Dezeen Showroom: US brand Blu Dot has created the Port dining chair, a piece with gentle curves and traditional joinery intended to celebrate the beauty of wood.
The Port dining chair combines a sculpted plywood seat and back with a solid wood frame, creating a harmonious mix of curves and lines.
The Port dining chair has a sculpted plywood seat and backrest
The upward curvature of the seat brings comfort while also strengthening the structure, because of how it connects to the rear legs.
These features, along with the use of traditional mortise and tenon joints and cross dowels, makes Port a showcase of refined woodworking.
The chair takes its name from the nautical imagery summoned up by its shape.
The chair also showcases traditional joinery
"When viewed from the side, Port's shape reminds us of two sails (the bentwood seat and back) attached to a single mast (the rear leg)," said Blue Dot.
"Port is a design that delights those charmed by its silhouette and those who appreciate its high craft."
Port comes in three finishes. Black on ash features black-painted ash wood, while the other two colours, walnut and white oak, have natural finishes.
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Dezeen is teaming up with Salone del Mobile to stream a live talk on the interplay of art and architecture. Watch live from 3:00pm Milan time.
Dezeen's collaboration with Salone del Mobile will see us live stream a panel discussion in its Open Talks series, curated by Maria Cristina Didero, every day this week during Supersalone.
The final talk to be live streamed is a panel discussion on the relationship between art and architecture.
The pair will discuss how contemporary artists utilise architectural methods and the dynamics between the two disciplines.
Höller is an artist best known for installing slides in unsual locations around the world. His most notable installations include The Slide at the ArcelorMittal Orbit in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, and Test Site, a temporary installation of giant winding slides in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2006.
Höller is currently based between Stockholm, Sweden and Biriwa, Ghana.
Stefano Boeri will talk about art and architecture
Boeri is an architect and is the curator of this year's Supersalone.
Amongst his most notable architectural projects is Bosco Verticale, a pair of skyscrapers covered in trees that were completed in Milan in 2014. He was recently selected as president of the Scientific Committee of Forestami, a project that aims to plant three million trees in the metropolitan area of Milan by 2030.
Boeri was also appointed as director of the Future City Lab at Tongji University in Shanghai. The post-doctoral research program explores the future of contemporary cities through the lens of biodiversity and urban forestry.
Cecilia Alemani will be moderating the discussion
The panel will be moderated by Cecilia Alemani. Originally from Italy, Alemani now works in New York as a curator.
In 2011 she was chosen as the director and chief curator of High Line Art, a public art program in collaboration with High Line in New York. More recently she was appointed as artistic director of the upcoming 59th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale.
This year's edition of Salone del Mobile, titled Supersalone, is curated by architect Boeri as a response to the coronavirus pandemic, which caused the cancellation of the 2020 edition.
Taking place in Milan in September rather than in its usual April slot, the special edition of the fair will feature products displayed on a series of parallel walls instead of in branded booths.
Salone del Mobile and parallel fuorisalone events will take place from 5-10 September 2021 in Milan. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
Vestre is showcasing a collection of urban furniture that encourages biodiversity at this year's Milan design week, set within a leafy installation constructed by Note Design Studio from one of the brand's old fair stands.
The installation is formed from a reused Vestre fair stand (top and above)
The materials were stored in Vestre's factory in Sweden for 19 months before being shipped to Milan. Here, they are joined by a meadow and a family of small shrubs and trees transplanted from a local nursery to form a kind of miniature indoor park housing the brand's new Habitats range.
Reusing the materials and transporting them to Italy, rather than sourcing them from scratch, helped to prevent not just waste but also a considerable amount of carbon emissions, the company claims.
"Transport accounts for less than five per cent of all emissions from material sourcing," CEO Jan Christian Vestre told Dezeen.
"It would have been so much more energy and CO2 demanding to throw the materials from Stockholm away and manufacture new ones in Italy."
Hollow, uncemented bricks are arranged into a meandering landscape
In total, 90 per cent of materials from the original stand were reused, save for the plywood walls and a number of functional metal components.
