Hasta La Ideas

The planet’s oldest asteroid crater, Pigalle basketball court’s revamp, moon cars, musical archives and more

Earth’s Oldest Asteroid Impact is Two Billion Years Old

The oldest asteroid collision on the planet, the Yarrabubba impact crater in Western Australia, is a whopping 2.229 billion years old. After analyzing minerals at the crater site, researchers have found the asteroid hit at the end of an era called Snowball Earth (one of the planet’s ice ages). Scientists, led by Dr Timmons Erickson (a geochronologist at Houston’s NASA Johnson Space Center), studied around 200 pounds of rocks from the site and calculated the age of the crater on the “measurements of 39 zircon and monazite crystals.” The ballpark for uncertainty in those 2.229 billion years is just five million, and “the next oldest-oldest impact structure Vredefort Dome in South Africa is over 200 million years younger.” While the crater is no longer visible, and no topography signposts its existence, it still holds our planet’s secrets deep inside. Find out more at the New York Times.

Radiohead Public Library’s Huge Online Archive

Opened today, the Radiohead Public Library is a huge online archive of the beloved British band’s albums, music videos, live concert footage, television clips, merch, artwork and more. Members can even create (and print out) their membership cards. The Twitter announcement reads, “Radiohead.com has always been infuriatingly uninformative and unpredictable. We have now, predictably, made it incredibly informative.” Every day this week, a band member will take users on a curated (albeit personal) tour through some of their favorite pieces of ephemera. Today, bassist Colin Greenwood shows viewers various videos, one being a performance in Ireland, which he captions: “Dublin 2000. It was in tents. I think I bounced on top of it during the day. A big blue bouncy castle. Think I broke some working at height rules.” See more at the new Radiohead.com.

Pigalle Basketball Court’s 2020 Makeover

The beloved Pigalle basketball court (located on Rue Duperré in Paris’ 9th Arrondissement) has received a makeover, the first since its bright gradient look from three years ago. The Pigalle brand (founded and helmed by Stéphane Ashpool) joined forces again with creative agency ILL-Studio and Nike for the gaming-inspired refresh, which features only recycled materials and”blocks of color intertwined with graphic icons, including arrows, plus signs, and target symbols.” Shades of blue, along with splashes of peach, plum and lavender have been used. The court, which used to be a parking lot, is once again open to the public. See more photos by Alex Penfornis at designboom.

One-of-a-Kind Machine-Made Ceramics

Israeli designer Ofri Lifshitz’s “Industrial One Of” addresses our fear of automation overtaking craft. Lifshitz created a machine-run reproduction of a ceramic jigger that can produce impressive plates and bowls—complete with unique inclusions and a maker’s signature. The deviation is made using a string she programmed to stroke at a particular moment in the process, but each remains slightly different due to the jigger’s sporadic jolts and jumps. The project is an important exploration of craft, human touch and its value. Read more at Design Milk.

Short Film “Kamali” is About More Than Skateboarding

Directed by Sasha Rainbow, the 24-minute film Kamali documents societal changes in India through the story of a seven-year-old girl who lives in Mahabalipuram. The tender, thoughtful and aesthetically beautiful film (originally intended to be feature-length) shows how Kamali, a wildly talented skater, helps to redefine “gender roles amidst the backdrop of a rapidly changing India.” The narrative also follows Kamali’s mother Suganthi in the wake of her brave decision to leave an abusive husband. Addressing India’s caste system, identity, gender, courage and “the first separation between mother and child,” Kamali continues to make the festival rounds and receive awards. Read more about the Bafta-nominated short at It’s Nice That or watch it online now.

Lexus’ Vehicular Visions for the Moon

For Document Journal’s Fall/Winter 2019 print issue, editors asked Lexus designers a question: “How will we navigate the moon’s low-gravity, rocky terrain?” Using their current models as starting points, the designers drafted seven concepts up for the task and Ian Cartabiano, Lexus’ Design President, explained each one to Document Journal’s Maraya Fisher. “We were trying to create a very futuristic and avant-garde statement that still conveys a premium style,” he explains. From the four-wheeled “Moon Car” (which is capable of navigating the ground and taking flight) to the six-wheeled “LEXUS Lunar” (designed to commandeer cliffs and craters), these designs are proof that automakers are considering vehicles and tech for use beyond our home planet. See more at Document Journal.

