Transportation Design at the Greener Gadgets conference

Yves Behar has designed a "hackable" solar electric vehicle, a transformable people's car with the ability for three distinct configurations. This car, truck or van was presented at the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York in concept and features an electric base and interchangeable parts. The design focuses on the needs and constraints of the modern world. Much more development is needed for this product to actualize, but nonetheless, this design has the potential to be a global multi use automobile.

The Begining of Los Angeles' "Cartopia" on view at USC

As city fascinated with private automobiles, USC's Doheny Memorial Library in Los Angeles is featuring the futuristic cars designs of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors during the 1940's and 50's. According to Phil Ethington, a history and political science professor at USC, "Hollywood and television fused the car with the rocket ship." He goes on to note that Los Angeles "practically invented the Space Age" and was the first major city to "fully adopt the automobile as a way of life."
The Space Age Hits the Road: Visionary Car Designs in America will be open daily through the end of May. Visions and Voices will also be hosting a car show and panel discussion on April 7th: “Cartopias: Southern California Car Culture, Hot Rods and the Space Age”.

La Concha Hotel: An Icon of Puerto Rican National Architecture

La Concha hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico was acclaimed as a "crowning achievement" when it opened in 1958. The sea-shell floating restaurant is an architectural and engineering icon designed by Mario Slavatori. Described as a reinforced skeleton, the restaurant shell is no thicker than eight inches and has come to represent the post-war changes in Puerto Rico.

Recently the hotel has been restored by architect José R. Marchand and interior designer Jorge Rosselló and continues to receive global attention. Listed at the Top 21 Hottest Caribbean Escapes in 2009 by The Travel Channel and Architectural Digest's Top Ten of 2009, the resort continues to be a prime location since its grand opening in the late fifties. Unfortunately the $100-million renovation has only left the bones of Salvatori's original design but he remains very much attached to the current success of the hotel.

Architectural Response to Haiti

What appears as a brilliant reuse of materials is in fact a en extremely expensive idea that is too late. Anshen + Allen has developed their first prototype for a clinic made from used shipping containers called C2C. The design is logical in that the containers are all a universal size, can be collected from around the world and may link together to form larger spaces.
But, the $100,000 estimated cost for one medical equipped container is far too expensive to be implemented on a large scale to the thousands in need. In addition, the first prototype will hopefully reach Haiti in a few months. Unfortunately with the current situation, Haiti will probably still be a great need of medical help. But months after a natural disaster, people should be in their next phase of recovery which is rehabilitation.
The problem with architects and designers in emergency relief situations is that they tend to not be aware of their timing. Designers need to start designing before the disaster, not waiting for the disaster to happen. This is why much of our world's crisis have extremely slow recovery times and huge amounts of displacement.

China's New South Lake Recreational Retail Center

structural plan of the Recreational Center
conceptual model of the Recreational Center
conceptual model for the Miyi Tower


In the Sichuan Province of China, Miyi County is developing a retail center complete with water rafting adventures, rock climbing and restaurants. The facility is striving to take advantage of the beautiful surroundings by creating public space in a pristine natural environment. With water streaming from a nearby lake through wetlands and water purification processes, the water is clear and enticing for visitors coming to the South Lake Recreational Retail Center. With the nearby wetland park and wildlife habitat in mind, the construction uses locally sourced materials. Even with waterfront areas, the glass cladding will be a remarkable site and in plan the center is admired for its architectural experience. The three buildings that make up the plaza are the recreation retail store, the equipment rental structure and the restaurant facility. The design process of the project expresses one entity that was carved to highlight the surroundings. The emphasis of water as a major component of the design is similar to Miyi's Tower project. The Recreational Center is projected to be finished in summer 2012 and the development hopes to attract year-round tourism.

M Series Chair Collection

With an emphasis in comfort, the Australian company Yellow Diva has launched their M Series Chair Collection. Their chairs and sofas stand on oak legs and are upholstered with 100% organic wool. The soft boxy forms are nicely contrasted with over sized buttons that add a unique style to the collection. The creative shapes can be paired with formal furniture styles and still offer a comfortable setting with "a definitive touch of nobility."

