Les graffitis de Hayley Welsh mettent en scène des cratures incroyablement tendres et attachantes qui délivrent des messages d’amour et d’encouragement. Ses petits animaux sont un mélange entre des chats, des chiens, des lapins, des souris et son un vrai moment d’apaisement dans notre journée ! Selon l’artiste, « ce travail explore les voix intérieures et est une réflexion sur le doute et la peur, en essayant de communiquer un message qui puisse être source de réflexion et de motivation ».
Adidas and Stella McCartney used vegan spider-style silk by Bolt Threads to create the Biofabric Tennis Dress, which can “fully biodegrade”.
The Adidas x Stella McCartney Biofabric Tennis Dress is made using Microsilk, a bioengineered yarn made from yeast by Californian biotech startup Bolt Threads.
The Microsilk fabric eventually breaks down back into the environment, making the dress fully biodegradable, Adidas claims.
While fabrics such as wool or cotton are often labelled as biodegradable, the chemical treatments they undergo to be made into garments can slow down the break-down process or stop it altogether.
Biofabric Tennis Dress is made using a bioengineered yarn called Microsilk
“Fashion is one of the most harmful industries to the environment,” said McCartney.
“We can’t wait any longer to search for answers and alternatives. By creating a truly open approach to solving the problem of textile waste, we can help empower the industry at large to bring more sustainable practices into reality.”
To create Microsilk, Bolt Threads studied the silk made by argiope bruennichi – a type of orb-weaver spider that commonly spins its own web – then recreated a version of the proteins in a laboratory.
In order to do so, scientists at the start-up bioengineered genes in the lab and implanted them in yeast.
Together with sugar and water, the yeast produces protein through fermentation. Liquid silk proteins are then extracted and spun into yarn to weave for garments.
Microsilk is still in the research and development phase and doesn’t have the statistics to compare its water usage with other fabrics, but by using plants that can be regrown Bolt Threads claims it is more sustainable than petroleum-based fibres such as polyester.
The material was mixed with a cellulose-blended yarn to make the prototype dress.
Bolt Threads recreated spider silk proteins and grew them using yeast in a laboratory
In an exclusive interview with Dezeen, Stella McCartney warned that designers “aren’t taking responsibility” for the environmental damage caused by the fashion industry.
“We need to impose new laws on designers because sadly people aren’t taking responsibility, and there is no incentive to encourage them,” she said.
The Serpentine Coffee House, which Mizzi Studio has created alongside the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park, London, is topped with a roof designed to look like a stingray.
Mizzi Studio designed the cafe to be a small landmark structure between the Serpentine Gallery‘s two locations on the main street that passes through Hyde Park.
It takes its form from both Japanese tea houses and the Serpentine lake, which it stands alongside.
“It is a biomorphic design as everything we do is inspired by natural processes,” said Jonathan Mizzi, founder of Mizzi Studio.
“It’s made to look natural, which is what we believe all architecture should be. Its an extension to the lake, a creature that has leap out of the lake – a smiling stingray that flies from the lake,” he told Dezeen.
The single-storey coffee shop has glass walls and is topped with a brass-coloured undulating canopy.
“At the centre is a classic dome that morphs into the eaves and together they create a smiling mouth,” continued Mizzi.
“The colour of the brass canopy is effective as it is an earthy material that is also regal, which fits the location in a royal park.”
Mizzi Studio worked with engineers Arup and manufacturer MouldCAM to create the fully watertight roof, which has a structural skin constructed from a reinforced carbon and glass fibre.
This structure is supported on a steel frame with two columns, which according to the architect look like teeth, supporting a canopy over the cafe’s front entrance.
Within the coffee shop the visible underside of the brass-coloured roof has been designed to evoke feelings of being under a stingray or a whale’s mouth.
“As you walk in you are enveloped in the mouth of a whale,” added Mizzi. “This cafe shows that using a simple concept to create a complex form means experimental architecture is doable.”
The cafe has a walnut timber-fronted counter that stretches along the back wall, which is covered with dark blue tiles.
