The Designs of the Year 2013 exhibition at the Design Museum presents over 90 designs from the past year spanning architecture, digital, fashion, furniture, graphics, product design and transport. It lists as a who’s who in the design world- with the Olympic Cauldron by Heatherwick Studio, The Shard by Renzo Piano, a glass table by Zaha Hadid, and the Louis Vuitton collection by Yayoi Kusama.
Notable designs include a non-stick ketchup bottle invented by the Varanasi Research Group at MIT, which uses a special edible solution sprayed on the inside of the bottle, and a portable 3D printing kiosk by Antwerp-based designers Unfold. Also on display is graphics from the David Chipperfield-curated Venice Architecture Biennale last year and the Bauhaus exhibition at the Barbican. Architecturally, the ones to note are: A Room for London by David Kohn Architects and Fiona Banner, which placed a small ship balanced on the roof of the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Astley Castle renovation by Witherford Watson Mann, and also a French project by Frederic Druot, Anna Lacaton, and Jean-Philippe Vassal that redesigned a 1960s Parisian tower block by adding prefabricated balconies, creating lighter, more spacious homes.
Winners in each category and an overall winner will be announced in April. Last year the award was won by design studio BarberOsgerby for the London 2012 Olympic Torch, and this year, Thomas Heatherwick’s Cauldron winning is almost a foregone conclusion.
Faceture Vases by Phil Cutlance is a collection of hand-case vases that are created from simple handmade moulds that ensure none of the geometric designs are ever the same.
Louis Vuitton collection by Yayoi Kusama
Re-imagined chairs by Nina Tolstrup and Jack Mama of British Studiomama is a collection of colourful chairs made from old furniture they found on the streets near their east London studio. The chairs were dismantled and the original frames powder coated, before oversize seats and armrests were added.
Strelka press
Gentlewoman magazine
Papafoxtrot toys has created a series of hand-crafter wooden toys celebrating contemporary feats of engineering and technology. The collection includes miniature oil tankers, container ships and communications satellites.
100 chairs by Marni
I wrote a post about these chairs by Marjan Van Aubel and James Shaw last week.
Prada
Kiosk by Belgium Unfold Design Studio is a mobile 3D printing cart designed to look like a traditional street-food vendor’s stall.
Images: my own
