ACCIDENTAL COLLECTORS curated for the Aram Gallery presented the personal collections of seven designers and artists, not of their work but the things they collect and mostly keep to themselves. This included the 48 puncture repair kits of Nigel Shafran, the 84 tin oil lamps of Tony Hayward, the 312 clothes pegs of Yoav Ziv and Gad Charny, a selection of 40 pinnies from Jesssica Ogden’s 400+ aprons, the Aladdin colour-separated glass vessels collection of Stuart Haygarth and file boxes full of the typographically-nuanced shapes and parts of objects from the studio of Paul Elliman.

The unexpected collected items, that serve to inspire their guardians, were presented during March 2007 and reflect The Aram Gallery’s ongoing curiosity about design thinking.

The exhibition design by Peter Marigold was complemented by a pamphlet edited by Daniel Charny, supported by The Arts Council of England, which included short essays by Yaacov Kaufman, Libby Sellers, Michael Marriot, Tony Hayward and a conversation between Paul Elliman and Anna Colins

Slow Water was a responsible design brief set by Feo and Charny for the Royal College of Art student group platform 10 and resulted in 14 new design concepts. The research and the prototypes were presented in a unique exhibition, supported by Innovation RCA, that rippled to wide acclaim during the London Design Festival of September 2007.

The students were offered a brief to ‘slow water down between the sky and the sea’, and to consider changes to the way people use and think about water in their day to day life. This included ideas about the future of showering with less water and efficient rain water management for private gardening alongside communication projects for raising awareness to the impacts of indulgent domestic water consumption.

Two of the students projects from Slow Water have since been picked up by progressive industry, and the project is still generating attention from press and publishers… for more details check out the report on treehugger or visit the platform 10.

On the occasion of the opening The Royal Institution of Great Britain hosted a talk with Karen Blincoe and Daniel Charny on Designing for Sustainability with a focus on questioning the roles of designers and design education.

New Moves was an exhibition at The Aram Gallery from 20 September to 3 November 2007 featuring 70 new task light prototypes designed by students from the Royal College of Art’s acclaimed Design Products department. The exhibition had as its starting point an exploration of the iconic task light – the Anglepoise and also offers the opportunity to compare new work with a selection of classics and best sellers from this uniquely independent form of lighting.

Research into solid freeform fabrication NEW PROTOTYPES of the Morning Glory tower lamp, and two products from the “A head of its time” project. The first to be produced was the double portrait sandclock, the sand pours from the top head to the lower and back when turned up side down. The second project is a salt and pepper portrait shakers. The embedded portraits are of the two designers involved in this project. The three pieces are part of the joint design collaboration with Professor Gad Charny of HIT, for ‘Dream Makers’ – an exhibition on the future of rapid prototyping, curated by Alex Ward, produced by Objet Geometries and shown at the Israel Museum Architecture and Design department, opened 5th January 2007.

do you suffer from LITTER GUILT?

GET A PIGDOG and you will be released from any further recycling anxieties!

PIGDOGS – made from two pint UK plastic milk bottles metallized in gold have become votive objects providing relief from recycling guilt, last seen at the Wellcome Collection’s Travelling Apothecary fair at the British Library on 16th September 2006, for further info see LITTER GUILT

Conversational Spanish

Conversational Spanish was a strong group show of experimental and new designs by currently active new generation designers from Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia that are working with local Spanish industry. The exhibition was designed by Serrano, and used speaker cones that played short conversations about the key exhibits. We got exciting reviews in local and international press.

STAGE

STAGE at The Aram Gallery was a monographic exhibition of selected work by Jaime Hayon, curated by Daniel Charny. Check out BACKSTAGE – the catalogue, and see the poster designed by Jeremy Mac Lynn. The exhibition won best of show in the 2006 London Design Festival Icon Design Trail award and has gone on to other galleries in Holland and Spain.

Walking Chair

Click here to see other previous exhibitions, such as the posters of DONT PANIC, the domestication of rotation moulded design in ROTATIONS, lighting design in DARKNESS or the tribute to A.Castiglioni. While you check out the exhibition of Trico Design Love! have a look at the latest colour available of the classic all pocket Pocketshirt designed for their inspirational design against trend collection.

Trico Design Love!

Royal College of Art Platform 10 is jointly directed by Daniel Charny and Roberto Feo, and is now in its 4th year.

The 2006 graduates work can be seen in our latest BOOK OF TEN (2006-2007). The Book of Ten includes some of the briefs given from that year (such as to design a Superstition and design a Mythical object from the 21st century, or Culture Shop aimed at initiating museum shop products that reflect the culture of the specific museum). For the first time there was also a reflective collaboration with V&A/RCA History of Design students that noted their take on the Platform 10 work. Five of the 2006 Platform 10 graduates have set up a studio group together – check out OKAYstudio

In 2006 we collaborated with rapid prototyping technology industry leaders 3D systems on a project MADEBYMACHINE , supported especially by Colin Blain, it was exhibited at the 2006 Milan furniture fair in collaborations with Zeus in their wonderful showroom – see here for some of the results.

In 2007, with the whole of Design Products we ran a project with the inimitable Ernesto Gismondi of Artemide in search of a new type of task light to continue the legacy (and diversify the market) started by the iconic anglepoise lamp. The culmination of this project was the New Moves exhibition at the Aram Gallery.

Sharewear – CHarny’s response to an industrial design project for the RNID future of hearing equipment exhibition, Hearwear launched at the V&A Museum contemporary galleries in March 2005.

Read more about the project in design4design article, and here are some media/client images of the project.

Talk at the Design Revolution in Industry conference for plastic industry leaders and project managers on the potentials of improving briefs for designers. Hosted by D-vision, Ketter Plastics group, Herzeliya July 2006.

Talk to History of Design post-graduate students at the V&A about writing the conceptual programme for a new type of design museum. The research for this included creating a tool to describe museum subject affinity and profiling the physical environment in relation to the mission statement, activity programme and collection. The building is being designed by Ron Arad Associates for the Holon Municipality in Israel.

Badisgood – a second outdoor design workshop looking at positive three dimensional graffiti in the built environment. Some exciting concepts – picts to follow soon.

Signs of Change – an outdoor public space design workshop with Gabriel Klasmer for the Swedish Industrial design LTH University in LUND.