In front of the counter is a small seating area complete with Perlino Rosato marble-topped tables and leather-upholstered chairs. Alongside the kiosk is an outdoor seating area.
The small cafe is one of ten sites being designed by Mizzi Studio for the Colicci coffee shop chain within London’s Royal Parks.
One kiosk has already been completed within the park, while another on the other bank of the Serpentine lake is set to be built this month.
Think about the way you are in the day. You spend one half of the day working, interacting, eating, filling your mind with thoughts, and the second half disseminating, relaxing, and sleeping. The SAND clock by Studio Ayaskan is a beautiful representation of our time in the 24 hours of a day. With just one hand that makes rounds around the clock’s sand-filled bed, the SAND clock’s hand creates ripples in the sand as it moves along in the first 12 hours of the day, and then erases them over the next 12 hours, resetting itself just the way the human body and mind does.
The SAND is just conceptually and in execution, a brilliant installation that tells time. It sits horizontally, with a sand-filled base, and a steadily moving hand that has rake-like spokes on one side, and a flat edge on another side. For the first 12 hours of the day, from midnight to noon, the rake-edge of the hand faces downwards, gently creating a ripple in the flat sand for 12 straight hours. Once the hand reaches the 12 o’clock position at noon, it flips over to have the flat edge pointing downwards, erasing the ripples in a calming, meditative way, not only telling the time but also acting as a metaphor for how we are active for one half of the day and passive for the other, as well as the repetitive nature of each day being followed by the next!
At Dreamfarm, along with food, there are always a couple of good ideas cooking. I’m talking about the guys that designed the Nutella spatula you’ve surely seen on the internet, or the TAPI, a silicone attachment to your bathroom tap that you pinch to divert water flow upwards, turning it into a water fountain. Now meet the Vebo, another rather brilliant idea from the minds at Dreamfarm. Unlike most metal colanders, the Vebo (a portmanteau of vegetable + boiler) is a silicone perforated bag with handles. Its silicone construction makes it food-grade and safe to immerse in heat. The bag’s flexible silicone design expands to let you put more veggies in or even fold to fit into pots of any size, and it even packs handles that allow you to lift it and carry it around.
The Vebo can be used to boil or even steam veggies with ease. It comes with an elevated base, making steaming vegetables easier, and the handles allow you to grab and hold the boiled or steamed vegetables fresh off the stove. Its perforations allow the water to drip through, even making it easy to rinse vegetables under running water. The Vebo is like a metal colander in the fact that it performs the exact same job… but just infinitely better!
Rather than building a barrier, Malaysian design office No-To-Scale Studio proposed creating a 1,954 mile-long dining table. Comprising a slab of “continuous polished marble”, the structure would squash typical associations with a border by instead inviting guests on either side to enjoy each other’s company.
Guadalajara-based Estudio 3.14 came up with The Prison Wall proposal in 2016, just after Trump announced his plans to bolster the border as part of his election campaign. The bold pink conceptual structure references the style of Mexican architect Luis Barragán to celebrate the Mexico’s architectural heritage.
Released by satirical news site The Postillon, this spoof of an IKEA flat-pack furniture kit offered a “practical, ready-made solution” to cheaply building the continuous barrier between the two countries.
Earlier this week, architectural studio Rael San Fratello installed three pink seesaws between the slatted steel barrier to allow for children and adults on either side to play together. The studio said the installation provided a visual representation of the idea that “actions that take place on one side have a direct consequence on the other side”.
New World Design opted for an alternative way to highlight the absurdity of Trump’s proposal by starting a crowdfunding campaign to build a golden picket fence around the president’s compound in Palm Beach, Florida.
Architectural studio Rael San Fratello has installed three pink seesaws in between the metal slats of the US-Mexico border wall, so that children on either side can play together.
The shots capture people playing on three bright pink seesaws slotted into gaps of the steel wall that runs between El Paso in Texas and Ciudad Juárez in Mexico.
