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Wiley Prefab Architecture

June 26th, 2011

Modular Masters: Studio Aisslinger

Studio Aisslinger in Berlin. Man on left is in detention. Woman on right is watching a company ping pong game. The hex screen in foreground gives us  a taste of the eponymous designer’s predilection for modular design.

In our gathering of modular product designs from all the world, it’s hard not to notice that many of them emanate from Italy. Just think Magis, B-Line, Kartell and already you’re talking about a slew of top-flight and enduring interactive pieces. Maybe it’s the climate, the food, the culture – who knows why such a regional concentration exists for this type of design? Still, it would be hard to develop a convincing theory on Italian supremacy without having to explain why, just a few hundred kilometers to the frozen north, the modular meter spikes again as we approach the Berlin studio of Werner Aisslinger.

Aisslinger is a very talented, multi-media and prolific designer who has generated some of the world’s most innovative product, interior and architectural design for brands such as Mercedes Benz, Swiss furniture company Vitra, adidas and Bombay Sapphire (Bombay Sapphire?). He’s got offices in Berlin and Singapore, so we’re talking about a global reach of considerable dimension. That’s good news for aficionados of customizable design.

Aisslinger’s chairs and chaise on display inside the Berlin studio. Below is his Plus Unit for Magis.

The company’s artistic philosophy focuses on making sophisticated new designs from novel materials and technologies, whether modular or not.  Fortunately, this is not the stuff of geeky sci-fi fantasies devoid of the human dimension. Rather, the design firm says it wants to change the paradigm of modern product design by looking beyond purely functional capacities to integrate a “dialogue between emotions and technology”. Progressive? We’ve just barely scratched the surface. In an estimated 5 to 10 years the firm has plans to install a small chip inside every product that will generate product information (producer, designer and distributor) and an opportunity for instant purchase when scanned with any type of wireless communication device.

 

Aisslinger’s deep interest in repetitive, modular design is evident in some of the product displays in his Berlin office. On the left is Mesh, a 2007 concept design for a lightweight semi-opaque screening system (more on Mesh below). On the right is a 2008 modular bookcase made out of, what else, books!

We aren’t the only ones with an interest in this portlfolio: Aisslinger has had his furniture and product design featured at world-class museums such as  MoMA (where he has a permanent exhibit on his chair design ), the MET, the French Fonds National d’Art Contemporain in Paris, the Musuem Nue Sammlung in Munich and the Vitra Design Museum in Weil, Germany.

What follows is just a sampling of the modular designs to have come out of his offices over the years.

Coral Seating and Lighting

TOP: Coral seating cushions lay on the beach as if they’ve been washed up from the sea. BOTTOM: Translucent Coral lights using a similar hex unit.

Inspired by  the micro organisms emanating from the deep depths of the ocean floor, these modular seating arrangements and lighting fixtures from 2009 are composed of flexible hexagon funnels made from a mix of felt and polycarbonate that create a coral shape when joined in multiples. The sea-inspired pieces come in varying color schemes and, being modular, can be scaled to suit.

NetWork

Embroidered design enters the Age of the New Industrialism.

Perhaps you were under the impression that crocheting was culturally retrogressive. No more. Aisslinger managed to transform this traditional, old-school craft into a progressive, interactive and contemporary design form using high-technology and software. Its 2-dimensional embroidery designs are directly programmed into ‘smart’ machines that stitch the pattern together to make 3-dimensional objects.

Mesh

 

Your request for privacy should not result in staring at stark white walls!

Gone should be the days of the opaque wall divider or cubicle. For subtle separation with visual appeal, Aisslinger designed a lightweight textile structure evocative of honeycombs. The units interconnect to form customizable interior dividers with the potential to be bent into 3-dimensional shapes – distinctly unlike most separators, which are typically confined to straight planes. Made with three different types of relief structures, the hex motif and ribs were inspired by a blow-up of a vegetable organism. The color contrast of the fibers and directional changes in the weaving pattern add perforation, depth and texture to the dividers.

PLUS Unit for Magis

Stack up or down with the playful storage design unit by Aisslinger.

