As reported earlier DesignBoost will take place at Arkitekturmuseet in Stockholm February 11-12. The overall theme is “Design for Life”. As earlier years Designboost has invited speakers from all over the world which represent the true frontline within design.

Today Designboost reveals four new speakers for the BoostTalk (lectures) on February 12th.

Karim Rashid – one of the most prolific designers of his generation. Over 3000 designs in production, over 300 awards and working in over 35 countries…

Ilse Crawford – a creative director and designer who crosses the worlds of brand creation, interiors and design.

Satyendra Pakhale – A cultural nomad born in India and now working from Amsterdam.

Monica Förster - One of the leading young designers from Sweden.

Last week Designboost revealed the name of the first nine speakers: Stephen Burks, Ineke Hans, Katrin Olina, Ilkka Suppanen, James Irvine, Richard Hutten, Bjarke Ingels, Gert Wingårdh and Thomas Sandell.

While flowers assorted our most important moment in life: from birth and romance to marriage and procreating, there is only one comparable modern-day object that mystically embodies the same symbolism: scented candles. In a noisy world where a new awareness is arising, scented candles have become a companion in our most fulfilling and luxurious quest: stillness and calm.

Calming Park presents from February 5th – 20th 2010 the exhibition “Art & Candle” at Holm, Zürich. A selection of CALMING PARK candles will be available for purchase in the boutique. The work of seven internationally renomated artists, reveals how the stillness and calm of scented candles meet luxury, fashion, music, spirituality, graphic and visual arts.

The first product released in the series is “Dark Pepper” by Bruno Pieters. It’s a more peppery version of “Amber- Pepper”, the first candle he designed for the CALMING PARK collection unveiled in Milan in October 2009 at “10 Corso Como” during the 2010 spring/summer fashion week. True to Bruno Pieters’ style, “Dark Pepper” is a chic and minimalist candle wrapped in black glass, whose scent is inspired by his favourite Men’s eau de toilette.

The other artists involved in “Art & Candle” are Arielle Dombasle, OeO, Sabina Sciubba, Kristina Dryza (you know her as contributor to this blog!), Bruno Peinado and Agi Simoes.

Sabina Sciubba has put together a project where the candle becomes the point of collision between music and video. In the song “So Close And Yet So Far”, the dim light of a Calming Park candle accompanies her guitar performance. Sabina Sciubba has taken this opportunity to reveal that she is a true fan of the SPA De Provence CALMING PARK candle.

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The Swedish flooring company Bolon presents the collection Botanic – a new flooring and architectural garden, a revolutionary breakthrough with environmental care. Botanic reflects nature’s variety of organic architecture and wealth of detail – a garden with a natural brilliantly coloured product flora to discover and wonder at. You can check it out both at the coming Maison et Objet and Stockholm Furniture Fair.

Jasper Morrison exhibits in Stockholm. With reference to the Stockholm Furniture Fair in February Forum, the magazine for Scandinavian architecture, interiors and design, brings Jasper Morrison and his exhibition Jugs, Jars and Pitchers to Stockholm. The exhibition will be shown at Hallwylska Museet.

As the name implies, the exhibition consists of personally selected jugs, jars, and pitchers – ordinary objects that are chosen on the basis of their aesthetic and functional qualities.

Jasper Morrison is a British furniture- and industrial designer. Born in London 1959 he had his breakthrough at the end of the 80s with the tubular steel armchair The Thinking Man’s Chair. Since then Morrison has been one of the world’s leading designers. He has designed everything from cutlery and doorknobs to tramcars, and worked for several well known brands like Alessi, Cappellini, Flos, Magis and Vitra.

Except for his own design, which is characterized by a simple style, Jasper Morrison is known for his work to acknowledge the ever yday objects, which he among other things has done with the book Super Normal – Sensations of the Ordinary (2007) that he has written together with the Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa.

The exhibition that is to be shown in Stockholm is a part of this work. This is what Jasper Morrison himself has to say about Jugs, Jars and Pitchers:

“Jugs, Jars & Pitchers is an exhibition on the age old theme of containers and pourers, show-ing a variety of examples in glassware, ceramic, plastic and stainless steel. The intention is to explore the essential nature of a time-honoured aspect of daily life.”

