design

Remember the fabulous cloud chair that we had on stage at Lift09? It was the work of Richard Hutten for Ormond Editions... Here we see it with Vint Cerf in the background:

Well, we'd like to extend our congratulations to Ormond Editions for winning a 2012 Wallpaper Design Award for their work: Altaïr collection, by Stéphane Parmentier, for Ormond Editions. In collaboration with Ormond Editions, Stéphane Parmentier presents an exclusive collection of occasionnal furniture, tables, console and decorative objects. You can get a closer look here.

We have the pleasure to announce our next Lift Event in Korea, which will take place in April 2012 in Seoul. The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Presence Switzerland mandated us to curate a Lift event in Seoul, taking place prior to the 2012 Expo in Yeosu.

The Lift event, under the code name “Swiss-Korean Innovation Night” will feature the traditional Lift ingredients: disruptive ideas, inspiring projects, carefully prepared speeches from pioneers of their fields and entertaining social events in a beautifully designed space.

The mission of the Swiss-Korean Innovation Night

• Enhance ties between both countries in the long term by connecting Swiss and Korean innovators
• Explore fields of innovation where Switzerland can contribute most: Robotics, design, luxury 2.0, craftsmanship, med tech, social innovation and culture!
• Promote a future-oriented Switzerland driven by innovation, creativity, technology and design
• Celebrate innovation!

Take your chance: submit your project!

We are looking for innovative, surprising and entertaining Swiss and Korean projects. The objective of the event is to offer participants the opportunity to witness exclusive demos and explore surprising prototypes. The projects must be very visual, engaging and ideally interactive, as they will be featured in an exhibition.

Further criteria

• Your project, prototype or demo should be quite easy to transport
• Good storytelling: you should enjoy present your project to an audience of 200-300 persons in English or Korean
• We are looking for projects from the fields of robotics, interactive installations (VJs, performance, sensors, new interfaces etc), design, craftsmanship, med tech, luxury 2.0, social innovation and culture

In this speech, Tobie Kerridge describes the "Material Beliefs" project, a design research project with a focus on a speculative approach to biotechnology as a form of engagement with the public.

A leading researcher on globalization, global cities and new technologies Saskia Sassen discusses the current hype around smart cities. She reminds us that “It is the need to design a system that puts all that technology truly at the service of the inhabitants—and not the other way around.”

Want to get more information? Check these related articles:

A propos de S. Sassen et de « l’urbanisme open-source » sur Technogéographie (in French)

An interview with Saskia Sassen about "Smart cities" by Nicolas Nova

Nice installation for the Tokyo Hermès shop. Sometimes technology can recreate a very human touch.

My article about technological failures has been published in the last issue of ACM interactions. It addresses the possibility to use failure as design tactic:

“failures and mistakes are important too because they are implicit signs of a need or problem that requires a solution. The examination of failures reveals what is commonly referred to in HCI as the “gulf of execution,” i.e., the difference between the user’s expected actions to achieve a goal and the actual required actions

However, my quirky mind-set left me wondering about the role of failure in design research: If problems and mistakes are so interesting and insightful, why not be a bit more bold and enlist them as a design tactic? I am suggesting the conscious design of “questionable” prototypes to investigate user experience. (…) In doing so, what kind of insights can be derived from leading people in the wrong direction?“

Link

We have had viral tickets, viral blog posts, viral tweets. One of the less known category of viral stuff we do is posters. You can see them pop up a bit everywhere from time to time. Here is the latest example, our longtime friend Robert Scoble making a video from his appartment with a wonderful Lift07 poster in the back :)

Link

The first Lift11 banners are here. They won't tell you everything about the year's visual theme, but you can see the global direction Bread and butter is choosing for 2011... Let's see how this pans out, and feel free to use the following to promote the conference on your webs!

A great idea that could transform a liability into an asset by turning electricity pylons into pieces of art. The project comes from Choi + Shine Architects (USA) and was an entry into a contest ran by an Icelandic utility. There is no realization date set yet, but let's hope this will take life somewhere in the world.

Links:
• Project page on Choi + Shine
• Telegraph: Chain of human pylons planned for Iceland

For our Lifters currently in Paris: the project FabWall of the Lift France 10 speakers Jean-Louis Frechin and Uros Petrevski is on exhibition until 15 August at the Musée des Arts décoratif. More info here.

Also check out the video of their Lift speech (in french) about "Hacking industrial machinery to design desirable objects" / "Hacker les machines industrielles pour concevoir des objets désirables"

Le projet FabWall de Jean-Louis Frechin et Uros Petrevski est exposé jusqu'au 15 août dans le WallPaperLab du Musée des Arts Décoratifs à Paris. Pour en savoir plus visitez leur nouveau site web NoDesignLab.