Mercedes-Benz is constantly looking forward so it’s no surprise that they have announced their first all-electric compact concept car—the Concept EQA. Honoring the brand’s history yet future-focused, the new vehicle is clearly a Mercedes-Benz, featuring……
Whether exploring a nearby neighborhood or a nation, there’s nothing that satisfies a curious mind quite like travel. This year—like every year—CH full-time staff and contributors from all over the world have experienced adventures of all kinds, all……
Food design studio Bompas & Parr has compiled a report that predicts seven trends it believes will shape what’s on our plates over the next year, from the flesh of extinct animals to nothing at all.
The Imminent Future of Food report is the first of its kind by the studio, which called upon its experience in the food, design and hospitality industries to foretell how we will consume.
“Now that we have a decade of experience as an agency with a reputation at the cutting edge of food, drink and experience design, it’s a natural next step for us to produce a report of this kind,” said Sam Bompas, who founded Bompas & Parr alongside Harry Parr.
The document is split into seven sections – each detailing a different prediction that is the result of research into changing technologies, reactions to cultural movements and global culinary influences.
AI dinner party
The first trend, named AI dinner party, looks into the role of robotics in the hospitality industry, but how these can be improved for 2018. The studio envisions artificial intelligence to be used for creating dream dinner party scenarios, where guests can invite anyone – dead or alive – to sit at their tables.
“A bot of the desired diner is created, and a likely looking actor recruited to play their role,” said the studio. “A discreet ear-bud allows the actor to interact naturally with the dinner party while being fed lines in response to the conversation provided by the AI.”
Fasting is the new feasting
For its next trend, Bompas & Parr see the practice of fasting picking up momentum – off the back of the term clean eating becoming “disingenuous”. The studio notes that, while considered a fad diet, fasting is nothing new and has been practiced by religious groups for centuries. But 2018 will be the year that it spreads to the masses.
“As restrictive dieting becomes the ultimate form of social signalling, and perceived productivity benefits align with ever-busier lives, sit back and wait for your friends to tell you about their special new fast,” said the studio.
Photograph by Brian Finke
Africa is the new Asia
The obsession with food from Asian countries will dwindle in favour of African cuisine, according to the studio. The prediction aligns itself with economic forecasts for the continent, which foresee Africa becoming the second fastest-growing region in the world between 2016 and 2020.
“[Africa] is arguably the main remaining world food culture left to be adopted, adapted and commercialised. The very fact we still talk about ‘African’ culinary culture is itself a sign of our collective naivety about the continent in the way we lump together that the huge array of gastronomic opportunities of its 54 countries,” said the studio.
“As its economic power develops, with world focus turning to the continent, it’s clear its cultural – and culinary – reach will also become far more influential.”
Photograph by Montana Lowery
Dining for sleep
The connection between food and sleeping is the next area to be examined by the studio. Although research into this area is nothing new, they believe the next step in this trend will be developing whole dishes designed to help aid slumber – rather than focusing on specific foods.
“To some extent this is a matter of connecting the dots of existing scientific knowledge, but around that exist further opportunities to commercialise sleep as an end in itself,” said the studio. “The next step is to develop dishes and diets that deliberately target sleep as their core output.”
Photograph by Kitty Wheeler-Shaw
Mixed reality dining
Describing current virtual reality experiences as “lonely”, Bompas & Parr envisage the technology being used to enhance group dining events, and making the act of eating and drinking completely immersible.
“This next wave of augmented reality will draw people together in contrast to the way it has so far separated them while the reduction in size of wearable technology will encourage greater take-up and fuel demand for scenarios where it can be effective,” they said.
GMOs for creativity
Research surrounding Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) research has improved rapidly in recent years, with advancements also enabling designers to use it in their creative process. But 2018 will see them begin to alter food, allowing diners to eat the meats of extinct animals, or even taste human flesh.
“Using GMOs in the creative process will be an emerging trend that future designers will tap into and lead the discussion on,” said the studio. “The possibilities with food alteration will not only change our diets, but more importantly how our foods are produced: instead of manufacturing products, we will be growing our future food, and it’ll be biologists making them.”
Photograph by Daniel Malheiro
Dine at mine
With the rise of rental apps such as Airbnb, and taxi hailing apps like Uber, Bompas & Parr see dinner party hosting becoming something you can offer as service – rather than having to do it yourself.
“The food and leisure sectors will shift from traditional restaurant and bar formats to peer-to-peer experiences,” they said.
“Creativity and hostmanship will become open source and increasingly competitive, prompting ever-changing, always-new and perpetually exciting ways of where we should eat. We will live in a world where the city and its inhabitants will be completely open and an incredible experience or meal can be found around every corner.”
