Photo © Manuel Rio Casali Today I want to show a design made from a material you just want to hold in your hands and feel what it is like. The material is cork an there’re not to many great designs around using cork. But look at ‘POPCORK‘, made from expanded cork and designed by Tania da Cruz.
Expanded cork was developed in the mid 1990s to provide a 100% natural insulation material and recyclable, using parts of the cork bark that were not previously used. It is a fantastic insulation material as the expanded cells contain 50% air and are also waterproof and fireproof.
Photo © Manuel Rio Casali Tania da Cruz was born in Lisbon (Portugal), grew up in Brussels (Belgium) and finally landed in Italy.  From Aug 2011 to Nov 2011 she worked at Marcel Wanders’ studio in Amsterdam. She exhibit her first collection at SaloneSatellite at Milano Design Week in 2011.​​​​​​​​​​ And this year she exhibited at the SaloneSatellite where she was the 1º prize winner of the Satellite Award 2013 with ‘BRAQUE‘. Her ‘Modular acoustic tile for sound absorbtion’ also uses expanded cork.

Design by Tania da Cruz

Photo © dutchDZINE At dutchDZINE there have been several posts about the Tortona Design Week 2013. And like the great Steve Jobs used to say, there’s ‘one more thing‘. This time it’s not about one design or one designer. No it’s about the Dutch brand Moooi. At via Savona Moooi transformed an empty space of 1.700 m2 into a place with small living rooms to show their entire collection of new designs. It’s quite something to walk through the exhibition and to see all these interior squares. This time Moooi co-founder Marcel Wanders teamed up with another creative star and friend. He asked renowned photographer Erwin Olaf to join the Moooi presentation with a grand selection of his portfolio, Grief, Fall, Keyhole and Berlin.
Photo © dutchDZINE And this collaboration resulted in an unique and fascinating experience. I was already a fan of Erwin Olaf and Marcel Wanders, but to see their work in this setting was something else. The combination between the design objects, the layout of the interiors with those big photographs, height 4,5 meters, hanging as a wall gave me the feeling of standing in a living room instead of and exhibition with great music. I can really say that I was mesmerized, I was in another world where everything was beautiful and inspiring. The patterns, playfulness, colours, details and materials giving the collection a stunning grandeur. Another nice touch is the way the presentation makes use of mannequins by Hans Boodt.
The Moooi exhibition shows work by Marcel Wanders, Studio Job, Neri & Hu, Nika Zupanc, Moooi Works/Bart Schilder, Joost van Bleiswijk, Edward van Vliet, Bertjan Pot, Raimond Puts, ZMIK (Mattias Mohr & Rolf Indermuhle) and Lorenza Bozzoli.
More photos at the ‘See more photos’ link and if you want a vitual experience of what the exhibition was like, head on over to the 360 panorama of the presentation during Salone del Mobile 2013 at Via Savona 56. A beautiful tour. See more photos

Design by Moooi

Photo © e27 Another design I came across at the Salone del Mobile is a fantastic furniture collection. It has such nice lines and is very elegant and sturdy at the same time. It also reminds me of playing by making cuts in a sheet of paper and trying to stretch it or you might have seen it in a bag design. And that’s exactly what the designers did. This furniture collection is called ‘Loll 2D/3D‘ and is designed by e27, a design studio based in Germany.
Photo © e27 “The idea of Loll is to transfer the idea of stretching metal from 2D to 3D into furniture solutions. Stretching the laser cut steel sheet up to maximal strain creates a static equilibrium. With this simple but ingenious technique, a metal sheet just 3 mm thick has been turned into a lounger, a coffee table and a wardrobe.”
See more photos

