Lee Broom has collaborated with glassware brand Nude to create a 10-metre-tall Christmas tree made of 245 individual hand-blown glass pendant lights inside The Shard in London.
The Tree of Glass installation is designed as an architectural interpretation of the silhouette of a traditional Christmas tree. It is inspired by its setting in the triple-storey atrium of the Aqua Shard restaurant on the 31st floor of the Renzo Piano-designed skyscraper.
“I wanted to create an installation that complemented the space and felt like it belonged,” Broom told Dezeen.
“As well as observing the interior of The Shard with its angles and facets, I also considered the building as a whole. The overall silhouette of the tree pretty much resembles the composition of The Shard itself, also the singular pendants are based on this too.”
Recognising that The Shard’s views of the London skyline are its main attraction, Broom was conscious that the size and impact of the glass structure shouldn’t obscure the expansive windows.
Two of the four facets of the glass pendants are reeded vertically to allow for refraction with the LED light, while the remaining two are left plain to allow visitors to catch glimpses of the view through the installation.
The glass structure is the largest Nude has ever created. The overall weight of the installation, which is based on a reinforced circular steel plate, was a major challenge and meant Nude had to be precise when creating the thin crystalline forms.
“Each of the glass pendants, which were hand blown by Nude, were pre-set to their specific height and then individually wired and suspended to create the formation,” said Broom.
“All of this was implemented on scissor lifts at a height of over 10 meters on the 31st floor of a 310-meter-high building. It was a painstaking process and we had to be incredibly accurate to achieve the overall configuration.”
The Tree of Glass has been designed so it can be disassembled in the New Year and sold as individual lighting products. All proceeds from their sale will be donated to The British Red Cross, Broom’s chosen charity.
In previous years, Aqua Shard has collaborated with Vivienne Westwood, Matthew Williamson and Timothy Hatton Architects for its Christmas tree.
Danish firm 3XN has completed a large sporting and cultural arena in Copenhagen, featuring a glazed curtain wall wrapped in timber fins arranged to allow partial views of the interior.
The 35,000-square-metre Royal Arena is situated in the Danish capital’s residential Ørestad Syd area and was designed by 3XN together with global architecture firm HKS to host concerts and international sporting events.
Its location in a densely urban area prompted the project team to focus on ensuring that the venue contributes to the local community by encouraging public engagement with its spaces and facilities.
“Our most important question before starting the Royal Arena project was, How do we design the good neighbour for this area?” said 3XN founder and creative director, Kim Herfort Nielsen.
The flexible multipurpose arena features a podium that acts as a link between the building and its surroundings by introducing various plazas and areas for socialising around its perimeter.
People living and working in the neighbourhood are encouraged to use these public spaces, as well as the wide entrance staircase and surrounding plaza, when the building is not in use.
The arena’s exterior design is also intended to present a more transparent and welcoming presence than typical stadiums, with the glazed surfaces and slatted timber sheath allowing views inwards and outwards.
“Since the arena is a local building, it was important to us to design it as an aesthetic contribution to the area, and not just a massive concrete block like other stadiums tend to be,” Herfort Nielsen added.
“Design-wise, Royal Arena is easy to recognise with the curvy wooden fins and the minimalistic Nordic expression and fits the nearby area.”
The large staircase leads visitors towards a main entrance set into the glazed surface that extends around the building. Concrete blocks positioned along either side of the stairs provide informal seating.
A total of four entrances distributed around the circumference of the building can be used to ease congestion when the arena hosts events attracting large audiences.
The undulating line formed by the lower edges of the external wooden cladding elements lifts up to signal the location of the various entry points.
A concourse that runs around the edge of the hall acts as the main circulation on each level, providing access to restaurants, bars, services and the stands.
The arena itself is designed to be flexible so it can accommodate a range of staging options, which is aided by the 22-metre height around a stage positioned at one end.
Seats can be added, removed or sectioned off if required and the floor can be retracted to create a space suited to large concerts.