Note Design Studio turned the polycarbonate ceiling panels into diffusers for the warehouse's stark, industrial lights, while the stone chips were once again used for the flooring.
The uncemented bricks, which formed a linear grid of walls in the original setup, were reimagined into a meandering landscape for Vestre's Milan presence.
Small trees and shrubs were transplanted into the installation from a local nursery
"We wanted to create a room inside a room, so the building materials were actually perfect for that," explained Note Design Studio's senior architect Jesper Mellgren.
"The bricks are not attached, they're just connected by metal bars, so they're really easy to disassemble."
Both the original stand and the reimagined installation are examples of reversible design, meaning they were constructed in a way so they can be easily taken apart and repurposed.
A living meadow covers the floor alongside reused stone chips
After Milan design week, the greenery will be put back into nature and the stones are set to be donated to a local landscape project. Note Design Studio hopes to build a permanent installation from the bricks.
"The whole concept was to make a stand, which you can take apart without causing harm to the materials so every single one can be reused," added the studio's co-founder Johannes Carlström.
"Now, the idea is to build something permanent, maybe a sculpture in a park or a little orangery, because these bricks are pretty good at letting through moisture."
Displayed inside the Milan installation is Vestre's Habitats collection, created in collaboration with Arde and Rethink Studio as well as a team of expert biologists.
The outdoor furniture range was designed to offer a refuge for flora and fauna in urban environments, in the hopes of preventing the rapid decline of biodiversity while bringing city dwellers closer to nature.
Among the pieces are two benches designed to enclose piles of rocks or branches, creating a range of different habitats within otherwise flat, homogenous parks.
Vestre's Habitats collection includes leaf-shaped insect hotels
The Log Bench, for example, is specifically designed to fit around fallen tree trunks and other deadwood, integrating it into the landscape and allowing those seated on the bench to witness the natural process of decay while creating a home for fungi, lichens, mosses and insects.
Also included in the collection are nesting boxes for birds as well as insect hotels shaped like stylised leaves, with perforations of different sizes tailored to different species.
"We want to bridge the gap between nature and people," Vestre explained. "It's about bringing nature back to the cities, taking care of biodiversity, taking care of these species before it's too late."
The red bricks were also used as pedestals for plants
The collection is constructed from locally and responsibly sourced Scandinavian pine as well as "the greenest possible steel", courtesy of Swedish manufacturer SSAB.
"The steel has a 30 per cent lower carbon footprint than the global average," Vestre explained. "It's 20 per cent recycled content and made with renewable energy and more energy-efficient ovens."
"But it's not like it's emission-free," he added. "That's why the most important contribution we can make is actually designing things to last forever."
The installation is housed in a Tortona warehouse as part of Milan design week
All of Vestre's products come with a lifetime warranty so they can be serviced and kept in use for as long as possible.
This forms part of the company's wider aim to achieve net-zero emissions, a goal that has also seen the company become the "first furniture manufacturer in the world" to declare the carbon footprint of all of its products.
Dezeen has teamed up with Danish furniture brand Muuto for our latest competition, which offers readers the chance to make and win their own customised Fiber chair.
The Fiber chair family is designed by Iskos-Berlin for Muuto and was originally launched in 2015. Its injection-moulded wood-fibre shell is recyclable and is a new perspective on the classic shell chair due to its soft, matt finish due to the wood fibers.
By entering into our latest competition, one lucky reader will win a Fiber chair in the colour and finish of their choice.
The competition closes on 10 October
Created by Copenhagen designers Aleksej Iskos and Boris Berlin, the Fiber chair takes the form of the classic shell chair, but reimagines it in a recyclable composite of plastic and up to 25 per cent wood fibres.
Although invisible to the eye from afar, the details of the wood fibres are revealed when viewing the design up-close and the material has a distinctive and pleasantly soft, matt feel.
The chair has a simple and sculptural form. Its slender profile takes up little space in the room, yet its seat still feels generous.
The Fiber chair takes the form of the classic shell chair
"Rather than making a chair that had a loud and interrupting expression, we wanted to perfect the design in a subtle way, ticking off the boxes of shape, comfort, materials, and aesthetic," said Iskos-Berlin of the design.
