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For the last couple of years, designers at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile here tried various ways to tweak or even subvert high-end minimalism, which has enjoyed a long run as home decor's default style.
At this year's furniture fair, which ended Monday, some of those strategies were still in evidence. Attention-grabbing figures like Philippe Starck and the Dutch group Moooi archly undercut the smooth look with baroque decoration, blasts of color and pattern or razor-sharp edges. At Edra, there were chairs and sofas that seemed happy to take on any form, from tangled to crinkled to lumpy, as long as it was not a streamlined one.
A more surprising and compelling challenge, though, came from designs with a sensibility reminiscent of Sofia Coppola's film "Lost in Translation": genuine and even sweet, but with more than a touch of wistfulness. Brightly colored odes to childhood and fantasy-filled displays that used new technologies and materials to look low-tech drew the most attention, along with designs that sought to provide a bit of refuge or calm. Irony or too-clever posturing seemed to hit the wrong note.
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General Motors (GM) is upgrading the supercomputer brains at the heart of its product development process. The car giant has signed a deal with IBM for a system powered by 145 p655 servers and capable of nine teraflops (or trillions of calculations per second).
This awesome computing horsepower - the fastest in the auto industry, according to GM - will be used in crash test simulation and other safety-related auto development work. GM has applied computers to reduce the number crash tests its needs to do on prototypes by 85 per cent, a huge cash saving.
GM says the new system will allow it to speed up its product development process and thereby save costs. Financial terms of its deal with IBM remain undisclosed.
"[The system] takes months out of our development process. It lets us get the right product to the right market or niche much faster," said Robert Kruse, GM's vehicle integration executive director.
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The 2004 HOW Design Conference is only a few short weeks away-May 16-19 in San Diego.
The HOW Conference is your chance to totally immerse yourself in design for four days, with no deadlines and no clients. You'll get expert advice on finding new sources of inspiration, positioning your in-house team for growth and profit, being creative with a conservative client, creating great broadcast design and more.
If you haven't already registered, you've still got time. But hurry-pre-registra tion will close on Tuesday, May 11 at 5 p.m. EDT. After that date, you'll have to register on-site in San Diego.
Don't forget to add a pre-Conference workshop to your registration. These three-hour sessions will offer in-depth information on sustaining your creativity, gourmet typography and building your career.
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The kickoff event at Lightfair is the New Product Showcase, bright and early, and packed with a record 222 product submissions this year. As in previous years, various products were recognized for excellence by a committee of judges, shown below.
As a co-sponsor of the Awards with Architectural Lighting, Lightsearch.com/Li ghtNOW publishes the New Product Showcase online each year. This year, you can find all of the products entered the 2004 New Product Showcase, including award-winners.
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Lightfair International definitely had a different flavor this year, with a number of large manufacturers conspicuously absent (there were few towering booths) and a large number of Asian and LED manufacturers present. In past years, we have seen "Repfair," "Ballastfair," etc. This year was pretty accurately nicknamed, "LEDfair" or, if you want to look at the effect of the LEDs, "Colorfair." There appears to be significant demand for small, colorful lighting, particulary color-changing.
Two of the three major lamp manufacturers that represent about 90% of North American lamp sales did not have a significant presence in the exhibit hall. Philips and OSRAM SYLVANIA had a small presence in the hall with 10x10 booths, and had planned not to exhibit at all. Philips Lighting and sister company Advance Transformer Co. did not exhibit in a big way, but had a major presence at the nearby Bellagio Hotel, where Philips debuted its new 20W ceramic metal halide (MasterColor) lamp at a party
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