Design by e27 | Produced by Pulpo

Photo © dutchDZINE Today is a special day for me, it’s my birthday, so time for something different. Yup, another year has gone by and a lot of things have happened. Blogging got more and more exciting and I’ve found myself getting very passioned about upcycle design. This resulted in another blog, upcycleDZINE. I’ve started making graphic paintings, upcycled some furniture by painting it with chalkpaint® and finally I’ve made two upcycle designs myself, two lampshades.
There’s still so much design I want to find and show on my blogs and I’ve still got to discover and learn how to do things concerning running a blog and using my creativity. And that’s where my painting ‘Dream Big and Dare to Fail‘ comes in.
Most of the time when I [and lots of people] want to try new things or start a new design, I’m afraid to actually start. Why? Well, what if the design or work doesn’t turn out the way I hoped it would be. It’s easier to quit than to go on. The result, nothing gets done, nothing happens. And that’s actually the real failure.
Photo © dutchDZINE That’s why I took this well known quote, “Dream Big and Dare to Fail”, by explorer Norman Vaughan: “My advice for young explorers, or anyone, is dream big and dare to fail. If you don’t try to accomplish your dream, you fail before you start.”
So whenever I start to have doubts about pursuing a goal I just look at my painting and know there’s only one thing to do and that’s to just KEEP on TRYING!

Painting by Gilbert de Rooij

Photo © Layla Mehdi Pour Some daily objects are always seen as a set, the are a pair and are designed as such. I’m talking about ‘salt and pepper’. They come in so many shapes and materials. Usually they come in a cylinder. But when I saw these ones at the recent Temporary Museum for New Design [Superstudio 13] during the Tortona Design Week I was attrected by the simplicity of the shape.
The design is called ‘FëlFël‘ and is by industrial designer Layla Mehdi Pour. “For designing, I often find inspiration in some elements of the poetic traditions of my culture of origin. Then I try to elaborate those ancient suggestions into a modern and sometimes a bit abstract shape.”
Photo © Layla Mehdi Pour This salt and pepper set isn’t just simple and ergonomic, but is also designed for visually impaired people as well. FëlFël is made by Italian handcrafted ceramic, in three colors: black, white and red, with matte or glossy finish. It’ll certainly give a nice touch to your dinner table.

Design by Layla Mehdi Pour

Photo © Zollanvari In the short history of dutchDZINE there have been only two post about a carpet or rug. Light carpet by Johanna Hyrkas and the Wood Wood rug by YLdesign. This time an award winning collection produced by Zollanvari and designed by SoFarSoNear. The collection is called ‘Trompe L’Oeil‘ and is another collaboration with the Milan-based designers and Zollanvari. SoFarSoNear’s idea was to inject a little Italian style and combine the traditional handcraft with the motifs of the Italian iconography.
Photo © Zollanvari Produced by hand in Persia, the Kilim carpets are produced by tightly interweaving the warp and weft strands of the weave to produce a flat surface with no pile. SoFarSoNear wanted to use icons from their country, such as Baroque churches or statues of ancient Rome. The collection Trompe l’Oeil was awarded last January as Best Innovation by the jury of the prestigious Carpet Awards at Domotex, Hannover.
Kilim’s are flat tapestry-woven carpets or rugs produced from the Balkans to Pakistan. Kilims can be purely decorative or can function as prayer rugs. Recently-made kilims are popular floor-coverings in Western households. [WikiPedia]
Most of the time people use the phrase ‘one picture tells more than a thousand words’. I can tell you that the images in this post are still not telling enough. When you have the chance to see the rugs in real life, you’ll understand why they won an award.

Design by SoFarSoNear | Produced by Zollanvari

Photo © Gen Ishikawa Design Another design I came across during my visit to the Tortona Design Week. It’s the “GI Lamp Pendant” by Gen Ishikawa. A beautiful and elegant design. “The lamp with natural taste is made joining two traditionally separated woodworking techniques; mould pressing and veneer production will provide the extraordinary possibility to control the visual appearance of the wood surface texture.”
Photo © dutchDZINE The beauty of this design is the way the veneer ‘snake’ curls around. And secondly the thin character of the veneer. These two aspects result in stunning aesthetics.