Similar to UP’s, the PLUS unit is a modular storage system that allows for customizable configuration of shelving units. Traditionally stacked or stacked side-by-side like a staircase, the aluminum drawers add a dimension of fun to functional design. Check them out at our store.

 

 

UP’s for RS Barcelona

Here’s how Studio Aisslinger explains the UP’s design:
“UP´s is a totally new modular block-system which integrates the open space between the attached boxes for the scheme: UP´s can generate endless modular sideboard landscapes or shelves always including the “free” space between the box-elements. These box-elements are offered in various types, such as the standard open box, box with sliding doors or boxes with folding wings. All these front-options can be later attached to the basic steel box-element. The visual “architecture” of the UP´s system is a rhythm of closed volumes with airy gaps in between”.

Loft Cube

TOP AND BOTTOM: Get sweeping views of any city with the 360 panoramic views of the Loft Cube. It travels anywhere you go and comes with a handsomely coordinated interior design. Will not fit into an overhead compartment.

Meet the modern day mobile home. This architectural piece is so cutting-edge that it may still belongs in the future. Composed of four walls of either translucent, transparent or opaque material, the structure forms a mobile living cube with 360 degree panoramic views. Custom interior design options are available so that lucky  cube-owners can turn the Loft Cube into any type of living or working space, anywhere they would like. Made with the highest quality lightweight materials, the Cube Loft takes only a few days to set-up.

Light Wave

Bombay Sapphire sets the mood blue with their lighting fixture designed by Aisslinger.

Created for Bombay Sapphire, this large-form lighting structure created the ultimate mood lightning for one of the gin brand’s events.  Made of 50 x 50 cm modules, the communal lighting object can be arranged in a variety of pixel-like configurations to create larger formats. Each individual module is designed to create a 3-dimensional shape that allows for an infinite number of additional modules. When shaped together, the overall product is an installation of fluid movement among convex and concave shapes (that’s fluid, in case you didn’t see the connection).

And this just in:

Hemp House at DMY Berlin 2011

TOP AND BOTTOM: A structural system made from the cannabis plant. A modular Mary Jane anyone?

Exploring sustainable materials, Aisslinger presented his Hemp House at DMY berlin 2011. The structure is made of more than 70% natural fibers, such as hemp and kenaf, bound together with acrodur, a water-based acrylic resin from german chemical company BASF.

The compression of renewable raw materials forms a new environmentally-friendly composite that is lightweight yet durable. Says Aisslinger, “Design history is driven by new technologies and material innovation. For us designers, the advent of these technologies has always been the starting point for new objects and typologies in design”.

Like we said…thanks Mr. Aisslinger.

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June 22nd, 2011

All in Stitches: Customized Floor Coverings

The units that make up Stitch Interlocking Rug system come in vibrant color shades suitable for both young folk and color-inclined grownups.

Finding the perfect sized rug to work in a space can be a challenge, especially when you’re also trying to find just the right color scheme AND find a pattern you like.  Sure, your basic white rug is a convenient away to steer around at least the last two problems, but where is the fun in that? White is so…vanilla. Not to mention a bear to keep clean unless you force people at gunpoint to walk around in their socks.

Answer? Make your own rug, of course. Okay, so you don’t know how to operate a loom. Or fleece sheep. Big deal! Modular design comes to the rescue, as it often does. In fact, we’ve got two solutions to offer: the Stitch Interlocking Rug from Lithuanian designer Nauris Kalinauskas, and the Buzzi Puzzle Rug from our friends at BuzziSpace.

The Stitch Rug also comes in grays, blacks and neutrals for a more subdued palette, which can nevertheless be intermixed with strong stronger accent colors for some visual pop.

Stitch works pretty much the way the name suggests: you purchase rug components in 10-piece packages that you then join together to create the finished rug.  This allows you to build whatever size floor covering you want and mix colors in whatever proportion you desire. Is your space irregular, open or complex in plan, meaning not a pure rectangle or circle? Egads, this really is your lucky day, because the contours of the Stitch rug modules lend themselves particularly well to making a rug with a non-rectilinear outline.

 

The Stitch Rug palette embraces a wide range of hues, so you can make sure it goes with your dog. Or child.


