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Title: Things seen Pages: 72 - 75    
Author: Editorial Text: Things seen Potpourri At Proposals, King's Road, SW3, there is a range of ceramic accessories from Sica, Italy in glossy white or dark brown. Also ashtrays, plant pots, and a variety of desk accessories for tidy executives - triangular containers, bowls, and shovel-shaped dishes. Crescent-shaped vases, below, cost from £2.90 for the smallest size. They can be grouped together to form circles, S-bends and other arrangements - and look good even without flowers. Salmon leap From Salmon-Hamilton Design Consultants in Canada come these two strong furniture designs: the 301 lounge chair by J Fear, left, is cantilevered on a tubular steel frame, in a chrome or white epoxy finish, with loose or fixed cushions: the 401 side chair by H Hamilton, below, has a cleverly thought out frame in one continuous piece of tubular steel in chrome or white epoxy finish. The seat is in natural birch or coloured aniline. The timber finish is also available stained red or blue. Both chairs use thick section chromed tubular steel Ship to shore This translucent caterpillar walkway is part of the Burns-Laird ferry terminal at Ardrossan. The practical problem, of providing an efficient, weatherproof connection with a ship which might be level with the quay but is equally likely to be riding the water many feet above or below, has been ingeniously solved by the architects, Law and Dunbar-Naismith of Edinburgh. A luffing arm over 50ft long to allow for variations of more than 11ft can be raised and lowered by a hydraulic elbow operated by two 20ton rams. Between this arm and the ship itself is a conventional link gangway made to slide fore and aft on rollers at the ship end and with considerable play at the luffing arm end. All contingencies are thus provided for and passengers to and from Belfast under their luminous canopy (the folded grp units are bolted together through foam rubber strip and armour plate glass windows give a splendid view) remain dry and happy in all weathers. With top executives in mind This Body furniture was designed by Minoru Takeyama for a Tokyo interior design show, the Top Executive Office. 1970. It's now being mass produced in life-sized grp units weighing between 5 and 8kg each. Takeyama, an architect who has worked under Utzon on the Sydney Opera House, is at present experimenting with foam and blowup furniture. Silver pourers Range of tableware designed by Robert Clover shows the way in which different materials can be successfully teamed with polished silver. The corrugated lid of the coffee pot, bottom left for example, is lined with a plastic skin to act as a heat insulator and the handle is fitted with nylon washers to prevent it from getting too hot. The teapot, bottom right is designed with a twin-folding handle, covered in black nylon velvet, which is both comfortable to hold and also overcomes the problem of heat, and the design of the spherical teapot, below, with its white nylon lid and tubular handle would be easy and relatively cheap to manufacture on a mass production basis. All three pieces, together with some silver cutlery designs, were exhibited recently at this year's diploma show at the RCA. Wild mustang Paradise Garage is not, as might be expected, the home of this flock-finish Ford Mustang - but the name of a shop doing brisk trade in second hand US boiler suits and dungarees. The proprietor of the shop, Trevor Miles, also owns the Mustang: its tiger-striped finish, now looking a little grubby from King's Road exhausts, was created by the Electric Colour Company. Julius Flavius Hille's new Flavius chair designed by Frederick Scott is made from a one-piece shell of rigid polyurethane foam, covered in flexible polyether foam and upholstered in Hille fabric. The whole chair is lifted clear off the ground by a polished chrome tube. One unfortunate addition, the seat cushion, harms the chair's purity of form - but was apparently needed due to the production method used. Total height 60cm, seat height 36cm, width 85cm, depth 73cm. Cost from £46.50 depending on upholstery. Riot helmet The design of the riot helmet by Roger Fitzpatrick was inspired by watching the Japanese, American and Ulster police combating mob violence. Fitzpatrick noticed that in order to put on their gas masks, the police first had to take off their crash helmets. He therefore devised a lightweight riot helmet which is constructed in high density glass-skinned polyurethane foam and incorporates a two-way radio system as well as air filters. The visor is in clear acrylic and the shell is designed on a modular system to be easily and cheaply replaced. Shown at this year's RCA Diploma Show. Programmed pedagogue High spot of the Philips NV stand at the recent ICOGRADA exhibition on the learning industry was the TELL electronic teaching system designed by a group at the company's industrial design centre. Based on interactive visual communication between a teacher's desk fitted with video cartridge players and pupils' desks equipped with an answering keyboard and monitors the system allows pupils to make their own confidential responses to courses of preprogrammed instruction. A camera above the master unit enables the teacher to point out interesting features on his monitor and be seen by the pupils. Simultaneous