Denise Scott Brown: The World's Foremost Female Architect

Denise Scott Brown, an architect and writer will be turning eighty years old next Halloween and is arguably the World’s Foremost Female Architect. Her controversial writings and feminist ideology has highlighted the flaw of architecture as the lack of personal experience. She states in her 1967 article, “Planning the Powder Room”, that the male dominated field of architecture is responsible for design flaws at major venues, such as the exceedingly long lines outside women’s bathrooms opposed to men’s.

More recently, Brown has published Having Words (2009), an insight into her struggle of getting recognition as a female architect. This paperback is part of the AA Words series issued by the Architectural Association where Brown studied in the early fifties. This book defines her prominence as a writer, without the partnership of her husband.

With this said, Brown and her husband Robert Venturi have completed many major works throughout their career including their Sainsbury Wing for London’s National Gallery, that sits among landmarks such as William Gibb’s St. Martin’s in the Fields and Inigo Jone’s Banquesting House. The couple is known for their high Mannerism and pop culture designs. Yet according to Martin Filler, although much of her work was done in partnership with her husband at their Philadelphia firm, Brown is responsible for the brilliant site planning for many of their projects.

Brown is being honored with two exhibitions for her work Learning from Las Vegas. The 1972 “illustrated polemic” is considered her central contribution to architectural thought.

“Las Vegas Studio: Images form the Archives of Robert Venturi ad Denise Scott Brown” will be shown at the Pacific Design Center branch of the Museum of Contemporary Art in West Hollywood through June 20th.

Havaianas, known for their rubber sandals, has created a store where all 350 Havaianas products can be found under one roof. This popular Brazilian flip flop company has used environmental design to draw in buyers from the street. The design has received the gold award in the environemnt category of Business Week's, The Best Designs of 2009. The store is filled with bright lights and native Brazilian plants to emulate a city plaza making a smooth transition from the street into the store. Located on a busy shopping street in San Paulo,the ground level offers a small lounge and the main store is on the lower level.

Water Bottle with a Filter

Over the last ten years water suppliers have come out with smaller and smaller water bottles including Arrowhead's pint size and Trader Joe's 8 ounce bottle. The saving water trend is now over and companies are sporting green labels on their bottles for using less plastic. Arrowhead and Aquafina are making the bottle cap half the height and marketing that the thickness of their plastic is using less plastic.

One step ahead of the game is Karim Rashid's Bobble water bottle and filter in one. The Bobble costs less than $10 and is made of recycled plastic. The filters promise to serve over 250 refills (150 liters) and can be ordered from the Bobble website. The bottle is BPA-free, ensuring that toxins are not leaked into your water bottle, unlike the recent allegations against Nalgene bottles.

Karim Rashid, has over 3,000 designs in production, is a recipient of over 300 awards and is working in over 35 countries. There is no doubt that the Bobble doesn't have a promising future.

Skyscrapers of the Future

Vertical Prison

Water Purification Skyscraper


Evolo Architecture Magazine has announced the winners of their 2010 Skyscraper competition. The entries were graded in the following categories: globalization, sustainability, flexibility, adaptability, and the digital revolution. Their first place winner designed an elevated prison and their second place winner designed a building that acts a water purifying system.

First Place Winner:

The first place was awarded to the architecture students Chow Khoon Toong, Ong Tien Yee, and Beh Ssi Cze, from Malaysia. Their design is a vertical prison that enables inmates to have their own city in the sky. The structure will ideally increase the inmates pride in their community while they support the city below by working in agriculture fields and factories.

The question that remains in my mind is, who would want to live in a city with a huge prison above them? The various times of day will project shadows down onto the populous as a constant reminder of the criminals above. Yet, this ability for the criminals to directly impact the production of their city below will provide a better chance for the inmates to assimilate back into their communities after they are released. Depending on the cultural context, this idea has a lot of potential to reverse the negative connotations towards prisons.

