Hasta La Ideas

American firm Ziger Snead Architects used stone shingles, charred wood and weathering steel for the exterior of a family home in Maryland, which was built after the client’s ranch-style dwelling was lost in a fire.

The Slate House is located in Baltimore County, on a three-acre (1.2-hectare) site that is part of an environmental land trust. Encompassing 7,000 square feet (650 square metres), the home replaces the client’s 1960s ranch-style house that burnt down in 2013 due to an electrical fire.

Ziger Snead Architects, a Baltimore-based studio, set out to create a new home that worked in harmony with the natural landscape, and fostered a sense of peace and healing.

“The Slate House is a contemporary retreat that respects the nature and legacy of the vast and densely wooded site,” the team said. “The home and gardens are designed as a metaphor for healing, reflection and relaxation.”

Situated on a hillside, the two-storey home is oriented to maximise views of the forested terrain. Featuring an irregular plan, the building is composed of different-sized volumes that are topped with gabled roofs.

“The design employs an archetypal gable form, a geometric extrusion that is both reductive and minimal, that yields cathedral ceilings emphasising the verticality of the trees,” the team said.

The architects used a mix of materials for the facades. Select walls and the roof are clad in slate shingles, forming a “protective shell”. Other surfaces are wrapped in blackened cypress that was charred using the ancient Japanese technique of Shou Sugi Ban. The burnt wood is meant to evoke “the memory of the former home”.

Weathering steel was also used on the exterior. The sturdy, orange-hued material wraps lower portions of the building, and was also utilised for a retaining wall in the back yard.

The home’s dark exterior contrasts with its light-filled interior. Rooms feature white walls and high, angled ceilings, lending a sense of airiness to the space. Vast stretches of glass usher in daylight while providing an intimate connection with the lush forest.

The team used a restrained palette of colours and materials, which helps create a serene atmosphere.

“Large expanses of mahogany-framed window walls maximise views of the surrounding forest, blurring interior and exterior spaces,” the architects said. “Clean and direct geometries combine with natural materials of stone, wood, steel and water to express rawness and simplicity.”

Located in America’s Mid-Atlantic region, Maryland has a range of natural landscapes – from sandy beaches to rolling, forested hills. Other projects in the state include a contemporary extension to a quaint bungalow by EL Studio, and a waterfront dwelling by Robert Gurney Architect that consists of overlapping volumes clad in stone, wood, fibre cement and glass.

Photography is by Adam Rouse.

Project credits:

Owner: Dale and Marlene Adkins
Architect: Ziger Snead Architects
Design team: Douglas Bothner (partner), Matthew Rouse (architect)
Landscape architect: Campion Hruby (Kevin Campion)
Interior design: Jenkins Baer
Structural engineer: Morabito Consultants (Tony Morabito)
Mechanical engineer: Aire-Craft Heating and Cooling (Fred Reinthaler)
Electrical engineer: Gramophone (Andrew Davis)
Lighting design: Flux Studio (Glenn Shrum)
Interior design (minor): Jackie Martin Design (Jackie Martin)
General contractor: Blackhorse Construction (Chris Kilduff)
Master closet: Poliform

Kitchen: Konst Siematic

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Having an organized closet can improve the life of your clothing, and quality hangers can help keep your clothes in their best shape. Many closets have mismatched hangers that have been collected over the years: A wire hanger there, a thick plastic one here, and wooden one there. Having the same hangers keeps any closet that much more uniform, which appeals to many people, but having the best type of hanger for your needs can be important, too. So, what type of hanger does one choose? If you are to overhaul your closet, and your out-of-control hanger collection, which hanger is the best?

I’m sure our readers have many differing opinions on what the best hanger is, but I’ll highlight a few of my favorite options:

Ultra Slim Velvet Hangers: These thin hangers claim to save up to 50% of your closet space.

Vertical Hangers: If you want to keep your hangers, you can go this route and store five garments in the space for one.

Classic Plastic: My closet is currently filled with these fat things. They don’t stretch out my clothing, but I’m not too thrilled about them because they don’t always hold very heavy clothing such as winter coats.

Wooden: These are probably more useful for a coat closet or suit storage.

