Architectural designers Ivo Tedbury and Freddie Hong have created a 3D-printed device that adapts door handles for hands-free opening, in a bid to help prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Tedbury and Hong, who met while studying architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, designed a curved plastic device that attaches onto “fire escape-style” pull door handles via a pair of cable ties.

The idea is that instead of opening the door with their hands, users loop their arm through the adaptor and pull the door open.

The duo came up with the design as a way to respond to outbreaks of Covid-19, which can reportedly last on some surfaces for days and is spread by human touch.

“I live in a block of flats and was frustrated at the number of shared doors between my flat and the outside world,” Tedbury told Dezeen. “If you’re going out to buy groceries, you might end up with contaminated hands within 30 seconds.”

“Not being medics or involved in other front line services, we were happy to try to help fight the coronavirus in other ways.”

The design of the device, which can be 3D-printed in under three hours, is available to download for free on a platform called Hands-Free Architecture. It comes with a poster that can be printed to show how to use the handle.

In addition to releasing the Open Source handle adaptor, Tedbury and Hong set up Hands-Free Architecture as a provocative platform to encourage others to share ways to respond to the current pandemic.

“To help fight Covid-19, our interactions with the built environment need to go ‘Hands-Free’,” they said. “We’re sharing designs for adaptor kits to reduce physical contact with shared surfaces in buildings.”

“What simple things can we do to temporarily ‘invert’ architecture and design norms?” Tedbury added.

Tedbury said that while unable to fight on the medical front, architects and designers are able to adapt the built environment to make safer spaces that could prevent the spread of the virus.

“It’s also meant to be a bit of provocation – the majority of existing architecture and design is geared towards bringing people together to enable human interactions (on a group scale), and centering our personal physical interactions with the built environment around our hands (on an individual scale),” Tedbury said.

“In the time of the coronavirus pandemic, both of these are actively unhelpful,” he continued.

A number of architects and designers have come up with creative solutions to problems caused by the coronavirus crisis.

Italian architects Carlo Ratti and Italo Rota have designed an intensive-care pod within a shipping container that could be added to hospitals fighting the pandemic.

Graphic designers have also developed images of support and informative illustrations that advise on how to slow the spread of the virus.

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Jesse Finkelstein started his doctoral program in a time of crisis. “It was around 2016, and I was just very aware that a lot of people around me in my own community, myself included, were being impacted by the election,” he says. “I was very conscious of the administration not being friendly toward sexual and gender minorities. I wanted to be more of a direct help—that was my primary motivation for going back to school. I wanted to put boots on the ground in terms of contributing to help, in my case, with mental health issues.”

The designer turned his attention to a PsyD in clinical psychology at Rutgers, and quickly became enamored with dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) as a stress relief and emotional regulation tool—so much so that he, along with his sister Meredith Finkelstein, developed an original game featuring its coping techniques, live on Kickstarter now. And, as the world roils in COVID-19 panic, the pair see a new urgency to their project.

What dialectical behavior therapy is—and how it can be a help to everyone

“DBT is a therapy that is specifically geared towards people who experience emotional dysregulation,” Jesse explains. Though that often means people who have borderline personality disorder, experience suicidal ideation, or exhibit self-harming behaviors, it’s really a set of skills applicable to everyone.

“I personally use the DBT skills throughout my day and my life,” he says. “Because they’re grounded in mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, and recognizing pain without adding unneeded suffering.”

“I feel like right now”—as COVID-19 catches all the world’s anxious attention—”when there’s so much anxiety and fear, which is very real, how can we have a relationship to that fear that doesn’t add on additional suffering? I think that DBT is very useful for that.”

Making a therapy tool into a game

To play the game, each player gets six “skill cards” and the group names one person the “wise mind.” That person places a “conflict card” in the middle of the table, then each player plays the skill that they believe is best equipped to resolve the conflict and makes a case for their choice. The wise mind selects a winner for that round. The deck can also be used more like tarot for solitary reflection.

Not many psychological treatments are offered as boardgames. So the Finkelsteins wanted to be sure they’ll strike the right balance of grounded tools—which even in a clinical context include aspects of humor, irreverence, and metaphor—and an engaging game you can really play (without feeling like a “loser” at the “game of real life” if you don’t win).