“Jugs, Jars & Pitchers is a unique opportunity for us in Sweden to take part in Jasper Morrison’s view on design. His entire work, from the products he himself has designed to the ex- hibitions, is about acknowledging the anonymous and normal, which seldom is recognized, but which always is there and always works. It is design whose foremost quality is not to be spectacular but to be long lasting. Jasper Morrison does only a couple of exhibitions a year. We are very happy that he has chosen to do one in cooperation with us,” says Forum’s Editor-in-Chief Daniel Golling.

The exhibition is shown 11–28 February at Hallwylska Museet, Hamngatan 4, Stockholm.

Jugs, Jars & Pitchers is presented by Forum and Henrik Nygren Design in cooperation with Hallwylska Museet.

The Happy Four is a new band from Malmö Sweden. I’m actually one of the members, playing the guitar! Back in the early nineties we released a couple of albums for EMI under the name Love Kings (we are 4/5 of that band now). The songs Kill Me and Happy are produced by Tore Johansson (known for his great work with Franz Ferdinand, Cardigans etc).

You can listen at both Kill me and Happy at our MySpace page. Please join our Facebook page as well!

Here’s a text about the release:

Whatever makes you happy

A recent article in the New York Times claimed there are more different indie-music genres than there are bands. It might be true.
We are nieching ourselves more and more. To invite people for dinner has become an adventure, you have to make sure who’s vegetarian, who’s hypersensitive to gluten or lactose, who’s vegan etc. The Olympic sports have multiplied. Buying olive oil at the super market either requires a degree or a personal shopper.

People enjoy development.

The Happy Four is a great example! They’ve created their own niche, yes, yet another one. While listening to their first single you can make out influences from The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Velvet Underground as well as contemporary ones from Bon Iver and Dirty Projectors.
As a crucible of sorts, without any comprehension of what is considered appropriate.
A band where STEFAN BERG has taken storytelling from his various documentaries including Svenstorp Blues, Rolling like a stone and Pojkar and where DAVID CARLSON conveys his sense of aesthetics which has earned him success with David Design, among other things. Along with LEIF JOHANSSON on base and ROBERT FEKETE on organ. Together they also make out four fifths of that which was once LOVE KINGS, the black sheep of EMI.

A new band from Malmö, with well-known members and guaranteed new music. In which genre would you place them? Mumblecore? Freak-folk? Ambient doom-metal?

Or, the other way around, if all that techno-disco-goth-plastic surgery-mumblecore-freak-folk-ambient doom-metal-eight-bit-facebook-mumbo jumbo was only a bad dream? And you woke up next to your loved one, opened a window towards the world outside, went to the kitchen and put some nice leaven bread in the toaster, fried two eggs and squeezed a couple of oranges while brewing epically strong coffee AT THE SAME TIME as you were listening to two great songs by a new band from Malmö.

Would THAT make you happy?

BEST REGARDS! THE HAPPY FOUR

Photo Charlotte Carlberg Bärg, graphic design Truls Bärg.

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On January 15, 2010, No Longer Empty (NLE) will re-open the legendary Tower Records store on Broadway and 4th street with a trans-media art exhibition: Never Can Say Goodbye.

Spotlighting more than twenty artists working with sound, light, image and installation,Never Can Say Goodbye recreates a fantasy version of the now defunct Tower Records withNever Records complete with record bins, album covers, cash registers, music posters and a performance stage.

Interactive installations by artists and musicians celebrate the stores historic role as the locus of the community– the old way to meet people face to face and share music and information.

Curated by Manon Slome, NLE; Steven Evans, Dia Art Foundation; Asher Remy-Toledo, NLE

The theme of this autumn’s DesignBoost in Malmö was Design for Life. Now the question is once again being posed, how to make design economical, ecological and fair when DesignBoost collaborates with Arkitekturmuseet in Stockholm.

At this DesignBoost people of worldwide reputation such as Stephen Burkes, Ineke Hans, Katrin Olina, Ilkka Suppanen, James Irvine, Richard Hutten, Bjarke Ingels, Gert Wingårdh and Thomas Sandell will participate. Additional participants will be announced.

