We are all seeing the effects of lesser vehicles on the road due to the lockdown, the air in so many cities has become cleaner than it has been in decades. So much so that you can see mountains and monuments that were otherwise hidden in a cloud of pollution. This unprecedented situation has shown us that we have the ability to slow down climate change with the right actions and one of them is to reduce air pollution – that will send major positive ripples through our ecosystem. The simplest way to contribute to that is by investing in an electric vehicle like Switch.
Switch is designed to make commuting in the city easier and solve the troubles one faces like the frequency of public transport, crowded parking, and poor infrastructure. Currently, you have electric rideshare scooters that are popular in urban settings like Bird, Lime, and Yugo but they come with an added responsibility of parking and crowding the sidewalks. Switch is different from its competitors because it is truly portable. Its flat-pack mechanism allows you to just fold it up and carry it along even if you’re walking or using a public transport service, you won’t have to worry about loading it and unloading it. It has a sleek build that blends in with your lifestyle and is as easy as carrying a backpack.
The scooter is created keeping the ever-evolving future in mind and comes with a fingerprint enabled unlock button which is located below the handlebar. One of the coolest features is how the accelerator and brake pedals have been incorporated into the handlebar – it simplifies the user experience and interface. Designers didn’t want the users’ lives to be planned around charging, so the electric scooter uses a high capacity swappable battery that can be easily exchanged for a fully charged one from a Switch station. It comes with an integrated navigation app that also reports on the statistics of your vehicle. Pollution only makes your immune system weaker (especially air pollution – it attacks your lungs and makes you more susceptible to viruses like Covid-19), so once the pandemic ends let us make a collective choice to build a cleaner ‘normal’ for our health and the planet’s health too.
Designers: Adil Lokhandwala, Adhithya Vishnu M, Aditya Tupe and Amit Mirchandani of Lucid Design.
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Digging into the brand’s reemergence in the basketball category
In 2018, PUMA reentered the basketball market with the unveiling of the brand’s first basketball sneaker in 20 years: the PUMA Clyde Court, named after the charismatic former NBA player Walt “Clyde” Frazier. Those sneakers reference a storied relationship between the brand and the beloved sport. Shortly thereafter, they announced a shortlist of high-profile players to ink sponsorship deals and Jay-Z as their creative director. This renewed focus on basketball was carefully considered and intended to be the crucial starting point for the brand’s reinvention.
With basketball sneakers as the core component, and fueled by creativity and a little underdog energy (thanks to their ranking in sportswear revenue share behind giants Nike and Adidas), PUMA Hoops then continued its rebirth with Jeremy Sallee, their Head of Footwear Design, at the helm.
Walt “Clyde” Frazier at PUMA Hoops’ Debut / image courtesy of PUMA
Before being employed by the brand, while recovering from an achilles tear suffered during a basketball game, Sallee heard PUMA’s aforementioned announcements. Inspired, he sketched sneaker designs for a project he titled #AchillesSeries—a collection of potential shoes for any number of big name clients—while passing time during his recovery. After seeing the concepts, PUMA approached him to take on the role.
Images courtesy of Jeremy Sallee
“When you tear your achilles what people probably know is that you have to be out for about a year,” Sallee explains. “You’re pretty much out of commission and back to normal after about a year. But that first month, you are on your back… I’m super-active, so being on my back for a month was super-depressing. To keep myself sane and keep myself going, I started drawing shoes—just to keep me happy. Every day I would post a new shoe and it didn’t matter what brand it was. I wasn’t reaching out to get a job or anything. But in the midst of that, doing it every day, blogs picked it up, and all of a sudden big brands started to call.”
Sallee has been drawing sneakers of all sorts and making them in limited edition quantities for signature labels of his own since he could remember. Coupled with ambitions of a career in professional basketball, and a stint at the collegiate level at Akron University, Sallee had uniquely positioned himself as the right fit for PUMA.
