Russell Kennedy designed a proposal for a new Australia Flag which he hops will replace the current Australian Flag by the year 2020. Not only did he design the new national flag but he also thought of the wider use, such as representing unity thought the design and diversity thought colour.

Russell says that: “Australians should respect the current flag whether we like its colonial design or not. It has served the country well over the years through both time of adversity and triumph, however it has become clear that as a nation we have outgrown it. Australian has reached a point in time where a change is not only necessary but also long overdue.”

A blue Kangarroo is the main distinctive feature on the Advance Australia National Flag and is one of Australia’s most recoginsable symbols. The yellow area represents the sun and is a link to the Aboriginal Flag. One particular feature was taken over from the current flag and that is the Southern hemisphere symbol of the Southern Cross which are the 5 white stars on the blue area.

Dr. Denis Whitehouse says that: “Instantly recognisable as Australian, this flag has the potential to present a positive and distinctive image internationally and nationally. Open to multiple applications by different interest groups, it is a flag that speaks of the power of the rich diversity and questioning that constitutes Australian culture.”

As you can see above, different colours can be applied to the flag to represent different organisations and state territories. One important part of this new design is the advance Australia reconciliation ensign which shares the design of the Advance Australia National Flag but features the colours of the Australian Aboriginal Flag (red, black, yellow), which was designed by Harold Thomas in 1972.

(download)

Click here to download:

1-000-recycled-doors-make-a-great-facade-iAJxcqiGkAecxDDnbdBB.zip (636 KB)

via popupcity.net

1,000 recycled doors are enough for the South Korean architect Choi Jeong-Hwa to transform a dull ten-story building into a fresh-looking landmark.

This ‘skyscraper’ in the center of the Korean capital Seoul has become a pixelated landmark, that tells the story of thousand people who once chose a fitting color for a door in their apartment.

In his work Jeong-Wha uses a lot of every-day used objects to transform landscapes, interiors and urban situations. This project, presumably called ’1,000 Doors’, is astonishing beautiful and brings injects the city scape with some fresh colors. The doors visually translate the diversity of a world city like Seoul, as Inhabitat explains:

“Choi Jeong-Hwa’s imagery is born out his desire to let art engage with the greater population. His work is almost delusional – he takes ordinary, often discarded items and uses them to create unique spaces. 1000 Doors engages with the entire city of Seoul through its immense scale. The mass of doors reads like a crazy advertisement from afar. Up close, the juxtaposition of the common doors scaling the full height of the building is a bit jarring, if not amusing.”

The 1,000 Doors project must be a great stimulation for recycling principles in architecture. We can’t let this project pass without mentioning some other recycled door projects that have been featured here on The Pop-Up City. The Utrecht-based collective Stortplaats van Dromen has done similar projects, although on a much smaller scale.

Shapes, shadows and interior design

In Japanese "IN-EI" means shadow and this is also the name of the new paper lamp designed for Artemide by fashion designer Issey Miyake and his research laboratory, Reality Lab. The material is made of 40% recycled PET bottles and in line with precise mathematical formulae is folded to create an origami-like light sculptures. The range includes pendant, table and floor lamps, each of them unique in their form, project distinct shadows within the room. All of the lamps are fitted with LEDs. The formal language of these pieces brings the "Akari" paper lamps to mind, created in the 1950s by Japanese designer Isamu Noguchi.

Another luminaire, whose magnetic skin is designed to offer greater flexibility, is "Ipparco", created for Artemide by Scottish designer Neil Poulton. A "light ring" held by a magnetic joint can be moved up and down the aluminum rod that is the luminaire's stem and can be fixed at any point the user desires. "Ipparco" can also be rotated 360 degrees on both a vertical and horizontal axis.

A silver reverse and opal-white diffuser – at first glance, the round wall and ceiling light "Silverback" by Danish lighting manufacturer Louis Poulsen looks like many another timeless luminaires. However, the Copenhagen-based design group Kibisi (whose members include Jens Martin Skibsted, Lars Larsen and Bjarke Ingels) has fitted it out with a rather special feature: The silver reverse is curved in such a way that it reflects the structure of the wall or ceiling from which it hangs, and thus appears to merge into it. Furthermore, "Silverback" adorns wall and ceiling surfaces with a gleam that envelopes them like the moon's halo. When determining the optimal curvature for the shell in relation to the flat wall and ceiling, the designers looked to water droplets on an even surface for inspiration.

Commissioned by Zumtobel, designers from Delugan Meissl Architects considered the effect of light and shadow when creating a new LED spotlight for use in a retail setting. "Iyon" serves to create light and dark areas, in which (according to the manufacturer's own research) customers tend to frequent more than others. For cases of malfunction or emergency, the Dornbirn-based lighting specialist has also developed a series of emergency lighting in collaboration with Austrian design agency Eoos. "Onlite Resclite", "Onlite Comsign 150", "Onlite Puresign 150" and "Onlite Crossign 160" are rescue and safety lights which mark out escape routes in case of emergency.

An illuminating contrast between the haves and the have-nots.

Lighting design seems to be a perennial favourite amongst the design fraternity.

Alongside fashion, shoes, cars and bicycles, lights seem to offer designers a simple, yet inspirational object for their creative abilities.

The intersection of light and dark and the objects and technologies used to achieve it offers designers endlessly fertile ground for exploration.

In such a way, Italian lighting studio Vinaccia Integral Design has designed two new collections of suspended lights for the Pulsar manufacturing company – ‘Cumulus’ and ‘Frame’.

Both feature the use of wood or bamboo, and both use the overlap of wooden layers or screens to create volumes, shapes and an evocative interplay between light and shade.

The Cumulus collection is a cloud of bamboo blades that spreads a soft and smooth light, while the Frame collection uses wooden slats and a central, interchangeable, pierced screen to create a variety of ‘custom’ shadows.

Closer to home, DIA member and talented lighting designer, Ilan El, creates a variety of customised light collections, including ‘Fall’, a subtle array of porcelain leaves inspired by autumn, and ‘ORA’, an interactive light that allows its owner to change colour hues and moods upon whim by the simple adjustment of three adjustable knobs, each controlling a different colour spectrum.

Nice though they are, lights like these are a luxury, dependent upon a regular electricity supply and the means to afford them.

Elsewhere in the world, 1.5 billion people have no electricity whatever, and tens of millions of others have limited or irregular electricity access.

Both situations mean that their children’s education is directly affected because the children can’t do vital homework at night if the parents can’t afford to divert money from their food bill to buy kerosene for lights.

No education means that those children are condemned to live in poverty for the rest of their lives.

A Dutch design studio has therefore come up with a concept and prototype for a cheap, highly-efficient, solar powered LED light that can be purchased for less than $25 and provides up to sixteen hours of light per day.

The Wakawaka light, developed by Off-Grid Solutions, is affordable (with a struggle) by people who live on less than $2 per day - but even then, probably only by pooling resources and buying a couple of lights for the community.

The Wakawaka light can be hung from the ceiling, mounted on top of a soft drink bottle ­– wherever a convenient location or need arises according to circumstances.

There are other solar powered LED lights on the market, but they’re more expensive and not as efficient as the Wakawaka, which uses a patented solar technology chip that boosts the efficiency of the solar cell by up to 200 percent, even in lower light intensities.

The designers are attempting to raise funds to take the project further via crowdfunding, and hope to reach the next stage of development soon.