One way to use the walls is with a pegboard; Julia Child’s kitchen pegboard, where she hung her copper pots, is a famous example. The pegboard above, from Human | Crafted, takes this old standard and makes it decorative as well as functional. The board is CNC machined from a solid block of walnut; the loops and hooks are 3D-printed nylon. It also comes with five feet of bungee cord, providing one more way to hold items in place.
Droog’s Strap, designed by NL Architects, is another example of taking a familiar product—in this case, the straps used to hold luggage on the back of a bike—and doing something new with it. The straps are made from silicone rubber and can hold phones, keys, remotes, books, hand tools, etc. These would work great for end users who work best when everything is clearly visible. But for others, it will add visual clutter.
The naoLoop Loft, with its polyester latex bands, follows the same general approach as the Strap, but with the bands attached to a laser-cut stainless steel (or powder-coated steel) board. Besides transforming the look, the board protects the walls from anything that might get them dirty or cause other damage.
Photo: Michael Wilson
The Hanging Line from Kontextür, designed by Josh Owen, is a single silicone band. Items are stored by tossing them over the line, or hanging them from a hook. Although this was designed for bathroom use, end-users could certainly use it other places, too. It’s somewhat limited in what it can hold, much more so than the Strap or the Loft—but it certainly provides more storage options than the standard towel rack.
This long and narrow brick house outside Budapest, by Foldes Architects, integrates a 17-metre-long library wall that accommodates the owners’ expansive book collection (+ slideshow).
Long Brick House was designed by Budapest studio Foldes Architects for a couple who are retiring and requested enough space to display as many of their books as possible.
“He is the rector of a university, and she was HR manager in a big planning office, and together they own a book collection close to 100 metres long,” explained architect Laszlo Foldes, whose past projects include a volcano museum with dark concrete walls.
“To avoid creating under-used space, we maximised the potential of the corridor, turning the horizontal axis into a 17 metre-long library wall,” he told Dezeen.
The one-storey brick house is built on a hill 15 kilometres from Budapest. It is concealed by trees that already existed on the site, which the owners wanted to keep.
“When arriving at the gate, just the green canopy of trees and a minimalist parking lot are visible. Thanks to the sloping garden, the house is hidden behind this rich setting,” said Foldes.
Inside, the floor follows the slope of the hill with a series of steps, so that rooms get progressively taller towards the back. It culminates with a terrace overlooking a valley, which shades the house from the sun and offers a external space to shelter from the rain.
“The series of steps inside results in a variety of spaces, each enjoying higher ceilings and wider rooms, ending up with the limitless panorama of the terrace,” said Foldes.
Private spaces have been grouped at the front, including a master bedroom suite and a guest bedroom that doubles as a study, while the open-plan kitchen, dining room and living room are located at the back.
A corridor at the side connects these rooms and accommodates the 17 metre-long bookshelf, which is interspersed with three cupboards to conceal drinks and glasses, towels, and bills and letters.
The 30-centimetre thickness of the bookshelf, combined with the 50-centimetre thickness of the wall behind it, also allowed the architects to incorporate three window seats into the structure, offering a view out to the garden that runs alongside.
“The three window seats are very important – they bring life into the bookshelf,” said Foldes. “Without these elements, the structure would be too monotonous.”
A west-facing terrace beside the master bedroom also provides a connection with the garden, so that the owners can enjoy sunset views over nearby hills.
“Even though the mass of the building is longitudinal and disciplined, it has visual and spatial connections to the east and west sides of the plot too,” said Foldes.
The front of the house also accommodates a small basement with a sauna and storage space, which is reached by external stairs.
“We wanted to save square metres inside, so we created outside stairs to access this space,” said Foldes. “If you use a sauna, it is good to go outside. In Finland they do the same.”
The house was built on a tight budget of €115,000, so wood-effect PVC flooring and PVC windows were chosen to minimise costs.
“The shape of the building is also very simple, and the wood ceiling is part of the roof structure, which was economical,” said Foldes. “The builders also had to compete for the job, and the best offer won.”
A well-ventilated attic has been designed to provide a thermal buffer zone, helping keep the house cool in summer and warm in winter. The 50-centimetre-thick sidewall, made of ceramic blocks with an external layer of bricks, also helps to modulate the temperature inside.
“The thick wall is important because summers are hot. The mass of the building resists the heat, so it has a good natural climate inside,” added the architect. “This way we didn’t need to have air conditioning.”
A fireplace has also been incorporated into the library wall to heat the house in winter.
“It was our general aim to assure the proper inner climate with architectural means rather than constructing huge machinery,” said Foldes.
Photography is by Levente Sirokai.