Image courtesy of PUMA
Artistically, Sallee felt it was the right fit too. The team there, with its first designs already completed, did not have to produce a signature sneaker for a spotlight sponsored player, reference seasons past in their new productions, or attempt to market some overstated technical or material innovation. Rather, PUMA, Sallee tells us, “had a bunch of potential, no recent baggage and awesome heritage. It was exciting to see something that they’re going to put money behind that I could start from scratch, basically. We’re using way more non-traditional ways of going about basketball. Rather than focusing on performance first—making you run faster, jump higher—we made it so that non-basketball players could relate to it.”
Image courtesy of PUMA
Before joining PUMA, Sallee was already working this way. The sketches from his therapeutic project were not shaped by wear-testing or performance metrics. He was conceptualizing sneakers based on intuition from prior playing experience and what interested him as a consumer. “The Clyde Hardwood and the Sky Modern were both based off of things I did before I got to the company,” Sallee says. “It actually worked out so well. It’s funny how that happens. You know, companies don’t usually show any of their things until they come out. Technically these were sketches that were already done, and had been out there.”
Images courtesy of PUMA
Sallee’s designs impress with their ability to mask various elements, making for cleaner silhouettes. The basketball shoes he’s designed don’t overtly point out air-pockets in the heel or arched toe-pads like others do. While PUMA Hoops’ shoes perform well because it’s a requirement, they’re not just for on the court. Finding a middle ground, Sallee uses design elements from the brand’s past to maintain a recognizable style but balances that with contemporary twists. “Everything we do is based off something in the past,” he says. “It’s important for the authenticity of us doing basketball shoes.”
“Materials and color were important to calling back to this heritage,” he says. “I call it ‘modern vintage.’ A lot of shoes are using all kinds of synthetics and nobody’s even using real leather anymore. So, that was a big point for me: let’s get some leather back on the shoe, because those were the good old days. The stuff I used to collect when I was younger was made of leather. It had that feeling. It was important to find a nice balance between the modern lightweight materials and the authentic, vintage leather basketball used to be known for. The way for us to stand out is to almost be the anti-basketball basketball brand. We try to be different.”
Beyond PUMA’s dedicated basketball segment, this rebellious energy has led to colorful reimagined takes on iconic silhouettes and the emergence of new styles entirely. The introduction of the RS-X³ Move provides PUMA a competitor to pit against chunky styles by bigger brands. Their Style Rider Stream On takes tips from the iconic Roma, but satisfies demands from consumers who lean toward releases from high-profile designers and luxury fashion houses. Still, the styles that define the brand’s history—the Roma, Suede, GV Special, Clyde, and California—remain front of mind, and just as ripe for reinvention and experimentation than ever.
The Covid-19 pandemic gives designers the chance to address global challenges instead of making “more meaningless stuff,” designer Hella Jongerius says in this video message recorded for Virtual Design Festival.
“From now on, a concerned approach to design will not simply mean returning to past ideas and making more meaningless stuff,” says Jongerius in an animated video she describes as a “woven portrait”.
The Dutch designer, who is based in Berlin, says she is spending time weaving during the lockdown.
“I feel I’m interwoven with all humans”
“I’m gathering with my family and I’m weaving, which is my form of meditation and a way for me to reflect on what’s happening in the world,” she says. “And although we are distancing ourselves from one another, I feel more than ever, I’m interwoven with all humans in the world,” she adds.
One of the world’s most successful industrial designers, Jongerius has worked for brands and organisations including Vitra, airline KLM and the United Nations.
Yet she has often questioned whether designers should be helping to produce unnecessary products, asking “Why create another piece of furniture?” in a 2013 video interview with Dezeen.
“This moment feels like a disaster and an opportunity at the same time,” Jongerius says of the coronavirus pandemic. “I see a great potential.”
“We now could crack the nut with all our global problems we are facing. And for us designers, let’s take this change. Let’s see it as a chance to get away from old beliefs from what we thought was the norm and take action to reassess our priorities.”
“The time beyond the new has come,” she concludes, referring to the “Beyond the New” manifesto she co-wrote with design theorist Louise Schouwenberg in 2015.
