Furniture Design: FIELD TRIP!!!!

The highlight of this week was going to neeeeeeeeew york concrete jungle where dreams are made of.... you know the song... Despite my hellacious week leading up to the trip & the fact I feel asleep during every miniscule moment of down time, I still had a great time! Uber-inspiring and almost made me want to move there (ALMOST). 


Material ConneXions
Our first stop of the day. Material ConneXions is a materials resource library. As per their website: "Built on the belief that Every Idea has a Material Solution™, we are the trusted advisor for Fortune 500's, smaller forward-thinking companies, and government agencies seeking a creative or competitive edge through strategic material selections." Its a pretty inspiring place where designers of every kind can find solutions to their materials problems. They have cutting edge material technology and encourages its members to use materials not traditionally used in their respective fields. I managed to sneak some pictures :)

I would come here just to get inspired by the forms + shapes

love these projections

I was digging this color combo

Lindsey Aldeman
Next stop was Lindsey Adelman's lighting studio. She creates custom lighting that is industrial yet delicate. She creates her mobile structures out of blown glass and industrial parts. She plays with various techniques on the glass globes and jewelry for the fixture including thrones, rope, and lace. See some of her work below.

Also if you go to here website or check out the music vibe she has an artistic video of lightmaking....


Uhuru
Our last stop of the day was in Brooklyn at Uhuru.  They are a pretty insteresting firm that uses all reclaimed materials for each of their pieces. The origin and story of the wood is also usually the inspiration for their line made from the wood. Their latest line was inspired by the Coney Island Boardwalk. A blurb from their website explaining their concept is below along with photos:

The new Coney Island Line is crafted from reclaimed wood taken from the demolished iconic boardwalk. The Ipe wood, first installed on the boardwalk in the late 1940's, has weathered in the sun, salt, and snow for 70 years. The design is inspired by the duality of Coney Island- its whimsical, colorful summers and melancholy winters. The pieces interpret the architecture of the desolate dreamscape: low-rise buildings patched with signs and seasonal layers of paint, beneath the towering old-fashioned rollercoaster. The line consists of six limited edition pieces, and Uhuru will produce only ten of each design due to the finite nature of the wood.- from uhurudesign.com