While in Japan and discussing design and the implications it can create around action and thought. Nothing mystical, but maybe..For example, the Zero Waste charger scooting around the Design Strategic Projects studio. The design of the activation button which starts a charge cycle that is constrained by time, to acc…

Here in Venice, where there is a tight housing market (but not unaffected by the current deep downturn), if you want to knock down the ugly old and put up your new janga-box architectural, but don’t want to hassle with the permissions to do a new construction, you can leave one wall standing and call the project a r…

It’s curious to think about eateries in time-context rather than categories of food types. In this case late night workers, people out after bar-hopping, people who just don’t cook at home and have midnight cravings. The neighborhood here is somewhat borderline in terms of its geography. It’s several blocks from a u…

What I’m coming to understand is the relationship between art, technology and design as one in which the different idioms of very distinct and displinary practices can be brought together..or not. My insights are not as thorough as yours and more driven by intuition and insight through process and projects. My own d…

Honm Friebe is an economist and journalist and one of the managing directors of Zentralen Intelligenz Agentur in Berlin.

Conflux 2008 Now Accepting Submissions:

Took a jaunt through the UCLA Design Media Arts MFA 2nd Year MFA Thesis Show this evening, titled “Exit Strategies.” There were a couple of pieces that stood out to me in the exhibition, which ranged from rather cerebral to playful, all with a good scoop of design sensibilities. There was a good range of work here a…

Kotaro Watanabe is a seriously crafty design engineer at takram. He created this really nice water project that was exhibited at 21_21 Design Sight during their last exhibition titled “Water.” These paper plates have been made super hydrophobic using a compound that completely changes the behavior we normally expect…

Maintenance in an urban setting, scraping the bits of hardened gum and goo that inevitably find their way downward. There was an interesting dance around this worker that isn’t quite captured here, with the transitory swarms of Shibuya. People indirectly registering this diligent and slow worker amongst their own sw…