“Now more than ever, let the world know what you’re aiming for. Be idealistic and be bold, be radical and feel involved. Work on projects that feed your soul and push the envelope for a better world. Take your own yarn, and together we can weave the new texture.”
Send us a video message
In the run-up to the launch of Virtual Design Festival on Wednesday, Dezeen invited architects, designers, artists and industry figures to record video messages from lockdown. We also put out an open call for submissions from readers – read the brief here.
We plan to publish one clip every day during the festival, plus a montage featuring over 30 of the messages we’ve already received with be published on Wednesday to launch VDF.
Cette semaine sur Fubiz Prints nous vous proposons de découvrir un nouvel artiste, dont vous pourrez acquérir les oeuvres jusqu’au lundi 20 avril à 12h (heure française). Nous avons donc le plaisir de vous présenter la photographe Mathilde Métairie.
Cette photographe amoureuse du voyage immortalise les instants remplis de poésie au cours de ses périples. Chacune de ses images est une invitation à parcourir le monde en sa compagnie. Elle vous propose une sélection de cinq images dont chacune sera proposée au prix unique de 39€.
Nous vous offrons donc l’opportunité d’acquérir une impression numérotée et donc unique d’une de ses parenthèses photographique, durant une semaine, au format de 48 x 68 cm imprimée sur un Papier d’art de qualité MOHAWK (175gsm Superfine Eggshell). Vous avez jusqu’au lundi 20 avril 12h (heure française) pour commander votre oeuvre favorite. Ne ratez pas cette occasion unique, le temps vous est compté !
Designer Sir Paul Smith’s third collaboration with historic Swiss writing and drawing implement maker Caran d’Ache includes this limited edition set of eight Supracolor Soft water-soluble colored pencils. Smith selected the eight bright and cheerful original colors and dressed their portable metal case in his iconic stripes. Made from cedar wood, the brand’s Supracolor Soft water-soluble colored pencils can be used for drawing or watercoloring or wash drawing.
Dezeen Awards, now in its third year, is the benchmark for international design excellence and the ultimate accolade for architects and designers everywhere. With the deadline on 2 June, you still have plenty of time to enter.
This year’s edition is expanded to include 12 architecture categories, recognising even more of the best projects across the globe.
Judged by a panel of 75 industry-leading professionals, projects will be scored according to how beautiful, innovative and beneficial they are.
Landscape project
Any landscape architecture project involving the design of outdoor areas including public or private parks, gardens, the grounds of educational or business buildings, public spaces and playgrounds.
Infrastructure project
Any structure, facility or system that serves an area or society – including roads, cycle paths and highways, bridges and energy supplies.
Enter architecture studio or emerging architecture studio of the year
The studio categories have been around ever since Dezeen Awards first launched and have been specifically created to highlight the architects and designers producing the most outstanding work.
Our panel of industry-leading judges will be selecting the designers and studios who they feel are set to make a big impact on the design world.
The emerging category is for all-round design excellence over a body of work by an individual or practice that has been in business for ten years or less.
Questions?
If you run into issues or have any questions email us at awards@dezeen.com or visit our how to enter page for more information. Remember, the entry deadline is 2 June.
Spanish designer Francesc Rifé has created a distinctive interior for a shoe store in Mallorca, using shades of soft pink and pale grey.
The ASH Mallorca store in Palma features curving concrete surfaces and suspended black shelves, set against a backdrop of soft pink curtains.
There are few other elements in the 95-square-metre space, ensuring that shoes are able to stand out.
“A conscious and austere selection of materials defines the shape and configuration of space,” said Francesc Rifé Studio.
“The hardness of the concrete gives way to the softness of the fabric, and the virtues of the curved lines compete with bold footwear proposals with a great personality.”
The ASH Mallorca store is organised over two levels. On the ground floor, a central walkway is framed on both sides by raised concrete platforms.
Slender shelves are set above these platforms, supported by black steel tubes that extend from floor to ceiling.
A curved staircase leads down to the basement. Although this element was already in place before the fit-out, its smooth shape matches the curves of Rifé’s design.
