What’s the firm’s design philosophy?

Our philosophy is to incorporate technical refinement and design originality. We design our collections according to human needs. Comfort and usability play just as important a role as aesthetics. We believe in superior quality and often say that the bitterness of low quality lasts longer than the sweetness of low prices

The intent of your designs?

The founders, graduated with engineering degrees so it’s not surprising that the Royal Botania team pays special attention to ergonomics. Our chairs and loungers offer the maximum in spinal support and comfort.

Your target audience?

Our target audience includes residential and commercial architects, designers and specifiers as well as the well-educated consumer who would like to buy for the long term. Our audience is design-savvy and sophisticated – hard workers who know how to relax in style.

The materials used?

Since Royal Botania supplies outdoor furniture to the global market, every product is created with durability and versatility in mind. From the sweltering heat in tropical regions to the freezing winters in Canada, all of our products are designed to withstand even the most extreme of temperatures. Only carefully selected materials such as mature teakwood—harvested in accordance with strict sustainable forest policies—and COAXXS—the strongest, most natural-looking synthetic fiber on the market—are used.

Sustainability?

We use materials with outstanding physical properties, including sustainably harvested teak, which is found in such popular pieces as the XQI chairs and Tabeola table. What’s more, around 95% of Royal Botania’s products are made of recyclable materials including: glass, aluminum and stainless steel. 

And why would my mother care?

They are built to last and be passed down from generation to generation.  What mother wouldn’t want to spend time outdoors in the fresh air with their family and friends?

For more information, go to http://www.royalbotania.com/

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Through her blog, Tile Envy, she’s learned what’s hot and what’s not – and she’s assembled an online design boutique dedicated only to the tile designs she knows are in demand.

It’s called Clé – and it’s a source for affordable, fashionable and quality tile.

“We now have suppliers from all over the world, through the Internet,” she says.  “Instead of being curated by tile dealers, we’re introducing different artists and design studios to an enormous audience.”

Moreover, she’s able to introduce artists who produce work by hand to larger collaborators who can produce 50,000 pieces in a year.  Or steer a client in Africa toward the nearest source for a desired tile.

“Two sides kind of bubbled up for me as I worked with Tile Envy,” she says. “First, there’s the trending of products, and then there’s the nurturing of artists’ voices.”

Clé, which launches today, includes works by 12 artists from almost as many places, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Napa Valley, Pennsylvania, Italy, South Africa, Scotland, Canada and the United Kingdom.

The online boutique is a play on the English word for clay and the French for key.  “We hope to unlock new tile horizons,” she says.

Among the tile trends she’s identified and represented on Clé are subway tiles (once disappearing but now making a comeback with a hand-hewn, industrial-age look) as well as penny pounds (porcelain about the size of a penny, mounted on a net), and anything wood-grained.  “Glass mosaics are dwindling, though we’re willing to look if it’s interesting,” she says.

It’s all driven by a bottom-up demand, rather than a top-down offering.  “It’s what people want, not what designers and manufacturers are pushing.”

For more information, go to http://cletile.com/

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It’s what he calls the brand essence of Lasvit, the company he founded after graduating from Loyola in 1999 and earning his MBA from Northwestern’s Kellog School of Management in Hong Kong.  His  firm designs and manufactures contemporary light fittings, glass art installations and award-winning lighting collections.

The Bohemian reference implies a free-spirited inspiration for the products his firm designs, while it pursues perfection in a systematic and precise manufacturing process.  The company’s name is a marriage of two Czech words: laska (love) and svit (light).

“We always want to combine the history of Czech design, based on Bohemian glass traditions, with new ways of thinking about it,” he says.   “One of our goals is to bring back the Czechoslovakian glass tradition that was nearly lost during the socialist period.”

The firm is known for engaging internationally-known designers, including Oki Sato of Nendo Studio.  “He’s the hottest designer in the world right now – he was Wallpaper’s designer of the year in 2011,” he says.  “He’s developing totally new concepts in blown glass – the products look simple, but they’re complex in the production process.

Among the products the Japanese designer has developed for Lasvit are glass coffee tables as well and lighting collections.

Lasvit’s custom-made glass installations are featured in public spaces of major hotels like the Four Seasons in Abu Dhabi.  The firm has collaborated on projects with architects Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid.

Its architectural glass division uses large scale thermo shaping to create glass panels of liquid crystals for interiors and facades.  Another division focuses on lighting collections that create art in glass and crystal, while a fourth is dedicated to a glassware line.

But it’s the firm’s commitment to the resurgence of a thousand-year-old art and tradition of Czech glass design that inspires most.

For more information, go to http://www.lasvit.com/#/en/home

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Richard Meier & Partners Architects and Stradaproject have announced the re-launching of the Richard Meier furniture collection, first introduced by Knoll International in the 1980s.

“It’s an extension of the Knoll collection, but it’s been somewhat modified and changed,” Meier says.  “It’s much more beautifully done.”

