Hasta La Ideas

Mowing slopes on a riding mower is dangerous. To avoid rollovers, savvy operators only drive up-and-down, never across, the slope. However, repeatedly driving up and down a slope will increase the rate of erosion.

After observing these problems, Mississippi-based inventor John Wright first decided to get rid of the operator, rigging up a mower with remote control. Then he got rid of the wheels, replacing them instead with turf tracks.

He started a company, Remote Mowers, to commercialize his products, which can go places you’d never dream of trying with a riding mower.

Here’s one of his machines in action:

Here Wright explains the performance capabilities of his machines and discusses their typical applications. He also describes how he’s designed them for serviceability:

Wright’s invention is both mechanically and commercially brilliant. As for the latter, never mind the domestic market; consider that America is covered in highway embankments and rolling college campuses, all of which have landscaping budgets and regular maintenance needs.

Now for the bad news. After ten years in business, Remote Mowers stopped updating both their YouTube channel and Facebook page last year, as if the company had gone dark. One of the final YouTube videos was for a “Remote Mowers Investment Opportunity,” which suggests financial trouble. And when I poked around on the internet for more recent traces of the company, I found these damning reviews on Yelp:

Ah well. It was still a great design for a great product, but as we all know, the business end has to be at least as robust as the design.

VDF products fair: natural slate is the focal point of the Cupaclad 101 Logic rainscreen cladding system, designed by Cupa Pizarras to be secured with hidden fixings.

Cupaclad 101 Logic was developed by cladding and roofing manufacturer Cupa Pizarras to celebrate the natural textures of slate and offer designers a “simple, balanced” aesthetic for their building projects.

The facade system is made with slabs measuring 40 by 20 centimetres, which are applied horizontally and fixed with concealed self-drilling screws. Made from stainless steel, these screws were developed by Cupa Pizarras to avoid visually impacting the design.

“Cupaclad 101 Logic facade systems enable the construction of efficient, sustainable rainscreen cladding,” said the company.

“The rainscreen cladding system gives any facade balance, combines ideally with other materials and flaunts natural slate’s texture and sheen.”

Cupaclad 101 Logic is prefabricated to ensure an efficient and secure installation process, while also helping to reduce waste. Alongside the use of natural slate, this ensures the system is “the ecological option for facade cladding,” according to Cupa Pizarras.

Product: Cupaclad 101 Logic
Brand: Cupa Pizarras
Contact address: cupaclad@cupapizarras.com

About VDF products fair: the VDF products fair offers an affordable launchpad for new products during Virtual Design Festival. For more details email vdf@dezeen.com.

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The “Improvise. Scavenge. Protect. Adapt.” label references previous releases while remaining future-forward

Launched in late 2018, the ISPA label (and acronym for improvise, scavenge, protect, and adapt) fits within the Nike Design Exploration initiative, a space for the “convergence of athlete data and digital design” to inform new and interesting sneakers and apparel. ISPA also references Nike’s past and acts a bridge between the designs that predate its inception and those forthcoming. The label’s logo—an amalgamation of the AirMax, Nike Shox, Presto, and VaporMax text—reflects this intention. The 2020 releases—scheduled for 9 July through 1 September—further their mission of marrying future-forward research programs and references to iconic silhouettes but also define the label’s style and scope.

The Zoom Road Warrior, Overreact FK, Overreact FK Sandal, Flow 2020, and Drifter sneakers comprise the newest collection. If versed in Nike’s core designs and collaborations, one can identify the source of elements found on the aforementioned releases. “A hybrid of Japanese traditional work boots” and Nike innovations (namely the sock-style upper found on Fear of God’s 1 collaboration), the Drifter places a split-toe Tabi front atop reground Nike ZoomX foam. The Zoom Road Warrior uses Nike Air Zoom Alphafly Next%, the controversial marathon record-breaking shoe technology to amplify the energy return of the Nike Air Zoom BB NXT. Experiments from the Nike React Element 87 era, including pressure and density maps and foot-strike data help designers place cushioning in the Overreact FK and its Sandal iteration only where it’s needed.