The basement has a more free-flowing layout, framed by a large S-shape in the floor plan. Shelves and curtains follow the same line, and the effect is emphasised by spotlights in the ceiling.
On both floors, storage and checkout areas are concealed behind the pink curtains, so as not to disrupt the aesthetic.
Rifé’s studio describes the mood created by this textile as “romantic and lively”.
“A light pink textile layer unfolds over the body of the shop and emotionally connects the ground floor with the basement,” said the studio.
“The lightness of this main element generates constant and spontaneous movements throughout the project,” it added.
Concrete cylinders function as additional display stands, while larger pink cylinders provide seats.
Concealed lighting elements feature everywhere, helping to make each element feel impactful. “The light source is always hidden to focus all attention on whatever it is lighting,” said the studio.
Francesc Rifé Studio has completed various stores for ASH, including spaces in London and Shanghai.
Happy Easter! Yes, I know it was on Sunday but we are all still at home and I am pretty sure we all still have our chocolate bunnies so might as well extend the holiday celebrations while we can (it’s the little joys!). Most of us are under lockdowns and spending Easter in quarantine means doing egg hunt at home. If you have a backyard, count yourself lucky but if you don’t then this zen egg garden will make up for it!
This beautiful glass terrarium is almost as perfect as the egg that broke Instagram – remember that? And you can still host your egg hunt in it by hiding Maltesers instead of real eggs – at least you can eat your reward which is better than holding on to painted eggs that can actually be breakfast before people start hoarding those too. This glass egg garden radiates zen energy and brings a sense of calm to the room it is placed in. The minimal terrarium matches the Easter theme but will work all year round too because of its evergreen (literally) visual aesthetics. Switch up the rabbit for holiday-appropriate decor and maybe even add a string light to create an attractive centerpiece. Having plants in your house purifies the air and adds to the aesthetic but the color green is also associated with soothing energies and we all could use that right now.
Easter may feel different but who knows, maybe this pandemic will help us to find our own metaphorical Easter eggs in life. Let’s just pray they are well-designed like this modern terrarium!
Jennifer Venditti, casting director behind Euphoria, Uncut Gems and Honey Boy, talks to us about finding the right person to convey personal stories, and the balancing act of casting first timers opposite Hollywood stars
SuperShe started life in 2016 as a women’s only private island in the Baltic Sea founded by Kristina Roth, the idea being that it would be a place where women could find community, form bonds and lift each other up.
After a fair bit of criticism that a networking session which costs £3,500 is more elitist than empowering, Roth changed track, realising that a private island would be inaccessible to many women, and deciding to bring the community onto an app instead.
&Walsh, Jessica Walsh’s recently formed agency, was commissioned to work on the branding, strategy and merch for SuperShe. It’s a fitting project for the designer given that &Walsh is one of the 0.1% of design agencies founded, owned and run solely by women.
“When looking at other women’s communities, we realised that many of them were overly prescribing the way women in that community ‘should be’. Be a girl boss, travel the world and wear your nightly face masks.
“Feminism had become commodified and there was no one in the space allowing women to claim their own version of themselves. With this in mind, the SuperShe community is designed to help women become confident in their own path in life, whatever that may be,” says Walsh.
The identity eschews the millennial pink aesthetic adopted by feminist brands over the past few years, including women’s co-working space The Wing. Instead, it takes inspiration from protest posters from women’s marches throughout history, including protests about equal pay and the Women Strike for Peace movement.
The agency developed a custom brush font which aims to be “loud and confident” but also “friendly and fun”, according Walsh, and is paired with secondary fonts Panamera and Bureau Grot.
Meanwhile, the app’s range of merch is always displayed in pairs with different messages to demonstrate how women don’t have to be defined in a singular way, such as ‘super boss’ and ‘super chill’.
“We also found that this same consumer who was tired of the commodified feminism ‘rah rah’ was also tired of all the BS claims on products today,” says Walsh.
“SuperShe products were designed with no false claims. The candles are not going to make your dreams come true and the body soaps contain no magic healing powers for your romantic relationships. Our goal was to create honest communication in a market saturated with fluff.”
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