Project credits:
Architects: Laszlo Foldes, Peter Sonicz – Foldes Architects Structural engineering: Zoltan V. Nagy Mechanical engineering: Attila Lucz Electrical engineering: Judit Balazs
My favorite carry-all for tools and materials is Festool’s Open Top SYS-Toolbox. It’s just a classic example of nuts-and-bolts ID: Simple, strong, reliable, and a perfect use of materials. The thick-walled ABS has a channel molded into the bottom, which forms the divider inside the box, and this channel allows the handle of a second box to perfectly nest within the first. Two latches at the side enable you to connect them quickly and securely. And they’re compatible with Festool’s full line of Systainers (manufactured by Tanos, as we looked at here), making them easy to roll around the shop or carry on-the-go in one piece.
From the mountainous city of Leh in the north to the palm tree-lined tourist-haven of Goa in the south, India is a vast nation of rich diversity—whether it’s landscape, language, food or even automobiles. The country’s intricate and ever-growing network of highways is…
L’artiste germano-hongroise Katharina Roters a réalisé une série de clichés récensant les différentes façades colorées et singulières des maisonnettes hongroises appelées « Magyar Kocka« , des cubes hongrois que l’on peut retrouver partout dans cet ancien pays de l’Union Soviétique. Des batîments simples mais personnalisés par les habitants à découvrir dans la suite.
Twenty DC-motors are positioned around the handrail of the first floor to surround the boxes, which each measure 70 cubic centimetres and are hung from thin nylon ropes in an 80-centimetre square grid.
When activated, the motors pull more threads connected to the boxes around the outside with varying intensity and in different directions.
The proximity to their neighbours causes the cardboard cubes to bump and jostle each other, until all 81 are in motion.
“The collision of the boxes and the friction caused when they collide gives rise to a multitude of sounds and noises,” said Zimoun. “The acoustic perspective changes as the viewer moves along the exhibition space and can be experienced in constantly new ways.”
The installation, which will remain in place until 21 September, is one of three new kinetic pieces by the artist that combine motors and cardboard.
As part of a private collection, Zimoun attached 157 rectangular boxes to the walls, ceiling and floor of a white room to form the second installation.
All with open fronts, the boxes face in the same direction and contain cotton balls on the end of thin metal wires, connected to motors at the bases. The motors move the wires so the balls rattle around the top of the box.
The final piece, mounted on a wall at Zimoun’s studio in Bern, works in a similar way. It is made up of 296 small cardboard cubes arranged in a tightly packed grid, each with purple felt balls inside.
The balls spin around in circles at different speeds and knock against the sides. Some rotate clockwise and some anti-clockwise, creating a pattern of moving spots.
“I hear you’re buying a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and are throwing your computer out the window because you want to make something real.”–LCD Soundsystem, ‘Losing My Edge’
Well this is weird and fun: The data wizards at IBM have partnered with the U.S. Open and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem / DFA Records fame to create real-time musical interpretations of tennis matches throughout the tournament. The premise of the U.S. Open Sessions is simple: IBM processes millions of data points via cloud-based algorithms to generate synth tones that represent the gameplay, complemented by Platonic shapes in the browser window. Developer Patrick Gunderson does the heavy lifting while Murphy transposes the progress of the match from groundstrokes to keystrokes; from playing the baseline to, um, playing the bassline.
Carrying a clutch looks great, but once you need to use both your hands—whether for holding snacks, riding a bike or throwing shapes on the dance floor—the accessory can be a…
News: technology firm mCube has developed an accelerometer small enough to be embedded into clothing or sports equipment – enabling developers to turn almost anything into a piece of wearable technology.
Accelerometers are used in smart devices and activity trackers to sense motion and relay information, but until recently have been too bulky to integrate with fabrics without being noticeable or restricting in some way.
Now mCube can combine the sensors that detect movement (MEMS) with the circuit that reads the data (ASIC) into a single chip that measures just millimetres across.
These new chips could lead to smart clothing or equipment, which would accurately detect how the wearer or user is performing during sports and everyday activities.
Connected to the internet, the chips could transfer data to smart devices where it could be stored, monitored and analysed.
“Virtually anything that moves can take advantage of a motion sensor, creating a huge market opportunity for MEMS manufacturers,” said mCube in a statement.
“By 2020, analysts predict more than 50 billion devices will be connected to the internet and a large percentage of those devices will be in motion.”
The company designed two sizes of chip, measuring two by two and three by three millimetres. It believes that the new smaller designs could become a catalyst for the “Internet of Moving Things” (IoMT), which would eventually connect all moving objects wirelessly and enable them to share data with each other.
“As one of the only private companies with the patented sensor technology needed to achieve the cost, size, low power and high performance needed for this growing market, mCube is paving the way for IoMT,” said the company.
“From smartphones to tablets, from gaming devices to augmented reality experiences, from smart clothes to wearables, a plethora of new applications are coming to market that will further transform the way consumers live and businesses operate.”
mCube has already shipped over 60 million units of the accelerometers to China for use in a range of smartphones and tablets. Each chip contains both the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors and an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC).
MEMS sensors have been used in industrial and automotive applications for many years, but the first-generation models were expensive to built and required a high amount of power to run.
They were also packaged in large multi-chip modules too bulky to be inserted into garments without attracting attention or hindering the wearer.
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Photo: Michael Wilson
