The 'Contortionist' - Folding Bike

Folding bikes seem to be all the rage at the moment, attracting commuting businessmen and women all over the UK not to mention other budding bicyclists! One bike in particular seems to have caught the attention of many - The Contortionist. Designed by 24 year old Dominic Hargreaves, who graduated from the Royal College of Art, The Contortionist has a unique selling point - the fact that all its components can be folded to fit to the circumference of the 26 inch wheel. Mr Hargreaves hopes that the bike will soon go on the market for around £400. The Contortionist has also been shortlisted for the James Dyson award for international design. Good luck to Dominic!

Section Seven

I came across this website for a small creative design & development office and was just struck by their really original online portfolio design. I just find it really neat, and the design makes it much more interesting to look through than if the projects and clients were just written in a list. Click here to see Section Seven's website.

Chuck Close

Ever since I first saw the work of Chuck Close in the San Francisco MOMA a few years ago, I was immediately captivated by his incredible style of painting. I love the way he treats each square in his images like it alone were a masterpiece in itself. I also admire his passion and determination to paint, as he has very limited mobility resulting from an accident a few years ago. Each little square that makes up his portraits has, I think, a cellular quality about it in appearance, which relates in a pleasing way to the fact that cells make up all living beings.

For part of my A level art coursework I had to write an essay about an artist, and Chuck Close was my subject. I wanted to explore his painting style and discuss whether it could be classified as art, as he paints in such a scientific way. My essay was entitled "Chuck Close - Man or Machine?" As I worked my way through the essay I decided that it's nobody and everybody's right to decide what art is for themselves. (Back to the 'what is art?' debate again!) In my mind, Chuck Close has the mind of a man, but the skills of a machine. His work is well worth taking a look at; it is very graphically and perfectionistically done and is very pleasing to look at, from all distances, as the effect is completely different close-up to far away.

Normann Copenhagen

On a recent visit to Newcastle, I visited the Baltic Mill museum set in a lovely location right on the River Tyne. Unfortunately there weren't actually many exhibitions on as they were working on exhibition changeover, however, we did have a great time looking at what was available in the gallery shop!

Art galleries and museums always, I find, have interesting and fun things for sale in their gift shops, and the Baltic was no exception. I even saw a collection of the Penguin Book deckchairs that we have in the grass studio in the school of design! However what caught my eye were the products by a company called Normann Copenhagen. The company produces modern, innovative homeware by a series of different designers, and you can view their products here. These products were not all available in the museum, but out of those that were, my favourites were the strainer, the cognac glass and the washing up bowl. Shown below is the strainer; I love this product as conventional strainers are usually quite big and are difficult to store without decent amounts of cupboard space, but this can just be folded down flat and takes up so much less space! It would be great to have something like this in my uni house!

Freshwest

I came across 'Freshwest' this morning whilst reading an edition of the Telegraph magazine from earlier this year. Freshwest is the furniture design company of the design duo Marcus Beck and Simon Macro and 'embraces both experimental and functional design and is driven by (their) desire to realise ideas'. What caught my attention was the simplicity of furnitures' appearance, versus the obvious complexity of the physics behind some of the works, resulting in pieces that have the feel of half school-boy experiment, half modern art.

One of my favourite pieces by Freshwest is the recent 'Brave New World Lamp' (left), as all the wood pieces look to me like scaffolding, holding up the lamp, where in actual fact the wooden pieces are constructed in a way that they are themselves the lamp's form. The lamp was launched with the Dutch company 'Moooi' in April, and made an appearance at the Milan Design festival, quoted by many as one of the highlights of the festival.

The 'Lazy Chair' was also exhibited at the Milan Design Festival; in actual fact it was present at the entrance to the festival to grab people's attention as they walked by. The Lazy Chair is constructed of wood and strings, and the piece contains movement sensors so that when people walk past, the chair collapses. It reminds me of those little children's toys of say, a giraffe on a little wooden stand, that will collapse and reform when the button underneath is pressed and released.