To support circularity, the Fiber chair can be disassembled at the end of its life, with its shell and base recycled separately. The shell is recyclable and can be used in the production of new Fiber chair shells.
Today, the Fiber chair family includes many different typologies, including armchairs, side chairs, bar and counter stools, stools and lounge chairs in a wide range of bases, finishes, colours, and upholsteries.
To navigate the different options, Muuto introduced a Fiber chair configurator that allows customers to visualise all of the possibilities available to them and tailor the design to suit their own individual tastes and space.
Competition closes on 10 October 2021. Terms and conditions apply. One winner will be selected at random and notified by email.
At this point, the winner will be able to configure their chair. To do this, they will need to:
1. Create their Fiber chair using the configurator at professionals.muuto.com
2. Take a screenshot that includes both the configuration and the right-hand panel that details the specific colours and finishes.
3. Save the screenshot and email it back to us
Partnership content
This competition is a partnership between Dezeen and Muuto. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.
Mingardo, who founded the Mingardo metal design brand in 2013, worked together with curator Federica Sala and Mingardo art director Federica Biasi to get the 10 contemporary product and industrial designers involved.
The finished works include a sculpture-like candelabra by Hayon and a design by Wanders that combines an electric light with a candleholder.
London's chimneys and industrial tower informed Philippe Malouin's design
Mingardo launched A Flame for Research to help support cancer research after his mother passed away from the disease.
Designer Jaime Hayon's candelabra Instrument N 01 is shaped like a face
He wanted to work with well-known names to ensure there was as much interest in the A Flame for Research project as possible and help raise as much money for it as he could.
"We thought if the names were bigger it would be more appealing and interesting for collectors to buy," curator Sala told Dezeen.
"We also chose these designers because apart from Philippe Malouin, who had already done collaborations with galleries and created special collections, all the others – more or less – are furniture and industrial designers, so there aren't a lot of unique pieces made by them in existence."
Two steel sheets form a candleholder by Alberto and Francesco Meda
The designers were given a free hand to come up with any candleholder design they wanted. These were then created in the Mingardo blacksmith workshop, which was founded by Mingardo's father in 1970.
As the pieces were produced during the coronavirus pandemic, it was a time-consuming process, in which the designers sent sketches that Mingardo turned into prototypes before sending them back for the designers to check.
It also created a challenge for Mingardo, as some of the designs were unlike anything his workshop had produced before.
Electric light is combined with candles in Marcel Wanders studio's Cu-Cou light
"Daniele actually learned a lot of new techniques for the pieces he had to produce; for example for Marcel Wanders' copper candleholder – he had to buy a new machine and learn how to use it," Sala said.
"The texture is like dusted ceramic and you need a special machine for that."
The only parameters given to the designers were the size of the pieces and that they had to be all made from metal, rather than a combination of metal and other materials. The resulting designs drew on a wide range of inspirations.
While Malouin's large bright-green double candleholder references the chimneys and industrial towers of suburban London, Nichetto created a shielded holder shaped like the "edicole" wayside alcoves that function as shrines in Italy.
Thun's circular candleholder also has a religious significance.
"Matteo wanted to dedicate this flame to Saint Agatha [the city saint for Catania, Sicily]," Benedetto Fasciana, who works on special handcrafted projects at Matteo Thun, told Dezeen.
The patron saint of Catania was the inspiration behind Matteo Thun's piece
"The metal is brass, with an engraved brise-soleil finishing to represent the sun," he added. "The holder is very minimal – we wanted to represent the typical Saint Agatha candles, which can be as tall as one meter. We also used Sicilian candles in the holder."
The 10 designs are currently on show as part of Milan design week and will be auctioned off at Christie's Italia on 15 September.
Candleholder by Federica Biasi
Mingardo hopes the sales can help other people who have been affected by cancer.
"To empower research is to have a sign of hope for everybody – if you support research, you can support hope," Mingardo told Dezeen.
"I hoped that this experience that was really bad for me could turn into something positive for someone else."
A Flame for Research will be on display at Offstage Milano until 10 September as part of Milan design week. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