“The wall became a literal fulcrum for US-Mexico relations and children and adults were connected in meaningful ways on both sides with the recognition that the actions that take place on one side have a direct consequence on the other side,” said Rael in the Instagram post.
He added that the event was “filled with joy, excitement, and togetherness at the borderwall” and described it as one of the “incredible experiences” of the duo’s career.
Rael, an architecture professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and San Fratello, who is also an associate professor of design at San José State University, produced the installation with Taller Herrería, a workshop located in Ciudad Juárez.
The duo, which established Rael San Fratello as an architectural research studio, with endeavours including the Emerging Objects project, which experiments with 3D printing.
It began investigating the US-Mexico border in 2000, and came up with the seesaw concept as the Teeter Totter Wall 10 years ago. These early designs and ideas are documented in Rael’s book Borderwall as Architecture, which was published as a protest against the barrier.
Rael San Fratello’s seesaws installation at the US-Mexico border follows a string of controversies surrounding the Mexican border wall. A key commitment in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was that a wall would be built between the two countries.
However in December 2018, the US senate refused to fund the $5.7 billion (£4.4 billion) cost of the structure, which triggered the country’s longest government shutdown in history. It has since been agreed that Trump’s administration will conduct repairs of the existing wall, rather than increasing its length.
Earlier this year, architecture studio New World Design launched a crowdfunding campaign to build a golden picket fence around Trump’s compound in Palm Beach, Florida, to highlight the absurdity of his plans for the Mexico border wall.
We’re still somewhere in the 21st century, but man has broken the shackles of being bound to Earth. We’re now an intergalactic species, and we’ve got equipment and vehicles to travel long distances in space and explore cosmic entities beyond Mars… the asteroids. Meet the MMU, or the Manned Maneuvering Unit, a concept created by Bruno Gauthier LeBlanc and Dave Arredondo. Named the Boomerang, for its unique boomerang shape, and also probably because it lets you travel to a certain point in space and back, this MMU seats one person, exposing just the arms and legs while the rest of the body fits inside the boomerang-shaped spacecraft. Controls on the front allow you to operate thrusters at the back that let you go darting through space, exploring parts of the solar system at will! I wonder how this thing would dock or land though…
Designers: Bruno Gauthier LeBlanc & Dave Arredondo
Residences that take cues from the canal houses in Belgium and the Netherlands, and minimal wood-clad homes in Scandinavia feature in this new development on the outskirts of Atlanta.
The new community called Serenbe was founded by Steve Nygren, who describes himself as a “developer by default”. He purchased 60 acres (24 hectares) of the area, complete with a farm, in 1991. Now, the sprawling area is ever-growing with housing and commercial ventures.
Serenbe includes a community called Grange, featuring a row of white townhouses and a farm
Located in Georgia’s Chattahoochee Hill Country, and a 30 minutes drive from Atlanta International Airport, Serenbe is characterised by its red clay earth, rolling hills and dense pine forests, as well as its dense neighbourhoods.
A stone house forms part of Selbroune, the development’s first neighbourhood
Nygren sought to harness the area’s natural charm by creating a new type of neighbourhood in this undeveloped area south of the city – one that focused on community, rather than space and isolation often found in America’s sprawling suburbs.
“I wanted to be focused on being a town versus a development,” he told Dezeen.
A minimal white house with a glass front also features at Serenbe
As an attempt to save the area from cookie-cutter houses on large plots, Nygren chose to build free-standing homes close to one another and have them centred around a main commercial strip, complete with several townhouses structures.
The outer areas are left untouched to allow nature to flourish, while a natural wastewater treatment system has been designed by Reed Hilderbrand.
Forests encircle this wood residence, denoting its location on the outskirts
To model such a community, Nygren rezoned the 1,400 acres (566-hectares) on a cluster of villages with dense housing and commercial activity. Nature serves as the divides.
“We moved all the density to 30 per cent, and 70 per cent has to be maintained for any agricultural activity,” he said. “So it can be equestrian or farms, but it cannot be residential housing.”