A collaborative effort with Wiebe Elzenga of Strada from the Netherlands, Meier’s collection now includes a chair, low and high stools, a low table and a high table, a day bed and a rocking chaise.

“These are designs for the things I like,” Meier says.  “I designed the coffee table because I wanted one myself.”

Each of the pieces is wood with choice of a black or white lacquer, or natural wood, hand-rubbed finish.  The collection is an evolution of current capabilities of wood-in bending, evoking the craftsmanship of classic mortise and reflecting Meier’s strong formal vocabulary of architectural expression.

He was inspired, the architect says, by the furniture he’s chosen for his own office.  “I sit here opposite seven Hoffman chairs, and they’re all different,” he says.  “It’s a modernist aesthetic.  I don’t even think about it – it’s a given.”

Each of the new pieces is available now.  For more on the collection, go to http://www.stradaproject.com/.  For more on Richard Meier & Partners, go to http://www.richardmeier.com

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The encounter not only changed his career path, but engendered a lifelong appreciation for good design.

In the early 1990s, he developed a curriculum for a course at Columbia on law for architects.  The dean got pretty excited about it, but that was about the extent of the enthusiasm.

“Only a few students signed up for it,” Herrmann says today.  “It became the course that didn’t happen.”

Still, the seed of an idea was planted.  So, years later, when he ran into a book editor from W.W. Norton, Herrman proposed a book on the topic.

The result is “Law for Architects,” to be published on Monday, May 14.  It’s a reference book where practicing architects can get a quick read on the legal aspects of the business side of design.  Each of its 10 chapters covers topics like copyright, design infringement, intellectual property, contracts and employment guidelines.

“I hope it will really benefit people – that they’ll take advantage of it and stay out of trouble,” he says.

Herrman’s been practicing law for almost 40 years, 30 of them representing the design profession.  He’s participated in AIA programs on risk management, ownership transfers and contract law.

Moreover, he’s an aficionado of good design.  He plans trips around the architecture of the Rust Belt, in cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Scranton, spending days at a time looking into classic American architecture.

And he’s got taste, too.  His favorite building?  Louis Sullivan’s exquisite Guaranty Trust Building in Buffalo, N.Y.

For more information, go to http://books.wwnorton.com/books/978-0-393-73345-7/

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They paint at exactly the same time, sometimes for as long as 10 hours at a stretch, like two musicians side by side.

They use an affine grid – a favorite of architects designing via computers – to produce a third subjectivity for the viewer.

“It’s elaborate, attractive, and about beauty,” says Gilbert-Rolfe.  “It’s about an involuntary response to what you’re seeing – rather than reading it, it’s about what you already know.”

They are Los Angeles-based, but they’re showing their work now at the Green Building in Louisville’s NuLu neighborhood.   They met at the Art Center College of Design when Norton was a student in 2007 and Gilbert-Rolfe, an instructor.  He still teaches there.

They are influenced by Piet Mondrian and his theory of what’s not on the surface of a painting, but exists between what the painting does to the space of the viewer.  “It goes straight into the viewer’s body,” Gilbert Rolfe says.  “You get to think about that after you have the experience of feeling it.”

Like Rothko’s, their paintings vibrate before the human eye.

Their palette is a product, to some degree, of living in an age of video.  It’s as much a response to technology and color as it is to nature.  And the result upon the viewer is almost as immediate as video too.

“When you look at one of our paintings, you’re not just looking at an idea – you’re dealing with something that’s happening to you,” he says.

The Awkward x 2 rule is that no painting is finished until neither artist is sure of who did what.

For more information, go to http://www.thegreenbuilding.net/gallery/index.html

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“It’s a big billboard in the marketplace,” the 2004 graduate of the Harvard Design School says.  “It speaks to users – for those who pass it, it enters into their visual life.”

He cites HWKN’s Uniqlo Cubes as a prime example.  Developed for a major Japanese retailer, they are pop-up stores that can be moved around an urban area, whose shelves become part of their walls. 

Once the cube is plopped onto its location, a section of its form slides open like a vault, inviting customers to come in, try on clothes and make their purchases.  At night, the cubes glow in the dark to make their presence known.  Their branding power is derived not just from form and glowing geometrical shape, but from the attention to detail in their material and construction.

“They’re made of aluminum,” he says.  “And how they came together is important – they weren’t screwed or bolted, but locked together like a jigsaw puzzle.” 

Kushner believes in research-based solutions to architecture and branding.  He’s not necessarily interested in a stylistic approach to design, but in diagnosis and psychoanalysis to dig into what a client’s agenda might be. 

If that sounds more like an ad agency than an architecture firm, so be it.

“We’ve learned a lot from agencies,” he says.  “We’ve worked with Deutsch, Kirshenbaum and KKLD – they hired us to work for their clients with temporary event spaces for campaigns.”

Between Architizer and his firm’s very smart designs (they’ll debut their winning entry for MoMA’s P.S. 1 in July), Kushner demonstrates a self-evident savvy of latter-day brand management.