“I think the challenge,” says Meredith, “is how do you make this a game? How is this different from therapy? Or from talking? And what does it mean to win?”

“I’m really interested in systems design and comparative systems, not just games,” she says. “It could be different astrological systems or different conceptual systems. And I think that DBT is a system, right? You can look at it comparatively with other systems and I think the whole question is how can we play with these systems and these rules? That’s what turns it into a game.

“It’s not like chess—a loss isn’t really a loss in the same way. And these are serious issues we really do want people to learn. This can be a game where people learn strategies for their mental wellbeing.”

The siblings developed it in collaboration with the Dialectical Behavior Therapy Clinic at Rutgers University (DBT-RU), directed by Dr. Shireen Rizvi—”so they helped with the language around the skills and making sure it could be useful in a therapeutic setting,” and fellow researchers did playtests with clients.

There’s room for irreverence and humor in therapy

Even if a therapy system seems like a challenge to fit into game design, the use of metaphor and irreverence flows naturally through clinical psychology and The Game of Real Life.

“In DBT, there’s a real emphasis on irreverence as a therapeutic tool,” says Jesse. “The idea is that by using irreverence, you can help shake someone out of their current thinking. It’s a way of helping things appear less hardened or less fixed than they are.”

Metaphor helps with this, too. “ACT incorporates a lot of use of metaphor in therapy as well,” Jesse says. “with this idea of working with a client to look at things differently. And so the other nice thing about the game is that it functions as a metaphor for clients because it’s not necessarily an issue that they themselves are encountering, but they may use it as a way of playing with the skills, not in a situation where they feel dysregulated.”

In the game, the Finkelsteins take players out of their own everyday issues with challenges that veer more into allegory and humor. There’s a scenario about an Ahab-like sea captain coming to the frustrating realization that he’s never going to catch this whale, another about a bus driver announcing to his passengers that driving under 60 miles per hour will trigger an explosion—sounds a lot like the 1994 movie Speed, doesn’t it? There are weightier challenge cards, too, like walking past your dealer’s house after years of sobriety and feeling an urge to use, but the overall effect of encountering many problems, serious and silly, is meant to be a healthy remove from your own problems.

“I think irreverence helps draw attention to the fact that thoughts aren’t real,” Jesse says, “that these thoughts are just thoughts.”

Why DBT matters in times of stress, from election season to a global pandemic

Jesse gravitated toward helping the vulnerable in the wake of Trump’s election—now, as he and his sister are getting ready to release their game, communities around the world are feeling vulnerable in the wake of the COVID-19 coronavirus. It’s another occasion where so many of us need some extra support and direction.

As I’m speaking to Jesse and Meredith for this interview, Meredith mostly keeps herself on mute—she’s flying home from a freelance gig as the government is starting to restrict travel out of the U.S. “We’ve got older parents, so I know that’s a source of stress for both of us, Meredith has her two sons, who she really wants to get home to. This is undoubtedly a stressful time. I think there’s no way to not experience it,” her brother says.

He sees DBT as a toolkit that’s keeping him sane in this trying situation. “I think we’re both relatively highly strung people. I’m going to speak for myself here—I experience anxiety, and these DBT skills have become very important in my own life in helping manage my stress and also remain present.”

“The word ‘dialectic’ in DBT describes how multiple truths may coexist,” he says. “The truth of this moment is that we are living through a scary and painful pandemic. AND there is the truth that we can all find moments of peace. We need to hold both truths to care for ourselves and others, and to make effective change for the future.”

“Everything in DBT is about balance,” he says. “On the one hand, it’s really important to remain informed, but if you’re checking your phone all the time for the latest news updates, you’re A) going to burn yourself out and B) it can function as an avoidance strategy. You may need to sit with the discomfort of uncertainty. We live in a time where there’s always new news to consume. And I think we really have to be balanced with how we consume it.”

The Game of Real Life is live on Kickstarter through May 24, 2020.

