Black + Blum Mix Humour and Function
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 05.18.08
Dan Black and Martin Blum must be fun to work with; they run a design consultancy in London, but also sell a line of products that they designed and produced. Their approach to sustainability is to develop clever ways to use less materials, and to design and build their products to last a long time. They manage to build a wine rack out of a strip of sheet metal, or a candelabra out of a piece of wire. They built a desk fan that uses all of thirteen watts.
Hit the jump for a video interview of Martin Blum of Black + Blum.
The very first video interview this writer has ever done, of Martin Blum at ICCF. We apologize for the quality!
Propeller fan
But they sometimes stray from the Miesian "less is more" toward a Morris Lapidus-like "too much is never enough," such as with their tape dispenser, where they "were tired of using tape dispensers that didn't work. Either the blade didn't cut or they were not heavy enough to use with one hand."
So they cast it out of a full kilo (2.2 pounds) of cast iron and aluminum. Heavy. ::Black + Blum