Most of the seating is arranged around three side of the stage but the fourth side can also be filled in with additional seats for events focused around a central stage, track or court. A temporary swimming pool will also be erected in place of the stage for an upcoming event.
The arena featured on the shortlist for the sports building of the year at this year’s World Architecture Festival, where it competed against projects including a swimming pool in Hong Kong with a roof shaped like a shell. The category was won by HKS with its design for the US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, USA.
The claim came from designer Babette Porcelijn, who has published a book that explores the factors driving climate change and other environmental issues, and offers potential solutions.
“I made an impact top 10,” said Porcelijn, presenting a graph of the 10 biggest causes of environmental impact. “Number one is products. It’s stuff. I’m an industrial designer so I was really educated to make these things. But it has the number one impact.”
Electronic products such as mobile phones and computers are among the biggest contributors, she said, adding that her list contains more surprises, with animal farming coming second.
“Number two is meat,” she said. “Then comes houses, then comes the car.”
Babette Porcelijn’s book De Verbogen Impact (Hidden Impact) reveals that the manufacture of new products is the biggest human impact on the planet
The findings are contained in her book, De Verborgen Impact (Hidden Impact), which explores the hidden impact of human activities on earth’s climate, which most people are unaware of.
“We moved a lot of our industry and agriculture to low wage countries,” she explained. “There they make a lot of our stuff, which we import and buy.”
“But this production has lots of impact on the environment and is not just climate impact, it’s also impacting nature and the environment. It’s polluting. It’s causing deforestation and putting fresh water under pressure, to just name a few things.
“And since we buy all this stuff, these products and food, it makes us at least partly responsible,” she said. “But we have no idea because we usually leave out all that impact and thus we kind of like create a blind spot in our assessment of environmental impact.”
She also claims that the manufacturing and use of plastic is not a big contributor to greenhouse gases. However the environmental problems caused by plastics being thrown away is a huge problem, she said.
“Using plastic and producing plastic is not the problem. But throwing it in nature, that’s the problem we should solve,” she stated. “I researched plastic pollution for the latest edition of my book and one of the findings is that producing plastic doesn’t have a lot of impact.”
“The point is when you throw it on the street and it comes into the environment, into nature, that’s where it hurts.”
Porcelijn claims the western world often considers only the impact of products in use, and is blind to the “hidden impact”of imported industrial and agricultural production
Plastic microbeads – particles less than a millimetre in diameter – have been identified as a major environmental problem, with tiny plastic particles polluting the oceans and making their way into the food chain. The UK and several US states have moved to ban them from cosmetic and cleaning products, where they are used for their abrasive properties.
However Porcelijn said their impact on the environment was dwarfed by fragments of synthetic rubber produced by cars as their tyres wear down.
“One of the biggest causes of microplastics is not in the bathroom at all,” she said. “It’s from tyre wear. It’s from your car, driving your car. If you drive for one kilometre, you have released more microbeads into nature than you do in one year in the bathroom.”
Porcelijn also claimed that if every person in the world consumed resources at the same rate as people in the west, we would need almost four planet earths to provide for them all.
“If everyone in the world would live like we do here today in Holland, we would need three point six planets to support us, she said.
Porcelijn was one of four speakers at the talk, chaired by Dezeen’s Marcus Fairs. They were joined by What Design Can Do co-founder Richard Van der Laken, Lonny van Ryswyk of Atelier NL and curator Annemartine van Kesteren
Each talk explored how designers are addressing a different problem and asked whether the ideas they are coming up with can scale up to offer viable solutions.
Porcelijn was joined on the climate-change panel by Annemartine van Kesteren, who is a curator at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
Most recently Van Kesteren curated Change the System, an exhibition that showcases ways that designers are responding to the world’s problems.
As an example, she spoke about an installation in the exhibition created by product designer Eric Klarenbeek, together with Arles-based design studio Atelier Luma, which explores using algae as an alternative raw material for plastic.
“He’s basically saying we should stop completely with plastics and oil production and [instead use] algae and different biopolymers,” she said.
