Hasta La Ideas

This week on Dezeen, the impact of plastic on the environment was yet again a talking point, as the London Marathon gave out drinks in edible seaweed capsules and a study revealed the truth behind biodegradable bags.

On Sunday, over 30,000 biodegradable Ooho capsules were handed out to runners at the London Marathon, marking the largest ever trial of the drinks pods.

Designed to reduce plastic waste, the pods are made from a seaweed-based substance and can be filled with water or other beverages. The wrappers can be consumed or dropped on the ground, as they naturally decompose in under six weeks.

Meanwhile the University of Plymouth revealed the results of its study that found “biodegradable” plastic bags remain intact and useable three years after being dropped in the sea or buried underground.

Five types of plastic carrier bag were used for the experiment, which was conducted over three years in soil and marine environments. The biodegradable bag, the oxo-biodegradable bag and the standard plastic bag all remained fully functional.

In architecture news this week, Studio Gang’s 40-storey Mira tower topped out in San Francisco, as shown in photos released by developer Tishman Speyer.

BIG also unveiled plans for a tower in Ecuador’s capital Quito, which will comprise two curved blocks covered in earthy coloured tiles.

Notre-Dame continued to hit headlines, as Studio NAB proposed replacing its gothic roof with a public greenhouse and Dezeen deputy editor Tom Ravenscroft argued that a new, modern spire should be welcomed.

Over 1,000 architecture and heritage experts also called on the French president to abandon his five-year deadline for its rebuild, saying it should be carried out “without haste”.

In design, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba unveiled a new custom typeface that its partners, sellers and consumers can use for their own brand identities.

Facebook launched its “modern” site redesign, which aims to puts privacy at the forefront and features a “cleaner”, all-white design. Users will see these updates in the Facebook app immediately.

Following years of extreme land subsidence, the president of Indonesia announced plans to relocate the nation’s sinking capital away from Jakarta. The new capital will be close to the geographic centre of the country.

Indonesia also featured on the shortlist for the Aga Khan Award, announced this week. A community library built by Indonesian studio Shau using ice cream tubs features on the 20-strong shortlist, alongside a courtyard home in Beijing and a fish market in Oman.

Create Streets founder Nicholas Boys Smith was named interim chair of the UK’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, following Roger Scruton’s removal in April.

Meanwhile in the US, Airbnb’s offshoot design studio Samara hired Apple industrial designer Miklu Silvanto to join the company’s housebuilding initiative, Backyard, which plans to roll out housing designs later this year.

The unpaid internships saga continued this week, when recent architecture graduate Urvashi Vasishtha spoke to Dezeen about her experience of “exploitative internships” in India.

In contrast, we rounded up five of the best paid internships available on Dezeen Jobs right now, including opportunities in London, Hong Kong and the Netherlands.

Projects that sparked readers’ imaginations this week included a lavender-topped writer’s study in Ireland, Sutherland & Co’s self-designed studio in Scotland and the revival of a mid-century house in Upstate New York.

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It’s pretty commonly known that plants have a way of cleansing the air we breathe. A forest has much healthier air than a busy intersection, and while that reference is sort of overkill, it proves a point. Greenery is associated with freshness, and plants trap dust, dirt, kill bacteria, and dissipate harmful chemicals like carbon monoxide from the air, replacing it with fresh oxygen that nurtures the body. The Clairy Air Purifier plays on this property of plants, accelerating it in a way that allows a single plant to do the job a garden would. With a stylized planter base that not only shatters the misconceptions that air purifiers should be bulky, appliance-like, and borderline clinical, Clairy has an aesthetics-forward Italian-design-influenced approach. It looks incredibly voguish, and houses a plant too, giving you greenery and home decor along with the benefits of an appliance without the overbearing presence of it.

Clairy is an award winning planter/purifier hybrid that adds a touch of aesthetic beauty and greenery to the space. With a purifier integrated into the planter itself, Clairy pulls polluted air through its top, allowing to pass through and around the plant and soil, getting the plant to absorb microorganisms, gases, and dust particles. Clairy purifies air using the plant’s own natural processes of trapping pollutants in its soil and around the roots, and the then purified air makes its exit from the exhaust on the planter. With no industrial filter of its own, Clairy relies on an effective form of bio-purification and therefore needs no periodic replacement of filters. It works silently too, doing its job diligently, and even allows you to track and measure air quality levels over time.

Designed completely in Italy, Clairy follows the highest standards of Italian aesthetics and engineering too (the product has won European and German Design Awards). The planter, in a bid to completely reject the norms of appliance design, comes made from Italian ceramics by Venetian craftsmen, effectively melding haute decor, consumer appliance, and the benefits of a healthier lifestyle into one, incredibly classy product!

Designer: Clairy

This residence in the Pacific Northwest by US firm Stephenson Design Collective features exterior walls clad in weathering steel and black-stained cedar, along with large windows that offer sweeping views of the mountains and sea.

The House on the Cove is located in the coastal town of Bellingham in northern Washington. The residence consists of a main dwelling and a detached structure that houses a garage and music studio.

Together, the two rectilinear buildings form an L-shaped plan.

A primary goal for the design team was to respect and embrace the natural surroundings. The elevated, wooded site offers sweeping views of the Puget Sound, San Juan Islands and Olympic Mountains.

“We had to maintain this environment with minimal intrusion when adding the structure,” said Seattle-based Stephenson Design Collective in a project description. “It is hard to discount the fact that we had a great opportunity to destroy this site if we weren’t considerate and thoughtful.”