This year Urban-Think Tank added another 16 units as part of their larger goal to demonstrate an adaptable method of designing safe and accessible housing units within urban plans.
South Africa is currently experiencing a housing crisis, with high property prices, limited financing options, and lack of appropriate housing stock leaving some 7.5 million people living in informal settlements.
A quarter of Cape Town residents are locked out of the formal property market, despite the right of access to adequate housing having been written in to the country’s post-apartheid Constitution.
Slum housing can be difficult and dangerous with communal taps and toilets inconvenient, and with shacks often built right up next to each other fire is a constant hazard. Poor services and facilities mean the areas become poverty traps that are difficult to escape.
Current government schemes have been inadequate, with not enough homes being built and those that are not flexible enough to accommodate different families needs.
“Although alternative schemes have emerged since the official shift in housing provision in 2004, the challenge still lies in developing a scalable, transparent and replicable model that addresses both real demand, market dynamics and municipal planning objectives,” explained the designers.
The Empower Shack aims to solve these problems. The low cost buildings occupy a smaller portion of the usual slum dwelling footprint, leaving fire break spaces that give emergency services easy access.
The dwellings are arranged around a sanitation core, providing water and toilets on site. A second storey or even a third can be added if required, to accommodate different family sizes.
The denser accommodation means land is used more efficiently and guarantees residents can remain at the same site, keeping community ties intact. Community members who live in the Empower Shack’s become long-term stakeholders in the project.
Urban-Think Tank has also developed software that can easily model different urban layouts for the Empower Shacks to be built in.
Described by the team as “preferential city-making”, the user can input individual and community needs along with municipal planning frameworks. Various adjustable urban layout scenarios are then automatically replicated.
The software also produces an online 3D model that residents can gain access to in order to view potential layouts and register their feedback. The software is open source, making it freely available to community and urban planners.
Because the model is scalable, Urban-Think Tank hope that this urbanisation scheme can be used to upgrade informal settlements, deliver basic services and create a safer urban environment on a larger scale.
The scheme also hopes to widen residents’ economic and social possibilities. Integrated livelihood programmes include community workshops, and renewable energy and water management training.
Micro-financing schemes are also built into the planning tools, so residents can take out small, ethical loans when building an Empower Shack or adding another storey.
“The building units are priced to meet meaningful financial contributions from recipients by designing generous but robust living spaces and service cores that meet building code obligations through fit-for-purpose bridge contracts,” said the designers.
In the long term, Urban-Think Tank hopes it influence government housing policy and provide access to diverse housing for South Africa’s gap market.
Client: BT Section Site C Partners: Ikhayalami, BT Section Site C Development Committee, City of Cape Town Local Architect: Design Space Africa Sponsor: The Swiss Re Foundation Support: Vhernier and Individual Donors Leads: Alfredo Brillembourg & Hubert Klumpner Coordinator: Scott Lloyd Research team: Clara Bitter, Fernande Bodo, Axel Chevrolet, Maria Deluren, Michele de Viliers, Emma Flores, Andrea Johnson, Marcin Kurdziel, Svenya Schärfer, Irfan Safdag, Giulia Tigliè, Gregiore Farquet, Danny Wills Collaborators: De Villiers & Hulme, Engineers / Design Space Africa / Information Architecture, ETHZ / Management Information services, ETHZ / Transolar / PJCarew Consulting / OKRA Landscape Architects / Isidima / Arturo Brillembourg / Riverside Consulting
Like the name suggests, the Balloon lamp is reminiscent of “balloons” from a different era. Its interesting form is akin to that of Chinese fire lanterns or even hot air balloons. As sculptural as it is functional, it’s a beautiful example of what can be done with Gantri’s Table Lights Product System, which provides a standard set of components, resources and toolkit to help designers develop high-quality products easily. The body of the product is constructed at Gantri using 3D printing technologies and then carefully hand-finished by local craftsmen to achieve a smooth luxurious finish. Designer Chris Granneberg thinks it looks right at home amongst woody interiors… and we couldn’t agree more!
Hands down, there is nothing more exhilarating than watching the likes of Lewis Hamilton or Esteban Ochoa flying down the F1 track at 245 km/h. With the year on year advances in Formula E, it’s only a matter of time before we’ll see Sam Bird and DS Virgin hitting the same speeds. What I will say is what makes the Formula E more interesting to watch is the gorgeously sculpted, aerodynamic body shapes of the vehicles versus the petrol based rockets used in Formula One.
