Design News N.025

Design News is your tiny dose of design, technology and other important news, curated monthly by Interwoven Design.  In this series we share the latest on our favorite topics, including sustainable and speculative design, women in design, exhibits in NYC, and architecture. In this issue: textiles with a social message, artificial reefs featuring regenerative design, and the first black architect to win the Pritzker Prize.

Raw Color’s Temperature Textiles

Colorful striped textiles hang on a rod.
Raw Color’s Temperature Textiles show climate data, raising awareness while providing warmth. Project by Raw Color:
Temperature Textiles / 2021. Image by Raw Color.

To raise awareness about environmental issues and provide a way to keep warm (potentially without turning up the heat), Dutch design studio Raw Color has created the Temperature Textiles collection, a textile series that is embedded with climate-change data; graphic design patterns that illustrate the future of global temperatures if emissions are not reduced. The series includes products like blankets, socks, and scarves in bright, colorful patterns featuring what look like abstract graphics until you look closely at the headings that identify the infographics.

via Fast Company

RCA Resting Reefs project

a small artificial reef surrounded by seashells
RCA Graduates Skajem and Pereze developed artificial reefs using cremated ashes. Photo by Aura Murillo and Louise Skajem, Resting Reef, restingreef.co.uk.

Graduates from London’s RCA Louise Lenborg Skajem and Aura Elena Murillo Pérez have developed a way to form artificial reefs called Resting Reefs from cremated ashes and oyster shells discarded by restaurants. The innovative project is an effort to support the natural reefs, which are steadily approaching extinction. The unique approach is the team’s effort to provide a “meaningful funeral service” that regenerates endangered ecosystems.

via Dezeen

Ukranian designer escaping the conflict

A model wears a tan fashion garment
Irina Dzhus’ latest collection was inspired by a single suitcase of garments salvaged as she fled Ukraine. Photo courtesy of DZHUS.

Irina Dzhus, the founder of Ukranian clothing brand DZHUS, has created a fashion collection based on one suitcase of garments salvaged when she was forced to flee Ukraine during the conflict with Russia. I could only take as much luggage as I’d still be able to bear,” she told Dezeen, “to say we have relocated the DZHUS studio would be an exaggeration. For now, I feel very lucky to have evacuated myself and brought our latest drop with me.” Many pieces feature delicate pleating and loose, angelic garment forms as well as structured, armor-like forms. The Physique collection is the brand’s Spring/Summer 2022 offering and is characterized by bold, androgynous silhouettes.

via Dezeen

Pritzker architecture prize: Francis Kéré

Francis Kéré's Serpentine Pavilion, 2017, view from below looking at ceiling/roof.
Francis Kéré’s Serpentine Pavilion, 2017. Photo courtesy of G Travels.

Architect, educator and social activist Francis Kéré was announced as the 2022 Laureate of the Pritzker architecture prize — the award often referred to as architecture’s highest honor. Born in the small village of Gando in Burkina Faso, Kéré is the first black architect to win the coveted award. The jury shared that “his buildings, for and with communities, are directly of those communities—in their making, their materials, their programs, and their unique characters.”

via Surface Magazine

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