The fifth element in my Salone Satellite was Shoo. I have designed this product a few years back but since it is looking for a manufacturer again I thought it was worth showing.
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As part of an exhibition called Do-it-yourself organised by atcasa I exhibited the vases Senzafondo, designed together with Monica Ferrigno, at the Space of Rossana Orlandi.
Senzafondo means bottomless – infact these vases are made of a tube of felt which simply covers a PET bottle when used as a vase and disappear flat in a drawer when not in use.
from left to right: Kyoko Inoda, Dodo Arslan, Cristina Cher, Maddalena Casadei, Alessia Cusinato, Emmanuel Gallina, Kensaku Oshiro, Dunja Weber, Philippe Nigro, Jim Hannon-Tan.
My friend Pia Bianchi who is a fashion journalist had the idea to use the Gate-08 designers (www.gate-08.com) as models for the Spanish fashion company Desigual. We spent a whole day with make-up artists, hair-stylists and fashion photographer Stefano Babic. The photographs will be on show at Bar Basso during the Salone del Mobile 09 (22-27 april) and will be published in the april issue of the magazine Velvet.
The pictures above are the result of a hard day of work – yes – being a model is surprisingly hard work and maybe being a designer isn’t so bad after all.
Snapshots taken during the shooting.
This year Maxdesign has commissioned me to design a special X-mas pattern for June. This is what I came up with.
Circles on a line, christmas baubles on a string, snowflakes falling…
The pattern is specially designed to measure to fit June and has been digitally printed white on gold. The lines follow the profile of the lounge chair. The circles create movement and pace.
Merry Christmas!
The idea of Galleria Temporanea was born out of the desire to do something together with friends, to collaborate together with the wonderful craftsmen that are based in the area of Milan, and to communicate the fact that we are around in a playful way. If you’d like to know more about Galleria Temporanea please visit www.gate-08.com
I have chosen glass as a material to work with and learned a lot on the way. My set of stacking tumblers are made from borosilicate glass tubes which are heated and hand-blown.
Finally I also have the photographs of Jay, the coffeetable that comes with June. Jay is available in four different sizes. The 4 table top colours and 7 colour options for the leg structure allow for an infinite number of possible colour combinations.
One year ago a received a phone call from an old friend in Luxembourg: Hey Dunja I have seen your lounge chair in “Officiel”. We would like to use it in a project we are working on at the moment.
One year later June sits proudly in the brand new centre socio-culturel Le Cité in the center of Luxembourg, in fact it is the old Cité cinema I used to go to as a teenager that has found a new function.
I’m very pleased that one of the first contract projects in which June is used is actually in Luxembourg.
The “June” family has had off-spring!
In fact I am happy to announce that the collection has been completed by “Junior” and “Jay”.
Junior has been designed to be used as a seat in its own right …
…or for supreme relax to be used as a footrest in combination with “June”.
dimensions: W 60 x D 42 x H 42
Materials: internal steel frame upholstered with cold-foamed polyurethane covered in fabric. Frame in powder-coated steel.
Same client – same location – same size (7×10 m) but a lot more furniture to display.
I have elaborated the step idea from last year only that this time around the steps have the full width of the stand. Also they don’t run perpendicular to the stand but at a slight angle, with the effect of creating different sized product areas at each end of the step. In order to give the different product groups a defined area the steps change alternatively from black to white. To create extra display space without interfering with the main product groups I have added some protruding elements which contain display niches and neonlighting to light wash the walls.
I keep my fingers crossed that next year we’ll manage to finally get a bigger space!
In the beginning of this year I worked together with my friend Maddalena Casadei on a competition called “Fuori dal Tunnel”. The competition was about improving the visual impact of a very intrusive high-way passing right next to a picturesque skiing resort (Bardonecchia) in the Italian Alps right on the border to France.
Bravely we decided to take up the challenge of this rather complex landscape architecture project. Sadly we didn’t win but we had a great time and were nevertheless rather satisfied with the result of our work.
Bardonecchia is a skiing & holiday resort and thus closely linked to outdoor activities during all seasons. The first question that springs to the holiday makers mind as soon as he gets up is: How’s the weather today? …but leaning out of the window to check instead of looking at a lovely mountain landscape he is confronted with a massive highway bridge.
But what if this monumental brigde became a feature rather than an eye-sore? We proposed to transform the bridge into a giant horizontal thermometer ( 6m x 300m). Interesting also because temperatures in Bardonecchia vary between 37°C in the summer and -15°C in winter.
The graphic visualization of the thermometer is achieved through a special metal-mesh which contains LEDs (Mediamesh and Illumesh). This means the thermometer is visible both during day and night. Since the LEDs are computer commanded colours can change. At lower temperatures the thermometer appears generally in colder tones whereas during summer it appears in warmer colours.
The metal mesh is also interesting in so far that even though seen from the village it veils what is going on on the highway it remains translucent from the highway side allowing the drivers to look at the landscape. The LEDs in Illumesh and Mediamesh remain visible over very long distances and thus the temperature could still be read from the mountain top.
The LEDs are powered by a system of 3D solar panels which we designed to cover some of the concrete walls and to integrate into the alpine landscape. For the realisation of this we discovered a phantastic technology produced by Nanosolar.
