| Abstract |
Six Swedish designers to watch
In September, icon published a letter from a Swedish professor saying the country’s design scene had fallen flat. Not true, says Lesley Jackson, it’s as dynamic as it ever was. Here she picks half a dozen young practitioners that represent the new spirit in the country.
LA Climbs
A new book celebrates the architecture of Los Angeles by inviting people to climb all over it.
Grimshaw's factory for Rolls-Royce
When Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners was designing its new factory for Rolls-Royce, there were certain key aspects that even the architects were not allowed to know. Including the exact dimensions of the car that was to be produced there.
British manufacturing Renaissance?
Furniture manufacturers in this country have long been regarded as suspicious of design and unwilling to take risks. As a result, home-grown designers have had search for success abroad. But is that beginning to change? Max Fraser highlights the companies that are realising that design pays.
Bill Mitchell
The MIT Media Lab guru was in London recently promoting his new book, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. Icon met him to talk about his ideas on how technology is changing design and peoples' behaviour.
Review: Architectures non standard
A new exhibition at the Pompidou which showcases the work of 12 architecture practices doesn’t propose anything radically new, says Mark Rappolt, it just celebrates radical difference.
Dieter Rams lives in a house he designed for himself and his wife near Frankfurt, not far from the giant Braun factory complex where he worked as head of industrial design. Most of the furniture, the electrical goods, the shelving and even the door handles were designed by Rams, making it a living museum of one of the most important designers of the last century.
Review: Mcdonald's, Upper Regent Street
The global burger giant is ditching its familiar red and yellow livery in favour of a classier, more idiosyncratic urban look. Which is all very well, says Kieran Long, but sadly you still have to eat the food.
News: Tom de Paor's new pumping station
Tom de Paor has completed a new pumping station in the Dublin suburb of Clantarf, making a local landmark from a piece of infrastructure. |