When asked whether ideas like this could be adopted by governments and industry, Van Kesteren said that existing systems were resistant to change and designers should instead strive independently to create new systems from the ground up.
“There’s nothing, nothing so rigid as a system,” she said. “And there’s no system that wants to change. It’s very important that designers remain autonomous.”
Lonny van Ryswyk of Atelier NL agreed, saying designers needed to “start really small” to address issues such as climate change, since industry wants to retain the status quo.
“Systems are very rigid,” she said, explaining how the global glass industry uses just one type of sand, which is running out and which is being illegally mined from riverbeds and beaches around the world, causing environmental damage.
“That’s what we are facing in our project making from local sand glass. The industry doesn’t want to go upward with us because they have a certain way of producing and that’s all about efficiency and all about mass production.”
Van der Laken presented his Climate Action Challenge, which asked designers from around the world to come up with new ways to combat climate change and its impacts
Richard van der Laken, co-founder of the What Design Can Do conference and initiator of this year’s Climate Action Challenge initiative, said that the question of whether even the most well-meaning corporations were willing and able to change their ways to reduce their own emissions was “a difficult question to answer.”
Designers should therefore focus on using their skills to communicate environmental messages to the public, rather than striving to change their clients from within.
“I think it’s really important that we as designers are all aware of the fact that we can make things tangible, that we can make things visual, that we can bring feeling and passion into it and I think that’s the real power that design can bring,” he said.
“There’s a lot of innovation and a lot of technology and I think that designers are able to translate that into stuff and services that people can understand.”
However Porcelijn disagreed that designers should be satisfied with merely being communicators and messengers. “The fact that we as designers can create awareness is enough,” she said. “What we have to do, what we can do, what we have the power to do, is to think of new ways to solve problems. That’s what we do as designers.”
“My slogan is think big, act now,” she said. “Look at how you can save the world but make it actionable in a small project that you can do and that you love to do.”
Van Ryswyk said that many young designers she meets are desperate to help solve big problems like climate change but “get lost” in the immensity of the challenge.
“I’m teaching at the Design Academy Eindhoven and I’m witnessing that a lot of students want to save the world,” she said. “And I say to them, to start with, understand your tools, your frustrations and your fascinations and make a project that you like.
“Keep it small, keep it close. Then maybe think about how you can scale it up.”
“The power of an idea is huge,” said Van Kesteren. “But stay true to yourself, be humble, realise that you will not do it alone, that you are part of a chain.”
Dezeen hosted five talks during this year’s edition of Dutch Design Week, covering other global issues including politics and refugees.
All of these talks are currently available to watch in full via our Good Design for a Bad World page, but edited versions of the other four will also be published soon.
Architect Michael Viviano has worked with his mum and dad to create them this concrete and timber house with a gable roof in Houston, Texas.
Situated on a narrow, noisy corner plot, the two-storey house measures 4,250 square feet (395 square metres). The building is constructed of custom-cut, stacked concrete bricks, with contrasting tongue-and-groove larch cladding on the upper level.
Corrugated metal tops the gable roof, while a large glass front door designed by the architect is wrapped in laser-cut steel.
Viviano built Family HQ for his parents, particularly with the help of his mother Catherine, who is now an antique collector. With fifteen years of experience in construction, she helped to lead and advise the young architect, and the house is their first collaborative project.
Located in a busy part of the city, the home’s indoor and outdoor spaces are informed by this constraint. Large square and rectangular windows are oriented towards a protected side garden, rather than the streets.
“Both floors of the house are organised along corridors at the garden’s edge, so light and views are carefully managed throughout the interior,” said the studio.
On the ground level is a living room, a dining room, a storage-lined corridor and a kitchen. A mudroom and garage are connected, past the cooking area. This main floor is designed to be open for entertaining, while the upstairs is more private and traditional. Three bedrooms, two of which have en-suites, are on the upper storey.
The linear garden runs against the long section of the house, and includes a pebbled dining area and a grassy space. Landscaping helps to produce a quiet area against the busy corner. “A row of slender-silhouette sweetgum trees creates a screen that softens the relationship to the street,” said the firm.