Written and performed by 18-year-old Angela Muñoz, “In My Mind” is laden with strings, velvety vocals, and twinkling harps. “I wrote this song thinking about the journey of love. Despite my age I have an awareness of what expressing love looks like. As I was writing this song, I wanted to challenge myself as a songwriter. This led me to imagine myself in the place of George Gershwin. If I could choose anyone to interpret this song it would be Sarah Vaughan. Ultimately love can manifest itself in many ways,” Muñoz says in a statement. Jazzy, soulful and entirely mesmerizing, the song features production by composer/arranger/producer Adrian Younge (member of The Midnight Hour, and collaborator with Kendrick Lamar and Ghostface Killah, among others) who created a polished but nostalgic sound. Ultimately the listener is treated to an ethereal, serene lullaby.

Dezeen promotion:a newly published report on the cross-laminated timber supply chain demonstrates the material’s sustainable credentials as it becomes more mainstream in the US.

Written by members of the Department of Architecture and School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington, the Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) report investigates the environmental impact cross-laminated timber (CLT).

The authors of the report commissioned by construction company Katerra, carried out an in-depth environmental analysis of both Katerra’s CLT factory and a building constructed from the material.

“The market needs mass timber to succeed”

CLT is a building material made up of alternating layers of sawn wood.

It is celebrated for having a lower embodied carbon footprint than traditional construction materials such as concrete and steel, because wood is renewable and low impact.

The LCA report seeks to verify the material’s sustainable credentials, while also showcasing the material’s ability to help deliver better quality buildings in terms of in-use performance and occupant wellbeing.

The company is championing striving to make CLT the US’ leading building material.

“Green technologies are enhancing our ability to create more sustainable solutions that also meet structural and aesthetic demands,” explained Nick Milestone, Katerra’s director of mass timber.

“Mass timber, and CLT in particular, is the only material grown for construction that offers incredible biophilic design solutions,” he told Dezeen.

“The market needs mass timber to succeed in order to meet ever-increasing housing and climate demands.”

Study explores Katerra’s first CLT building

A key study in the report was focused on the company’s first building to make extensive use of its CLT system.

Named the Catalyst building, the five-story office was designed in partnership with Michael Green Architecture and uses CLT for almost its entire structure and building envelope.

The assessment found that the use of CLT nearly offset all of the building’s upfront embodied carbon. According to Katerra, this means it is significantly lower than other North American commercial offices measured in other studies.

Another section of the report examined the company’s own high-volume CLT factory in Spokane Valley, Washington, which demonstrates how the company is leading the way in bringing the material to the mainstream in the US.

Katerra’s factory makes CLT products using timber sourced in sustainability-managed forests in Canada, and is capable of producing 140 boards per minute when at full operation.

Equivalent to 50, 23,000-square-metre, commercial office buildings a year, this is “more than any plant in the world” and means the company’s CLT it produces has a smaller environmental footprint compared to other manufacturers in the US.

CLT embodies “Katerra’s guiding principles”

Reflecting on the report, Katerra’s product engineer Hans-Erik Blomgren concluded that “CLT has proven to be a versatile building block that allows for more efficient, factory-built, and sustainable approaches to design and construction”.

He added: “Beyond its sustainability as a building material, CLT creates a new paradigm of sustainable systems. From sourcing to the factory to onsite logistics – it creates a new, more sustainable supply chain.”

Find out more about the LCA results in the full report, or learn more about Katerra on its website.

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Si nous sommes habitués aux bagarres dans les stations de métro, cette image capturée dans le métro de Londres reste pourtant bien surprenante.

Dans le cadre du concours du photographe de l’année de la faune sauvage du Musée d’histoire naturelle de Londres, le photographe Sam Rowley a réalisé un cliché incroyable. L’artiste a pour habitude de capturer des instants fugaces, et il le prouve une fois de plus avec ce cliché de ce qui semble être un combat violent entre deux souris.

« Ce combat a duré une fraction de seconde, avant que l’un d’entre eux n’attrape une miette et qu’ils ne se séparent ».

Avec cette photo – baptisée « Station Squabel » – le photographe a obtenu le Lumix People’s Choice Award 2019. Pour voir plus de scènes improbables de la vie animale, suivez Sam Rowley sur Instagram.

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