When it comes to those wire hangers, round them up and drop them off at your dry cleaner’s the next time you’re running errands. Dry cleaners almost always accept used wire hangers. However, you may want to keep one in case you need to unfold it to fish the Lego out of the furnace vent.

This post has been updated since its original publication in 2008.

Post written by Matt

Designed for nature, and from nature, the Alphapot transforms food waste into a molded, modular planter. Its grave to cradle approach reduces waste by turning the food we throw away into a planter that can be used to grow plants, allowing the waste to serve a much nobler purpose.

Typical planters come made from either ceramic/terracotta, or plastic, neither of which are biodegradable. The Alphapot relies on a material derived from food waste, making it feel like plastic, but be a completely natural alternative. The food waste is broken down into a pulp, which is then dried, ground, and compressed into the shape of a planter. With a design that feels like a finished product, the Alphapot uses the same material that is grown within it (plants), creating an infinite loop that cuts down heavily on waste that would normally be dumped in a landfill and would decompose, producing tonnes of methane in the process.

The design of the Alphapot was the result of a very specific set of purposes too. Its square top was made to enable modularity, allowing you to create a row or even a farm of pots that would snap together to form a kitchen garden of sorts. The circular base conforms to more traditional pot-shapes, allowing the Alphapot to dock in stands or hanging apparatuses meant for plastic or ceramic/clay pots. The square rim of the planter also creates a dedicated space for a water reservoir that allows the plants to self-hydrate, pulling in water from the reservoir on their own, eliminating one’s need to manually water the plant day after day.

Made from compressed, dried food-waste, the Alphapot is biodegradable too, allowing you to use it as a planter, and directly place it into the soil when the plant begins growing big. Ridges on the base of the Alphapot increase surface area contact with the soil, accelerating the decomposition process, and since the Alphapot is made from food waste, it ends up enriching the soil with nutrients that feed the plant. Designed with a negative footprint and a positive impact, the Alphapot makes greenery even greener!

Designer: Bionicraft

Click here to Buy Now: $28.00 $33.00 (16% off). Hurry, only 38 left!

Made from food waste to grow nature, Alphapot is 100% biodegradable, 100% Food Waste Fiber+ Vege Starch + Emulsion, 0% plastic (PP, PET…) 0% bio-plastic (PLA), helping to reduce and repurpose food waste in a more beautiful way.

Any kind of waste created is a burden on our environment, putting a strain on already precious resources, including water, land, and energy.

We often take food for granted and never think twice about our consumption behaviors, but food waste in particular is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, as it typically ends up in landfills or is sent to incinerators, contributing to global warming and climate change. The vicious cycle that is created from the food that we waste each day is astonishing.

What if food waste could be turned into something useful? Bionicraft believe that more can be done with the food waste created.

Food waste is given a new life when sent to the repurposing factory instead of landfills or incinerators. After going through the processes of mixing, drying, and pressing, a new biodegradable material is born, transforming the vicious food waste cycle into a virtuous one.

100% Food Waste Fiber+ Vege Starch + Emulsion, 0% plastic (PP, PET…) 0% bio-plastic (PLA).

d Zero waste created and reducing food waste at the same time! Alphapot is their first step in turning waste into a resource, in using food waste as a material, they hope to let design and nature take care of your plants.

Alphapot is designed with a round base to hold a plant from a standard 4 inch pot, and the square opening feature allows for pots to be interconnected. The engravings around the base area of the pot enables Alphapot to decompose back into nature more efficiently.

Alphapot is designed to hold water in a corner reservoir of the pot and together with a wick system that extends into the reservoir, your plant will draw just the right amount of water needed to feed itself.

This self-watering system works for any type of plant, taking the worries off your shoulders and giving you the green thumb you’ve always wanted, just remember to keep the Alphapot reservoir full.

The name Alphapot is taken from the words “alpha – the first” and “alphabet – the basic elements in a system which combine to form complex entities.”

Each Alphapot is a basic element, designed with modularity, and can be combined together in endless ways to build an oasis for any kind of space. The more the merrier to create your personal garden.

Alphapot is made to be directly transplanted into the soil when your plant outgrows the pot, and since it is made from food waste, it is 100% biodegradable and becomes nutrients for your plant to grow as it breaks down in the soil. Taken from nature and returned to nature!

