Hasta La Ideas

Designer Es Devlin created an all-blue stage set for the Girls & Boys play at London’s Royal Court Theatre, which charts the dissolution of a woman’s marriage through different video projections.

London-based Devlin created two sets for the play, which sees a working-class woman played by British actress Carey Mulligan directly addressing the audience to recount the story of how she met her then partner.

One of the designs is a simple blue screen, while the other is an open-plan living room and kitchen.

After constructing this lounge-like setting out of real, ordinary household objects and children’s toys, Devlin then sourced, photographed and 3D-scanned each item and surface.

Once all the surface data had been recorded, Devlin and her team then painted the entire set in a vivid turquoise.

Video designer Luke Halls used the surface data to create a virtual version of the set in all its original colours, which is then precisely mapped back onto each surface throughout different points in the play.

During the play, Mulligan’s character continues to switch between delivering monologues in front of a plain blue screen and acting out memories with her two invisible children in front of the monochrome turquoise living room setting.

It becomes apparent that she is reenacting these scenes in an attempt to rewrite her own memories, erasing the involvement of her husband and the tragic loss of their children.

“The key to the design is the ‘hinge’ between the states of direct engagement with audience and interaction with remembered space and children,” said Devlin.

“Director Lyndsey Turner and I acted out the transitions between scenes in my living room, which is full of kids’ debris,” she continued. “Each time the character engages in a memory sequence, a normal looking room gets instantly fogged and muffled in pastel turquoise matt colour.”

The designer told Dezeen how she wanted to create the illusion that a full-colour set was being instantaneously painted with blue light or paint live during the play.

The living room is first revealed in the process of “losing its memory,” Devlin explained, as it turns from its normal full colours to one shade of blue.

Following this, each time the play transitions from a section of monologue to an enacted memory, the black screen disappears and the virtual 3D scan is projection mapped precisely onto every object and surface in the room, momentarily returning it to its original full colours.

With each projection, the colours get stronger. Devlin told Dezeen that she used these colour shifts to reflect the gradual loss of Mulligan’s memories as she succeeds in rewriting them.

“In each subsequent transition, [the room] tries to recapture its memory in richer colour, and with repeated and immediate loss,” Devlin said.

“During the scenes and monologues, the sculpture behaves primarily as counterpoint and foil to the text and its performance – during the transitions it enacts something analogous to the protagonist’s ritual of remembering each scene with the children while erasing the memory of their father,” she explained.

Girls & Boys marked the first collaboration between writer Dennis Kelly and director Lyndsey Turner. The play was on show at the Royal Court Theatre in London and ran from 8 February till 17 March 2018.

Devlin also created the stage design for a theatre performance at London’s National Theatre this time last year, where she used a basin-shaped map as the canvas for video projections for Ugly Lies the Bone, which followed an injured soldier undergoing virtual-reality therapy.

Project credits:

Writer: Dennis Kelly
Director: Lyndsey Turner
Actress: Carey Mulligan
Set design: Es Devlin
Video Design: Luke Halls Studio
Lighting Design: Oliver Fenwick
Costume: Jack Galloway
Photography: Marc Brenner

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The 2oor Stopper is a twist on the door stopper unlike any other. The flexible band lays flat against the surface of the door to ensure it’s out of the way when not being used. To activate the stopper, one must simply unsnap it from the door. The flexed design will automatically snap into place to secure the door in position by gripping the floor. Its arch will also prevent the door from slamming against and damaging walls. Minimalistic yet vibrant, it’s also a stylish detail that provides a pop of color to any office, bedroom or other space.

Designer: Sai Kann

Take into account all the places that utilize the number pad and you’ll notice a disparity that’s quite odd but humanity seems to have made peace with.

The number pad. You see it everywhere, from your dialer, to your calculator, to your PIN bypass on the phone unlock screen. You’ll see it on the right of your keyboard on your computer (if you’ve got a numpad), and you’ll see it in your ATM machines, cash registers, card readers, security systems, and if you’ve still got one, your landline phone. The numbers, for obvious reasons, are the same… but the layouts aren’t. Phone dialers and ATM machines have it starting at the top with 1, going down to 9 and ending with a 0 at the base, sitting between the asterisk and the hashtag; but you look at the calculator, the cash register, or the computer’s number pad and it’s the other way around. The zero or the lowest value sits at the bottom and it increments moving upwards, ending with nine right at the top. It’s always bewildered me that we’ve had these two separate systems for separate machines, even today. There’s no fixed reason for the difference in layout, but there seem to be a few interesting theories to define exactly how we arrived at this bizarre predicament.

