The HI-MACS® House in Bavaria, Germany

A stunning villa, totally made in HI-MACS® Solid Surface. The interior and exterior were completed with its fabulous material piece-by-piece.


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Beautiful, Practical, or both?

www.hermanmiller.com

VONDOM - A Special Night, Valencia Shopening Night

Valencia joins the trend of New York, London, Paris or Milan of mixing fun and shopping around the most chic streets of the city.

The streets of Valencia celebrated a stylist and glamour event, named Shopening Night.

Alma pots by A-cero from Vondom presumed its elegance in the entrance of each space, shining and welcoming everyone who approached.

Westfield Shopping Centres and naughtone

Westfield shopping centres have recently used a wide variety of naughtone products in their new centre at the Olympic park, Stratford.

Westfield's in-house design team worked very closely with naughtone to tailor their products to Westfield's specific needs.

Audrey stools were stained to match other wood finishes and an additional footring has been added to the low stools.

Standard tables from their range for the cafe court were produced in a special stainless steel finish. naughtone also designed a bar height table in stainless steel specially for this project.

SleepBox

SleepBox represents a contemporary and organic piece of furniture, designed for the demands of an increasingly urbanized environment. A sinuous life-sized object which creates a place of comfort and relaxation within airports, offices or other semi-public spaces, providing peace and quiet in busy urban environments. The solid, smooth and uniform shell is made of HI-MACS, and contains a leather covered mattress.

The project was designed by Caspar Lohner at the Chair for Computer Aided Architectural Design [CAAD], Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich, supervised by Mathias Bernhard and Manuel Kretzer and produced in collaboration with Kläusler Acrylstein AG, who is the exclusive distributor for HI-MACS® in Switzerland.

The free-form shell is made from HI-MACS®, the architect choose the material thanks to its extraordinary properties: it’s extremely robust, but it can be thermoformed and visually seamlessly connected – which was essential for this project.

Caspar Lohner was in charge of each stage – from design to fabrication - of his first project using Solid Surfaces. He was both managing the project but also producing it with a team of students from the Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich with constant assistance of Kläusler Acrylstein, who supported with their expertise and technical resources. “Every day was a challenge for me, but when something didn’t work, we tried and tried again until it was resolved. I learnt a lot about HI-MACS® fabrication possibilities thanks to this project” says the designer.

The necessary MDF moulds were produced on a three axis CNC milling machine at ETH Zürich’s in-house facilities Raplab. The flat HI-MACS sheets then were thermoformed into shape using a vacuum membrane press. After the material cools down it exhibits the same properties as before and can be further processed in a similar way to wood. The eleven individual pieces were finally glued together to create a single seamless homogeneous object.

SleepBox will be exhibited from 17^th to 21th January at Swissbau 2012, the most important meeting point for the construction and real-estate industry in Switzerland and one of the biggest specialist exhibitions in Europe.

Swissbau 2012 (Trendwelt Bad)

Stand Kläusler Acrylstein - HI-MACS®

Hall 2.2 – Stand A40

17^th – 21^st January 2012

Basel, Switzerland

Happy Holidays!

Thank you for your visit to The Furniture Industry Blog.

We would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and hope you will continue to read the blog in the future. Please email your news to; info@thefurnitureindustryblog.co.uk for inclusion on the site.

Best wishes for 2012!

Merry Christmas from Design Prima

Heal’s Launches Mobile Site

After months of planning and development, Heal’s launch a mobile optimised website.  With more and more of us using our mobile phones and tablets to shop, Heal's decided it was time to optimise the shopping experience for Heal’s customers on the go. With the new mobile website you can shop contemporary furniture wherever you are.

After seeing an increasing amount of people accessing Heals.co.uk via mobile devices (Oct 2011 saw +15% of total visits completed via mobile devices versus 3% in Oct 2010), the aim of the launch, was to give customers a better, faster and easier shopping experience that is optimised for smart phone users.

Some of the key development areas were:

Provide an inspirational shopping experience that is consistent with the Heal’s brand across all popular mobile devices

To provide simple, clear navigation, that allows customers to browse through their products and purchase the full range of products available from Heal’s.

To create a simple concise product pages with rich images and detailed product information including ratings and reviews.

Ability to share through Facebook, Twitter and Email

Ever present site search bar to allow customers to find products quickly and easily

Store locator to allow customers to easily access store locations, opening hours and contact details

Seamless integration of mobile and main website enabling customer to use a single account to shop across both channels.

