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Title: Products, Interiors, Events, Ideas Pages: 84 - 89      
Author: Editorial Text: Products, interiors, events, ideas County matters The drive for mechanisation which has taken place in recent years in industries such as construction, bulk handling and agriculture is a direct result of the cost and scarcity of labour. In the United States, development engineering concerns have tended to design their equipment for a specific job, whereas in the UK the tendency has been to develop a good all-round prime mover capable of hauling loads as well as carrying them. The County four-wheel-drive, six-cylinder tractor is a good example of this new type of multipurpose vehicle. The major drive components are identical to the standard four-wheel drive tractor developed by County Commercial Cars Ltd in 1960. The new development, expressing the tractor's changed role, is to take the driver from his normal mid-mounted position and place him and his controls in front of the engine. With the driver in the new forward position, towing attachments particularly goose-neck trailers, right - can be placed at a point within the tractor's wheel base, so distributing the load evenly over all four of the driving wheels. The tractor has a maximum load capacity of 16,000 lb, hydraulic power steering and hydraulically operated brakes and clutch. Various sizes of tyre and tread pattern may be fitted, including high flotation tyres for very soft conditions. Something more than a bath This prototype bathroom was designed for Rohm & Hass GmbH, Darmstadt, at the Institute for Industrial Design, Hanover, under the supervision of Professor Matthias Janssen. The bath tub (I) measures six feet in diameter and 20 inches deep. Conditioned air is blown through a slit at the edge of the ceiling (A), warmed over the heated floor (C) and extracted at the centre (B), together with damp air over the "wet" zone (D). Alcoves sunk into the wall accommodate television set and record player (K) and bar and bookstacks (L); there is also room for a cosmetic area (J) and a sitting area (M). A shower (E) is situated in the ceiling above the bath tub, and there is a hand shower in the tapering wash basin unit (H). The room is approached by sliding doors (F and G); the walls consist of panels of acrylic sheet insulated with polyurethane foam. Make your own sculpture The standard of souvenirs and gifts peddled by most of our art galleries and museums is certainly improving but still has a long way to go before it can match up to the very fine products available in the United States. Multiplications, designed by Betty Thomson for the Museum of Modern Art, New York, consists of eight cubes of clear acrylic, each measuring 1 a inches, joined to one another by hinges of durable but invisible Mylar. Steel-plated snip These kitchen scissors in chromiumplated carbon steel are designed by Robert Welch and made by Taylor's Eye Witness Ltd of Sheffield. They are 82 inches long, incorporate a screw-top remover and a bottle opener, and their shape assists the cutting of awkward corners. The handles are stove-enamelled in orange or blue. Retail price is 1 as 6d. Living a life of Conran Conran's new range of domestic I furniture has been designed and priced to capture a very broad slice of j the market. The firm clearly wishes to do away with the reverential approach to furniture and in the new three language catalogue Conran's export sales now account for 20 per cent of total output) a typical Conran man, his family and his dog are seen putting the new furniture to practical use. The knockdown-frame testle table (£3915s), below, has chrome steel cross frames and tubular stretchers. The table top is veneered oak stained dark brown, like the frames of the side chairs, which come with a rush seat (£13 5s) or an upholstered one (£1210s). The knockdown easy chair (£3215s) and two-seat sofa (£4910s), top right, are both made of dark stained oak veneer panels, Pirelli webbing and polyether cushions. The sofa (£9510s), bottom right, is u pholstered with fve-inch polyether foam and the low table (£1510s) is made of stained oak veneer with a Melamine laminate magazine shelf. All the furniture shown is available in a wide range of fabrics. Products, interiors, events, ideas Swiss revolution Revolution is a Swiss-patented dualpurpose revolving bed system, which is being marketed in this country by Heal Furniture Ltd. The system provides a wardrobe fitted with sliding shelves together with a unit (measuring 3 feet 8 inches by 7 feet 1 inch by 2 feet 3 inches) which may consist entirely of shelves or of a combination of shelves and cabinet, below. The units revolve round smoothly to reveal a counterbalanced folding bed. Bedclothes need not be removed when the bed is not in use and a sliding panel at the bedside acts as a small table or may be completely removed for use as a serving tray. The head of the bed is adjustable. Retail price is £169. Breaking the glass image Glass in Architecture is the downto-earth title of the special school of the College of Applied Arts at Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. The school is headed by Vaclav Cigler, whose works have represented Czechoslovakia at a number of Woric Fairs (Brussels 1958, New York and Moscow 1964, Montreal 1967). Cigler shows a decided leaning towards monumentally conceived glass, and this is reflected in the work of his students shown here. The mental climate of the school is reported to be anti-romantic and anti-traditional. Teaching is geared to the individual personalities of the students, but nobody expects to learn how to become an artist. As Cigler puts it: "The poetry, dreams, searching and experimentations should follow an