In my opinion, this architectural concept merely exaggerates MVRDV’s Wozoco, a senior citizen apartment building in Amsterdam. Wozoco’s design cantilevers sections of the building from the main structure in a way that offers natural lighting to more apartments and increasing the square footage without taking up more land.

Second Place Winner:

Inspired by the polluted Ciliwung River, The Ciliwung Recovery Program (CRP) is a working structure that collects and cleans the water from the river through its three-layers. The building aims to provide living quarters and workspace, eliminating the slums that currently exist along the riverbeds.

Designers Rezza Rahdian, Erwin Setlawan, Ayu Diah Shanti and Leonardus Christnantyo from Indonesia offer a sophisticated response to water pollution. But, instead of pumping water from the river up through the structure to clean it, this idea has the possibility to operate with a much simpler approach. The three-layered building of a water spine, green layer and wind turbine combined with solar reactors is a innovative concept that can be applied to all built structures. A green layer alone will help clean our water of any smog or atmospheric pollution before hitting the ground’s surface. Eventually, I foresee wind turbines and solar reactors becoming a part of the canon of construction, making our built environment more self-sufficient and less destructive of natural resources. And finally, the designer’s invention of a water spine that collects and filters water can be implemented as a strategy to prevent water waste and flooding during heavy rains. As our climate undergoes drastic changes from human activity, unexpected natural disasters will continue to rise. Inventing a way to manage and efficiently use water by preventing wasteful runoff is an aspect of construction that our current builders lack.



The structural engineering of both of these buildings pose quite a challenge. The vertical prison claims to hold agriculture fields, factories, and an entire workforce of employees and inmates in what appears as 8 supporting steel trellises. Similarly, the Ciliwung Recovery Programs proposes a water reservoir on the top level of the building. In order for these concepts to become reality, both need to focus more on the process of engineering.

Vernacular Architecture: Niyang River Visitor Center

Connecting Tibet and Sichuan province, the Niyang River Center was built by Standardarchitecture-Zhaoyang Studio using native construction techniques.

The structure was built by layering and compacting rocks in an angular fashion. These load bearing walls stand by stone buttresses and are coated with Aga clay, a native waterproofing technique. In this small town of Daze Village, color is a very important aspect the their building culture. The interior of the structure is painted with a paste made from natural minerals creating vibrant pigments.

According to the architects, the plan appears arbitrary but it is shaped and designed for this site specific landscape. On the other hand, the colors made from local minerals, are meant to add an additional spatial experience independent from the concept of architecture.

Commissioned by Tibet Tourism Ltd. as a way to attract visitors in a space where land is not abundant, the visitors center is located along the banks of the river where Mirui Road meets Highway 318.

The End of I.D. Magazine

The nation's oldest product design magazine has stopped production after 55 years. ID Magazine is a recipient of five National Magazine Awards for design, overall excellence and special interests.

ID's Annual Design Review is the nation's oldest and largest design competition operating since 1954. This competition also brought a majority of the company's revenue. But apparently the magazine has not earned a profit in seven years. The magazine has reportedly suffered from the increasing interest in "glossy design magazines". In addition, online magazines such as Core 77, MocoLoco, Designboom, and Dezeen has left ID behind in the dark ages of print.

Even though ID will cease their monthly publications, their sister publication Print will stay open and F+W Media Design Group will continue to host the Annual Design Review.

Marketing Art

Canaletto: Old Walton Bridge, 1754
Dulwich Gallery exterior view



The Dulwich Picture Gallery located four miles from central London has loaned the Frick Gallery in New York nine old master paintings. This small exhibit serves as a tease for New Yorkers in hopes that they will make the trip to Dulwich the next time they are in London.

