AZURE_2014_09.pdf

designs
for the near
future
11
10
FOOD
Culinary design thinking
The Meccanica kitchen system’s barely there design
enables endless adaptability – a feature Valcucine believes
makes it amenable to any culinary trend or household
evolution. Yet even the manufacturer realizes that responding
to change requires continual reinvention. This spring
during EuroCucina, the world’s largest fair devoted to
kitchens, the Italian company tore a page from the design
thinker’s manual and invited 11 creative types (including
one aerospace engineering student) to hack Meccanica,
adding features as they liked. “We wanted to see what
other drivers besides us could add to the system,” says
marketing head Daniele Prosdocimo.
The results of the open-source workshop, which took
place publicly within the Milan showroom, were similar to
what comes out of most incubator labs – a goulash of
both brilliant and dumb ideas. One participant proposed a
grey water system to funnel cooking water into the garden
(good idea); another wanted to convert the fabric used on
the cupboard doors into reusable shopping bags (impractical);
and collab orators Marina Cinciripini and Vittorio Cuculo
designed an infographic embedded with conductive and reactive
LEDs that make it easier to track down kitchen tools
in drawers and cupboards (brilliant). Prosdocimo has hinted
that at least one of the ideas generated is being considered
for a future Valcucine product. demode. it – C.O.
travel
What will you be doing in your self-driving car?
It’s just so cute, the Google self-driving car. It looks like BMW’s Isetta from the early ’50s, a smiley little thing that says,
“Oh, the places you’ll go” – but it is much more than just a self-driving car. As the Institute without Boundaries in Toronto
concluded a few years ago, the autonomous car will be smaller, lighter, slower, and there will likely be one-tenth the
number of them compared to regular cars. Parking garages will disappear, as the cars don’t really stop; they zoom off
to pick up somebody else or do a sushi delivery. The streets will be free of parking spaces and the intersections devoid
of annoying traffic lights as the cars flow around one another. Of course, with this vehicle as the sole designated driver,
happy hour will be fun again. The air will be clear of pollution, too, and the city much quieter without the sounds of
electric motors and tooting horns. Downtowns will be re-greened with boulevards and parks.
Or maybe not. While most people hate the commute from the suburbs, Allison Arieff, editorial director at the urban
planning think tank SPUR, predicts that travelling to and from work will become the best part of the day. “If you can
read on your iPad, enjoy a cocktail or play a video game while commuting,” she pointed out in one of her New York Times
columns, “time spent in the car becomes leisure time, something desirable.” That is what we are doing when not behind
the wheel, so why not do it in our Google cars – our little mobile entertainment bubbles, which just happen to take us
home. In this scenario, by the time driver-free transportation becomes a reality (predicted to arrive as soon as 2020),
cities may well start to empty out, and commute time will become irrelevant. – Lloyd Alter
12
product design
Every chair can be different
In São Paolo, a novel way to customize furniture encourages
every one to collaborate. Called TOG All Creators Together, the
newly minted company lets shoppers choose a piece of furniture
online and then search a network of affiliated artisans to individualize
it, adding such unique touches as beadwork, handwoven
upholstery or carving to chairs, tables, lamps and other pieces.
The initiative is being bankrolled by Grendene, the Brazilian
footwear giant that makes the Melissa shoe, and it has commissioned
Philippe Starck and Sebastian Bergne, among other big
names, to design the first line of naked products. The artisan
community now numbers in the dozens, but the plan is to expand
to thousands around the globe, engineering a new way for designers,
consumers and craftspeople to join creative forces. As the
brand develops, nascent technologies, including 3‐D printing, will
be employed to further push the maker movement into the mass
bespoke market. togallcreatorstogether. com – M.H.
80 sept 2014 azuremagazine.com