Hasta La Ideas

Every Halloween, Josh Sundquist, a motivational speak, paralympic skier, and author, comes up with a hilarious new costume idea that incorporates the fact that he only has one leg. For this year’s costume, Josh dressed up as Tigger, the bounce-loving tiger from Winnie the Pooh…(Read…)

“I built a natural draft furnace to test ideas about how hot a furnace could get without the use of bellows. Natural draft is the flow of air through a furnace due to rising hot air. The hot gasses in the fuel bed are more buoyant than the cold air outside the furnace causing them to rise. Fresh combustion air then enters the base of the furnace to replace the rising combustion gasses, keeping the fuel bed burning. This effect increases with: 1. the average temperature of the fuel bed relative to the outside air and 2. The height of the furnace. Two other important factors are the size of the tuyere (air entry pipe) and lump size of the fuel bed as these effect the resistance to airflow through the furnace. The furnace was tested with wood fuel and some ore was melted but produced no iron. High temperature were indeed produced (probably about 1200 c). These types of furnaces were once used for smelting copper and iron ores in around the world in ancient times, usually using charcoal as a fuel and in some cases wood too.”..(Read…)

Design studio Davidpompa has carved rose-hued cantera stone mined in Mexico, and teamed it with copper to create this pair of wall and table lights.

Launched at this year’s Design Week Mexico, the Ambra wall and table lamp employ cantera rosa – a pink rock formed of volcanic ashes and lava. The stone was historically used in Mexican architecture because it can be easily carved into different, precise shapes, and is also durable.

Mexico City-based Davidpompa chose the material for these same reasons, sourcing the pink-toned version from three Mexican cities: San Luis Potosí, Morelia and Zacatecas.

For the Ambra wall lamp, the studio cut the rock into a cylinder, which it then offset vertically from a circular copper base. An LED light slots into a hidden cut-out, creating an indirect illumination.

“With an eye catching personality, Ambra is a unique wall lamp that stands out for its minimal, unusual proportions,” said the studio. “Its volumes provide an interesting downlight to interior settings by projecting the light onto the wall.”

The sconce can be mounted in any orientation so that the light can shine in different ways, and the studio says it is best experienced as a series fitted on the wall.

An elongated version of the cylinder forms the base of the Ambra table light. A copper tube is fitted on top, extending slightly above, and is capped by a thinner slab of cantera that reflects the light inside. The lamp also includes a dimmer switch.

“The unusual shape fills the environment with a vibrant light, which reflects in the copper and cantera stone, as well as on its standing surface,” said the studio. “It is not just about a new shape, but rather new light, a balance between material composition, and light function.”

Davidpompa has previously designed a tall standing light with the pink stone and copper. It unveiled the two new lights at the Diseño Contenido exhibition during Design Week Mexico, which took place from 11 to 15 October 2017.

The temporary exhibition showcased the work of Mexican designers and stores in shipping containers erected in Mexico City’s Parque Lincoln.

Volcanic stone was also used by Mexico-based Ayres to create a series of vessels, which were shown at the Inédito exhibition in Museo Tamayo during the design festival.

Ayres’s vases was among Dezeen’s top pick of the exhibition’s emerging designers from Mexico and Latin America, with others including shapely stone vases, furniture made of wood chips and a set of balancing pendant lamps.

The post Davidpompa pairs pink volcanic rock and copper for Ambra lamp range appeared first on Dezeen.

Au Salon Automobile de Tokyo 2017, Honda vient de créer la surprise en révélant son nouveau modèle futuriste et électrique, la Sports EV Concept. Inspirée de la mythique S2000, les lignes et le design aussi épuré que rétro de ce modèle du futur donne de plus en plus envie de passer aux véhicules electriques. La marque japonaise vise, avec sa famille « EV » à créer une série de voitures electriques en production de masse.

Crédit photos: Honda

Interior architect Arjaan De Feyter has completed the renovation of an apartment built across four old silos in a former malting distillery in Belgium.

Located just outside Antwerp, the canal-side silo building is part of a former malting distillery that has been regenerated by by Axel Vervoordt Real Estate.

Belonging to a couple with grown-up children, the 200-metre-square, third-floor apartment is arranged across four of the cellular concrete tubes where the distillery’s grain used to be stored.

Connected by short corridors, one of the four tubes was converted into a square by the developers to create one space with straight walls within the apartment.

De Feyter embraced the building’s circular room layouts created by the tubes, inserting just two straight walls to create what he refers to as “visual pauses”.

Upon entering the apartment, visitors walk through the first silo, where one of the inserted walls divides the space into a hallway, study and bathroom.

The hallway leads through to the circular living room located in the second silo, where linen curtains that encircles the centre of the space acts as an acoustic room divider while also creating privacy.

An open-plan kitchen and dining area that overlooks the canal occupies the square silo.

The made-to-measure kitchen countertops are crafted from slabs of titanium-toned travertine, while the cabinets are made from silvered ash finished with gall ink and polished manually to keep their natural colour.

The third and final circular silo that leads off the dining room is occupied by a bedroom and ensuite, which are divided by the second straight partition wall.

On the bedroom side, the wall doubles as a set of built-in wardrobes with silvered ash doors that stretch into the dining room space.

In keeping with the apartment’s monochrome palette, the silos’ concrete walls are left exposed, finished using a mineral painting technique, while a micro-topping surface treatment has been applied to the floors.

“The whole atmosphere of the interior was created by us,” Arjaan De Feyter told Dezeen. “I wouldn’t call the palette neutral, but rather calm, sophisticated and restrained. I personally think the nature stone is so beautiful.”

“Also the difference in rawness of the wood has so many colours,” he continued. “The brass details, the raw edges of the walls, everything is well thought to make it cosy and ‘naturel’. But the people who’re living there are bringing in the real color.”

The apartment’s bespoke black oak furniture was designed by De Feyter in collaboration with furniture designer Tim Vranken.

Arjaan De Feyter isn’t the only designer to complete a project in a former silo building in recent months.

September saw the opening of Thomas Heatherwick’s Zeitz MOCAA galleries inside a hollowed out grain silo in Cape Town, while Danish studio COBE converted a former grain-storage silo in Copenhagen into an apartment building.

In Norway, Barcelona-based MX_SI and Mestres Wåge Arquitectes are in the early stages of converting a 1930s silo in the city of Kristiansand into an art museum and cultural centre.

Photography is by Piet Albert Goethals.

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