New architect discovery: Cedric Price (1934–2003) has been described as the most influential architect you have never heard of. Rejecting the weighty, earthbound, and monumental brutalism that was prevalent in the 1960s when Price started practicing architecture, he imagined buildings that were lightweight, mobile, and ephemeral. His ideas and images have percolated through architectural culture and beyond, most famously with Price’s Fun Palace providing the visual vocabulary of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers’ Pompidou Centre.
Chindōgu (珍道具) is a prank from Japan, which is done by a person seemingly inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem, but are in fact nothing more than a useless gag. The term was coined by Kenji Kawakami- a former editor and contributor to the Japanese home-shopping magazine “Mail Order Life.” In the magazine, Kenji used his spare pages to showcase several bizarre prototypes for products. He named these gadgets “chindōgu”, Kawakami himself said that a more appropriate translation is “weird tool”. The special category of inventions then be familiarized by Japanese people.
Further reading: Chindogu: Those Viral Japanese Inventions https://www.tofugu.com/japan/chindogu-japanese-inventions/
New designer discovery: Domic Wilcox. Transforming the mundane and ordinary into something surprising, wondrous and strangely thought provoking. Here is his portfolio for some wield imaginative things:
Further reading: Variations on the normal book of invention drawings by Dominic Wilcox http://dominicwilcox.com/the-book/
“How to Get lost in IKEA” On 10/26/2019 about a hundred creators had gathered in IKEA in New York to explore the store as a site for newness and imagination. This site-specific experience was a part haunted house, part unconference, part art installation, part choose your own adventure story, based on the true experience of the organizer of her getting lost in IKEA as a child. Sessions varied from Tarot reading with IKEA-specific tarot deck, roaming interior design consultations and fantasy IKEA catalog Drawing workshop.
Full itinerary is here. IKEA Tarot cards were featured in other publications post-event.
New obsession: “isochrone” maps. This is one of the coolest maps I’ve ever seen: how many days it took to get anywhere in the world from London in 1914.
More maps inspirations here