This rare collection was complied by the French art dealer Noel Desenfans and his Swiss business partner Sir Francis Bourgeois for the Polish King Stanislaw Augustus in 1790. This collection was to establish the National Collection of Poland, but 5 years later, Poland was partitioned by Russia, Austria and Prussia. This political climate kept the sale from going through and left Bourgeois with the collection. Unable to sell it due to the flood of art as a result of the French Revolution, the collection grew and Bourgeois left it to the prominent Dulwich boy's school in London. Artists of these rare paintings include Rembrandt, Murrillo, Watteau.

The Dulwich Picture Gallery is England’s first purpose-built public art gallery and attracted 140,000 visitors last year. It remains very popular but the London traffic and bridge construction continues to be a problem, making it possible for fewer and fewer Londoners to get to the gallery in a timely fashion. Originally, Bourgeois selected the gallery space for its distance from the polluted London air but the four-mile traffic jams are making it difficult to view.

When you do get to the Dulwich Gallery it is quite the experience. Built by Sir John Soane, the gallery design is still studied for its ideal viewing conditions. The gallery offers indirect natural light through central domes. This gallery could very well have served as inspiration for Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas which lets light in through the eaves, making the ceiling appear to float.

The US Embassy: The New Tower of London

Timberlake's winning design plan

Mayne's proposal

The once controversial US Embassy in London was designed by Euro Saarinen in 1955 and the 2010 winning design for the new embassy resembles the Saarinen facade simply stacked three times higher. The building is being compared to a 21st century avatar of the Tower of London and a body armor suit disguised as a seersucker suit.

Designed by the small Philadelphia firm of Kieran Timberlake – the building appears as a 12-story glass cube. But the strengths that lead Timberlake’s design to victory are the terrorist precautions. In addition, the design allows for the structure to be completely self-sufficient with solar power from the photovoltaic cells on the exterior cladding.

Although I see it as an oxymoron to publish the building’s anti-terrorist qualities, their design inspiration from medieval castle defenses is quite interesting. The building is raised up from ground level with a grassy knoll on one side and a moat on the other, creating a centralized public entrance for security. The “undulating earthworks” are meant to detour truck bombers. Similarly, the exterior glass cladding is treated with a “polymer plastic to help lessen the projectile force in case of explosion.”

With the two bombings of the US Embassy in East Africa in 1998 and the recent al-Qaeda threats, these security features set Timberlake's design apart from the majority of other proposals. But this building will be costing the US $1 billion to build, where as other Embassies in more threatening zones have cost sufficiently less: Pakistan cost near $850 million and Baghdad cost $500 million. Are American diplomats in need of higher security in London or is this an example of poor financial spending on the Administration's part? According to Martin Filler of the New York Review, this is one of the least successful artistic initiatives ever undertaken.

Architect Richard Rogers and former British Arts Council chairman, Peter Palumbo have attempted to persuade their fellow jurors of accepting Thom Mayne’s proposal from Morphosis firm in Santa Monica. The design is open with courtyards and embodies many curves, greatly contrasting the missile shape of Timberlake’s design.

Besides the two opposing jurors, Rogers and Palumbo, who have publicized their hatred for Timberlake’s winning design, the firm does appear at #8 on Fast Company’s most innovative architecture firms. And their designs have been proven to be green and functional – two aspects that are starting to override aesthetic appeal.

Saarinen’s building was once criticized on for the cube shape modeled after office buildings - similar to the critiques Timberlake’s design is currently receiving. But years later it is considered a landmark. The government of Qatar has reported to have purchased the former US Embassy for $533 million and will be converting the office space into a hotel and apartments. As it is now a recognized landmark, Qatar must maintain the current facade.

Global Healthcare Creating Design Opportunities

As our current administration continues the health care debate, design firms see global health care as a building opportunity. For years wealthy individuals abroad, including the king of Saudi Arabia, have come to the United States when they needed Western medicine. In 2012 the Cleavland Clinic, a popular hospital for international patrons, will be partnering up with other US institutions to open the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi. The buyers of this clinic are striving to make Western medical care available in the United Arab Emirates and a huge part of its success depends on how the building is marketed to the people within the government of Abu Dhabi. This is where the architects come in - visually articulating the presence of the Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi. The firm HDR will undertake this 360-bed project in making a hospital with the aesthetics of a hotel. The exciting role for HDR is their role from start to finish, from idea to reality.

