RX Made

Chicago's Rebuilding Exchange introduces a line of upcycled furniture with Strand Design

Over the past three years Rebuilding Exchange (RX) has served designers, architects and builders in Chicago as a retail outlet for reclaimed building materials. Since the non-profit’s inception the warehouse has developed a strong reputation for promoting sustainable deconstruction practices and has grown to offer instructional design classes, job training programs and now a line of furniture and home goods. Developed in collaboration with Strand …

Interview: Renato Preti

The founder of Discipline talks refined design with "some Italian tomato sauce"

In the panorama of Italian design, Discipline is one of the youngest and most interesting newcomers. Its motto, “beautifully designed, consciously made,” underlines the ambitious goal to meld aesthetics with the consideration of environmental issues from a contemporary and innovative point of view. The mind behind the project, Renato Preti spent years investing in design companies like Moooi, B&B and Skitsch before deciding to start …

Low-Tech Factory

ECAL students explore self-sustaining manufacturing process for Designers' Saturdays in Langenthal

For its 14th edition earlier this month, Designers’ Saturdays in Langenthal, Switzerland invited ECAL undergraduate and Masters students in industrial and product design to let their imagination run free while developing a series of machines exploring the manufacturing process of a selected product. The project was overseen by industrial designers Chris Kabel and Tomas Kral. Students had the opportunity to experiment with techniques such as …