engineering-architectural character - which is becoming more and more inevitable in glass work." The breakaway from academism and l'art pour l'art is certainly evident in these examples, even if they do not fully reflect Cigler's pragmatic approach to glass design. Glass sculpture of two bowls and a coloured ball, Jeff, is by Pavel Tomececk; screen of textured glass and mirrors, below left, is by Milan Pultk; glass globe sculpture, below right, is by Josef Vacholek. How your tv is made The ITA Television Gallery traces the technical history of tv and shows how modern programmes are made and paid for. The central section right, is furnished with black and white Perspex chairs designed by David Colwell, and shows, in multiscreen images, how the programme Newsat Ten is made. Further on, a display called "Profile of a television production" shows the techniques and people involved in making the new drama series, Frontier. Models by Astrid Zydower, below, show a conference between writer and script editor, a meeting of technicians, and a studio hand sweeping the mess oflthe set. The remainder of the exhibition is mainly devoted to technical problems and there is an ingenious arrangement of taps, buckets and water pipes, far right top, showing where the revenue comes from and how it is spent. The exhibition was designed by James Gardner. The Gallery is at 70 Brsmpton Road, London SW3. Three wheels, two motors This electric vehicle by Techniques Electriques Jarret was developed by R. Sarrazac-Soulage as a shortdistance transporter and for interior servicing duties in buildings such as hospitals, where conventional forms of transport would be unsuitable. The chassis consists of three wheels linked by a light, tubular steel T-bar. The rear wheels are powered by two motors, one for each wheel, fed from a centrally positioned battery. The vehicle is capable of speeds of up to 28 kmh. The shell is of glass-reinforced polyester; the control is a centrally positioned joystick, which acts as a steering wheel, brake and accelerator all in one. Products, interiors, events, ideas The rocking chair has an obvious appeal for designers, yet few have come up with anything to approach the bentwood and wicker work models that Thonet was producing in the middle of the last century. The Dondolo, designed for Bernini by Modena architects Cesare Leonardi and Franca Stagi is one of the best looking rockers to appear on the market in recent years. Made from one continuous strip of hollow, fluted glass-reinforced polyester, the chair measures approximately 20 inches wide, 7 feet 1 inch long and 4 feet high, and is available in white, grey or light blue. Bernini is a firm that specialises in GRP furniture; among its products are a number of excitingly moulded chairs, such as the hemispherical Eco (DESIGN 243/89) and the Mantissa arm chair and divan, both in GRP and upholstered with polyurethane foam. Didactic design Tim Sarson's exhibition unit is a project designed to increase the public's awareness of the theme "Intolerance." The unit comprises exit and entry tunnels made up of press-studded sections of resin impregnated paper - which are plugged into sleepers supporting the floor - and a dome, constructed in canvas and the Abstracts tubular building system. On entering the dome, the visitor would be immediately struck by a heaving mass of inflating and deflating balloons, held in place by a net and designed to act as a screen for a montage of films and slides. To complete the message, still photographs would also line the walls of the two tunnels. The unit is claimed to be simple to transport and erect, and flexible enough to suit even the most difficult site conditions. Card sharp Visual Games designed by Giovanni Belgrano and Bruno Munari is a new series of products by Danese Milano. The first of these is a set of image sequences printed on coloured cards which have to be arranged in | the correct order before the child can grasp their meaning. The images are easy to begin with, /eff, and become progressively more difficult.. Drawing the easy way Photon Inc's console is a semiautomatic computerised drafting instrument designed to be operated by unskilled craftsmen. Line work is plotted on a rough sketch, by positioning the stylus at the points where the lines change direction. Each step is measured by a digitising head which registers the variations in the triangle made by wires supporting the stylus. This measurement is accurate to within 1/2,000 inch. As each point is plotted, the information has to be fed into the console via the circular control panel, bottom. Using the same control panel, symbols (as many as 554) can also be fed in from the chart located under the lighting strip, and typed information such as legends and specifications can be fed in from the typewriter. The console was designed for Photon by Robert P. Gersin, V Lorenzo Porcellin and John C. Bordnick of Massachusetts, USA. Trompe-l'oeil paintboxes Reeves & Son is planning to put a new range of paintboxes on the market in two months time. There are two small sizes containing six and 12 watercolour pans respectively; and a much larger box containing 14 poster colours, 12 pastels and 12 pans of watercolour, grouped around water jars and mixing trays in moulded plastics. The most unusual feature is the boxes themselves, which have been designed (by Reeves Studio) to look as though they are already in use. This graphic technique probably derives from food packaging where the cooking process is often illustrated on the outside of a box or tin. As shown, below, the lid laid alongside the unused paintbox can have a peculiarly hypnotic effect.. Retail prices are 5s 11 d, as 11 d and 59s 11d. |
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