Design for Life is about how we shall shape our way of life. How we plan, produce, deliver and consume everything from cities, transportation and infrastructure as well as food, entertainment, products and brands. Over the years design unfortunately has developed more and more into an exceedingly contributing source of pollution and over consumption. Therefore some of the biggest names in the world of design will once again meet, to show how design and architecture may be used to create better conditions for people as well as for the environment.

One of the speakers is Stephen Burks, known among other things for his border breaking collaborations with artisans in South Africa and Peru.

We need to redefine design and focus on people’s needs, rather than just surface. When design is put in a humanistic perspective one understands the tremendous ability it has to make change happen, socially as well as economically and ecologically. With knowledge of design, we can solve and improve everyday life of people both in Sweden and globally, says Peer Eriksson.

DesignBoost at Arkitekturmuseeum in Stockholm will take place on the 11-12th of February with around seventy especially invited participants. During two days BoostChats (workshops) and BoostTalks (lectures) on the theme Design for Life will be held. BoostChat on the 11th is exclusively open to those especially invited guests while the talks on the 12th will be open to the public.

As a part of this a BoostShow (exhibition) with examples of holistic sustainable design will be open until the 7th of March.

DesignBoost invites the most pioneering thinkers. Stephen Burks is established as one of the worlds greatest designers but other brilliant talents will also attend, such as Bjarke Ingels, architect and maker of Denmark’s pavilion on the world exhibition in Shanghai later this year, David Carlson tells us. He, along with Peer Eriksson is the initiative behind DesignBoost.

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Shop by Jasper Morrison just put up the products of the month. This time a cork bowl, a dustpan, an outdoor brush, a brown tape and a bucket. The Shop which is situated in one part of the Jasper Morrison studio is worth a visit next time you are in London. As simple and straight forward as you can imagine with its wooden shelves and carefully selected assortment. The Shop address is 24b Kingsland Road.

Studio Power / Tim Power Architects was awarded Third-Prize in the International Design Competition ‘Housing Sociale’ in Via Cenni, Milano, Italy.

The three winning projects were chosen by an international jury, composed of  11 experts in Social Housing from 5 european countries. The affluence of participants was from over 1100 enlisted studios, with 140 registered projects participating in the competition.

The competition was aimed at finding an efficient and sustainable solution for 9000 Sq.mts of Housing and Community services including Apartments for 110 families, Infrastructure, commercial and social areas, playgrounds and urban farms.

Located north-west of the city Center in Milan, the project site will be developed by Polaris Investment Italia on behalf of the ethical real estate Fund “Abitare Sociale 1” in collaboration with the Fondazione Cariplo.

‘Our proposal, based on a ‘new sustainability’ prescribes that in order to project and nurture the environment, we must look beyond engineering: instead, a ‘new sustainability’ proposes to mix urban density and social variety with natural and physical phenomenon.  Landscapes, weather patterns and the metropolis combine to create living environments . This project is as much a landscape as it is a building.  Our proposal is a significant intervention deliberately emphasizing its great mass, as if it were as much part of the natural environment as it is of the urban environment.  It is in fact an eco-system which focuses as much on social interaction, the environment and nature as it does on architecture and the urban environment. Its insertion in the city balances the multivalent needs of its inhabitants with the existing urban fabric of Milan.’  TIm Power - Founding Partner, Studio Power

The project emphasizes the horizontal morphology of the city of Milan. The housing units are oriented towards the south, to maintain views and natural light, and are placed on a vertical expanse like a precipice which rises above the alpine pastures below. The units themselves have ‘oversized’ semi-collective terraces. Crossing the grey facade are tree lined paths, connecting  the sloping grasslands and their collective functions below to the peaked green roof above.

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David Report just spent a week in Miami Beach relaxing and hanging out at some cool places. We have put together a package of images to show you some highlights from our trip. Here we go for part one.

The above pictures are from Standard hotel. Probably the best experience in Miami Beach. Cool, scandinavian styled and relaxed. André Balazs know how to do it. Maybe you have been at his Shelter Island hang-out?

The new Herzog & de Meuron 1111Lincoln road building offering a new context for retail, residential, dining and parking experiences. Developed by Robert Wennett.

Raleigh hotel garden with the famous and classic Esther Williams pool. Another bohemian chic hotel by André Balazs.

And some beach life of course.

More to come from Miami beach in a few days. Stay tuned!