80's T's
For my Youtube channel 2kB of Fun, I made several T-shirts based on logo graphics from 80's video games and electronic gadgets.Retro Space 4.0
Sound and Vision in Hilverum was interested in buying Retro Space arcade cabinets for their museum.This request demanded an extra durable version of the Retro Space cabinets.
The new cabinet is fully re-engineered in folded aluminium sheets. The cab is fully modular, perfectly recyclable and gets prettier from a little use.
2kB of Fun
Never has a consumer electronic product seen such an extravagant variety in case design as early handheld games from 1976-1985. Never have computer games been so beautifully reduced to their essence as these handhelds offered. Never did 2Kb of memory offer so much fun.1983 was the best year with top titles like Amidar, Astro Thunder 7, Burger Time, Dig Dug, Ms. Pac-Man, Q*bert, Super-Cobra and Zaxxon.
Martijn Koch, architect from the Netherlands bought 180 of the best handheld games, photographed them, took them apart, analysed their tech, and put all the material together in this stunning book, a catalog like you never saw before.
M+ M- ???
Redesignme.com is a website where designers are challenged to create new designs for certain products.Garton Jones used redesignme.com to search for a redesign of the Ativa 10 Digit Desk Calculator.
I'm always puzzled by the fact most calculators still function like the early 1970 designs. A time when chip logic was very expensive, and the amount of components was kept to a minimum. Today's standard micro controller is way more powerful. So my primary goal was to create a new set of basic functionality.
Which means I had to redesign the layout of the buttons first. The design itself continues proved ingredients like injection mould plastic, the perfect shape of PTT's Zurich telephone and modern white OLED matrix displays.
My own challenge was to make the design in one hour on a Friday afternoon.
The result: a top 3 note among 109 redesigns. "Your redesign was part of my top 3. Very well done! Yours sincerely, Charlie Garton-Jones"
Creative Factory
The Clock Building is a magnificent icon for Eindhoven. It is built as factory by Philips Electronics in 1928/1929. After having been used for years as office space by Philips, the building now transforms back to its original function: a factory.This time no series production. Trudo turned the building into a creative factory. Architects, designers, musicians, photographers, creative consultants: a colourful aggregation of creative talent took over this icon of the city Eindhoven.
The building has been split into units of various proportions. They all share one common feature though. Huge window openings with delicate metal frames. The light that enters the building gives unity to the diversity of interiors.
I photographed numerous interiors of the Clock Building to give insight in the new use of the building. The transformation of the Clock Building is a starting point in the transformation of the city district Strijp-S, a new centre for the city of Eindhoven.
The pictured companies are from left to right: Architectuurcentrum Eindhoven, Little Mountain, Keukenconfessies (2x), Desque, FuturOn.net, De Boekenmakers, studio-OOK, Scherpontwerp, Lady Penelope, Dikgedrukt en PopEI
XXL
Kingspan Netherlands wanted to expand their factory for insulation panels in Kesteren, and to combine it with their distribution facility and offices in Dodewaard.At the new industrial zone Medel near Tiel the needed 700.000m2 plot was available. The area also allowed high risk production plants.
At the moment phase 1 is completed. The plot has room for expansion with 2 more production lines and 3 times the amount of distribution storage that is part of phase 1.
Kinspan asked construction and design firm Van Zeist to draw the design. As architect I was responsible for the design up to approval of the design by the urban supervisor and the local "beauty commission".
Pac Man LACK Hack
One of the most popular IKEA products is the LACK coffee table. It is so cheap, it must be hollow.I opened the tables, I built in a retro TV computer game by Jakks and added real arcade controls to this game. This way the TV game has a longer life and the Ikea LACK is no longer the boring classic every household owns.
Thanks to Lara Verlaat for Playin Pac-Man.
Want some Beers?
ZZEF asked me to photograph 2 projects designed by Johan van den Berkmortel for the architecture portfolio of ZZEF.One project is a beer cafe at the monk brewery Koningshoeve and the other is the Bavaria House in Helmond.
Low Bandwith
When the design of Retro Space was finished, we needed a matching website.Because of the presumption that Retro Space could become a hit on the internet, we tried to make the website as small as possible. We did not want the website to crash on bandwidth problems.
Matching the style of the retro games, the website is designed in pixel art. All elements except some product shots are GIF images in 4 colours. It's just like the early years of internet when bandwidth was scarce.
I never promised you a rosegarden
An abandoned commercial plot in the centre of Heteren had to be filled with 19 apartments. Contractor Kuijpers had moved to the city limits and the housing corporation "Woningstichting Heteren" had 4 outdated senior-citizen houses on the adjacent plot at the Rozenpad street. The combined plot connects a traditional village street with a seventies extension to Heteren. The housing coorporation asked me to design the modernist block fitting the seventies area.I designed this appartment block as employer of Bouwkundig ontwerp- en adviesburo van Zeist BV
Ghost World
Detroit is a weird city. The city disappears slowly and turns back to nature. Not caused by war or disaster, it vanishes because of economic irrelevance. De automotive industry moved towards the Mexican border. Jobs are gone. The city renders useless. The General Motors headquarters still shine as a major highlight downtown. Perhaps as an icon for the glorious past.These photographs are taken during a trip of the USA and Canada in the autumn of 2005.