Today a friend referred me to the Andre Perry website, and I must say, I’m ashamed to admit that I had no idea who Andre Perry was until today. Better late than never I suppose. Anyway, I don’t even know where to begin. This is such an amazing studio, and the Le Studio (I apologize for redundancy) brand is super duper.

Apparently this studio was one of the first sophisticated, wold-class, environmentally friendly, audio / visual studios started by Andre Perry in 1974 (a 1962 Grand Prix du Disque award winning studio musician). Anyway, click here for more information on Andre Perry, as the history of Le Studio is really fascinating.

Enjoy

- m / Colorcubic™

Preface: This is not about Daniel Johns’ rock band. Read on if you want to learn about the most perfect chair in the world.

I had briefly touched on the topic of Hadi Teherani’s Silver Chair in a previous post, and now will expand upon what I had coined my Unicorn of all chairs. Before any more words are typed, we must visualize this fabulous (and thankfully un-mythological) beast:

The three bears: cub, mama bear, and my favorite, papa bear.

If you like butts and you cannot lie, here’s a great shot I can’t deny + foot stool.

It don’t matter if you’re black or white… or brown, or even orange.

When I sit down at my desk pictured above… oh crap, I can’t fool myself.

I’m not too worried about Silver becoming a common seating solution like the Aeron. The Silver Low (cub) costs $4625, Silver Mid (mama bear) is $5040, and Silver High (papa bear) $5610. Even the damn foot stool costs $1811, which is more than the Aeron Chair itself! To have the chair customized, it’ll cost you even more.

The Silver Chair was designed by Hadi Teherani for company Interstuhl. Teherani is an Iranian-born architect by trade who recently embarked in the design of consumer goods and interior design. Teherani is best known for his famed architectural achievements such as Munich’s Swiss RH Centre and the Dockland office building in Hamburg. On silver-chair.net, the chair’s own website, a wonderful statement captured the soul of this chair:

“Design needs to make an emotional connection with the character of materials and their use; layer by layer must be peeled away in order to reach the heart of meaning and discover a new context. It was our aim to make the technical complexity in Silver invisible and reach the poetic plateau of perfection in seating. A chair which is only suitable for use in an office is not enough. Aesthetics without ethic is deception.” Note that the Silver Chair is 98% recyclable.

This is no ordinary task chair, dinner chair, reading chair, or anything chair. Silver’s design is so versatile that with customization of various materials (aluminum, wood, leather, glass, fabric and more), the chair can adapt to any environment. Could you imagine using an Aeron chair as part of your dining decor? It would look absolutely frightful.

Some of the Silver’s design influences included classic Mercedes-Benz coupes, the sharp angles of fighter jets, and the Sydney Opera House, all which can be summed up in Interstuhl’s words as “Security in technology, hidden function, shell concept, and futuristic baroque.”

In a nutshell, the Silver Chair is absolute perfection.

- c / Colorcubic™

After relocating the Colorcubic office to Old Town in January, we had planned to outfit our environment with new decor and furnishings; specifically task chairs. I recently discovered that our old chairs were partially made of polyvinyl chloride, otherwise known as PVC or vinyl. Further research had determined that PVC products (more specifically flexible PVC) contains chemicals known as additives that slowly leach out, possibly resulting in health complications. I had also read on the FDA site that the additive DEHP has produced a range of adverse effects in male reproductive systems and production of normal sperm in animals. No tests have been done on human males, but my advice to kung-fu kicking males is to avoid the “Macho Sewn Vinyl Groin Guard“. Needless to say, all this information made it necessary to upgrade our seating pronto.

Like most modern and aesthetically-inclined design studios, we looked to Herman Miller as a viable solution. No, we didn’t want to be just another card-carrying member of the Aeron Chair club. While the Aeron is a fine chair indeed, it has lost its appeal over the years by being so common (in my opinion). I must admit that I only prefer the Executive Aeron with the polished aluminum frame. The other models just fall short of meeting my expectations. Another item that fell short of expectations was our chair budget—at well over a grand a pop, the aluminun Aeron wasn’t an option at the time; neither was the Silver Chair: my Unicorn, the mark of absolute perfection. I shudder as I write this. More on my love, the Silver Chair, in another post.

