Hasta La Ideas

Rachel Armstrong, professor of experimental architecture at Newcastle University, will speak about cities of the future at Dezeen Day on 30 October.

Armstrong is a pioneer of living architecture, an approach that explores how buildings can have some of the properties of natural systems.

A professor at Newcastle University’s school of architecture, planning and landscape, she is also the director and founder of Experimental Architecture Group and coordinates the Living Architecture holiday home project.

At Dezeen Day, Armstrong will discuss how we can look to living systems to come up with more sustainable ways to design and build cities.

She will explore these ideas with fellow panelists transportation designer Paul Priestman and the curator of Barbican’s recent exhibition AI: More Than Human, Suzanne Livingston.

In 2009, Armstrong gave a TED talk about how architecture has the potential to grow and repair itself. In it, she explains how architecture has the power to connect cities to the natural world.

Armstrong talked about living architecture during a TED talk

Dezeen Day is an international architecture, interiors and design conference, which will take place at the BFI Southbank in London on 30 October. It will focus on key topics in architecture and design including entrepreneurialism, the circular economy and the future of design education.

Read about all the speakers announced so far and sign up to the newsletter to receive all Dezeen Day updates. See the full schedule for the day here.

Today is the last day to purchase discounted early-bird tickets, which you can buy using the form below or through the Eventbrite page.

You can receive an additional discount of £50 per ticket if you buy three or more tickets and students can claim theirs for only £75.

The illustration is by Rima Sabina Aouf.

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Microsoft has revealed the design of the Surface Duo, a dual-screen Android folding phone, which can be opened down the middle like a book.

Two 14.2 centimetre displays can be unfolded to create a small tablet device, which uses Google’s Android instead of Microsoft Windows.

Both screens can run different apps simultaneously, allowing the user to make calls while running a note-taking app, for example.

“We know, scientifically, that you will be more productive on two screens,” said Microsoft’s chief product officer Panos Panay.

Microsofts Surface Duo unfolds like a book

A 360-degree hinge allows the screens to close together to form a protective case, or fold back to be use as a palm-held device.

The phone can be switched into landscape mode and used as keyboard and screen setup, like a laptop, or as a games controller.

Although it can take calls, Panay stressed onstage that the device was not a phone but a “Surface” – Microsoft’s new category for personal technology.

The Surface Duo, which will be available to buy in late 2020, was unveiled alongside Surface Earbuds – wireless in-ear headphones – at Microsoft’s annual hardware event this week.

Microsoft revealed wireless earbuds as a rival to AirPods

Surface Earbuds, which appear to be Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s AirPods, have flat discs on the outside of the earbuds will respond to gesture control, so the user can change the volume or pause audio by tapping the outer surface.

Pairs of Surface Earbuds will come with a case that charges them.

These earbuds will also have voice control, and if they have an Office 365 subscription the Surface Earbuds can be used to direct Powerpoint presentations.

Microsoft also revealed details of the Surface Neo – a laptop with two screens that is only 5.6 millimetres thick.

The Surface Neo is surrounded by a protective layer of chemically strengthened Gorilla Glass. It will run on an Intel Lakefield processor and have a new version of Windows, called Windows 10X.

Other technology launched by the company at the event included the Surface Pro X, a 2-in-1 laptop and tablet with a detachable screen, and updates to its existing models the Surface Laptop 3 and Surface.

Last year Microsoft launched an Xbox controller that was adapted for gamers with disabilities.

Rival tech company Samsung had to postpone the launch of its folding phone the Galaxy Fold after problems with its screen breaking.

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Breaking news: Design Museum co-directors Deyan Sudjic and Alice Black are leaving their posts at the London museum. A successor has been lined up and is expected to be named later today, Dezeen understands.

Sudjic and Black will step down in January 2020 after working together for 12 years, with Sudjic becoming director emeritus.

The pair oversaw the Design Museum’s move from its premises in Shad Thames to its new home in the former Commonwealth Institute on Kensington High Street.

Pair moved Design Museum to new home

Sudjic was appointed director in 2006 and devised the strategy for the Design Museum’s expansion that would offer free admission for the first time. Black joined as deputy director in 2007 to lead the move to the institution’s new premises.

Black became co-director of the museum a month after the move into the John Pawson and OMA-designed building was completed in 2016.

Three years after the move the co-directors have decided it is time to move on, with the Design Museum expected to name the new director later today.

“Having established the Design Museum in its new home, after record visitors this year, I am now ready for a new challenge,” said Black.

“We have shown that design can change the world, and that the Design Museum has changed design. Now I want to see where design is going next,” added Sudjic.

Terence Conran “eternally grateful”

The new premises have allowed the museum to grow its annual visitor number dramatically, from 120,000 per year to 600,000 annually. Since the Design Museum relocated it has had 1.9 million visitors.

Earlier this year Sudjic curated an exhibition of the work of legendary film maker Stanley Kubrick, which was the most significant in the museum’s history.

“Moving the Design Museum to Kensington is the most significant moment of my whole career in design because it allowed all my early dreams and ambitions to come true,” added Terence Conran, the Design Museum’s founder.

“We have created a world class museum with the size and scope for the serious promotion and celebration of design and architecture in this country,” he added.

“I am eternally grateful to Deyan and Alice for their outstanding work in leading and realising this vision and for the three successful years we have enjoyed in our museum’s new iconic home. They have created the robust foundations that will ensure the Design Museum continues to promote the importance of design to our country for decades to come.”