A similar project in China does not allow architects to engage in the functional operations of the hospital, but merely the design. The Shenzhen hospital is currently being designed by TRO Jung|Brannen. In addition, China has called for 2,000 local hospitals and thousands of health clinics to be reconstructed and renovated - thus creating more opportunities for design.

According to Ron Smith at HOK, there is a global market for the American excellence in design and standards in health care. On the bright side our health care nightmares are admired around the world as "excellence".

Our World's Designers outside the Mainstream

Fisker Karma
Koolhaas' Louisville plan
Hadid's Port at Antwerp


The average American tends to classify the word “design” most commonly with fashion design and sometimes interior design – both of which allude to fine fabrics, haute couture and movie stars. Business Week has compiled a 27-person list of the World’s Most Influential Designers including a wide range of professions including biomimicry, aerospace and digital design.

As far as architecture and interiors, names expected to appear in this category include Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and Philippe Starck.

Rem Koolhaas, 65, is the cofounder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and is responsible for some of the most groundbreaking architecture of the 20th and 21st century. He is recognized not only for his architectural design but also for his writings on urbanism and architecture. While a professor at Harvard University, Koolhaas has extended a subsidiary of OMA - AMO, which is to look at the global goals of architecture. A plan for his art museum and mixed-use center in Louisville is the multi-faceted image above that appears as several skyscrapers connected.

Another name that appeared on the list is USC’s dean of architecture Qingyun Ma. Ma became an international name when working on Koolhaas’ first Harvard Project on Cities. With his design firm MADA s.p.a.m., Ma has created the most influential name in design out of China. His genius can be most recently observed in Beijing where he served as the project coordinator and presenter of the 2008 Olympic Games.

Along with Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid is a winner of the Pritzker Prize – the most prestigious architectural award. Hadid was the first woman in history to receive this award. Known as an experimental designer, her concrete fire station in Germany in 1993, put her on the list of designers to watch, and critics have been watching ever since. The image above in blue is her plan for the Antwerp Port Authority.

Philippe Starck, a revolutionary furniture and product designer, first entered the public eye in interior design and currently holds a contract with SBE Real Estate Development. This relationship has lead to Starck's designs to appear in many hip new restaurants in Los Angeles including Katsuya, XIV and SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills. Starck has most recently designed the interior of a spaceship.

Philippe Starck is one that is blurring the lines between the fashion world of design and the industrial world of design. With this said, the following biographies are of designers in a whole new level of innovation that make Business Week’s Top 27 Most Influential Designers in the World.

Burt Rutan is working on creating the world’s first fleet of commercial spaceships. His company, Rutan Aircraft, founded on the basis of creating do-it-yourself aircraft built at home, has recently partnered with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic organization.

Steve Jobs usually steals the show as the global face of Apple, but, Jonathan Ive should not go unnoticed. Ive is Apple’s senior vice-president for industrial design and has overseen the development of the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad – products that have and will continue to change the way we operate our daily lives.

In addition to Ive, other names listed in technology include Bob Greenberg of the digital design firm R/Ga, a digital advertising and marketing agency in New York. Greenberg began his ventures in motion picture graphics working on films as Alien, Predator and Seven. At R/Ga, Greenberg has left Hollywood behind for digital design at companies including Nike and Wal-Mart.

Business Week writes that it is not hard to come up with brands designed by Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar. Their company Chermayeff and Geismar was started in 1957 and since then they have designed the iconic brand logos such as Pan Am Airlines and Mobil and are currently working with the high fashion line, Armani Exchange.

Janine Benyus has helped companies adjust to more sustainable methods by adopting nature’s ways. As founder of the Biomimicry Guild, Benyus has acquired clients such as General Electric, General Mills and Hewlett-Packard. Benyus has educated executives on building practices such as making the exterior of buildings more water resistant to repel water and making it drip off much like a lotus plant leaf.

