Having handpicked the heroes from the show floor at 100% Design, we now turn our attention to looking back on a handful of highlights from London Design Fair, Design Junction and Biodesign at London Design Festival 2018. So come with us on a whistle-stop tour, and don’t forget your toothbrush.

Usetool Toothbrush

There’s a small magnet in the neck of the toothbrush so you can store it handsomely and hygienically on the bathroom wall

Having just eaten a sticky bun, we conveniently stumbled upon a stylish leap in toothbrushing design at the London Design Fair. Dubbed the Usetool Toothbrush it consists of a sonic wave toothbrush, sterilizer and magnetic wall-mountable holder. Flipping your toothbrush on its head and sitting it in the the sterilizer keeps your bristles in rude health. Created by exciting up-and-coming designer Jiyoun Kim, the sleek minimalist forms and magnetic wall storage certainly make it a desirable bathroom buddy.

Made for the Usetool Company and launching in the US soon

The sterilizer sits on a sleek wireless charger, with room for more

Jiyoun Kim in his studio making sure every bristle lines up perfectly

ecoBirdy

The entire collection also includes the Container Kiwi bird-shaped storage and Rhino Lamp

“Kids furniture” doesn’t usually grab us by the pigtails with excitement, but ecoBirdy is a new range that was turning heads at the show, including ours. The striking exaggerated curves of the Chair Charlie and Table Luisa give the pieces an almost animated and animal-like character, made all the better in the knowledge that they’re made from 100% recycled plastic. The bods at ecoBirdy even smartly separate the plastic waste by color, which means they can give each product distinctly striking look. Time to request some adult-sized versions.

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ecoBirdy has also started a school programme to raise awareness around plastic waste and recycling among kids

All those curves mean serious knee-knocking and shin-smashing are out of the picture

Taktil

Some objects, like the felt creation (far right) are designed for simple sensory games – there’s a single little pearl bead nestled in one of the folds that children have to feel for and find

Another fascinating and child-focussed piece of design. This time to help children who have autism spectrum disorders. Paula Lorence is a talented graduate from the Riga School of Design and Art who has developed a set of beautiful and highly functional objects called Taktil that provide tactile sensory stimulation, designed to help autistic kids focus, overcome sensory sensitivities and soothes anxiety during therapy. Carefully selected materials and colors are used to make objects that are each individually crafted to carry out a specific functions or games. Currently a working concept Lorence is now looking to get support to help develop the product further.

There are three collections of Taktil objects, each set tailored for children with different types of autism

This collection consists of stress relievers with lots of pleasingly squeezable and highly tactile surfaces that happen to be sculpturally charming too

Biodesign

Jun Kamei is a Biomimicry Designer and Material Scientist and the brains behind Amphibio

Easily the most mind-bending show at the London Design Festival, the Biodesign exhibition was a hive of live experiments and ideas associated with the exploration of designing new biological concepts. From growing sustainable mycelium based objects, to detecting DNA in your food at home, there was heaps of high-level thinking going on, and one particular out-there project ignited our imagination when we saw the working prototype in the flesh for the first time. Amphibio, a 3D printed amphibious concept garment that lets you breath underwater. How does it work? Well… “The gill accessory is 3D-printed from a microporous hydrophobic material, which supports sub-aqua breathing by extracting oxygen from the surrounding water and dissipating the carbon dioxide that accumulates in the system.” Simple.

Designer Sinae Kim was displaying her collection of ceramics which are glazed with minerals extracted from human urine, dubbed Urine Ware

Minima is a home DNA kit for your kitchen that uses biotechnology to help people with specific diets or folks just curious about their food to better understand what they’re eating

The team at Mycterials are creating sustainable fungal biomaterials using synthetic biology, engineering and design

Childhood Series

The entire Childhood Series furniture collection (or playground). Designer: Wanghe Studio

Despite the name, Wanghe Studio’s Childhood Series is aimed squarely at adults and wants you to go play. Whether that means swinging on the rocking stool or skidding the skateboard inspired clothes rack into a corner. Designed for small apartments, each piece either has a small footprint or is intended for dual use, like the Marshmallow Sofa with its integrated and detachable side tables.

Kel lamp

Simply roll your hand up and down the oak dowels until you’re happy with your abstract light pattern

It’s playtime again as new designer Georgina Heighton aims to give us a casual excuse to engage in some spontaneous physical play “with no questioning or judgement” with her Kel Lamp. What’s lovely about Heighton’s creation is that it’s pretty effortless to lose yourself in the satisfying motion of rolling a simple bundle of oak dowels up and down and creating all sorts of patterns of light. As with the Pluck & Hug light, there’s certainly no shame in taking a minute to let a little ray of spontaneous light into your life.

Goop, the lifestyle and wellness brand led by actress Gwyneth Paltrow, has opened its first pop-up store in London featuring California-inspired interiors by Fran Hickman.

The Goop store is located in the affluent Notting Hill neighbourhood, nestled among a row of high-end boutiques along Westbourne Grove.

It is the wellness brand’s first pop-up space in the UK. Previously they have only opened temporary stores in US cities including in Dallas and New York, while maintaining a permanent Goop “lab” in Los Angeles.

Design studio Fran Hickman, which has already completed stores for fashion labels such as Emilia Wickstead and Moda Operandi, was given just two months to create the interiors for the London outpost.

Restricted on time, the studio worked out how it could portray the “elegant, modern, understated, warm, sophisticated, and fun” personality of Goop and its customer base by making only a few changes to the existing site.

