Category: Madison

Madison, WI

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Several people on the road trip warned us that Madison was a “very liberal place” and we were not sure what to expect. Upon arrival we discovered a quaint university town with a number of independent retailers, cafes and restaurants lined up between the Capitol and UW Madison. The city is smartly planned around its university with plenty of pedestrian-friendly streets that provide a local feel – something unfortunately rare in too many American cities. Madison also prides itself on its local architectural heritage (Frank Lloyd Wright remains a strong tourism asset for Wisconsin) and food specialties to be experienced in places such as Lazy Jane’s (pictured above), Barriques and The Old Fashioned, a local institution for fried cheese curds and micro-brewed beers.

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Rating 3.00 out of 5

When Design Becomes Philosophy

Tags: Sustainability

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The Office for Lost Objects™ is the intriguing name of a furniture design practice led by Jarrod Beglinger. It creates conceptual furniture and uses design philosophy to question our relationship with objects and everyday life.

This philosophy is based on six principles:

• Respect the Super Normal.
• Revel in the infra-ordinary.
• Honor craftsmanship.
• Follow a logic.
• Express an integrity.
• Seek an essence.

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Jarrod started with engineering studies at MIT which later led him to do an internship at BMW in Germany where he became more aware of design. He decided to spend more time in Europe and applied to Eindhoven’s Design Academy where he was accepted to pursue a Master’s degree. There, he discovered a new way of seeing the world through design and started to make design pieces that worked as social commentaries. His strongest design influence is the “Super Normal” as practiced by Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa: a type of design thinking that emphasizes less on aesthetics but rather focuses on making “normal” objects that integrate so well in everyday life, people don’t even question them.

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Rating 3.00 out of 5

The Office of Lost Objects

TAGS: None

Cities x Design talks to Jarrod Beglinger about the beauty of the supernormal, conceptual design practices taking hold in the United States and The Office of Lost Objects.

Rating 3.00 out of 5