My co-blogger Branko thought of me right away when he saw the Wooll-e, a lamp I could have in my way too dark office without drilling holes in the wall, which I’m not allowed to do.
No more need for screws or nails as wooll-e is a unique ready to hang lamp. The wooll-e is a lamp that doesn’t require any tools. Only a power outlet and blank wall space. Designed to be quick-‘n- easy. No more drilling holes in your walls. Simply stick the wooll-e discs on your wall and the wooll-e FIX will do the rest!
The felt sleeves of the wooll-e (hence the name is my guess) are handmade from 100% Dutch wool. Even the power cords come in different colours. For 5 euro of funding towards this Indiegogo crowdfunding project, you’ll get a thanks, and for anything starting at 95 euro, you get a lamp with combo packs going for up to 210 euro.
Industrial design student Lodewijk Bosman, 25, and Hidde van der Straaten, 28, founded “The Upcycle” in university city Delft in January 2012 to exploit a typically Dutch problem. With so many bikes [in the Netherlands] come parking problems, and if they are left in the wrong place or simply abandoned, the authorities pick them up and take them to the pound.
Lodewijk and Hidde [buy these] abandoned bikes and parts […].
A Upcycle bedside lamp, priced at 88 euro, consists of a bike light with a new LED bulb fitted to a stem made of a few chain links and intertwined spokes — all standing on a wooden base wrapped in plaited inner tubes.
Dutch cities impound tens of thousands of bikes each year. Sometimes they are oprhan bicycles, abandoned by their last owner, but often cities just steal bikes under the guise of keeping bicycle parking manageable and keeping the streets clean. The bikes are stored at a depot, which in the case of Amsterdam, is far way from downtown. The rightful owners can retrieve their bikes after paying a fee—a fine, as the city spin doctors call it. The depot is so far out of town that there is even a cab service in Amsterdam that advertises its rides to the depot. As a result, lots of people don’t bother collecting their bikes, and those that are not retrieved are sold off to second-hand bike shops and to The Upcycle apparently.
Shown here is a fragment of the Fragile Future III lamp to show you how dandelion-like these lamps really look like.
Last time we mistakenly reported that Summer Expo 2011 is all about paintings. The actual categories in which professional and amateur artists could enter works are 2D, 3D, Photography and Multimedia.
Our choice of highlighting Annemieke Alberts’ painting Be-spiegelingen back then proved a fortunate one though, as the work won second prize. Third prize went to Tilleke Schwarz’ cloth ‘painting’ Purr Chase.
Today is the last day of the exhibition, so hurry over to the Hague if you want to see and the 247 other works of the expo.
Koning’s work first came to my attention when he won HEMA’s student design competition with his 103 % Vaas in 2002.
(Photo: Han Koning. In the screenshot to the right, of Blakes 7 episode Sand, the shipboard computers have broken down and Avon has to resort to letting coloured perspex do the thinking for him. Source: BBC.)
Naarden design studio Brand van Egmond (William Brand and Annet van Egmond) came up with these chandeliers. Their website doesn’t say if and where you can buy them. Check out the Milan video, it shows the chandeliers in use.
Arend Luc Groosman is selling lamps (called Woodoo) that you can put together from a minimum of 6 wooden frames. A bit hard to explain perhaps for something so simple, so check the video:
(Photo: Playwoodoo.com. Video: Youtube user playwoodoo.)
This lamp, the Ode 1647 by Jacco Maris from Breda, Noord Brabant, must be one of the spookiest I have ever seen, although the designer was mainly looking to recreate the grandeur of chandeliers. I want one in all its splendid tentacliness. Apparently they come in all shapes and sizes. The arms are made of copper weave.
This is the hanging lamp Bettine, named after Dutch table tennis diva Bettine Vriesekoop and made of 315 ping pong balls. It was created by Diaz Kleefstra and is being sold by him, and those of you who religiously follow design blogs will yell “old hat!” The lamp’s been out for a while.
What’s new is that Vriesekoop is suing Kleefstra for the use of her famous name. “It’s not about the money,” she tells Algemeen Dagblad. Oh, it’s so about the money, her lawyer says. Looks like they’re in the same newspaper but not on the same page. It’ll be interesting to see what intellectual property right the lawyer will claim, but as happens with so many of these cases it will probably all end in arbitration and settlement. In the meantime Kleefstra has removed the name from his website, but not the lamp.
“The Enlightenment is made of white acrylic glass. It is 24 centimeter high, 17 centimeter wide and 8 centimeter deep, and is supplied with a 9 watt compact fluorescent lamp.”
“The purchase price is 89 euro. Ten percent of this goes to charity.”
Studio Drift has won the audience award of Summer Expo 2011 with its 
Ad agency Studio Meiboom in Harderwijk came up with this