Our other customizable floor covering, the Buzzi Puzzle Rug, goes in the opposite direction in terms of shape; in fact, the modules are based on a square, which goes pretty well with the straight walls and rectangular perimeter that characterizes the large majority of interior rooms or areas. The pieces measure about 39 inches across, not including the tabs, which gives them a fun, generous scale. The palette tends toward neutral grays and off-whites. Made from up-cycled PET waste, you’re not only doing your toes a favor when you go this route, you’re helping the environment. And the rug has sound-absorbing properties to boot (get it, to boot?).

The Buzzi Puzzle Rug comes in four colors and is a cinch to put together. Even a grownup could do it.

Don’t know about you, but we’re positively floored by the idea of making cost-effective rugs to suit.

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June 14th, 2011

HOMB Is Where The Heart Is

Hanging out: HOMB modular homes offer an unusual faceted design style that derives from the unique shape of their modules.

A few years ago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York (aka MoMA) put on a much talked-about show on the state of prefabricated architecture (aka prefab) from the perspective of high design. Looking back on that show now, it’s reasonably safe to say it represented a crest in the wave of popular interest in prefab that emerged with the appointment of Allison Arieff to the editorship of Dwell magazine in 2000. For many years thereafter Arieff used her platform to promote prefab as a viable way to create well-designed, affordable homes and structures using factory-built modules trucked to a site and assembled into a finished whole.

One result of this surge was a proliferation in the number of new companies offering upscale, contemporary-styled prefab dwellings. Today there seem to be dozens if not hundreds of them scattered across the country, vying to catch the attention of the home buying market (or what’s left of it). Some are stand-alone manufacturers, others are collaborative ventures involving architects and fabricators. Collectively their catalog of designs constitute a visible departure from the somewhat stale, ersatz renditions of quasi-traditional homes cooked up by the major players who had dominated the prefab market in the decades since the Second World War.

While it might be relatively easy to tell this new breed of companies apart from their older competitors, it does, at times, get somewhat difficult to differentiate the new guys on the block from each other. That’s one reason why we rather liked what we saw when we first came across HOMB, a modular operation out of…well, we’re not exactly sure. They have one of those websites that assiduously avoids telling you where they are located. Anyway, with the help of Google we found out they were based in Washington State, and appear to be a joint venture of Skylab Architecture and Method Homes.

TOP: From module (left) to modular steel frame (middle) to enclosed house (right). MIDDLE: you’ve seen the stills, now watch the video. BOTTOM: Hellooooo…anybody HOMB?

What really caught our eye in browsing their website was the fact that their modules have a shape rather unlike any we had seen before. They’re equilateral triangles, to be precise, meaning triangles having three equal sides and equal angles.

What’s so exciting about that? Well, you put a half-dozen modules together and what do you get? A hexagon, one of our quintessential modular forms! Think honeycombs! Think architect Frank Lloyd Wright, sculptor/architect/painter Tony Smith, and lots of other less well-known creatives who have seized on this particular polygon as a way to generate and organize form and proportion in their work. Finally, somebody who’s thought out of the typical modular box to connect contemporary prefab with a rich design history. Welcome HOMB indeed!

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June 12th, 2011

A Child's Chair by Kristian Vedel

A chair for children, or a side table for adults: the Child’s Chair by ArchitectMade can grow with you to adulthood and even into your dotage, at which point it’s time to hand it down to the next generation. Image courtesy of ArchitectMade.

Ah, childhood. Frivolous days of frolic and not a single concern in the world.  Not even for the awkwardly exponential rate at which we outgrew every pair of shoes, pants and shirt Mom bought for us. Problem for Mom and her wallet, big problem with conventionally static design.

Enter Kristian Vedel (1923-2003), Danish industrial designer and problem solver for fast-growing children worldwide (left).

Vedel was an influential member of the Scandinavian Design movement at its mid-century height, crafting furniture from plastics and woods in a classically modern design vocabulary that embraced ergonomics and pragmatics simultaneously. He incorporated these objective requirements with a personal design vision that sacrificed neither imagination nor practicality.