Design by Gen Ishikawa

Photo © Elena Rogna Design The product I’m showing you today is a very small and incredible useful design. When I visited DesignersBlock during the Tortona Design Week in Milan I noticed a little stand selling a tiny black box. The box looks like a chocolate or soap box. But when I saw what was inside it was clear that I was wrong. Inside are 4 small items made of high quality recyclable plastic.
Photo © Elena Rogna Design The item is called “tic®“, designed by Karolina Räntfors from Sweden. She’s an industrial designer who noticed that traditional needle and thread methods were not needed to fasten shirt buttons. Her concept and design landed however, like so many others before it, on her drawing board. Then whilst Karolina studied towards her Masters’ degree she took the idea out from the draw, wrote a business plan, and entered one of Sweden’s largest business plan competition. tic® won. After winning she then tamed 3 dragons in the Swedish version of BBC success show Dragons Den. In Sweden tic® has been embraced by the high end retail clothing sector as well as exclusive hotels, design boutiques and corporate merchandisers. Thousands of Swedes have used tic®. It replaces the needle and thread. Take a look at this video to see what tic® is all about. I think it’s a fantastic idea and the great thing about it is that looking at the attached tic®, you don’t notice the difference with a thread. You have to look very closely to see and especially feel the difference. The only thing missing is different colors. However, white and black will do the trick in many occasions.

Design by Karolina Räntfors

Photo © Elena Rogna Design Chairs and stools come in all different shapes and sizes. Some designs have the shape of a body or part of it. For instance, take a look at ‘HIM & HER‘ by Fabio Novembre or more extreme ‘Mother Mine & All of Us‘ by Ana Fatia.
The featured stool design also reminds me of a part of a body, but not any body. No a very old and famous one. I don’t want to say person, because I’m not talking about a person. I’m talking about a cartoon. The stools name is ‘Betty‘ by Elena Rogna from Italy, her latest creation. Betty is named after the famed cartoon of the nearly-roaring thirties, Betty Boop.
“Stool Betty reminds of the heels of that early, a bit funny pin-up, and of every curvy line of her stiletto shoes. Betty is an everyday object, and even a sculpture: its legs have a modernist flavour, the seat on the other hand is stubby and rounded, as a whole, self-ironic and glam, as well as the pretty face of the Max Fleischer’s character.”
Photo © Elena Rogna Design Betty is an experimental model yet, a prototype, and Elena’s searching for someone who believes in its project. It would be a shame if this design wouldn’t go into production.

Design by Elena Rogna Design

Photo © dutchDZINE At the Salone del Mobile was a special section for lighting design, Euroluce. The biennial Euroluce, at its 27th edition, is the most important event worldwide concerning light systems with its 4 pavilions dedicated. Incredible how many lighting exhibitors showing all kinds of new design.
One design that I thought was really stunning was a lighting object called ‘CAENA‘ by Abate Zanetti. For those who don’t know Abate Zanetti, The Abate Zanetti School of Glass in Murano, currently Abate Zanetti Srl, heir to an ancient glass institution, the Scuola di Disegno per Vetrai (Drawing School for Glassworkers) founded in 1862 by the abbot Vincenzo Zanetti, is now the place where past and future of the art of glassmaking come together. The Centre is equipped for all the classic Murano glass working techniques: furnace, lampworking, fusing, and glass grinding. There are two souls of Abate Zanetti: education and production.
Photo © dutchDZINE Well and this ‘institute’ made this remarkable and stunning lighting design. CAENA is a sort of chain formed by links. These links are coupled to each other with a magnetic point to connect the electricity. Each lighting link has LEDs at the end of its shape. The light produced by the chain or even a whole curtain is available in different colors and can also be dimmed.
I must say, standing in front of the CAENA was pretty impressive, especially when you have a link in your hand. That’s when you feel and notice how beautifully made this design actually is. 
Photo © dutchDZINE

Design by Abate Zanetti