With a $528.7 million loan from the Obama Administration, Henrik Fisker designed the Fisker Karma – a luxury hybrid electric vehicle. In 2000 Fisker designed the BMW Z8 roadster and in 2007 founded Fisker Automotive.

This wide range of designers throughout the world have each impacted our lives in more than one way and their efforts have trickled down from their specialties into the convoluted world of design.

London's Olympic Stadium - A Global Step Forward

Conceptual Plan

Current state of the Stadium as of March 2010

The 2012 Olympic Stadium in London was designed by Peter Cook of HOK Sport and was intended to be environmentally revolutionary, fusing aesthetics and sustainability into a multi-functional stadium. The first light tower of fourteen has recently been lifted into place with a 650-ton crane. Once all fourteen light towers are in place, spectators will see the full 197-foot height of the 92-foot diameter stadium. The plan according to Rod Sheard, an architect at HOK, is a “simple building with a very tight, compelling bowl.”

As a re-sizable stadium, this structure is revolutionary. This circular venue will hold 80,000 spectators for the games and can transform into a 25,000-spectator arena for local events after the Olympics. The designers have incorporated removable seating that allow the seats to be installed in a different arena, similar to the arrangement in 2006 when the football World Cup in Germany shipped 16,000 seats to Barbados to be used in the ICC Cricket World Cup.

To save money and materials, the metal used in construction was melted into steel beams from confiscated guns and knives from London’s Metropolitan Police Department. This recyclable method serves as a sustainable reuse of materials and an anti-weapons measure. Separate from the spectator seating are detached “pods” surrounding the stadium, serving as concession stands, restroom facilities and gift shops. These pods will be installed with water recycling systems to reduce the games’ impact on natural resources.

The focus of the stadium is to allow for the Olympic Village in East London’s Lower Lea Valley to not only be renovated before the games but to be restored to a more natural state after the Olympics. A large public park is planned for the site and is expected to be fully established by 2040. In addition to reclaiming the land after the Olympics, the stadium’s construction has revived a lesser-known part of London. The construction has created 50,000 new jobs in the community and London hopes to continue the area’s economic vitality with 30,000 new homes. These efforts will keep London's structure from turning into an unoccupied “empty shell”, like the 21 out of 22 Olympic structures in Athens, a $14.4 billion project that has been sitting desolate since their 2004 games.

The designers for London's stadium encourage its future use by creating a structure that can be moved and used in various locations. The 10,000 ton steel structure is the lightest Olympic stadium to date and was assembled by interlocking pieces of steel without welding. Bolting the structure gives the stadium the ability to be completely dismantled into a kit-of-parts to be easily transported.

The concept of a re-sizable mobile structure offers several ways for London to make use of the stadium. One option is that the stadium can be sold as a venue. Private buyers can purchase this sustainable building and deploy it in another city. Another option is that the stadium can be shipped to host countries as a temporary structure, lowering the construction costs of Olympic building. This would make it more financially feasible for developing nations to host the games.

The legacy Britain is trying to attain with this stadium may very well put the London games at the forefront of sustainability and change the face of our world’s Olympic games. During Chicago’s unsuccessful bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics, the director of sports and operations at Chicago 2016, Doug Arnott, stated that if London's stadium could be boxed up and shipped to the next games, the stadium will be "something that could benefit the Olympic movement." This demonstrates that future host cities are interested and believe in this concept as an environmental and economical way for future Olympic games to operate.

But the high cost of the stadium is limiting London’s opportunities to recuperate their money. In the last two years the stadium’s budget has nearly doubled to $1 billion. Consequently critics claim that even with the incentives to buy a structure that can be reused and adapted to hold a vast number of spectators, the high price will discourage potential buyers.