This balance of perspective made him an ideal designer of children’s furniture, since he resolved the obvious problem of accelerated obsolescence by designing children’s furniture that grew with them instead of them outgrowing it. This made him of one of the first architects to design children’s furniture that wasn’t simply a miniature version of grownup pieces. His Child’s Chair of 1957, currently produced by ArchitectMade, is a superb example of his insightful design philosophy.

A few key aspects of the Child’s Chair explain its success as a piece of children’s design. First, Vedel made the chair reconfigurable by the use of two removable and re-positionable discs that fit into any of four slots in the barrel form. Friction-fit and requiring no hardware, the discs can be handled easily by child and adult alike. That makes the chair more than just a piece of practical furniture – it also makes it an object of interactive play for the child. And once the child’s imagination comes into play, so to speak, the chair becomes potentially infinite in form (in other words, a toy).

LEFT: A sampling of the many configurations of his Child’s Chair from vintage photographs. We especially appreciate the image in the lower right showing a big old guy handing a bottle of beer to an unsuspecting child. Please do not try this yourself at home. Image courtesy of ArchitectMade.

Reconfigurability also enables the chair to serve multiple functions. Simply by altering the discs and orienting the barrel form in any number of directions, the Child’s Chair can function as a table, rocker, highchair, nightstand, storage or display piece. Its versatility is further enhanced by the abstraction of its geometry, particularly the fact that it has no visible base, middle or top. By contrast, imagine taking a traditional child’s highchair and trying to turn it upside down to use it for something than its intended purpose. The only thing you’ll get by doing that is a mess of split peas on your rug.

The absence of details that give a chair its scale – the turnings on a leg, the size of a fixed back, the height of a defined seat – is precisely what enables Vedel to avoid the problem of miniaturization we mentioned at the start of this post.

Reconfigurable, multi-functional, beautifully designed and made: sounds like something they’d carry at our favorite online store for transformable art and design. Oh wait…that’s us!

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June 8th, 2011

New York Parks Turn Over A New Leaf

A vibrant bright green gives the old NYC Parks & Recreation logo a youthful – and modular – facelift.

As the weather starts to heat up, we at Module R are looking forward to our annual refuges of cool at our local New York City parks this summer. Shades on,  refreshing beverage in hand (our current fave: Rieme Blood Orange Sparkling Limonade), passing away the dog days of summer under the city’s leafy shades of green has become a favorite, if not our customary way, to stay hydrated during the sometimes unbearably hot and sunny season.  The only thing that may make our park experience even cooler this summer is the very fine redesign of the Parks Department’s logo by renowned design studio, Pentagram. And why are we feeling good about this? Because there’s a modular component to the new graphic that naturally brings a smile to our face, and a post to our newsletter.

The leaves in the Parks Department’s updated marketing collateral find some inspiration in wallpaper design.

First, the basics: the rather lengthy department name has been shortened to just “NYC Parks” and the leaf motif in the logo has been brought to a more modern look. This was achieved largely by smoothing out the rough edges of the old leaf and changing over to a fresher shade of green from the one that’s been in place since 1934. We’ll be seeing the new logo throughout the city parks and in brochures, event posters and other collateral materials.

A modular signage system for the NYC Parks.

Looking at some of the leaf patterns above, it’s evident the designers came into the project with a modular sensibility. That sensibility is most visible in the  signage system that the department is rolling out for use in the parks and green spaces. Using a square module as a base unit, the signs will expand and contract incrementally depending on the amount of information that needs to get posted.

It’s encouraging to see municipal government retaining the talents of a world-class design firm to enhance the public domain. Now if we can just get them to do something with the airports…

Via Design Taxi

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Mission

MODULE R is a concept store focused on transformable art and design. We collect pieces from all over the world that are customizable, reconfigurable, expandable, stackable, interchangeable, interactive and modular. Our catalogue includes accessories, books, furniture, children’s playthings, cookware, jewelry, lighting, storage systems, space dividers, floor and wall coverings, and artwork. In bringing this collection together – and authoring this blog – we hope to promote flexible design as an ideal way of making things in an age that prizes personalization, multi-functionality, economy and experience.

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