Shamees Aden (a researcher and multidisciplinary designer who joined the ISPA creative team in 2016) describes the label’s efforts as “building a collection and a story about the future of products within the emerging, built-in environments in cities.” An insights trip to Tokyo, where earthquakes are increasingly common, led Aden and ISPA’s other designers to consider how Nike products could cater to the adventurous, apocalypse-ready, city-dweller—many of whom were already customers of the brand.

“This collection and ISPA were born out of these insights and understanding how, in a human-built environment, we are going to adapt to seasonal change, weather change, natural disasters, and increasing temperatures. We created products to answer, or problem-solve, these questions,” Aden says.

It really is part of our design philosophy to scavenge from what Nike has to offer within

“ISPA is a big collective of people from different backgrounds,” she continues. “It really is part of our design philosophy to scavenge from what Nike has to offer within, as a massive company. It’s very collaborative. We’re very much open. And I think that’s healthy: you get lots of different perspectives, point of views. Diversity of ideas, concepts, backgrounds, and I think that helps to create these new products and ideas.”

The 2020 ISPA collection prioritizes performance and utility and appeases growing interest in gear and accessories once deemed “outdoors,” but remains mindful of aesthetics. Altogether, it’s futurist and somewhat post-apocalyptic, but still optimistic about what lies ahead. But Nike’s ISPA program isn’t naive to the fact that their research will reach a relatively niche market to begin with. Each collection will have a different direction, and will be informed by different insights, with the goal of exploring how far a company like Nike can stretch its experimental arm.

“It’s this idea that you can take a natural disaster as a source of inspiration, but then there’s some sort of positive element out of it. It’s not like, ‘It’s Doomsday, here’s your kit. Run. Get out.’ It’s very much to talk about—yes, you might be in these situations, through natural disasters, and what sort of tools could we give you and empower you to have in order to then go about your day… [ISPA] is never just one vision.”

Ahead of the 2020 releases, the design team considered various recent events, including the refugee crisis, and subsequent migration, in Europe. Aden and the ISPA team pondered how design might encourage collectiveness. “It’s about collective commune,” she says, of the new products. “We were inspired by how they were able to come together in times of hardship and support each other and be close with each other, even though they were strangers. And that was a source of inspiration for us, like instead of running away, let’s fight for existence, fight for the collective, fight for humanity.”

The narratives inspiring each collection, season after season, are important, despite seeming far away—especially for ISPA’s target audience. An added challenge arises when the ISPA team needs to find a balance between their message and precise design direction.

Surveying the individual releases closely, there’s no doubting that ISPA’s manifesto informed their production. They’re distinctly different from the run-of-the-mill Roshe Run or the iconic Air Force 1. Structural elements from previous releases connect to brand new innovations, tapping into both the work of designers bygone and those new to Nike—many of which work under the ISPA umbrella. “We look at this manifesto to guide us in creating new and distinct design solutions for the city athlete,” Aden says. “We improvise to see if we can improve on the design, scavenge within Nike innovations and across category, and adapt these innovations to protect us from our built-in environments.”

“Nike offers a lot to its consumers—very diverse collections with very diverse products. But we struggle with that because some of the innovations that we create have to be in small units, in small quantities. We can’t offer it to the masses, unfortunately, due to these innovations, but I think more importantly is not just the product itself, it’s to create a bigger dialogue with consumers and people in general,” Aden says.

Available 6 July, ISPA Live aims to be the online extension of the conversations started here, within the product design. There, designers Shamees Aden, Darryl Matthews, and Nur Abbas explain the ISPA philosophy and its inspirations.

Images courtesy of Nike

Rewilding is a better way of fighting climate change and biodiversity loss than planting trees, according to designer Sebastian Cox.

“I’m not an enormous advocate of the planting of trees,” said the English designer, who is known for his solid-wood furniture made entirely from English timber.

“I don’t think it’s necessary,” he said. “And actually, generally, you get a much more resilient woodland if you just let it grow through a process of rewilding.”