Interiors feature white walls, polished concrete floors, and white and grey cabinetry. Upstairs, a warmer tone is created by white oak floors that match the pale wood window casings throughout.
An assortment of antique furniture pieces and paintings, all of which were collected by Catherine, are used to decorate the home.
Houston is currently recovering for severe flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, which experts say was exacerbated by poor urban planning. The city recently released a masterplan to overhaul its Downtown area in wake of the disaster.
Dezeen promotion: a symposium covering the most important architecture and design projects from the past 12 months will take place 9 December 2017 at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, with speakers including architects Wang Shu and David Adjaye.
As media partner for In Our Time: A Year of Architecture in a Day, which The Met is hosting for the second year running, Dezeen will be live-streaming the full series of talks.
The day of talks at The Met will include Heneghan Peng’s presentation of the Palestinian Museum
The symposium – from 11am to 6pm at the museum’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium – will bring together architects, artists, curators and filmmakers from around the world, each selected to present a project that has had a particular impact this year.
“The speakers were selected to represent the incredible range of contemporary architectural practice now taking place all over the world,” said a statement from The Met.
“They will illuminate the creative process behind newly built homes and institutions, advancements in new technologies, and areas that have been greatly affected by climate change and natural and man-made disasters.”
A keynote presentation will be delivered by Pritzker Prize-winning Chinese architect Wang Shu, who will speak about his Fuyang Cultural Complex in China.
The Met’s associate curator of architecture and design, Beatrice Galilee – who organised the programme – will be in conversation with a creative leader at IKEA, and a panel discussion titled In Our Future: Radical Design Education will be moderated by the museum’s chair of education, Sandra Jackson-Dumont.
Artists and designers participating will include John Gerrard, who simulated a flag of black smoke as a symbol of climate change; Nelly Ben Hayoun, who set up the fee-free University of the Underground design course; and Lucy McRae, who fictionally examined the ways space travellers could use architecture and design to train their bodies.
Ethiopian artist Julie Mehretu will speak about her Politicized Landscapes pair of large-scale, site-specific artworks for the atrium of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Projects that examine the roles of dating apps and virtual reality in cities, and Syria’s architectural history and future, will also feature.
The talks are free to attend with museum admission. Registration is recommended, but space is limited and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors will open at 10:30am.
For those unable to make it, both Dezeen and The Met will be live-streaming on Facebook. A link to the stream will be provided on the Dezeen homepage on the day.
To find out more about the In Our Time programme and see the full list of speakers, visit The Met’s website.
Holiday shopping time is here, and with it comes the opportunity to buy cool tools! Here are our picks for super-cool gadgets that the tech-friendly unclutterers on your list will love.
The iFixit Essential Electronics Toolkit contains unique and essential tools for most electronics repairs like screen and battery replacements. It’s also useful for repairing other electronics and household appliances. It has a great little carrying case with designated spots for each tool so you know where everything belongs and can easily see when something is missing. If there’s a tinkerer on your list, or someone who wants to save money by doing repairs at home, this toolkit is a great gift.
The Automatic Pro is a small device that plugs into a port that most contemporary cars have. Once in place, it provides a whole host of useful information to the companion smartphone app (iOS and Android), including:
Diagnostics of engine warning lights
Parking tracking
Expense tracking for business travel
Crash detection and response
There’s even cool collaboration with existing apps and services. For example, have your Hue Lights turn on as you pull into the driveway, set your Nest thermostat to turn the heat down as you pull away or log trip distances onto a Google document automatically.
The KBAR USB charger looks like a power strip but don’t let that fool you. This charger has eight USB ports that intelligently charge up to eight high-power mobile devices like iPads, Android tablets, and full-sized smartphones simultaneously. I say “intelligently” because the KBAR recognizes all of these devices and charges them at their maximum designed speed. Plus, the built-in surge protection helps keep them safe during a electrical power fluctuations.