tuition of two class groups and computer linking for progress assessment are also possible. Designed for round the clock service in the 24 hour school of the future, TELL is ergonomically adjustable for different age groups. Box and cox Stakaway, a furniture system, made by Quinton and Kaines Ltd, Suffolk, has been designed on a 396mm module. There are two basic units: a standard cube measuring 396mm x 396mm x 396mm and a larger version with the same width and depth but 792mm high. Both are available with cupboard doors and locations for shelves. The large unit can also take five drawers. Stakaway is made from a honeycomb core panelling, filled with corrugated paper and edged with hard board for lightness and strength. Prices range from £3.60 for a standard unit to £10.95 for the drawer unit. Carriage is free from the manufacturers for orders over £10. Floor to ceiling The Flos Parenthesi light fitting hangs from a wire fitted to the ceiling and held taut by a circular weight placed on the floor. The lamp, mounted on a crooked arm may be moved up and down at will or turned on its axis. It's available from Aram, King's Road, London SW3, price £25.20. Brush work A series of paint brushes, designed by John D Vale for the Lion Brush Works Limited, Newcastle-upon-Tyne are made of nylon with one piece polypropylene ferrule and handle, finished in brown, white, red, orange or turquoise. Handles are of uniform length, 147mm, and brushes are available in sizes 2, 4, 5, 6, with retail prices starting at 3p Audio trolley A mobile framework has been designed by Andrew Holmes to carry records, turntables, amplifiers etc. Made up from standard tubular steel sections linked by a standard sleeve, the trolley is stove-enamelled dark green, with fluorescent green Perspex shelves. It measures 3ft high by 2ft 6in wide. Have a ball Crockery in the round designed by Helen von Boch of Villeroy and Boch breaks down into 19 pieces, several reminiscent of dog bowls with cutout handles. Still, it does look attractive in combinations of brown, white, and cognac or yellow, green, and orange, and has the undoubted advantage of compactness. In order for the service to fit together each component has to be perfect, so Villeroy and Boch developed a new firing technique to manufacture the pieces. The set costs approximately £60. In the bag Growing use of shrink wrapping for individual meat, fruit and vegetable portions ready trayed for the supermarket refrigerator or stand has created a demand for a relatively cheap packing machine to handle long runs or single items automatically. Rose Forgrove's 84P, designed by company engineers and styled by Noel Haring and Michael Farr (Design Integration) Ltd, is aimed at this market with a price tag just over £3000. The 84P's main feature is self-measuring - it doles out the right measure of uncoated plastic film, seals it underneath and then shrinks it tightly over the product. Full height Frank Height's new kitchen pedal bin is the first design to emerge from P B Cow (Li-Lo) Ltd's new housewares range, as a result of calling in Michael Farr (Design Integration) Ltd. The full width front pedal activates a lid-pening mechanism driven by a mono filament terylene band which is totally enclosed, so that there are no projections at the rear. The main structure and the pedal mechanism are in polypropylene and the inner container, which has a wide overhanging lip which acts as an effective dirt seal, is in polythene. Available in blue, yellow and tangerine, the bin costs £2.30. Italian jobs Chunky bright red abs nuts and screws are the prominent feature of the Dado e Vite storage system, designed for Bonacina, Italy by Lomazzi, De Pas e D'Urbino. The nuts and screws combine with pvc covered shelves available in two sizes: 33cm x 33cm and 33cm x 62.5cm. Also from Bonacina, and the same team of designers, is Carrera, made from a single piece of Gummixa foam rubber. Removable covers come in leather, woollen fabric or pvc, with carefully detailed ''baseball mitt" seams. Available in straight or curved form, the chairs may be combined to form continuous banks of seating or teamed with the Civingam chair, a similar design for Bonacina by L/DeP/D'U. Artifort art Typical of the work of Kho Liang le & Associates for Artifort is this range of tubular steel furniture comprising stool, occasions table and easy chair. Common to all three is a curved and chromed tubular steel frame, wire cage base. Oatmeal canvas upholstery is attached to the frame with leather thongs. Cube capacity Cubestore have extended their successful range of storage to include Cubeshelf, a practical and inexpensive shelving system. It has the excellent feature of uprights which project only 3/8in from the wall, and the bracket clamps which lock securely into position at any height at the turn of a Pozidriv screwdriver. The shelves are 3/4in thick chipboard, faced and edged (on one long and two short sides) in white laminate. Uprights, shelves and brackets are all available in a variety of sizes, and screws and rawlplugs are supplied with every order. Cubeshelf has the added advantage that it can be combined with Cubestore or Cubebox to make a flexible wallmounted storage system. Shelves from 75p each, uprights from 65p each and brackets from 26p each postage and packing for the UK costs 50p. |
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