Initially, the stadium appealed to the ODA (Olympic Delivery Authority) for its unique design for a structure that represented the muscles of the human body. With the increasing costs, the concept has been altered and is not faithful to London's original proposal. Critics state that the form resembles a gas storage facility, far from the original idea inspired by the human body.

With the preliminary design lost and the rising cost of the structure, Architect Will Aslop highlights that there was no competition for the stadium’s design or to choose the designers. Local architects are claiming that the concept of a traveling stadium could have been represented with more aesthetic appeal. The ODA has been criticized for being more interested in the legacy of a re-usable Olympic structure than the actual design. Architects believe that London is not taking advantage of the opportunity to create an architectural icon of British design.

Unfortunately the design also lacks practicality. For example the seating is not suitable for different climates. Only 67% of the seats will be covered for the Olympic games, leaving over 26,000 seats unprotected from sun or rain. With 33% of the seats uncovered the structure’s adaptability is limited. Additionally, the structure cannot be easily assembled because of the heavy machinery required, such as the 650-ton crane needed to transport the stadium’s lighting. This feat has been described as the greatest engineering challenge on the project thus far.

With this said, the stadium is not as financially sustainable as Peter Cook intended. The assembly requires technologically advanced tools with high operating costs. In addition there are dismantling and shipping costs that have not been factored into the $1 billion price tag.

The original concept of a mobile stadium has the ability to fulfill its potential on projects that have more collaboration and design expertise, but this design was not clearly thought out. Still, although this structure may not alone start a new a strategy of building, it is definitely a model for developers to learn from.

Design Competition for a Music Studio in Haiti

Grammy-Award winning musician and record producer Wyclef Jean has opened the Design Ideas Competition for a music studio in Cite Soleil, Haiti. According to the musician, music in not merely notes on a page, in Haiti "it is a way of survival". This design competition was initiated in hopes of inspiring young architects and designers around the world to partake in improving the lives of Haitians. More than half the population in Haiti are under 21 years old and in this society a music studio will provide jobs and musical education for youth in the area. Applications must be submitted by March 9, 2010.

Interior Innovations

In efforts to build a product without foreign components, Dutch designer Dana Cannam made a lamp out of a solid maple base, a cantilevered arm, LED strip and wire - all assembled without the use of glue or screws. The clamp lamp was inspired by exploring the truth of the material in wood's most autonomous way, while creating a functional product.

The era of technology has left many visual aids collecting dust. Fortunately old records continue to hold value but what about film slides? These have been replaced by computer projections and other modes of technology. Featured on the design blog Inhabitat, film slides can creatively be made into a curtain. The transparency of the slides beautifully projects a soft light into the room.

Philippe Starck's Transparent Chair

This month Architectural Digest featured transparent furniture. Various reflective materials such as glass and stainless steel are admired for the way they interact with light. Architect Eddie Jones states that the transparent furniture helps create a sense of floating in space. These chairs were designed by Interior Designer Philippe Starck.

Merging of the Arts

Australian Interior Designer, Anna Spiro, looks to the work of abstract artist Debra Dawes in her blog Absolutely Beautiful Things.
These patterns echo graphic arts as well as Byzantine mosaics. The geometric lines and colors that create a type of depth resemble textile design. The appeal that designers have in works like Dawes is the ingenuity of color, form, texture and depth all portrayed in a flat 2d painting.
Another example of artists skewing the autonomy of their trade is the new rug line by Matthew Williamson. He began as a high fashion designer and is now exploring the same types of color and geometry in interior design.
This rug is filled with bright colors and shapes which are outlined in black referencing Byzantine mosaics once again.
Painters are now graphic designers and fashion designers now have rug lines.

A Light Show Controlled By All: The Vectorial Elevation

Vancouver has installed The Vectorial Elevation, a light show that allows individuals around the world to design light sculptures. These light shows can be designed from any computer using google earth. With a virtual model of the city, people can create a light show on their website Vectorial Vancouver. The design offers participants to control twenty robotic search lights to create a their show and each night from dusk til dawn the shows were played.