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Articles on Furniture design

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A smart light pole in the UK can also recognise faces and numberplates and detect speeding. Nazlika/Wikimedia Commons

Smart street furniture in Australia: a public service or surveillance and advertising tool?

Smart street furniture can do a lot of things at once. Some of these functions offer the public clear benefits, but the data collection and surveillance capabilities raise a number of concerns.
Illustration of ‘Axminster’ linoleum, in ‘Catesby’s one-piece linola squares’, Catesbys Colourful Cork Lino (1938). BADDA 181, courtesy of the Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University, www.moda.mdx.ac.uk

Houses through time: some homes can reflect a century of social change

Some houses are like a time capsule of social history that can tell us how living standards, and fashions, have changed over the years.
Architect and designer Florence Knoll Bassett poses with her dog, Cartree, in this photograph circa 1950. Courtesy Knoll Archive

Florence Knoll Bassett’s mid-century design diplomacy

Knoll is best known for transforming the design of America’s corporate offices. But she was also on the front lines of a State Department effort to promote American ingenuity and capitalism abroad.
The on-paper designs for furniture belong to the designer, just like any other artists. But things get more complicated when designs become physical objects. Shutterstock

Explainer: can you copyright furniture?

How are furniture designers protected by law, and what is an ‘original design’ when aesthetics meets functionality?
Peter Thomas of the Winnipeg Art Gallery (left), Marcel Dionne of Roarockit (centre) and Jaimie Isaac, curator for Indigenous/Contemporary at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (right), are seen building a skateboard using a do-it-yourself kit in this 2017 photo. Art and design schools should reward those who actually build and create more than they do design theorists. (Author provided)

Art and design schools must cultivate creators, not theorists

Even as our world goes digital, there will always be an appetite for craftsmanship, for art and for the work only human hands can truly bring to life. Art and design schools should celebrate creators.
Poul Henningsen’s Artichoke Lamp, viewed from below at London’s Park Plaza Hotel. Doc Searls/Wikimedia Commons

From the mundane to the divine, some of the best-designed products of all time

We asked five design experts – what’s your favorite product of all time, and why?
The Briggs Family Tea Service tells the story of George Briggs and Woretermoeteyenner, during the early years of Tasmania. Trent Jansen

I merge Indigenous stories with my design – maybe others should too

In our personal and working lives, there are some lines that should not be crossed and others that must be. As a designer, crossing the line that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian…
George Rose’s light is one of the products on display at this year’s Fringe Furniture exhibition. Anna Lorenzetto

Fringe Furniture: the products that help us understand who we are

Every product is a blabbermouth; it has a tendency to answer every question – and then some - Del Coates. Coates, an American industrial designer and design academic, is right. The processes and outputs…
Why has David Foulkes Taylor again been left out of the history of mid-century Australian design? Ted Snell

Don’t forget the west: mid-century modern and David Foulkes Taylor

In 1982, I wrote an introduction to a survey exhibition of the work of Western Australian furniture designer David Foulkes Taylor lamenting that so little attention had “… been directed towards the recording…

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