Chair criterion included ergonomics, aesthetics, sustainability, and price. After browsing through Design Within Reach, I came upon the Celle Chair (pronounced cella) designed by Jerome Caruso for Herman Miller. Made from 33% recycled content and 99% recyclable, this product immediately caught my eye. At a mid-price of $749 each ($629 on Amazon.com), the Celle was ergonomic, attractive, and Greenguard Certified.

I was initially worried about the comfort of a chair that is constructed mostly of polymer, but the system of cells and loops conforms to the sitter’s body and flexes with movement. Since the Portland DWR didn’t carry the chair in-store, I had to trust in the idea of the chair description and the reputation of Herman Miller. We placed an order and a month later (yes, it takes 4-6 weeks for this product to arrive), we received the pre-assembled chairs in Brownstone (looks brown in online photos but is more of a light graphite in real life) and it was everything as expected, except for the color which had worked out conveniently.

Durably constructed and highly adjustable, it was more comfortable than I had expected. Although the Celle chair is very flexible, it is still very firm. If your butt can’t stand some firmness, then I’d suggest a different chair, or purchase the optional fabric seat covering to alleviate your proctological issues. We did however receive a damaged chair, most likely cracked during the shipment process. I’m not surprised since the chair packaging was crappy as it was placed in a big-ass cardboard box with one small piece of styrofoam on the chair back, all strapped together with plastic strips. The way some UPS delivery guys throw packages around should be a liability. Luckily, DWR has a pretty good return policy and had scheduled to have the chair picked up while a replacement was ordered. Bad news was, we had to wait another several weeks for the sucker to arrive. Why so long, DWR? I wonder if this chair is made-to-order. Anyway, we have been enjoying our Celle chairs very much and have had no problems. The overall design is not too pretentious, the color Brownstone (or Graystone as I’d like to call it) is attractive, the ergonomics and comfort is copasetic, and the footprint, although wide, won’t domineer your workspace, as long as you’re not working in a cardboard box or anything like that. Oh yeah, and it’s super sustainable. The Celle chair earns our approval and an overall rating of 8.

- c / Colorcubic™

Sigg™ bottles are probably one of our favorite drinking bottles of all time. If you don’t already own one I would suggest picking one up. A few pros about why Sigg™ is the way to go over most other drinking bottles: The Sigg™ bottles are aluminum lined with an inner coating resistant to fruit acids and isotonic drinks, unlike most plastic drinking bottles that with excessive use begin to contaminate the beverage contained within it. Sigg™ also spent some good time on their brand identity (which for me makes it more enjoyable to drink out of). They also have a pretty crispy option if you’re a company or a collective of individuals, and you want to stylize or personalize your Sigg™ bottle. They give you the option to have your logo featured on their bottle. I believe it’s with a quantity of 20 or more ordered at a time, but don’t quote me on that as my memory doesn’t always serve me best.

Anyway, just thought we would share.

Peace,

- m / Colorcubic™

Last year, I became fascinated with the Grameen Bank, an organization founded by Muhammad Yunus that provides microcredit to the poor to fund small businesses to pull their families out of poverty. Since Grameen’s inception, microloans have been provided to more than 7 million borrowers all over the world (97 percent of whom are women), all without collateral, based purely on mutual trust.

I was having a conversation about microcredit with an accountant friend a couple weeks ago and she said something about how they must have a low rate of repayment since they are giving out loans to the poor. Amazingly enough, they have a loan-repayment rate of over 95 percent (according to the Grameen web site)! The poor have a better track record of repayment than the wealthy because they have so much more to lose if they don’t repay. Of course, nothing is ever perfect, and Grameen occasionally encounters periods of repayment difficulties but continually proves to rebound from such delinquencies.

