Design

Section

Colossal Design

Origami Wrap Turns Disposable Gift-Wrapping Paper Into DIY Crafts

Fun fact: if every American wrapped just three gifts per year using reusable or reused materials, we would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields. And it doesn’t just have to be last week’s Sunday comics: this clever wrapping paper is the gift that keeps on giving, six times over! Each 20 x 30 inch sheet is covered with directions to turn it into a dog, frog, flower, balloon, fish, and crane. Origami Wrap is designed by ILOVEHANDLES and sold in sets of five sheets. Find it in The Colossal Shop.

 

Design Photography

Look Inside the World’s Most Beautiful Libraries in a New 560-Page Photo Book by Massimo Listri

Portuguese photographer Massimo Listri has spent decades traversing the globe to document the spectacular architecture, sculptural elements, and furnishings of historic libraries. His new book, The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries, includes views inside such rarefied locations as the Palafoxiana Library in Pueblo, Mexico and the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, France. Listri also includes descriptions and histories of each library. The 560-page tome is published by TASCHEN and available on Amazon and the TASCHEN website.

Design Photography

Snails Occupy Miniature Sets Built by Aleia Murawski and Sam Copeland

Creative duo Aleia Murawski and Sam Copeland build elaborate miniature sets occupied by small, slimy actors. The environments are laced with suburban nostalgia, which feature perfectly manicured lawns, plastic-coated furniture, and messy teen bedrooms littered with snack wrappers and tiny video game consoles.

The pair’s collaborative worlds are used for still images and short films. Murawski’s favorite part of shooting with snails is seeing how they interact with their sets, while also learning how to specifically direct the slow moving creatures, she explains on her Instagram. One way she and Copeland inspire certain movements while filming is by positioning cucumbers behind the sets’ tiny objects, which encourages their subjects to inch towards the hidden vegetables. The duo used this technique in their recent music video project for Bully, in which they built out an entire neighborhood and house set to outline a day-in-the-life of an extra sluggish snail.

For more slime-centered work, including this video of a motorcycle-riding snail, visit Murawski’s Instagram. You can purchase posters of the collaborative photographs on Big Cartel. (via It’s Nice That)

Art Design

Sinuously Curved Benches Made with Thin Strips of Steam-Bent Hardwood

Brooklyn-based furniture designer and sculptor Matthias Pliessnig creates sumptuous, twisting benches by steam-bending hardwood. He first developed the process in 2006 while studying wooden boat building techniques at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when he realized that by flipping his boat-inspired creations over, he could use the hollow form as a sturdy bench. Once he has designed his works using Rhinoceros 3-D software, Pliessnig places a strips of wood into a tube filled with hot steam. After ten minutes the wood is malleable enough to bend into his desired shape, but only for about 30 seconds. In eight hours, the wood is fully hardened, and back to its original strength. You can see more of the designer’s undulating furniture on his Instagram.

Design

Tree Stump Patterns Transformed into Bronze and Etched Brass Chairs by Sharon Sides

Israeli designer Sharon Sides translates natural forms into designed objects by digitally transferring their patterns onto metal. In her series of bronze and acid-etched brass furniture titled Stumps, she utilizes the concentric rings of tree stumps to create richly textured surfaces. As a way to more deeply connect each piece to the object it is inspired by, Sides also keeps the edges of her tables and chairs as close to the stump shapes as possible, and molds the furniture’s legs to appear like twigs or branches. You can watch the design process behind Sides’s series of tree-inspired objects in the video below.

Design

A Series of Japanese Benches Showcase How Pencils Are Made

A series of benches that surround the Mitsubishi Pencil headquarters in Tokyo give step-by-step instructions for how the brand’s pencils are made. The concrete and wood furniture dot the perimeter, adding a creative touch to the public space just beyond the company’s walls. (via Spoon & Tamago)

Art Design

Alex Chinneck Unzips a Condemned Building in the Style of a Retro Shirt

British sculptor Alex Chinneck has a history of manipulating facades—previously slumping the brick face of an apartment in Margate and completely upending a building in London. Chinneck’s newest monumental manipulation is a condemned office building in Kent, England. The 1960s structure seems to unzip from its middle with a XXXL zipper, revealing the ruin of the forgotten interior. Two folded segments near the top act like a collar, giving the entire installation the appearance of a retro polo shirt. Catch the soon-to-be-demolished intervention while you can: Open to the Public opened August 2 at Brundrett House, Tannery Lane, Ashfield, TN23 1PN. (via It’s Nice That and Dezeen)