Hasta La Ideas

Abang et Neng sont des baroudeurs. Sur leur compte Instagram ils documentent leurs périples d’une manière bien à eux. Ils se représentent sous forme de petits personnages dessinés et capturent ces petits bonhommes de papier dans les lieux qu’ils visitent. Des clichés malins et créatifs à découvrir.

Knitted lab-grown meat and windows that can charge smartphones feature in an exhibition of socially focused design at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum (+ slideshow).

The works of 26 designers are in the show, which is focused largely on design created to address social issues, including humanitarian or ecological disasters. The exhibition also features projects that challenge everyday consumerism, by promoting repairing or recycling.

Marjan van Aubel’s Current Window, which uses a layer of solar cells to convert sunlight to electrical energy that can be used to charge devices, is included in the show, alongside Boyan Slat’s Ocean Cleanup design, which seeks to strip plastic from the seas.

Both designs have already found wider success, with a prototype of Slat’s recycling platform being tested in the North Sea this year, and van Aubel’s solar panel concept being translated into a further range of products via her company Caventou.

Several other pieces in the show are focused on the reuse of materials, including Benedikt Fischer’s collection of brooches made from recycled ski helmets, and Studio Drift’s Obsidian mirror, fabricated from chemical waste.

A more playful take on the issue comes in the form of Marcia Nolte, Stijn van der Vleuten and Bob Waardenburg’s We Make Carpets collection, which reuses brightly coloured plastic cocktail stirrers, umbrellas and sticks to make spiky, unconventional rugs.

Other designers have tackled environmental issues, including Studio Roosegaarde. It is presenting the Smog Free Ring, made from processed particular matter trapped in Rotterdam’s Smog Free Tower, which filters pollution from the city.

Next Nature Network is showing an alternative to traditional food production, with its speculative In Vitro Meat Cookbook. It includes recipes for meat grown in a lab – including bone marrow cocktail and meat fruit pie.

Also on display are Formafantasma‘s explorations into bio-based polymer packaging, an emergency shelter made from crop residue and an ethically produced smartphone.

“Idealism is not new to design, but now we’re seeing a change of emphasis: the focus has shifted from the design object to the idea itself,” said the show’s curator, Lennart Booij.

“Sometimes this ‘social design’ produces immediately useful applications, but it’s the designers’ critical thinking and imagination that sparks new ways of thinking.”

Booij’s comments reflect a shift in focus for Dutch designers keen to address a wider range of social issues. As Design Academy Eindhoven creative director Thomas Widdershoven told Dezeen in 2015, its students are now more interested in addressing real-world problems than making just beautiful objects.

All work included in the Dreaming Out Loud exhibition was selected as part of an open call for submissions and whittled down from a long list of 250 projects.

The exhibition opens on 26 August and remains on display until 1 January 2017. The museum intends to acquire pieces from the show for its permanent collection, and will announce which will be added later in the year.

The post Stedelijk Museum’s Dreaming Out Loud exhibition showcases social design appeared first on Dezeen.

This monochrome house in the Spanish town of Mora appears split in half by a narrow recessed entrance, which extends from the street to a garden and pool at the rear (+ slideshow).

Madrid studio OOIIO Architecture designed Casa ARM to complement its low-rise neighbours on a quiet street in the town, which is located in Spain’s Toledo province.

The building is made up of two mono-pitched volumes with black tiled bases, which are joined by a recessed hallway with a flat roof.

The blocks sit parallel to each other but their positioning between the front and back of the site is staggered to make the most of the available light.

A chimney-shaped protrusion also runs the length of one of the blocks and incorporates a clerestory window.

“Casa ARM is a game of extrusions and sections, catching the natural sun light,” said the architects.

“We understand this project as an exercise to get a good house that is inexpensive and functional in a large enough plot, and able to achieve all of the client’s brief in only one level.”

The hallway connecting the two parts of the house extends from the recessed entrance to a door leading to the garden. Further flat-roofed areas on the opposite side of the site cover the garage and a laundry.

The shorter of the building’s two wings contains the main living room, along with a dining space and a library.

Windows and clerestory glazing provide plenty of natural light to this space, which can be divided up using moveable partitions.

The longer section of the building accommodates three bedrooms, and a kitchen at the rear that opens onto a large patio connected to the garden and pool.

Because the building is single-storey, the architects were able to specify a low-tech building method that reduced the time and cost of construction. They added additional insulation to keeps the house cool in summer and warm in winter.

A passive heating and cooling system reduces the building’s running costs.

OOIIO Architecture, which was founded by Joaquín Millán Villamuelas in 2009, has previously completed another house in Mora featuring irregularly stacked blocks clad in varying types of stone.

Photography is by Eugenio H Vegue and Francisco Sepúlveda.

Project credits:

Architecture: OOIIO Architecture
Team: Joaquin Millan Villamuelas, Gloria Moya Paniagua, Eugenia Peyron Enjuanes, Sergio Velandrino Poveda
Structures: Consultora CPE
Facilities: OOIIO Architecture
Civil engineer: José Tomás Fernández Dorado
Safety manager: José Tomás Fernández Dorado

The post OOIIO Architecture’s Casa ARM appears cut in half by a recessed entrance appeared first on Dezeen.

Can we all agree that the left lane is for passing, please?..(Read…)

Explained by Computerphile…(Read…)