Finally, I want to mention the PIXNOR 7-piece tweezers set. I seem to always have trouble finding a pair of tweezers when I need them, let alone the right tweezers. This kit offers a variety of sizes, shapes, and weights. Whether it’s removing a sliver from your finger or performing a precision repair, this kit has precisely what you need. At a little under ten dollars, it’s a super deal.
There you have our recommendations for gadget gifts for the organized. Happy shopping. Feel welcome to explore our previous Gift Giving Guides for even more ideas: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.
Between all the soap, water and smooth surfaces, things can get slippery in the bath and shower! If you’ve ever used a shampoo bottle and then set it back down, you know it can go sliding all over the place. The Suction Shampoo Bottle introduces a simple suction cup onto the bottom of the bottle so it stays put. Just press it on any surface and use the pump to dispense your shampoo, conditioner or soap without any slipping!
Ah, the humble drawstring. Probably the first ever iteration of storage known to man, starting from the simple coin-purse, to becoming what it is today, a fully evolved product that’s miles ahead of what it started out to be. The drawstring today is versatile. It can be used for work, play, and even on holiday trips. It’s spacious yet compact. Made out of soft fabric, it can expand to fit pretty much anything, and then when emptied, can roll up or fold down to occupy a fraction of its space. More importantly, it’s slash-proof, water-repellent, comes with hidden components for personal belongings, a charging port for your electronics, and can literally be secured to anything with a padlock. This is the drawstring bag of the future. And it’s called the Roam ByBLVD.
The Roam isn’t a drawstring to be underestimated. Designed to be as capable as backpacks (if not more), drawstrings are known for their convenience, but not as much for their security. However, the Roam comes with a fabric containing a UHMWPE (polyethylene) blend that’s virtually slash proof, and impervious to blades, knives, etc. Aside from guarding the contents on the inside, the Roam could even be used to protect oneself. The Roam can even be securely padlocked to poles, bikes, tables, etc., for extra security.
On the inside, the Roam is compartmentalized to work as any type of bag you want. It contains a water-proof wet-pocket for bottles, umbrellas, etc (and comes with a hydration pouch that you can directly drink from). The Roam even has a dedicated RFID blocking pouch for your cards, etc. Other personal belongings can slide right into the Roam’s shoulder-pads that double up as storage for items like cash, or keys… basically anything you need to access instantly, but also want to keep hidden. To top things off, Roam even comes with a charging port that can connect your phone (on the outside) to a power-bank inside the bag.
The bag can be worn/carried traditionally, thanks to the UHMWPE braided ropes, and to make things more secure, the Roam even comes with sternum straps that buckle around your chest, making the bag hug your body. The straps come with an emergency whistle, and a metal clasp for your EDC. The bag even comes with its own brass combination lock to help secure all your belongings. The Roam is designed to hold up to 14 liters worth of your belongings, and when empty, can flatten out and roll up to occupy as much space as a bottle of water.
Designed to be as convenient as any drawstring bag, but far more secure, comfortable, adaptable, and accommodating, the Roam a drawstring that pays tribute to the drawstring of the past, with a design for every sort of present, backed by innovation clearly from the future!
Le photographe Mike Tinney and le designer Alex Hammond se sont rendu compte qu’aujourd’hui, au plus fort de la révolution numérique, le crayon, à papier, à plume ou à encre, reste encore l’un des principaux outils de design. Dans le processus créatif, face aux demandes des clients, à l’exigence de rapidité le petit schéma rapide en coin de page peut s’avérer crucial. Ils ont donc décider de faire une série photographique sur les grands designers contemporains, via leurs ustensiles d’écriture. Parce que rien n’est plus efficace pour transmettre une idée sur papier qu’un simple crayon, ils en tirent des portraits clin d’oeil, originaux et colorés, dans leur nouveau livre, The Secret Life of the Pencil, disponible sur Laurence King.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Holiday shopping time is here, and with it comes the opportunity to buy cool tools! Here are our picks for super-cool gadgets that the tech-friendly unclutterers on your list will love.
