Dornob | Design Ideas Daily

The Shape of Home: Creative Gabled Wall Cutouts

Posted: 04 Apr 2014 08:00 AM PDT

House Shape Cutout Motif 1

The elongated, gabled shape of a home in Kyoto is echoed within its own interior with a cutout motif appearing as doorways, windows and niches. Hazukashi House by Alts Design Office features a warm and cozy central gathering space clad in wood, extending the full height of the home, punctuated everywhere you look by the same repeating shape.

Gabled Cutout Motif 2

The result is a house that almost seems to be memorializing its own simple silhouette, paying tribute to an icon that we all instantly recognize as ‘home.’ The openings break up the large wooden wall in the dining area, allowing foot traffic and the transmission of natural light from one room to the next.

Gabled Cutout Motif 3

Gabled Cutout Motif 4

A timber-clad central stairway leads from this common area to the private rooms upstairs. Linear routes throughout the home lead from one of these gabled cut-outs directly into another, making the space seem to multiply as if with a trick of mirrors. How many can you count in a single room?

Gabled Cutout Motif 5

You’d never guess from the unassuming exterior, with its three stacked rectangular windows and lack of any other distinguishing features, at the complexity found inside.

...

Bad Design Gone Good: Hilariously Uncomfortable Products

Posted: 03 Apr 2014 02:00 PM PDT

difficult wine glass

We all have our own definitions of “good” design, but what do we call it when the designer is making products that are intentionally terribly difficult to use? Katerina Kamprani has designed a line of home products that, while technically still functional, are quite awkward.

eternal loop watering can

door to nowhere

The Uncomfortable Project is an ongoing experiment in proper design and how we view the objects that don’t quite live up to our standards. She asks if the designer of such difficult-to-use objects is malicious, or simply helping consumers to look at their belongings in different ways.

too thick fork

shielded spoon

The goal of the project is to make products that can be used, but make the user incredibly uncomfortable to do so. A spoon with a guard at the scoop end that prevents anything from actually sliding off of it, a fork several inches thick that couldn’t be used to spear food, a pouring pot with the spout facing toward the handle and the user…the products do seem a little malicious in nature at times.

toeless galoshes

concrete umbrella

Some of our favorites are the rain galoshes with no toes and the concrete umbrella. Both are recognizable for their intended uses but humorous in their reimagined forms.

pouring pot

two handled soup pot

Like all good design, Kamprani’s creations make us stop and think for a moment about their form and function. They certainly represent a function, but their form is unexpected. Does that make them any more or less desirable? Or does it make us question the form and function of the normal objects they are modeled after?

bent key

arched cat chair

Kamprani’s project serves to point out that the items we use daily are designed for our comfort and benefit. They could take on other forms, but to what end? Would we be less likely to use a chair if we had to balance gingerly on its arched seat? Probably so, and that would drive the invention of a more user-friendly, comfortable design. And this, of course, is part of the project’s message.