Sudjic is a British design writer who was one of the co-founders of monthly magazine Blueprint, former editor of Domus and the former design and architecture critic for The Observer newspaper.

While at the Design museum he established Designs of the Year awards in 2007, with the Yves Behar-designed One Laptop Per Child project taking the first overall prize in 2008. In an interview with Dezeen in 2017, Sudjic said that it was a “a howling error” that the iPhone didn’t win the inaugural prize.

Photography is by Phil Sharp.

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The white-tile interior of this Aesop store has been designed by Mlkk Studio to match the materiality of buildings dotted around Taipei’s Daan district.

The Aesop Daan Signature store – which is shortlisted in the retail category of the 2019 Dezeen Awards – is located on a quiet street corner, and takes inspiration from the pale ceramic tiles that can be seen on the district’s shopfronts and buildings.

Matte alabaster tiles run across the store’s front facade and into its ground-floor interior, creating what Mlkk Studio describes as a “gentle continuation of the streetscape”.

“The design explores the tension between nature and urban environments,” said the studio, which is based in Hong Kong.

“These dominating ceramic tiles define the city as rigid, durable and unchangeable, but [our] design instead embraces the peculiarities, cracks and imperfections that develop over time to create a record of a changing environment.”

The store comprises a retail space, treatment room, flexible meeting area and back-of-house office. It’s fronted by large windows that look out across a planted patio and the adjacent road.

Tiles line the walls, ceiling and a pair of chunky service counters that help loosely arrange the space.

A few surfaces have deliberately been left exposed to reveal the textured mortar beneath, intended to sit in contrast to the polished ceramic tiles.

Behind the sales counter lies a sliding door that can be drawn back to extend the space for events, or closed to create a private space for meetings.

A narrow hammered glass door then leads through to a small consultation room – completed in darker tones, it’s meant to serve as a calming transitional space that helps visitors relax before treatments.

The treatment room features gently curving window ledges, seating, door frames and handles, offsetting the orderly geometry of the tiles.

“The smooth cement surface of the organic furniture requires exceptional craftsmanship to create,” explained the studio.

“Each is first milled into a rough shape, and then the cement layer is applied by the local master and handcrafted to a smooth geometry before the cement is dry and then further sanded to smooth.”

The studio has also added various climbing plants and herbs that will grow up the mortar walls, in between the tiles and across the facade, changing the store’s appearance over time.

“Often as an architect, we are being asked to design something to stay timeless and near perfection, so the outcome always looks new and fresh. However, in the commercial world and particularly in Asia, time is relatively short. In every few years, the brand or the landlord often ask to relocate the store or make a new one,” said the studio.

“Our question is whether we can embrace changes and appreciate the transformation, refreshing the store’s appearance in a subtle and prolonged manner without a drastic and abrupt renewal.”

This is not the first Aesop store that Mlkk Studio has completed. Earlier this year the studio created a branch for the Australian skincare brand in south Seoul, which is entirely lined in reclaimed red bricks.

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Japanese studio Nendo has created a collection of stackable chairs from recycled household plastics, which take design cues from a folded sheet of paper.

Designed for Danish furniture brand Republic of Fritz Hansen, the shell of the N02 Recycle chair is made from recycled polypropylene.

The chair is Fritz Hansen’s first move towards creating a chair for the circular economy, as it is made from recycled plastic and can be recycled again at the end of its life.

The plastic used for the chairs comes from household waste that has been collected, processed and reformed  in central Europe.

Discarded products such as food packaging and plastic bottles were ground into plastic pellets and melted down to form the chair’s seat. This process could in theory, be repeated again and again using an array of plastic objects.

“The fact that the material is constructed from everyday recycled plastic creates an extra connection between the user and the chair,” said Nendo founder Oki Sato.

“It’s an accessible design made for everyday use and made from everyday recycled, household plastics,” he added.

The the standard chair’s legs are made from powder coated steel, while the sledge base is made from 50 per cent recycled chromed steel and the base of the swivel chair is made from polished aluminium that is 95 per cent recycled.

Sturdy and stackable, the seats are true to Nendo’s minimal design character, and took their shape from a simple fold down the middle of a piece of paper found on Sato’s work table.

This fold was translated into a crease in the chair’s shell designed to support the sitter’s upper and lower back.

“We wanted to do a versatile, plastic, stacking chair in recycled materials,” said Christian Andresen, head of design at Fritz Hansen.

“Collaborating with studio Nendo meant the design would be simple and elegant, a really nice blend of Scandinavian and Japanese aesthetics,” he added.

The characteristic minimalism of both Scandanavian and Japanese design come together in seven shell colour options, which each take cues from the earthy, warm tones found in Nordic nature.

These colours include dark orange, dark red, dark blue, light blue, grey, black and off-white.

Available in stores in November 2019, the N02 Recycle chair is also being launched in three different base formats – four-legged, sledge and swivel bases.

According to Fritz Hansen, these different colour and leg options grant the chair more versatility, suited to a range of environments such as dining rooms, home offices or meeting rooms.

The Danish furniture brand recently opened its biggest ever showroom designed by Jaime Hayon in Xi’an, China, featuring “temple-like” interiors with high ceilings and vaulted walkways.

The 1,000-square-metre store is Fritz Hansen’s first in the country, and is part of its ambition to become “the biggest Danish brand in China”.

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