.

Lagerfeld laughingly has said: “Coco Chanel had an affair with Stravinsky, mine was with a guitar."

The 2009 Spring Summer Guitar By Chanel: Debuted at the Paris Spring 2009 Fashion Week, the guitar is a black acoustic instrument, with Chanel discretely spelled out across the top of the neck and the classic double CCs can be seen in the guitar's resonant cavity.

The strap is striped in brown, white and black with intertwining C’s embossed in leather where the strap attaches. The most elegant piece of all is the guitar’s case, in Chanel’s signature quilted pattern and in stylish white.