Inside Cruise’s Fully Autonomous Vehicle

With similar measurements as most SUVs, a new vehicle by Cruise (a subsidiary of GM) requires passengers to forfeit all control of the car. Without a steering wheel or pedals, the interior design references subway cars, rather than buses or vans. Officially named Origin, the first model is most obviously different from competitors’ autonomous rides in the absence of the option to take control should something go awry with the software. Engineers at Cruise stand by the belief that by the time Origin hits production (and roads) the technology will be at a “superhuman level of performance” and the likelihood of an accident, incident or malfunction will be near zero. Read more at The Verge.

Fortnite Video Game Now An Official High School and College Sport

The incredibly popular multiplayer game Fortnite is now a regulated high school and college sport, courtesy of a partnership between Epic Games (the studio behind the game) and PlayVS, the governing body that handles registering individual schools and teams. Since the game’s release in July of 2017, it has logged 78.3 million users, raked in just under $2 billion in annual profits, and successfully attracted the coveted 12-24 age range. With professional matches and championships rivaling the Super Bowl in total viewership, potential for collegiate scholarships for the new sport, and a realization that professional gaming is a viable (and high earning) career, more and more students are being encouraged to play if they’re talented—a stark contrast to traditional efforts to dissuade playing video games. The country’s six conferences will begin their inaugural regular season on 26 February. Read more at Forbes.

Link About It is our filtered look at the web, shared daily in Link and on social media, and rounded up every Saturday morning.

Charlie Luxton Design decided to “refurbish not demolish” a neglected, brick bungalow on the edge of a village in the Cotswolds to create a family home.

Designed by Oxfordshire-based Charlie Luxton Design the home, called Lamorna, draws on the appearance of the neighbouring agricultural structures to frame views out to an adjacent Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

“The knee-jerk reaction is to knock down the [bungalow] and start again to make the most of the plot in current housing terms,” said the practice.

“We believe this is wrong. The embodied carbon and energy locked up in the existing structure needs to be valued and re-used despite government VAT incentives to do the opposite.”

The original walls and concrete floor slab of the bungalow were retained, stripped back and re-insulated before being topped with the home’s new roof structure, which provides greater height in the living spaces and adds an additional to part of the home..

“We had to add an entire new storey with a constraint on additional ridge-height, but doing that opened up fantastic views across the landscape,” Charlie Luxton Design founder Charlie Luxton told Dezeen.

These new pitched-roof forms have been designed to reference the agricultural forms of the surrounding countryside buildings.

Entering past a small courtyard, a series of wooden portals create a “processional entrance” into the home, which is loosely L-shaped to look out at both the front courtyard and the south-facing garden.

“We created a new focus around the courtyard and entrance area to try and embellish this edge of the village/town, urban/rural location and balance the two,” explained Luxton.

“The courtyard was a more controlled connection to the town and then the garden side opened up to make a connection to the landscape beyond.”

Moving past the bedrooms which face out to the northeast, the kitchen and dining areas sit overlooking the garden to the south, where a wooden trellis covered with climbers and vines creates shade.

The living room is nestled in the more private heart of the home, looking out towards the front courtyard and a single-storey garage structure.

All of these spaces have new, higher roofs, while to the east a new storey has been added above the main bedrooms to house two children’s rooms.

These upstairs bedrooms upstairs are decorated with a jungle theme, including tiger wallpaper that extends out into the corridor to “bring some life and fun and sunshine into that area of the house,” said Luxton.

Charlie Luxton founded his studio in 2005, and runs it alongside his work presenter TV shows including Building the Dream.

In 2013, the practice collaborated with Takero Shimizaki to renovate a 1960s London home, giving it a dramatic black-painted finish.

Photography is by Ed RS Aves.

The post Charlie Luxton Design restores and extends cotswolds bungalow appeared first on Dezeen.

This week on Dezeen, the work of up-and-coming French designers, alongside sofas and rugs were on show at the Maison&Objet furniture and accessories fair in Paris.

Maison&Objet’s Rising Talents exhibition highlighted the work of six emerging French designers: Natacha & Sacha, Laureline Galliot, Mathieu Peyroulet Ghilini, Wendy Andreu, Julie Richoz and Adrien Garcia.

Their work demonstrated a trend for creating handcrafted objects, with the judges concluding that industrial design is falling out of favour in France.

Homeware and accessories brand Trame chose Maison&Objet to launch its first collection. Named A Voyages to Meknes, the debut collection of rugs and accessories is based on the fictional marriage of Louis XIV’s daughter and the Sultan of Morocco.

Numerous statement sofas were also unveiled at the fair, including one based on the shape of pebble stones and the first sofa from Chinese furniture brand Maisondada.

In Vienna IKEA announced its plans to build a city-centre store that will have no car parking spaces. The IKEA Vienna Westbahnhof store will be designed by Querkraft Architekten to address “radically changed customer and mobility behaviours”.

