Product > Finds from the Floor at NeoCon 2013
Nearly 42,000 architects, interior designers, facilities planners, furniture dealers, and distributors converged on NeoCon, the A&D industry’s largest exhibition of office, residential, health care, hospitality, institutional, and government design products. Held from June 10–12, the show included education components and keynote presentations from Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG; Michael Vanderbyl, principal of Vanderbyl Design; Holly Hunt, president & CEO of Holly Hunt; and Lauren Rottet, interior architect and founder of Rottet Studio. AN was present to cover a handful of educational seminars and sessions (see our live tweets from Ingels’s presentation on our Twitter feed), and we scoured the showrooms in search of 2013′s new product trends. Following are a few we saw at the show.
Video> Eames Elephants Go On Safari
If you love the Eames Office (and who doesn’t?) you need to see this new video by Eames Demetrios, grandson of Charles and Ray Eames, who took several of their famous elephants on safari with him at the Malamala Game Reserve in South Africa. The stop-action video accomplishes what few in the design world have been able to: it brings the already playful pieces to life, wearing pith helmets, bumping around in their jeep, wrestling and checking out zebras, water buffalo, and other creatures (but curiously no elephants). Good news: it appears there will be more safaris to come.
Ice Cube, the Architectural Draftsman and Eames Enthusiast
Since an unofficial concept ad was leaked (above, left) in September proclaiming “Ice Cube celebrates Ray & Charles Eames,” the web has been abuzz about the rapper’s upcoming film on the architects’ influence on his life, part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time series of exhibitions in Los Angeles. For the exhibition on Ray and Charles Eames, Ice Cube recreated an old ad (above, right) from the 1950s, complete with a pipe and a 1953 DAT Chair. Cube, it appears, studied architectural drafting, although he never got his degree. He joins LA stars like Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis and actor Jason Schwartzman in promoting the epic series, which continues through next year.
Quick Clicks> Sotheby’s Farmers Market, NYC Camping, Big Blue’s Architecture, Dirtiest Cities
Sotheby’s Wants to Open… a Farmer’s Market: In an unlikely move, the auction house is proposing a youth-run farmer’s market in front of its Upper East Side headquarters, after a sale of heirloom produce raised $100,000 for non-profits last year. The plan went before the community board this week, and DNAinfo reports: “Some were supportive of the small-scale event that would bring fresh food to the area… Others were more skeptical and wanted to know where the kids manning the stand on between East 71st and 72nd streets — on Sept. 6, 13, 20 and 27 — and the produce would be coming from.”
Camping in New York… City: The National Parks Service announced plans to turn Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennet Field, a decommissioned airport once used by Amelia Earhart, into the country’s largest urban campground. Ninety camp sites have been planned for the next two years, with as many as 600 in the future. Floyd Bennet Field already has occasional summer camping nights, which the NYTimes Frugal Traveler tried out for $20 last year.
How IBM Re-Defined Corporate Architecture: Big Blue celebrates its 100th anniversary this week, and Network World takes a look at the company’s greatest architectural gems. The company hired some of the biggest names, including Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, Paul Rand, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, to design its modernist offices and later suburban corporate campuses. Martin Moeller at the National Building Museum calls IBM the “vanguard” in using buildings to express corporate identity.
America’s Dirtiest Cities: Travel and Leisure just released its list of worst offenders. New Orleans, Philadelphia and Los Angeles top the list. Readers chose the “winners” based on litter, air pollution, and the taste of local tap water, in the magazine’s annual America’s Favorite Cities survey.
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