My favorite theory takes us on a time-traveling trip. The reason the two keypads have different layouts today is because they were two completely different products, using different technologies, for different purposes. Long before the modern day touch-tone phone, we were used to the rotary phone, which arranged the numbers from 1 to 0 on a circular dial that you’d rotate (the zero was actually treated as a 10. I explain why a little later*). With the advent of touch-tone hardware in the 50s, companies decided to stick roughly to the current layout, having the 1 at the starting, and the 9 and 0 (or ten, as they called it) at the end. They followed the calculator’s 3×3 matrix for the 1 to 9 (arranged from left to right), putting the 0 at the bottom, between the * and #.

The calculator, on the other hand, had been designed long before the modern phone, and used a format with 789 at the top. The design of the calculator was based on that of the cash register. The keypad’s layout wasn’t an evolutionary one like the telephone, but a functional one. The 0 was placed intentionally at the bottom of cash registers because with the currencies that were used, the 0 was pressed much more often than any key, so it made sense to keep it within hands reach. Having currencies with the denominations 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 etc, it also made more sense to keep these lower numbers towards the base too. So the 1 and 2 were placed immediately above the 0, making the cash register easier to operate. The calculator simply followed this functional format.

A rotary telephone and a calculator (or an adding-machine)

*In the days of rotary dials the pulse signaling system was known as ‘loop-disconnect’. Each digit dialed produced a series of quick disconnections in the ‘loop’ just milliseconds long. Dialing a 1 creating one disconnection, dialing 2 created two disconnections in the loop. The telephone exchange (or the central office) could detect these disconnections and step the electro-magnetic mechanical switches that then connected you to the number you dialed. Dialing a 0 would create 10 disconnections in the loop, so what looked like a 0 was actually a 10, if you count the number of disconnections in the loop.

The second theory also seems interesting because it talks about creating two separate counter-intuitive, reversed layouts on purpose. The calculator was invented long before the touch-tone telephone and was used for data-entry. Data-entry professionals using these calculators had gotten into the habit of crunching numbers at incredible speeds. The touch-tone phone, however, couldn’t operate at those speeds and oftentimes would end up missing a number or two. Phone companies then decided to reverse the layout to “confuse” people, allowing them to take more time to dial the number correctly, giving the telephone enough time to register the number dialed. Marvelous, isn’t it?! It’s a shame that none of these theories can be claimed as the one-true reason we have different keypads.

It’s worth also noticing how in the phone, the 0 falls after the 9 since it’s actually considered to be a 10, and how on the calculator the 0 falls before the 1 because it’s treated as a 0 or a number with no value. In both their formats, the 0 finds itself at its appropriate place, according to the value assigned to it! I still find it silly that we’ve held onto this strange past all these years, but the history lesson (and its share of speculative theories) that comes with it definitely makes me look at this strange duality with awe!

While we try to minimize our carbon footprint on the earth, Norwegian hotel Svart doesn’t really worry about its own carbon footprint of energy because it doesn’t generate one. The Svart actually generates more energy than it consumes, making it a powerhouse for sustainable energy. “Svart is the first building to be built after the energy positive Powerhouse standard in a Northern climate. Not only does this new hotel reduce its yearly energy consumption by approximately 85% compared to a modern hotel, but it also produces its own energy” says the architectural firm Snøhetta.

The design and materials for the Svart are inspired by traditional Norwegian rorbu (a seasonal house found in fishing villages). The hotel stands on wooden poles, just like a house close to riverbanks would. This allows the building to reduce its footprint and prevents the need for constructing directly on the land and impacting the flora around. The hotel generates its own electricity using solar panels and geothermal wells, making it 85 percent more energy efficient than traditional hotels.

Guests who visit the Svart will get a stunning 360° view of the land around, only to be highlighted further by northern lights that will punctuate the sky at night. Additionally, since the Svart sits on top of a water body, guests get the privilege of even seeing a second set of northern lights in the reflection on the water right below the hotel!

Designer: Snøhetta and Powerhouse for Arctic Adventure of Norway.

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