11 SEPT 2014 - STEFAN SAGMEISTER

Introduction

Stefan Sagmeister is a New York-based influential graphic designer and lettering artist. He gives me the feeling of humorous, non-traditional and punk. In the 1977, his work was influenced by punk, disco and hiphop. One of his talk named Design and Happiness, gives a thorough background on his personality and philosophy what inspires him the most. Stefan has a studio. Every 7 years, he will closed it for a year. During that year, anything are not available to their clients. To stefan, the year is a lovely and energetic time. He has another studio in New York in which combining Music and design (his passion and love) by creating his own music and packaging. 

 "The Happiness Hypothesis" by Jonathan Haidt 

The book called "The Happiness Hypothesis" by Jonathan Haidt is one of Stefan's influential book. The book define his work into 3 different levels which rank very true for him. He described his work as a calling to him.

• Job: Done for Money
• Career: Advancement and promotion
• Calling Intrinsically fulfilling

The 1999 AIGA Detroit poster 

His unique technique presents both non-tranditional and unoriginality style in his work. One of his poster he designed is "The 1999 AIGA Detroit poster", which symbolized Stefan Sagmeister’s style in which he painted his D.I.Y  text into his own skin. His ability of conceptualizing creates powerful, original, stunningly ideas in all his designs.

Coffee Table - Be Here Now

Stefan got a lot of inspiration at Bali, Asia, a place he called a crafted orientated society. He does not has any religion beliefs, but he tend to look for nature. Nature to him is a wonderful inspiration coming from itself.He started to work as a furniture designer in Bali. The initial reason behind this is because the furniture he like he could not afford, and the furniture he can afford he does not like.

One of the furniture is called the coffee table - Be here now, it included 330 compasses inside the coffee table. He hided a magnetic inside an espresso cup and put it on top of the table to make those compass goes crazy.

"Materials for architectural design 2" by Victoria Ballard Bell and Patrick Rand

During his second sabbatical on Bali in 2009, communications designer Stefan Sagmeister designed several unique pieces of furniture and had them produced on site by master craftsmen. (Material for architectural Design 2)

12 SEPT 2014 - WOOD

What is Wood? 

Wood comes from trees. Wood is an organic material, and has many distinct characteristics, structure and individual components which will be helpful to learn. 

"Materials In Architecture" 
Wood is enjoying a renaissance as a favored architecture material. While it used to be a common material in vernacular housing, country building, or other small structures, it is now a player in the big league. Due to its natural properties, wood is easily associated with tradition and the environment. This wood trend may be interpreted as a response to the increasing demand for cultural identity and sustainability in architecture. More than that, wood can be bent and shaped to create modern forms. Various kinds of wood and timber and different treatments also provide endless exciting, dynamic and surprising possibilities. 

WISA Wooden Design Hotel designed by Pieta-Linda Auttila

This design hotel immidiately caught my eyes while flipping the book "Materials in Architecture". The site specified for the construction, is on the northen edge of Valkosaari, Helsinki. The sea-washed islet brought a picture of grey painted block of wood was splintered in the middle, revealing its light core. Following the concept, the construction is a rectangle with all the sides as long as the others. The maritime location and the architect's admiration for wodden boats inspired the architect to try a boat building technique of bemding the middle parts of planks. The completed construction interacts with its environment in the way imagined by the architect: partly blending in, partly standing out. With a little imagination, you can see the driftwood washed onto the shore.

Swimming Pools of Ribeirao designed by Pitagoras Arquitectos

The installation benefits from a large expanse of land in the north south direction, where a plan distributed over two floors has been developed - the ground floor and basement are partially buried. The swimming pool complex is settled within a large, formal facility. The facility is largely horizontal, in keeping with the morphology of the land. The two environments are separated by a glass wall, which allows those who pass through the atrium to have permanent visual contact with the water’s surface.

Woody Essential Oils

Essential oils with a woody fragrance are in fact mostly extracted from various trees. Like the uprightness and longevity of many trees, woody oils are an emblem of stability, endurance, maturity and timelessness. They can awaken in us our innate body wisdom as a physical embodiment of our ancestral lineage with its perennial stability and constancy. 
Woody oils generally have a centering, stabilizing, strengthening and relaxing effect. With their ability to gather our energy towards our physical center, the hara in our lower abdomen, they can help relieve conditions of spaceyness, disconnection and oversensitivity, as well as generally helping us trust in our instinctive gut feelings. The net result of this centering effect is relaxation, which can be useful for nervous tension and any symptom of mental-emotional instability. Here combining woody oils with sweet oils can only be an advantage.
Woody oils are clearly as relevant for daytime use in the face of stress-filled days or times as they are for evening and night-time use. At the end of the day’s activities, or in fact at the end of any particular activity, the scent of woody oils can help us complete and find closure to that activity by gently yet firmly enveloping us with their timeless strength and serenity. (http://www.snowlotus.org/woody-essential-oils.aspx)

15 SEPT 2014 - TWIST

What is Twist?
A torsion force that is applied on an object by twisting one end when the other is held in position or twisted in the opposite direction. Different materials have a different way of responding to torsion. Some will deform, crack or even break depending on the type of material.

The stackable stool is a monocoque construction made from a piece of plywood, with no joining bolts or screws. Its form is derived from origami, follows ergonomic requirements, and is also highly stable. (Twist and Build) This chair particular attracts me of it shape and form. The design reflects the beauty and tension of composed torsion.   

BMW Welt designed by COOP HIMMELB(L)AU 

One of the central design ideas is to expand the existing configuration of the BMW Tower and the museum with an additional element so as to create a spatial, ideal, and identity-forming architectural ensemble.