The single best mag you'll come by this summer--and I'm also betting this year. MONOCLE hits its nth home run with the summer special edition "devoted to building better cities, neighbourhoods and residences." The yearly article that ranks the world's 25 most liveable cities takes center stage, with the rest of the content revolving around this topic. Lists galore, including "50 people, products and services to improve your life" and "20 design elements every house should have." And if that isn't enough, accompanying the mag is the Design Directory listing Monocle's favs and the best in retreats, products and retailers. Get it and read it. And don't forget Monocle also produces and distributes free online complementary videocasts.

-- The whole thing: ≈250 pages + 50 page design directory. (Vol. 2, July/August 2008)

The July issue of ICON feels a bit all over the place with a lot of short articles, but the curation of works and the overall tone seals it just right. Most interesting was the cover feature Ugly in a good way. ICON discusses with curators and designers (Gateano Pesce, Maarten Baas and Bertjan Pot to name a few) the idea of formal, explicit ugliness in furniture and product design "celebrating difference and humanity" simply by letting go of the necessity of perfection in design: formally a bit less perfect, then a bit more human. Other findings include a quite animated article with Winy Maas of MVRDV and Joep von Lieshout of SlaveCity discussing SlaveCity, a utopian perverse parallel city; and a curious spread on cakes as a semi-industrial design product in Portugal (!). To top it all off, joined to the mag is ICON's Kitchen & Bathroom supplement with 50 pages of original kitchen & bathroom design, enough to raise the moco through the roof.

-- Issue 061 (July/August 2008)

Materialise.MGX recently produced Asymptote’s Atmospherics series of black resin vases designed by Hani Rashid. Fugu, Ubu and Roi are made of epoxy, polyamide and chrome and have been created using some of Materialise.MGX’s rapid prototyping technology, including Stereolithography (SLA) and Selective Laser Sintering (SLS). The vases evoke the motion of tornadoes or whirlpools and were designed for an exhibition at New York’s Phillips de Pury & Company.

+ materialise.com

Sadly, Douglas Gauthier and Jeremy Edmiston’s BURST*008 was closed briefly when I visited the exhibit, so I didn’t get to see the inside (other than on tippy-toe, sneaking a peek through the full-height picture window at rear). No worries: the angular, almost aerodynamic exterior was entertainment enough. Comprised of 1,000-plus pieces of milled plywood held together with some 540 steel clips, the house quite literally bursts from the landscape (um, concrete lot) in an explosion of painted-plywood facets levitating on sticklike legs. But marveling at the architecture is not the point of BURST*. Ultimately, the structure puts the emphasis on nature: The house’s rear elevation unfurls in a cascade of bleacher-style seating, all the better to sit and enjoy the view—out.

For Gauthier and Edmiston’s detailed account of the design and fabrication process, check out MoMA’s video-embedded website devoted to the show:

+ momahomedelivery.org

On the elevator to MoMA’s 6th floor gallery, I made small talk with a nice couple who turned out to be from Philly. Hey, me too! “Oh, then you must be here to see the Cellophane House,” they said, brimming with pride as we chatted about our hometown architecture heroes, KieranTimberlake Associates. The firm’s design did not disappoint; the five-story, two-bedroom, 1,800-square-foot building was the show’s largest. And the most tactilely nuanced, with an evanescent glow that comes courtesy of see-through plastic walls embedded with photovoltaics, a translucent 3Form floor lit from below, and acrylic stair treads embedded with LEDs—all of which attach, sans hardware, to an aluminum frame. Below, James Timberlake sheds light on the luminous design—and its bright future:

You designed Cellophane to be adaptable to numerous climatic conditions. Is there a location—the Alaskan tundra, beachside in Rio—where you’d love to see it permanently installed?
Actually, we designed Cellophane as siteless, meaning that the approach for MoMA works for New York City conditions—but would have to be studied for other locales. It is mass customizable, given the scaffold frame, to allow for a variety of adaptations. We would enjoy seeing Cellophane in all the locales you have suggested and have had inquiries from dozens of others.

+ momahomedelivery.org

+ Japanese maker Zojirushi presents a white version of its ZUTTO collection of electronic kitchen appliances, which includes a rice cooker, toaster, hot water dispenser, and coffee maker. The collection was designed by Fumie Shibata.

+ Plus Minus Zero has launched an international version of its website.

+ The Good Design Expo returns to Tokyo Big Sight next month (August 22-24) for a public showcase of all of this year's nominated designs. Final results are announced in October. JS

The stackable SYSTEM3, by Austrian architects Oscar Leo Kaufmann and Albert Rüf [olkruf.com], boasts the elongated shape of a shipping container. Inside, its austere bearing gives way to a more luxurious simplicity, thanks to amenities like an elegantly spare dining set, luxe Gaggenau appliances, and circular windows that create intriguing light effects. The design takes advantage of existing prefab technologies like CNC milling, which allows an incredible level of accuracy and customization, too; clients can choose the position, shape, and size of every window. Firm architect Jochen Specht took a break from blogging on MoMA’s exhibition journal to answer a few of our most pressing questions.

Was CNC milling part of the concept from the outset?
Our design was determined by the possibilities of the milling process. That’s why we do not have windows that extend to the floor or the ceiling—otherwise a wall element would not be stable enough to be craned. Furthermore, as you may have noticed, the windows’ corners are round; this is due to the size of the milling head—you can’t mill sharp corners. More after the jump.

+ moma.org