Four different neighbourhoods, or “hamlets”, make up Serenbe, which are spread across the property in “serpentine omega forms”. Also featured across the development are shops, restaurants, a hotel, horse stables, a farm, nature trails and pastures.
Other communities under development include Mado, where this house is located
Each neighbourhood is designed with a different architectural style, and also serves a different focus or “key pillar” that Nygren has identified for a healthy life. These pillars are art, agriculture, wellbeing and education. The first two have been built, the third is currently being developed. The fourth, for education and play, is yet to break ground.
Nygren worked in Phil Tabb, who has a doctorate focused on the English village system, to act as a consultant on the development.
“I wanted to really see what we could do to make Serenbe look more organic as a town rather than a development,” he told Dezeen. “So that’s why you see the variety.”
Another house in Mado has a linear form inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture
To make these neighbourhoods distinct from one another, Nygren looked to housing models around the world for architectural inspiration, taking cues mostly from European cities. Almost all of the structures are designed and built in-house by Serenbe Planning and Design.
Building typologies in England, the Nordic countries, the hill towns of Italy, France, the Netherlands and Belgium proved most influential.
“I was inspired by the countryside of England,” he said. “After world war two, they realised they couldn’t indulge in urban sprawl because the island was only so big and so they put in land laws.”
Sidewalks have shrubs and flowers, and garbage and recycling bins built alongside in the ground
Currently under construction is Serenbe’s Mado neighbourhood. The architecture has Scandinavian influences reflective of the colourful buildings in Malmo, Sweden and Copenhagen.
In addition to having many free-standing houses nestled close to one another, Mado also features a cafe, spa, gym and outdoor pool.
“We looked at what are the components that make for great communities in the past, and great places where you want to visit, or live,” he said.
The fourth neighbourhood, which focuses on play and education, is yet to be built and is expected to include a four-acre (1.6-hectare) park in the woods, an observation tower treehouse and a zip line.
The development accommodates pastures, horse stables and gardens
Other parcels include Serenbe’s first neighbourhood called Selbourne, which broke ground in 2004. It features a varied architecture style and cues to the 1930s with brickwork and bungalows. Construction on the second borough, called Grange, started in 2007 and consists of white brick townhouses from the 1890s that are evocative of the Low Countries.
A smaller neighbourhood in between these two, called Crossroads, comprises 16 cottages that are evocative of the American South in the 1800s when homes were painted white because the paint pigment was expensive.
Trails for hiking, running and horseback riding are also integrated within Serenbe
Today, the Serenbe community is home to over 650 residents. Along with acting model for a new community development in the American South connected to nature, it forms an experiment in urbanism and commercial activity, creating a wealth of jobs in its stores, restaurants, and other service sectors.
As e-commerce continues to grow, it’s becoming increasingly important to rethink wasteful shipping practices and come up with alternatives to bulky boxes and filler materials. Minnesota-based materials company 3M has just debuted a new type of packaging that claims to cut the time, materials, and space required to ship products by 50%.
The Flex & Seal Shipping Roll is made up of three plastics developed by 3M: a tear- and water-proof outer layer, a bubble-wrap cushioning middle layer, and an adhesive inner layer. The packaging option can be used on a variety of objects under three pounds, a category that, according to 3M, accounts for 60% of the items that are bought online. Users can simply cut what they need from the roll, fold the material over the object, and press down to seal—no need for tape. The adhesive only sticks to itself so there’s no worry that it will stick to whatever you’re packing.
The process is a lot easier than the multi-step process of making a cardboard box and the resulting packages save a lot of space in delivery trucks. According to Fast Company, 3M is looking into large-scale retail partnerships with companies like Walmart and Target who are competing with Amazon’s Prime delivery speeds. “Some of their business is automated [with robot-powered fulfillment centers], but some is done by hand,” said business director Remi Kent. “We think we’re a better solution for those items done by hand.”
The material can be recycled with other plastics, though 3M said it’s looking into alternative materials that would make recycling even easier.
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.
