PPD: Design Museum

I have visited home in London for the Easter holidays and thought that I would make good use of my time down here by visiting the design museum. They had the designs of the year exhibition showing, so it's really good timing. I met up with Francesca and we went together.

As we weren't allowed to take photos, I took some notes and found various websites and links to the pieces of design that I found most interesting.

Shade

A responsive skin to the windows of a building that filters daylight into a moving projection of shadows, that translates the ever-changing natural timeline of the outdoor to the static and perpetual indoor space.

Shade is a new material that applies as a glass window surface. Through variably blocking or passing light, it forms sunlight into a spacial, graphic projected moving image of shadows. It's surface holds a grid of triangular cells that are each individually able to change their level of opacity, and hence block or pass light. The graphic shadows projected on the floor, walls and ceiling of the space - varying from sharp and graphic, to environing and spacial depending on the time of day - reveal the geometrical patterns of wind that pass the building on the other side of the glass, as choreographed by the measurements of an outdoor sensor.

As both the angle of the sun and the patterns of wind are continuously changing throughout the day and year, the perpetual character of the artificial space is reconnected with an evolving, unplanned natural timeline.

http://www.simonheijdens.com/index.php?type=project&name=Shade

Photo Lettering

http://www.photolettering.com/

GF Smiths digital paintings

http://www.seadesign.co.uk/Work/Manufacturing/GFSmith-Digital.html

http://www.field.io/project/digitalpaintings

What design can do!

What Design Can Do! is an international conference about the impact of design. What Design Can Do! celebrates the power of design and its problem-solving abilities. This two-day event in Amsterdam exposes design as a catalyst of change and renewal and a way of addressing the societal questions of our time.
WDCD is an annual event, taking place in the municipal theatre Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam. The catalogue WDCD 2011 with all the important conclusions and recommendations is available now. Check www.whatdesigncando.nl
As Designpolitie we initiated, curated, designed and organized this event together with a dedicated group of fellow designers and producers.

http://www.designpolitie.nl/index_wdcd.html

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An illustration piece by Koen Taselaar, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

http://www.koentaselaar.nl/koentaselaar_nl/?p=467

Join us they might be giants music video

http://www.paulsahre.com/work11/they_might_be_giants/

The comedy carpet, Blackpool

The Comedy Carpet is a celebration of comedy on an extraordinary scale. Referring to the work of more than 1,000 comedians and comedy writers, the carpet gives visual form to jokes, songs and catchphrases dating from the early days of variety to the present. Sited in front of Blackpool Tower, the 2,200m2 work of art contains over 160,000 granite letters embedded into concrete, pushing the boundaries of public art and typography to their limits. A remarkable homage to those who have made the nation laugh, it's also a stage for popular entertainment that celebrates entertainment itself.

The £2.6m Comedy Carpet was commissioned by Blackpool Council as part of the multi-million pound regeneration of the sea front including vital sea defence works. It was funded by CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) as part of it's Sea Change programme.

In collaboration with:
Typography – Why Not Associates.
Implementation – Russell Coleman, Andy Sawyer and their team.
Client: Blackpool Council.