12.05.08
David
Grand Designs
Visited the Grand Designs show at Excel in Docklands at the weekend and amongst all the haberdashery and eco-challenges were some pretty cool pieces of innovation. The most notable was the pioneering Vertebrae from industrial designer, Paul Hernon.
Essentially, the bathroom of the future, the design consists of several modules, comprising WC, basin, storage, cistern, and shower, all of which rotate for easy access. The device can even be fitted with a LCD screen and would be ideal for anyone who wants to watch Kevin McCloud (or Naomi Cleaver?) while in the shower.
Described as “the antidote to home shows”, the Icon Experiment presented work from some of the world’s most thought-provoking designers with a daily schedule of performances, interaction design, animation and special projects. Amongst these were Albin Karlsson clock that tells the time with dripping glue. Sounds odd, but the results were quite spectacular as a machine, attached to the ceiling, dropped one gram of hot glue every minute and rotated once an hour, gradually forming a sculpture beneath it.
Not to be outdone, Sony used the show to accost as many visitors as possible in an attempt to showcase their cutting-edge digital cameras and produce the ultimate range of fabrics comprising of thousands of mug shots and called Face Fabric. The result? A rather bespoke sofa upholstered live at the show.
However, the coolest thing at the show was probably one of the smallest too. Demonstrated at the House of the Future was the all singing, and quite literally, all dancing Sony Rolly – an egg-shaped MP3 player – the modern day equivalent of dancing flowers?