One person who understands the nature of Formula E design language is Frédéric Le Sciellour, with his electric power manifestation “E-Lecktron.” At a glance, this speed demon just oozes out a sharp, air-cutting design language, so sharp you’d be afraid to touch it with your bare hands. The E-Lecktron is a powerful vehicle with a low center of gravity, sitting just as tall as the tires it rests on. The top face of the Formula E racer is wonderfully reflective, capturing the surrounding environment and making the vehicle seemingly smaller than it already is. Looking at this aggressive vehicle, I can’t imagine the E-Lecktron is limited to the road, I see this guy running along walls and who knows, maybe even upside down.
Dans la série « Les Yeux des Tours », le photographe français Laurent Kronental capture les hublots de Tours Aillaud, un ensemble de 18 bâtiments dans la banlieue parisienne de Nanterre construit entre 1973 et 1981. Si les bâtiments eux-mêmes sont plutôt délabrés, les habitants ont toujours une vision futuriste du paysage au-delà de leurs fenêtres. Suivez Kronental ici et sur Instagram.
Le photographe-aventurier Cody Cobb est un spécialiste lorsqu’il s’agit de capturer de brefs moments de calme au coeur du chaos de la nature. Ainsi, pendant plusieurs semaines, il part, seul, dans l’ouest américain afin de s’immerger pleinement au sein de paysages peu fréquentés, comme oubliés. Cet isolement est le secret de la série « Cascadia », qui représente à la fois une sublimation du paysage externe comme de la solitude intérieure.
Brussels designer Alain Gilles stacked different shapes to form these totem-like side tables, which are supported by a lightweight cork base.
Gilles created the Assemblage tables for Italian brand Bonaldo. For his design, he chose to use cork as opposed to a standard solid base, and each of the side tables can be assembled in various ways.
Gilles likens the assembly to a “child’s game,” as each piece is placed on top of one another, and fastened together using a long bolt that runs through each piece.
“It is an assemblage of two materials that have been turned, the cork and the wood, but that has a very different finish – as if they were two entities not made to be matched together.”
By topping the cork bases with a dense wood surface, Gilles intended to reverse the ordinary composition of furniture where the base is the heaviest element.
“With the Assemblage table, the mass that provides the stability to the base is constructed of cork,” he said. “Cork is visually a very present material with its typical multicoloured structure, but with its low-density aspect is usually associated with a lightweight material that floats, rather than a material which lends stability.”
“The cork – the material with the lighter mass – is treated in the design as the weight that holds the table up, thus creating a dialogue within the piece itself,” he added.
This inversion of the load-bearing base of furniture items is a continuation of Gilles’ Mass tables, which sees bases made from bent metal frameworks that resemble crinoline petticoats.
“I started working on a discussion between actual weight and visual weight, or mass, with the Mass table I designed for Bonaldo in 2016. In this case, the typically dense base has been replaced by a lightweight metal structure, which actually happens to be visually very present,” said the designer.
“This makes its visual weight the opposite of its actual mass; the table top in heavy wood or marble is the heaviest part, but also the most simple graphically.”
British architecture practice Studio Carver has completed a timber and glass extension to a house in north London that was inspired by traditional wooden conservatories found in the American Midwest.
Studio Carver designed the extension for an Anglo-American family who wanted to improve the living spaces of their Edwardian house in Belsize Park.
The compact addition to the rear of the building replaces an existing conservatory and contains a dining area with improved levels of natural light and privacy.
The clean-lined contemporary design and muted material palette of exposed concrete, zinc cladding and white-oiled oak creates a subtle contrast to the London stock brick and white-painted details of the original house.
The clients also wanted to evoke suburban American sun rooms, which typically feature timber-framed structures set on solid bases with sash windows wrapping around the facades.
“The window mullions and intersecting timber frames of American conservatories establish a strong vertical rhythm that we drew inspiration from for the Belsize House,” architect Keith Carver told Dezeen.
“We exaggerated this rhythm and verticality with the introduction of deep oak fins set between the windows.”
A concrete plinth supports the extension’s timber structure, which was developed in collaboration with Devonshire-based carpentry company Emanuel Hendry.
“This collaboration early in the design process gave us the ability to test and prototype ideas in order to push the limits of the material,” Carver added. “As a result, we achieved a more refined aesthetic and greater integration of all aspects of the design.”
The frame was designed and erected off site before being transported to the property and re-assembled, therefore reducing construction time and costs.
The new conservatory contains built-in bench seating that spans the rear elevation and allows the family to lean against the glazing and look out at the garden.
Deep oak fins between the windows frame the views outwards while preventing the space from being overlooked by neighbouring properties.
The two-metre-high sash windows ensure plenty of daylight enters the space and echo the vertical rhythm of the Edwardian building’s French doors.
A skylight between the extension and the existing house creates a sense of separation between the old and new parts of the building, as well as introducing more natural light into the room.
A side door featuring handles subtly recessed into its wooden surfaces connects the interior with a decked area that extends out towards the garden.
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