Walls in the beauty department, which sits at an elevated level at the store’s rear, have been painted gold to reflect the warm climate in California. This room has been dressed with red-frame cabinets that display makeup and skincare products, and large circular mirrors.

Gold continues down the staircase until customers reach the homeware section, where a majority of the surfaces and display plinths have been clad in OSB board – a type of engineered timber invented by Californian Armin Elmendorf in the 1960s that’s made up of compressed flakes of wood.

At this level customers can also access a small outdoor courtyard that overlooks a row of adjacent townhouses.

The basement, which contains sportswear, has been completed with deep blue carpets, walls and soft furnishings to evoke the colour of the ocean on America’s east coast.

A fresh coat of white paint has been applied to the ground floor room, which contains ready-to-wear clothing collections. Its accessed via a mirror-clad walkway that’s lined with bushy olive trees, intended to act as “symbols of peace and friendship”.

“Planting was always going to be intrinsic to the store design, so the trees occupy a narrow space at the entrance that was not going to be easily merchandised,” Fran Hickman, founder of the studio, explained to Dezeen.

The store will be open until 27 January 2019. Goop has also recently debuted its first furniture and homeware collection, which includes pieces inspired by mid-century Italian and modernist design.

Photography is by Appear Here unless stated otherwise.

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Smartwater, la nouvelle eau premium sur le marché français, s’associe en tant que partenaire aux Fubiz Talks, organisés par Fubiz et l’agence TETRO, le 4 octobre prochain dans l’enceinte de la Salle Pleyel. Smartwater, l’eau qui incarne ceux qui osent, met ainsi en valeur à travers ce partenariat, les créatifs qui transcendent les obstacles et permet de porter une vision ou un rêve.

Eau officielle de l’Equipe de France de Football, Smartwater, partage les ingrédients indispensables pour dépasser ses limites -comme l’ont démontré les Bleus tout au long de la Coupe du Monde- : l’audace, la volonté et la créativité.

To us relatively wealthy Westerners, the obvious application for a cooler is camping. But for folks in developing nations who don’t have access to refrigeration, having some means to keep food fresh is a crucial need, not a creature comfort.

Enter the Fenik, a clever and biomimetic design for an electricity-free refrigerator. The flatpack device extends into the shape of a cooler. The sidewalls are made from a clever membrane based on the idea of human perspiration, whereby liquid transfers heat from inside to outside and evaporates. Take a look at how it works:

Fenik, originally known as Evaptainers, started out as a student project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The purpose of the project was to develop a low-cost method of preserving fruits and vegetables in remote areas. The research culminated in the invention of the Yuma 60L, which achieves refrigeration through the use of smart materials and the phenomenon of evaporative cooling.

…If you thought we spent the last 4 years developing a low-cost refrigerator for glampers, you’re sorely mistaken! Over 1.2 billion people still lack access to electricity, and without electricity, any type of refrigeration. Our core mission is to help these families out of a tough spot by providing products that can improve their lives.

We’ve already been working in throughout Morocco for the last 3 years, and are collaborating with USAID to conduct a large scale development project next summer.

At press time the Kickstarter campaign for Fenik’s Yuma 60-liter cooler was short of the mark, with $53,486 pledged towards a $70,000 goal. If you’d like to help them get across the finish line, there’s still 14 days left to pledge. The Early Bird coolers are going for $120 a pop.

Missouri architecture firm Hufft has designed an expansive two-storey residence for a couple with a large private art collection in Kansas City, complete with a subterranean gallery.

The 10,650-square-foot (989-square-metre) Artery Residence provides a family home for clients who are “repeatedly named by ARTnews in the top 200 contemporary art collectors globally”, according to Hufft.

“When an art collector and his wife asked us to design and build them a new home, we used their extensive collection as the genesis of the residence,” the studio said.

The Missouri house is laid out around three triple-height atriums, referred to as its “arteries”, which extend from the basement gallery to living spaces on the two floors above.

These feature large expanses of wall and spaces for displaying the impressive collection of paintings, photography and sculpture. Specific lighting and climate control are used for preservation purposes.

“Art installations are thoughtfully placed along these gallery-like spaces, accented by soft, indirect lighting, creating deliberate moments of pause and allowing art and residence to coalesce into a single experience,” Hufft said.

The most dramatic of the “arteries” is a long thin space that extends perpendicular to the main bulk of the house.

It contains two straight flights of stairs – both rising in the same direction – which link the basement to the ground-floor living spaces, then this level to a two-bedroom annex above the other end of the corridor.

The guest rooms sit perpendicular to the linear space below and dramatically extend beyond its supporting walls.

Another artery is found beside the entrance on the ground floor, in the form of a doglegged staircase, while the third is a void positioned over the basement art library.

The basement spaces are also accessible from the street, through sliding glass doors via a sloped driveway. Along with the gallery and library, this level also houses an art storage area, a wine cellar and tasting room, a gym, a bathroom and a mechanical room.

Upstairs, a kitchen with dark wood cabinetry is joined by a living room, which together lead out to a patio and pool. Also on the ground floor are a dining room, his and her offices, and two bathrooms.

Atop the home’s main portion is a master bedroom and ensuite, with a large closet. Two children’s bedrooms with en-suites, a media room and a laundry complete this upper storey.

Portions of the exterior are clad in limestone, while overhanging roof planes are accented in warm cedar. These overhangs, along with aluminium louvres, help to shield the large panes of glass and the valuable art behind from the summer sun.

Based in Kansas City, Hufft has also completed a two-storey black house with warm wood accents on the other side of the Missouri-Kansas state border.

Photography is by Michael Robinson.

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