For more information, go to http://www.hwkn.com/

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He majored in both at Yale, then tackled Princeton’s A-school.   He’s been tracking the price of oil and the use of sustainable design ever since.

“When I graduated in 1981, there wasn’t much in environmental design,” he says.  “Oil was cheap.  “By the ‘90s, it was expensive again, and there were new green materials and technologies out there.”

Still, environmental design seemed always to occupy a niche aside from the mainstream.  Now, the author of “Sustainable Design: A Critical Guide” from Princeton Architectural Press says it’s time for the public and the profession to integrate it into everyday design practice.

“Including environmental design doesn’t mean ruining the budget or sacrificing aesthetics,” he says.  “It’s not a separate aspect, but integral – we need to stop niching environmental design in the way we approach design concepts.”

In his book, he encourages the rethinking – of making the distinction between tweaks and innovations.  A tweak might be a more environmentally friendly lawn mower, where an innovation might mean rethinking the idea of a lawn that must be mowed.

He also addresses the concept of regenerative design, an approach to ecodesign that goes beyond sustainability to repair, or regenerate, natural systems.

“A roofing product might take the smog out of the air, and purify the air around a building,” he says.  “It’s a matter not of doing less bad, but of returning the eco system to better state that aids us in flourishing on this planet.”

That’s a far cry from the late-20^th century modernists who led us to think we could work without nature as a constraint.  As the 21^st century dawned, an understanding of environmental issues advanced, though looked at mostly as being separate and unusual.

These are different times, the author says.

“We’re in a phase now where we need to think of green design as the usual way of doing things, as being broadly incorporated,” Bergman says.  “Now, it’s not an option – it’s something that needs to be almost taken for granted.”

And that would be a brave new world.

For more information, go to http://www.papress.com/html/book.details.page.tpl?isbn=9781568989419

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Brazilian photographer Bruno Cals has achieved something similar with his images now on display at 1500 Gallery in West Chelsea.

“In some ways, his work is simple, but that’s what makes it beautiful,” says Andrew Klug, co-founder of the gallery. 

Cals’ images are of building facades photographed from below, looking upward, placing the horizon in the middle of the plane.  The results?  Photographic images that look like desert scenes, futuristic cities, landscapes from Mars and prehistoric settings.

“It makes you ask what you’re looking at,” Klug says.  “The emotional intention that he’s trying to evoke is one of wonder.”

The 45-year-old Cals is an accomplished commercial photographer – one of the most successful in Brazil.  Not satisfied with shooting ad campaigns and fashion spreads, he set out to pursue an artistic career a few years back.  His first exhibit in 2010, which was also 1500 Gallery’s first solo show, was well received.

The new show, curated by pioneering Brazilian modernist photographer Boris Kossoy – whose own work hangs in both the Met and MoMA - is an extension of that 2010 exhibit.

“In this exhibition, Bruno Cals presents a reflection on space and time—a riveting reflection over indeterminate eras and possible civilizations, extinct or yet unborn, not necessarily human,” Kossoy writes.  “How do our minds react to the unknown, to empty landscapes lacking historical context?”

The images are at once architectural, surreal and ethereal.

“He’s presenting landscapes, and trying to mislead the eye by presenting something very commonplace,” Klug says.  “The effect is one of a very unusual perspective to take a commonplace object and make it unrecognizable.”

The exhibit opens on May 2 and runs through Sept. 28.

For more on Bruno Cals, go to http://www.1500gallery.com/index.php?mode=gallery&section_id=156

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His commercial clients are asking for geometric, linear and clean patterns for their hotels, restaurants and retail outlets.  They want big slabs, in neutral colors with organic shading.  “Greige is back,” he says.  “It’s gray but a little warmer.”

The large floral motifs currently so popular in Europe have not caught on here.

“I think it’s already passed us by,” the Charlotte, N.C. area manager for the company says.  “In the states we’ve had no requests for it.”

LEA made its commitment to cutting edge design clear at last year’s Milan Design Week when Zaha Hadid used the firm’s ultraslim ceramics to create “Twirl.”  It was futuristic, fantastic and created in a Milan courtyard. 

The site was surrounded by two-story columns and an elevated gallery.  The ceramic sheets made of LEA’s Slimtech product line, were arranged to transform the rigid, classical design of the courtyard into a fluid and dynamic spatial construct.  Still, the installation managed to emphasize its arches and curves, while distorting its sense of space.

LEA is one of five Italian companies within the Paneriagroup, which also operates Florida tile in the states, and Magres and Love Tile in Portugal.   Paneriagroup acquired the smaller, family-owned LEA about 15 years ago and began to invest in technology for the firm.”

The company has evolved into a market leader, known for quality, design and technological savvy.  It regularly engages designers like Hadid to prove that point, in projects like ‘Twirl.’

“It showed how easy out material is to work with for the shapes she sees in her mind,” Guazzi says.

For more information, go to http://www.ceramichelea.it/acm-on-line/en/Home.html