Its greenery covered facade will have more than 100 trees placed on balconies within its gridded structure.

In architecture news Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG, defended having a meeting with Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro after a photograph of the meeting was widely criticised, including by Dezeen commenters.

“Creating a list of countries or companies that BIG should shy away from working with seems to be an oversimplification of a complex world,”  responded Ingels in a statement.

In New York the continuing saga over the fate of Two World Trade Center continued with BIG’s design for a skyscraper  on the site being scrapped in favour of the original proposal by British studio Foster + Partners.

The Norman Foster-led studio also tried to revive another major project, this time in London, by launching a planning appeal against a decision to reject its Tulip tower.

Foster also proposed a design contest to create a home for UK parliament’s House of Lords outside of London, which could be a potential future project for the studio.

Popular projects and products this week included a skinny house in London and a minimalist electric screwdriver that was designed to be “unintimidating”. Readers also enjoyed roundups of bathrooms and black cabins in remote places around the world.

The post This week sofas and young designers were showcased at Maison&Objet appeared first on Dezeen.

British designer Samuel Wilkinson has updated the classic director’s chair, introducing a hidden mechanism that allows the fabric seat to be held in tension without any noticeable support.

The London-based designer created the Prop chair for The Conran Shop, which tasked him with creating a folding chair with a simple aesthetic that could be used indoors and outdoors.

Due to the retailer’s customer base being focused around its main locations in London and Paris, the project was driven by the needs of high-end urban consumers.

“A lot of the customers we were targeting live in nice apartments but don’t have lots of space,” Wilkinson told Dezeen, “so it’s useful for them to own flexible furniture that looks good on a terrace but can also work inside.”

The Prop chair aims for a cleaner aesthetic than existing fabric folding-chairs, which typically feature horizontal struts that lock in place to push the two sides of the frame apart and maintain tension in the seat.

Wilkinson’s design replaces this element with a specially developed mechanism hidden in the rear hinge between the back supports and arm sections.

The rotating mechanism allows the arms to fold in one direction and stop at 20 degrees in the other. This prevents the rails along the sides of the seat from hitting each other as the chair is folded.

The mechanism also locks the frame in place when it is unfolded, ensuring there is enough tension in the seat to comfortably support the sitter.

The fabric seat tapers slightly at the front and back to increase the amount of tension in these areas and improve comfort.

The chair takes its name from its propeller-like tubular steel frame, which is asymmetrically pressed to create flat sections at the centre where the two halves meet.

The specially developed pressing creates a particularly thin and efficient form where the central hinge is located. The hinge itself is only visible on the inner surface.

The chair’s armrests are made from turned maple-wood with dished end details and machined recesses underneath that reveal the rounded ends of the metal frame.

The heavy cotton canvas seat is available in four colours, with a leather option providing an alternative for high-end interior projects. A folding table and padded lounge-chair that complement the Prop chair are currently under development.

In 2019, Wilkinson worked with The Conran Shop to design a dining chair based on the materials used to create classic 19th-century bistro chairs.

Wilkinson founded his eponymous industrial design studio in 2008. He focuses on pursuing fresh and innovative design solutions, backed by a strong understanding of materials and manufacturing processes.

He is best known for designing the award-winning Plumen 001 light bulb, and in 2018 launched his own lighting brand focusing on new uses for the latest LED-bulb technology.

Wilkinson’s previous furniture projects include a simple chair made using the traditional steam-bending techniques, and a collection of lightweight aluminium furniture for Italian brand EMU.

Photography is by Sylvain Deleu.

The post Samuel Wilkinson designs contemporary take on the director’s chair appeared first on Dezeen.

An exclusive series of evening events with WhistlePig Rye Whiskey

As roughly 50,000 festival-goers pass through the charmed ski town of Park City, Utah for Sundance, cultural events crop up along Main Street, neighboring towns and in the mountains, too. Once again, the exquisite Montage Deer Valley will host programming to accompany the premieres and parties downtown. Set during the evening, the Live at Montage music series features surprise performers in an intimate environment. It’s an exclusive reprieve that embodies the elegance of the venue, as well as returning alcohol sponsor WhistlePig Rye Whiskey.

The ski-in, ski-out property’s food and beverage program has been a draw since the hotel’s opening. Its high-design yurt has become a drinking destination of its own. In the midst of Sundance, with WhistlePig signature cocktails on the menu, it’ll be a necessary stop for anyone looking to experience the full breadth and depth of the festival.

Live at Montage takes place from 26 to 28 January in the Vista Lounge at the Montage Deer Valley, 6PM-9PM.

Images courtesy of Dan Campbell Photography