Click here to Buy Now: $28.00 $33.00 (16% off). Hurry, only 38 left!

Last year Infiniti produced the Prototype 9, a retro-futuristic concept based on 1930s racecar designs. This year their creative team is again flexing their design muscles with the electric Prototype 10, which continues with the future-past theme, albeit advanced by several decades; this car takes its cues from 1960s roadsters.

Introduced last week at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the Prototype 10 is the first project produced under the direction of Karim Habib, Infiniti’s new Executive Design Director. (The Prototype 9 project was led by Nissan’s Senior Vice President for Global Design, Alfonso Albaisa, whom we profiled here.) “For us, Prototype 9 evoked the thrill and drama of early open-wheeled racing, and Prototype 10 represents another passion project for our designers,” says Habib. “This idea of ‘looking back to go forward’, and combining the inspiration of an earlier aesthetic with future technology, lets us show how excited we are about the era of electrification.”

Speaking of electricity, what’s really shocking is how quickly the car was designed and produced–the development time was reportedly just four months. This was accomplished by exploiting time zones and essentially yielding a 24-hour work cycle. Habib is based at Infiniti’s design center in Japan where, at the end of the workday there, he could pass the baton to the company’s UK-based designers. Fabrication took place in yet a third time zone, at Infiniti’s North American design base in San Diego.

As the Prototype 10 shows, it is an exciting time to be a car designer. Cutting-edge digital tools and teammates spread across the world have allowed them to work as never before, and the mandate to create vehicles visually distinct from combustion-engine cars has provided a thrilling leeway to designers. (Read our interview with Jaguar’s Wayne Burgess on their I-Pace for more on this subject.) As Infiniti explains:

Where the Prototype 10’s unbroken, skyward-facing surfaces reflect the uninterrupted nature of electric motor power delivery, the bodywork itself is punctuated by geometric lines. These lines reference the shock of sudden acceleration enabled by a powertrain, which can instantly deliver 100% of available torque with a push of the accelerator pedal. Straight lines give added definition to the grilles at the front of the car, and the side strakes that plunge into the rear wheel arches. The cooling ducts in the open-air cockpit – one behind the driver, one in place of a passenger seat – are also characterized by their sharp geometry, with their very structure appearing to take the form of an electrical pulse. The upright fin behind the driver’s head carves into the rear deck of the car, with razor-sharp forms also evident in the design of the triangular rear light.

“Our electric vehicle architecture represents a turning point for our design teams, a chance to present alternative proportions with different shapes,” says Infiniti President Roland Krueger. “This new design language prioritizes clean, efficient lines with which we can articulate a new, confident design language.”

Berlin-based designers Studio 7.5 collaborated with Parisian 3D printing experts XstreeE to create a series of continuously printed concrete benches with a woven pattern.

The three outdoor benches that form a series named Make by Studio 7.5 were printed using XtreeE’s technology and equipment, which includes a six-axis 3D-printing robot that can print concrete and clay with extreme precision.

Studio 7.5 had worked with other 3D-printed materials on previous projects, but they had never worked with concrete – whereas XtreeE have worked extensively with the material.

The concrete is printing in alternate layers by the robot head, moving in an continuous oscillating wave and slowly building up the layers. This movement creates the woven pattern.

By 3D printing the concrete the designers were able to create patterns that would be very expensive and challenging to create using only a mould.

The benches are constructed using a minimal amount of concrete in comparison to the amount required with mould forms this reduces the carbon emissions created during the concrete production.

The bench is also much lighter than it could have been in solid concrete, and the pattern plays an important role in the aesthetic of the bench.

According to the designers, the woven pattern was developed specifically for the benches, and hasn’t been used before. Since the launch of the bench, the material has been employed by other artists and companies working with XtreeE.

These benches form part of a collection of custom-made street furniture by Studio 7.5, best known for its longstanding relationship with the brand Herman Miller. the studio’s Cosm Chair for Herman Miller has been longlisted for the inaugural Dezeen Design Awards.

In the Netherlands a bridge has been fabricated from 3D-printed concrete and the Eindhoven University of Technology are creating a series of concrete houses that they will 3D print and make available to rent.

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