“Over the last year, mobile has quickly grown to become one of the most important channels for our customers to access to our website.” said Mike Traill, Head of Ecommerce at Heal’s. “Creating a mobile optimized site that enables our customers to quickly and simply research and purchase products as well as find our store locations at home or on the go will enhance our multi-channel strategy.”

New from Arturo Alvarez

The MIUU floor lamp is an arch that has the characteristic of turning 180º easily without any effort.  This piece is very suitable for lighting tables or sofas. Suits both residential and commercial uses; e.g., common areas of hotels.

Click here for images.

HOME

HOME is the first and foremost interiors event of the new calendar, opening January 15th for three days. 

Register now at www.home-london.net to ensure you are the first to see and select standout products for the new buying season, many of which are making their worldwide debut at Home.

Offering a wide range of stunning classic, contemporary and ‘Homegrown’ British designed furniture, lighting and interior accessories. The event will be divided into three distinctive sections representing the cream of each of these sectors.

In the Modern Home section, visitors will discover the very latest in contemporary interior products. Modern Home will house both the well-established design companies alongside younger boutique brands.

DELLA ROVERE PRICE LIST INCREASE

Update from Della Rovere advising of a 3.9% price increase effective on orders received from 1st January 2012.

Aqua Creations

Aqua Creations Wishes You Happy Holidays

Staverton Launches New Website!

The innovative British office furniture manufacturer, Staverton, is proud to announce the launch of its new website, www.staverton.co.uk.

With a clean, contemporary and stylish design, the fresh website presents the entire Staverton furniture collection via an interactive product viewer that allows users to browse by range or category. 

Merry Christmas from David Fox

David Fox Design would like to wish you all a very merry christmas, and a prosperous 2012. 

Classic Tangerine

The Colour for 2012 is said to be Tangerine.  If you like to keep up with trends but at the same time invest in something lasting, this Wishbone Chair is a great idea- the colour is bright and beautiful and the design a real classic.

The Wishbone Chair (CH 24)

The Wishbone Chair is a classically elegant and lightweight sculptural dining chair. The top rail is carefully steam curved to enhance freedom of movement and provide additional comfort. This design is a compact masterpiece of craftsmanship. More than 100 stages in the manufacturing process involve genuine handwork, including the seat, which is hand woven from 120 meters of paper cord and can last for up to 50 years. Hans J. Wegner designed the Wishbone Chair for Carl Hansen & Son in 1949, and production has continued uninterrupted since 1950. RRP from £391 ex VAT

www.carlhansen.com

Design Event 2011 Highlight

As part of the festival, Design Event commissioned eight new designers to develop a product using materials or processes they’ve not used before, in order to create eight exclusive products for the Mart. The resulting designs formed ‘Design Event Presents’ and raised the profile of the eight design newcomers from the north of England. These products are also for sale at www.britishbydesign.org

Valentina Gonzalez Wohlers * INTERVIEW

Click here to read more

Opening of BD Barcelona Design Gallery

BD Barcelona Design Gallery,
C/ Ramón Turró, 126,  Barcelona (Spain)

BD was created in 1972 by Pep Bonet, Lluís Clotet, Cristian Cirici, Mireia Riera and Oscar Tusquets. These five architects later became progenitors of contemporary Catalan design, but were also responsible for creating one of the first and most successful companies to promote local design both within the region and to the rest of the world.

BD edited and sold furniture and domestic objects signed by Mackintosh, Antoni Gaudí and Salvador Dalí, alongside the best in international contemporary design: Óscar Tusquets, Martí Guixé, Jaime Hayón, Konstantin Grcic or Ross Lovegrove....

Herman Miller and Magis

Herman Miller are now the exclusive distributor of Magis products in the U.S. and Canada. Much like Herman Miller, Magis collaborates with the leading independent designers from around the world, adding a new set of names to the ranks of Eames, Nelson, and Stumpf. 

Ru Chair wins award

The Ru Chair received the Swedish architectural award The Golden Chair (Guldstolen).

The Golden Chair is awarded annually by the Swedish Association of Architects (Sveriges Arkitekter). It is awarded alternately to Best Product and Best Project and this year Ru Chair won the prize in the Product category.

Jury’s statement: “Ru Chair, with its neat and discreet profile is both innovative and inspiringly idiosyncratic. With a meticulous and solid woodworking craftsmanship adapted to industrial production techniques, this chair is both cogent and functional, a clear expression of our time.”

The Ru chair is designed by Shane Schneck and made by Hay. Available in the UK from www.iconsofdenmark.dk. It retails at £166.00