The Sand Clock by London-based experimental art and design studio Ayaskan. Sand, Inspired by the landscape art of kare-sansui – Japanese Zen rock garden, is the gradual formation and flattening of a ripple pattern over a period of twelve hour cycles. In the daytime the hour hand draws ripple patterns on the sand whereas during the night these patterns are gradually flattened out to restart a new cycle…(Read…)
Homemade Vegan Burger by JunsKitchen..(Read…)
Game of Thrones’ Cleganebowl with lightsabers..(Read…)
Israeli designer Shahar Livne has designed a pair of sneakers with alternative leather inserts made from the wasted fat, bones and blood of animals.
The Blood Sneakers were designed as part of Livne‘s Meat Factory project. It sees her run a series of material experiments to turn fat and bones taken from waste streams of slaughterhouses in the Netherlands into a sustainable material.
Inspired by the “nose to tail” attitude of using the entire animal, Livne also used discarded blood as an ink-like colourant and plasticiser for the deep-red material.
While the ingredients and their amounts are under wraps, the designer uses the waste products to form a substance that can then be moulded or 3D-printed into a leather-like material, or extruded into yarn.
The Design Academy Eindhoven graduate hopes her project will spark conversations around the lack of knowledge consumers have about where the food on their plate comes from.
“The Meat Factory project investigates the dissonance people have with the food on their plates and the living animal, and the psychological dissonance between raw materials and processed materials,” the designer explained.
“It explores the emotional connection with nature that has changed since food and materials became industrialised, and consumers have been alienated from the source, content and use of animal-based materials,” she added.
While the main body of the trainers are made from Nappa leather, each shoe features a dark red panel at its centre of a material that the designer describes as bio-leather, as a hint towards the potential of the material as an alternative to leather.
Made in collaboration with sustainable luxury footwear brand Nat-2, the outsoles of the sneakers are made from rubber, while the insoles are made from cork.
Livne hopes to develop her bio-leather material to a point where it could be used to make the entire shoe in the future.
“With these sneakers we want to bring more attention to urgent international matters such as sustainability in different animal-based industries by using nature-given resources and upcycling leftovers from those industries,” said Nat-2 and Livne.
“But we also want to make a point for more tolerance and open-minded thinking by raising people’s fascination and curiosity, and highlighting the wasteful and disrespectful treatment of animals and natural resources,” they added.
Livne also hopes her project will bring to light the “misleading” view that leather is a by-product of the meat industry.
“The hide is what comes out of the slaughterhouses, and to become leather it needs to go through processes that involve chemicals or a lot of energy and water,” she explained.
“If leather is sourced from a cow’s hide it is usually scratched or damaged by insects, which leads tanneries to cut out those parts or refine them extensively,” Livne continued.
“On the other hand, you have luxury calfskin for high-end fashion – in which case the calves, or other animals, are grown for their flawless skin.”
“This bio-leather offers a new, out-of-the-box possibility that utilises animal by-products that are low in cost and pollution, and that mitigate the amount of waste created by meat-production industries,” she added.
Livne previously created a range of sculptural objects from a clay-like material made from discarded plastic.
The designer hopes her Lithoplast material will challenge the idea that petroleum-based plastics are damaging the planet by treating their waste as a valuable commodity for future generations.
The post Shahar Livne makes bio-leather shoes from slaughterhouse waste appeared first on Dezeen.
A spiral staircase made of concrete rises through the centre of an open-plan office designed by architecture studio Hildebrand in Steinhausen, Switzerland.
Winding its way up the building’s four levels, the staircase ends with a large elliptical skylight that brings light into the centre of each floor.
Hildebrand designed the headquarters for Hapimag, a Swiss holiday company. As well as providing access, this stairway was designed to double as an informal gathering space for the office workers.
“The atrium and the sculptural ramp create open and playful spaces for meetings and communication, encouraging the informal exchange between all employees across hierarchical boundaries,” said the architecture studio.
Hapimag’s headquarters has a simple plan with polished concrete columns supporting each floor, which have been left open to be as flexible as possible.
“The building offers flexibility which allows the company to fluidly adjust and adapt to future developments in the constantly changing world of office structures,” said the architecture studio.
Two larger concrete cores house stairs and lifts, and some smaller areas have been sectioned off from the open plan floors.
Timber frames with glazed walls create quiet meeting and workspaces that afford privacy without breaking up the open effect.
All other interior finishes have been left simple or exposed. For the ceilings, white timber slats cover the concrete floor plate above, and the concrete of the cores has also been left unfinished.
At ground floor level, a datum of wooden slats runs along the interior walls, and continues up the inside the the central concrete staircase.
The entire building is wrapped in glass. At the centre of each floor plate a run of white timber planks provides sun-shading, protruding from the top to become a balustrade for a roof terrace created by the set-back top floor.
A flat concrete roof overhangs a smaller office space at the top floor. This provides an area of shade for the surrounding terrace, which overlooks a landscaped garden adjacent to the new building.
Flexible, open-plan spaces are popular in contemporary in office layouts, with architects seeking new ways to create varying degrees of privacy for them.
In Copenhagen, Spacon & X designed workspaces with adaptable partitions, and Space Encounters’ designed an office in Utrecht where planted partitions give workers some privacy.
Photography is by Roman Keller unless otherwise stated.
Project credits:
Client: Hapimag
General planner consortium: Hildebrand, Ghisleni Partner
Architecture: Hildebrand
Project leader: Pascal Ryser, Stefan Roovers, Marion Ott, Stephan Dietrich
Project team: Thomas Hildebrand, Daniel Sasama, Isabelle Schulz, Robin Bollschweiler, Dominik Keller, Nora Klinger, Yuichi Kodai, Claudia Maggi, Mikel Martínez Múgica, Kosaku Matsumoto, Michael Stünzi, Geng Tian, Simon Würgler
Construction management: Ghisleni Partner
Civil engineer: Ferrari Gartmann
Electric engineer: Hefti Hess Martignoni
HVAC engineer: Hans Abicht
Acoustics and building physics: Gartenmann Engineering
Fire protection planners: Hefti Hess Martignoni, Braun Brandsicherheit
Facade planning: Reba Fassadentechnik
The post Concrete spiral staircase twists through an open plan office by Hildebrand appeared first on Dezeen.
This week we’re heading back in time to the 2001 treat you never knew you wanted (because they don’t sound very good): the orangey, chocolatey, coffee-y frappuccinos so eagerly inhaled by Derek Zoolander and friends, just moments before their tragic deaths in a freak gasoline fight accident…(Read…)
We normally build a dam to hold water back and store it for use in water supply, irrigation, hydropower, or flood control. But sometimes we have to let some water go. Whether we need it downstream or the impounded water behind the dam is simply too full to store any more, nearly every dam needs a spillway to safely discharge water. The spillway is a critical part of any dam and often the most complex component. So how does it work?..(Read…)
The last minute shows interviews from 20 years after the encounter. A total of 62 children saw this…(Read…)
Kodi Lee: Blind Autistic Singer..(Read…)
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.