To help the home blend with its surroundings, the team wrapped exterior walls in weathering steel and black-stained cedar The house is intended to be a “shadow among the trees”.

The entry elevation is fairly opaque in order to conceal the interior and the spectacular views that lie beyond. Windows are carefully placed to bring in light and provide a connection to the neighbourhood. The home’s interior stairwell is hinted at on the street-facing facade by angled metal cladding and a trio of skylights.

In contrast, the rear facade has large stretches of glass that draw in the scenery. Rooms open onto terraces that provide opportunities for taking in the ocean air.

Rising two storeys, the main dwelling encompasses 2,504 square feet (233 square metres). The ground level contains public spaces, along with a bedroom and an office. The upper level houses the master suite and a dimly lit nook for relaxing.

“We knew the house would be bright, so we created a ‘nest’ behind the main bedroom that could be completely closed and dark for refuge in the heat of the summer,” the team said.

A neutral colour palette was employed throughout the dwelling. Finishes include wood and concrete flooring and walls clad in stone. Textured rugs, wooden tables and fluffy pillows help create a cosy atmosphere.

To the north of the home is the separate two-storey structure. The upper level of the 765-square-foot (71-square-metre) building houses the music studio, which can also be used as guest quarters.

The lower level contains the garage and a small workshop for metal fabrication. The client is a blacksmith by trade, and the shop acts as “his escape to create without demand”.

The architects note that their initial site meeting with the client entailed “drinks, dogs and music”. The meeting began in the afternoon and stretched well into the evening.

“The client requested that we watch the movie Minka and listen to Marc Cohen’s Olanna before beginning the process,” the studio said. “He needed his home to spark the same emotions that these pieces inspire.”

The client had no set expectations regarding the home’s size. His focus was more on the experiential qualities.

“We continued the design process as a discussion of experience and interaction,” the architects said. “We never established a ‘goal’ square footage or size, only what needed to happen within the home and how it would take place.”

Sustainability was an important concern for the clients. In turn, the team incorporated a range of eco-friendly features including radiant concrete floors and high-performance windows. In the winter, a fireplace and its pipes provide instant heat.

Washington is well-known for its lush forests, snow-capped peaks and beautiful coastline. Other homes in the state include a waterfront home by Prentiss Balance Wickline that consists of cascading boxes with green roofs, and a dwelling by David Coleman that cuts into a hillside “like a rusty blade”.

Photography is by Andrew Pogue.

Project credits:

Architects: Stephenson Design Collective
Builder: Indigo Enterprises NW
Engineer: Malsam Tsang Structural Engineering
Metal fabrication: Indeco
Manufacturers: Thermador, Zola, Victoria and Albert, Kohler

The post Stephenson Design Collective designs House on the Cove to blend with coastal Washington setting appeared first on Dezeen.

The automatic self-charging Solar Powered Hydrade Bottle, sounds very high-tech, but is very simple to use. This insulated bottle keeps a tab on your hydration levels and monitors your intake, and even donates to charity based on how good you are with your drink!

We all know that keeping yourself hydrated during the day is important, and yet we need apps and technology to help us stay on point. Keeping this in mind, the Hydrade uses a unique technology and software so that you can measure your water intake, using the several different sensors, that are placed between the cylinders of the double wall insulation. The sensors are so sensitive that they track drinking of water, or if you are pouring it out, or drinking water with ice!

Designer: Eli Moon

Click Here to Buy Now: $35 $75 (53% off). Hurry, less than 48 hours left!

Hydrade’s smart solar-powered insulated bottle recommends hydration levels, monitors intake, & donates to charity based on your intake.

Click Here to Buy Now: $35 $75 (53% off). Hurry, less than 48 hours left!

Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg has built a wooden “sleep box” that emits a faint light in the early morning, to alert his wife when it’s time to wake up without looking at her phone.

The device is a small wooden box that can be placed on a bedside table. The base of the box is raised roughly a centimetre above the table surface, to allow a faint light to shine out.

The box emits a soft light for an hour each morning, between 6am and 7am, to let his wife Priscilla know whether it’s time to get up and check on their children, without resorting to looking at the time on her phone.

Box designed to not wake you up

“Being a mom is hard, and since we’ve had kids Priscilla has had a hard time sleeping through the night,” said Zuckerberg in a post on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

“She’ll wake up and check the time on her phone to see if the kids might wake up soon, but then knowing the time stresses her out and she can’t fall back asleep.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mark Zuckerberg (@zuck) on Apr 27, 2019 at 9:45am PDT

The device isn’t intended to wake the user. Instead, when Zuckerberg’s wife wakes during the night and the sleep box isn’t glowing, she knows that it’s not yet time to get out of bed and can fall back to sleep more easily not knowing the time.

“Since it doesn’t show the time, if she wakes up in the middle of the night, she knows to just go back to sleep without having to worry about what time it is,” said Zuckerberg in the post.

“So far this has worked better than I expected and she can now sleep through the night.”

Idea could be put into production

Zuckerberg goes on to suggest that entrepreneurs may want to turn his idea into a business, as “a bunch of my friends have told me they’d want something like this”.

“As an engineer, building a device to help my partner sleep better is one of the best ways I can think of to express my love and gratitude,” he said.

Many designers and manufacturers have worked on products that aim to help users get to sleep, or stay asleep.

Nokia produced a sleep sensor that tracks slumber patterns and adjusts the lighting and temperature in the bedroom, whilst Bryte created a bed with smart technology that makes adjustments for optimum sleep.

Photo of Mark Zuckerberg is by Anthony Quintano/Wikimedia Commons.

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