RESOURCES

Yunus’ 1997 autobiography Banker to the Poor is a great resource if you’d like to learn more about Muhammad Yunus, the Grameen Bank and microcredit. Yunus also recently wrote a new book called “Creating a World Without Poverty” which I’m looking forward to reading.

Another amazing microcredit organization is called Kiva. Kiva allows you to lend to entrepreneuers featured on the Kiva site, as little as $25 at a time. Once your Kiva loan is repaid, you can choose to withdraw your funds, or give it to a new entrepreneur.

United Colors of Benetton just launched their own microcredit organization called Africa Works. You can find a special collection of Africa Works t-shirts designed for the campaign in select Benetton stores.

- c / Colorcubic™

We’ve had a few inquiries about our prints going on sale. Unfortunately we usually only attempt to sell our prints at live music events we’re involved with in some way. Because we’ve been so preoccupied with redesigning / redeveloping colorcubic.com, as well as all of our current projects underway, we’re probably not going to be selling anything for a while. That and the fact that our online store isn’t up as of yet.

We were going to put up the store sooner, but we figured we’d wait for the new site to go live. At that point we’ll probably start selling our prints again, and this time making it more available than to just fellow Portlanders.

That being said, we have been rather discouraged about our older prints. Besides the event posters we’ve produced for “digital organics”, or “dis-order technology”, a lot of the concepts we’ve produced are more personal than anything. I’m sure as some of you have experienced, it’s easy to beat yourself up over trying to create something you’ll always be happy with. I guess what I’m trying to say is that we’re not very happy with any of our older prints, (say for a few), and so we might have to just say goodbye to those altogether.

I suppose if there’s a great enough demand we’ll start reproducing them again, but at this point they’ve been filed away in our cabinet of no return. We are however brainstorming newer concepts, and will be previewing them as soon as they’ve reached a place we’re happy with. More to come on that later.

Anyway, for now we’re off to photograph some beautiful flowers by flowerbud™. We’ll be sure to write more later today.
Peace,

- m / Colorcubic™

Hey everyone,

sorry it’s been a while since we’ve updated our site with posts.

We’ve been so slammed with projects, it’s hard to find time to update this on a regular basis. We’ve also moved offices, (which was very time consuming, but definitely worth it).
We’re catching up with a lot of topics that we feel are relevant not only to the design / development community, but also to people that are concerned with sustainability, and social entrepreneurship.

Anyway, we hope that you find the coming topics useful for your own personal, and professional growth.

Feel free to contact us with any questions that you may have regarding the content of our posts.

Ciao,

- m / Colorcubic™

The original article is from June’s issue of Vanity Fair, which is titled, “The Africa Issue.” You may read the original article on Vanity Fair online.

Letter from Uganda

Sachs speaking at a school in the village of Ruhiira, Uganda, January 2007. Ruhiira is participating in Sachs’s Millennium Villages Project. Photograph by Guillaume Bonn.

Jeffrey Sachs’s $200 Billion Dream

Jeffrey Sachs—visionary economist, savior of Bolivia, Poland, and other struggling nations, adviser to the U.N. and movie stars—won’t settle for less than the global eradication of extreme poverty. And he hasn’t got a second to waste.

by Nina Munk July 2007

In the respected opinion of Jeffrey David Sachs—distinguished Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia University, director of the Earth Institute, and special adviser to the secretary-general of the United Nations—the problem of extreme poverty can be solved. In fact, the problem can be solved “easily.” “We have enough on the planet to make sure, easily, that people aren’t dying of their poverty. That’s the basic truth,” he tells me firmly, without a doubt.

It’s November 2006, and Sachs has just addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations. His message is straightforward: “Millions of people die every year for the stupid reason they are too poor to stay alive.… That is a plight we can end.” Afterward, as the two of us have lunch in the crowded U.N. cafeteria, overlooking New York’s East River, he continues: “The basic truth is that for less than a percent of the income of the rich world nobody has to die of poverty on the planet. That’s really a powerful truth.”

(more…)