Rewilding is gaining traction as a way of letting landscapes recover with minimal human intervention. In a Dezeen panel discussion at Dutch Design Week in 2018, geologist Sjoerd Kluiving said that rewilding was the single most important way of tackling climate change.

“If we are able to rewild more in Europe, to create national parks, we can combat biodiversity lows,” Kluiving said. “We can do something about climate change.”

Wood is “solid carbon dioxide” 

Cox, who harvests timber from his own managed woodland in Kent, England, has set a target to store 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide in his products each year and to make his business carbon negative.

He is also campaigning to double the amount of woodland and wild land in Britain by 2040.

“The thing that I find so magic about wood is that it’s solid carbon dioxide,” Cox said in a live interview with Dezeen conducted as part of Virtual Design Festival.

“Wood is the number one material that nature wants to give us which helps us fight biodiversity loss and climate change in one action.”

Cox added: “If we were to sit down and design a material for this century – something which would be solving the issues that we face today – we would probably end up with something that looks a lot like wood.”

UK imports 87 per cent of its timber

The designer, who is in the process of relocating from London to Margate in Kent, owns 4.5 acres of ancient woodland, which he manages sustainably to encourage biodiversity while harvesting timber for his workshops.

The woodland is managed actively, with mature trees cleared to allow new growth. “We’re actually accidentally mimicking with our chainsaws the activity of woolly mammoths and giant herbivores that used to move around our landscape,” he explained. “Woodlands respond really well to this kind of disturbance and they throw up lots of new life.”

The woodland only provides a fraction of the wood Cox requires, with the rest coming from sustainably managed woodlands around the UK. This makes Cox unusual since 87 per cent of the timber used in the UK is imported.

“It’s largely because other countries are better at homogenising their product,” he explained. “With UK trees, you have to accept character; you have to accept the imperfections.”

“Britain “one of the most nature-depleted countries”

Trees thrive in the temperate British climate, with a bare plot capable of producing harvestable timber within 15 years through rewilding with minimal human intervention.

But the UK has among the lowest tree cover of any comparable country, with 72 per cent of its land dedicated to agriculture. Most of this is intense, industrial farming.

“Britain is one of the most nature-depleted countries on the Earth,” said Cox. “And that has a significant negative impact on our biodiversity.”

In some parts of the country, built-up areas can be as much of a haven for wildlife as rural areas, he said.

“Already that inversion exists in the sense that we do have depleted nature in our countryside and increased nature in some of our suburban and peri-urban kind environments,” he said.

People who criticise the destruction of the Amazon to create farmland need to be aware that the same thing happened in England in the past. “I think that we should really get our own backyard in order before we go criticising the rest of the world,” he said.

Design projects by Cox include an “urban rustic” kitchen for DeVol, featuring rough-sawn planks and woven beech panels.

He is also experimenting with mycelium, creating a range of lights from the fungus material, and has produced a range of products called Underwood, made from coppiced wood that is usually regarded as waste.

“We’re a nation of gardeners and I think we’ve overdone it”

Cox’s approach to land management is closely aligned with that of author Isabella Tree whose 2018 book, Wilding, documents how a 3,500-acre farm in West Sussex was handed back to nature.

In an opinion column for Dezeen last year, Cox argued against calls for mass adoption of veganism to save the planet, arguing that livestock that is allowed to roam freely in natural landscapes can help rather than damage biodiversity.

He recently published a manifesto called Modern Life from Wilder Land, setting out an alternative view of how the landscape could be managed to benefit nature and fight climate change while providing valuable resources including timber.

“We’re a nation of gardeners and I think we’ve overdone it,” he said of the English tendency to make everything neat and tidy.

“One of the main things [the manifesto] advocated is the idea that we need a bit more scrappiness and a little bit more where we just let go.”

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Oslo‘s long-awaited Deichman Bjørvika central library, which stands alongside the Snøhetta-designed opera house on the city’s waterfront, has opened to the public in Norway.

Designed by Atelier Oslo and Lundhagem, the five-storey building contains space for 450,000 books wrapped around a large, top-lit atrium that connects the floors and breaks them into smaller spaces.

