Now a ten year tradition, the Humanscale Faces in the Wild charity event invites artists and designers to submit a depiction of any non-domesticated animal, auctioned off to benefit the World Wildlife Fund. Increasingly more design focused as the bar keeps getting raised, this year's contributors include Marcel Wanders, Yves Behar, Scott Wilson, and Scott Henderson, among others.



Scott Henderson sent us a sneak peak of his submission, Megatera, depicting a Humpback Whale diving below the surface in the deep ocean. The whale was machined into a 16" tall block of solid acrylic in both postive and negative volumes. This gives the illusion of the whale as a single piece, as both volumes connect seamlessly at the waterline. Henderson has been a long time contributor to the event, and talked with us about the ideas behind this year's choice of Megaptera novaeangliae, humpback whale:

I love this event because it's awesome to be able to use your skills to help the environment, especially this year, as we have seen incredible damage being done to marine life, which is why I chose the diving whale form. Man only sees the whale's tail from his perspective above the water, and can't appreciate the colossal size of these mammals hidden below the waves. The heavy block of acrylic was a perfect way to show that.

The New York Times recently published On Clean Energy, China Skirts Rules, a story dissecting China's international lead in clean energy manufacturing, pointing out that while they are leading, they are also skirting trade rules established by the World Trade Organization by subsidizing their exporters. If these subsidies are not removed by the Chinese government, there may be retaliation from other countries, through the implementation of steep tarriffs.

Below, an excerpt from the NYT's article describing some of these subsidies:

A visit to one of Changsha's newest success stories offers an example of the government's methods. Hunan Sunzone Optoelectronics, a two-year-old company, makes solar panels and ships close to 95 percent of them to Europe. Now it is opening sales offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles in preparation for a push into the American market next February.

To help Sunzone, the municipal government transferred to the company 22 acres of valuable urban land close to downtown at a bargain-basement price. That reduced the company's costs and greatly increased its worth and attractiveness to investors.

Meanwhile, a state bank is preparing to lend to the company at a low interest rate, and the provincial government is sweetening the deal by reimbursing the company for most of the interest payments, to help Sunzone double its production capacity.

Heavily subsidized land and loans for an exporter like Sunzone are the rule, not the exception, for clean energy businesses in Changsha and across China, Chinese executives said in interviews over the last three months.

Our good friends over at Ecouterre are teaming with the Textile Arts Center to bring Fashion's Night Out to Brooklyn! The theme of the night is slow fashion: fashion that takes a bit longer to design, construct, or find but creates outfits just as stylish and fashionable as high-fashion. There's a detailed schedule here.

6 - 7pm

"Hack Sustainable Fashion" workshop

7 - 8:30pm

Ecouterre eco-fashion panel and Q&A moderated by Jill Fehrenbacher, with panelists Greta Eagan (FashionMeGreen), Caroline Priebe (Uluru), Sarah Scaturro (Cooper-Hewitt Museum), Titania Inglis, Shabd Simon-Alexander, Margarita Mileva (M2 Jewelry), and Laura "London" Shirreff (Waste Not Want Not)

8:30 - 11pm

Shopping hours with local designers (reMade USA, Wiksten, Shabd, Titania Inglis, and M2 Jewelry), free DIY workshops, food, drinks, live DJ

Textile Arts Center

505 Carroll St.

Brooklyn, NY 11215

The Institute of Design at IIT and the Design and Emotion Society will host the 7th International Conference on Design and Emotion October 4-7 at the Spertus Institute in Chicago. The conference is aimed at delving into where design crosses with technological, social, cultural and economic change, and how human emotion is involved in it all. Participants can geek out on themes like Consumer Behavior & Emotion, Relationships & Patterns, Interaction & Usability, and Semantic Interpretations. Keynote speakers include Jeroen van Erp, Co-Founder and Creative director of Fabrique design agency, and Cynthia Breazeal, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Science, MIT Media Lab, whose keynote title, "Socio-Emotional Design of Personal Robots" sounds particularly enticing for some of us design nerds.

Registration and more information here.

I hate the new Corvettes. They remind me of a formerly attractive movie star that's just gone to seed, all bloated and tacky, a shade of their former self. If a car design could die of a drug overdose in a seedy motel off the strip, the new Corvette would do it.

In contrast, this ill-fated Pininfarina-styled Corvette from the '60s is so beautiful it makes me want to weep. It's a long story, but the short of it is that GM made some Corvette bodies available to Pininfarina back in 1963, and the Rondine concept, as it came to be known, was unveiled at the Paris Motor Show that year. And everyone...hated it. By 1964 the plug was pulled and the concept never saw production.

You can read the full depressing tale at Corvette Fever, see more beautiful photos of the car at Ultimate Car Page, and read about a 2008 auction where a Pininfarina-Museum-housed version sold for $1.76 mil at Autoblog.