“Our aim was to make a library that can offer a variety of different spaces within one large continuous space,” explained Atelier Oslo co-founder Nils Ole Brandtzæg.

“We think we have succeeded in making a building that is huge, but at the same time feels intimate so people can feel they belong there.”

Named after Carl Deichman, whose book collection started the library in 1785, Deichman Bjørvika is located on Oslo’s waterfront alongside the opera house. This building, as well as existing roads, determined the library’s footprint, distinctive cantilevered top floor and vertical arrangement.

“The competition had options for the library to be placed on two different sites alongside the Opera,” Brandtzæg told Dezeen. “We choose to place the library on the site towards the public plaza in the west.”

“This site, however, was limited by roads and a regulated sightline towards the front of the Opera,” he continued. “The organisation of the building is really built around the restrictions from this regulation.”

The library is arranged vertically, with a cinema and 200-seat auditorium in the basement, and a cafe, restaurant and newspapers and magazines on the ground floor.

The first floor contains fiction and children’s books, while the second and third floor contains more books and several enclosed areas that include recording studios, a mini cinema and gaming rooms.

On the top floor, there are social science books and reading rooms, as well as the Future Library art project.

“The program of the library is organised so that it gets more and more quiet and contemplative towards the top,” explained Lundhagem co-founder Einar Hagem.

“The underground floor contains auditorium and cinema for large audiences while the two upper floors are connected through the terraced cantilever that creates a perfect hang-out for contemplation where the library opens towards the Oslo fjord and the surrounding landscape,” he continued.

Atelier Oslo and Lundhagem punctuated the upper floors with a series of diagonal voids that combine into a central atrium and create variety within the internal spaces.

“Three diagonal voids, or light shafts, connect the different floors with each other as well as the street below,” said Hagem.

“The light shafts make each floor unique and create a vertical public space that is an open and inviting continuation of the city outside,” Hagem continued.

“The interior opens for exploration like in a forest, where you are constantly invited around the next corner to discover new areas of the library.”

The city hopes that the library will attract more than two million visitors a year after the coronavirus pandemic has passed.

To achieve this, the architecture studios aimed to design a modern library that contains books, but is also a place for people to gather and meet.

“The library has moved away from being a place to store books to be a place for people to meet and learn,” explained Lundhagem co-founder Svein Lund.

“Old libraries were often designed as large floors with rows and rows of bookshelves. Our library space is more divided and creates a huge degree of variation. This breaks down the scale and lets a lot of different activities take place,” he continued.

“Here you will find spaces for meeting, rehearsal rooms, gaming rooms, exhibition niches, record studio, silent reading rooms etc. Even though the books still have a strong presence this library is designed first and foremost as a place for people.”

While designing the building, the architecture studios looked at both modern and historic libraries and aimed to create a flexible space that could be adapted as the purpose of the building changes.

This meant that they paid particular attention to elements that will be longlasting, including the building’s structure, internal arrangement, ceilings and facades.

“We won the competition 11 years ago and we have had the time to explore many different library projects,” said Atelier Oslo co-founder Marius Mowe.

“This has been important to understand the spirit of modern libraries and to try to foresee where we are heading. We also get a lot of inspiration from looking at classical library spaces,” he told Dezeen.

“For instance, we got inspired by how the ceilings and the main structure always are treated very carefully. This is something we have pursued in our own project,” he continued.

“For us, the ceilings and the main structure will secure some lasting qualities for the library space while the floor is more like a marketplace where activity and use can change and evolve over the years.”

Locally based studios Atelier Oslo and Lundhagem won the competition to design the library in 2009.

Lundhagem was established by Hagem and Lund in 1990. The studio’s previous projects include a stilted summer house on a Norwegian island and a Y-shaped cabin on a hilltop overlooking a ski resort.

Atelier Oslo was founded in 2006 by Brandtzæg, Mowe, Thomas Liu and Jonas Norsted. It has previously designed a house wrapped in a gridded timber facade on the island of  Skåtøy and a basalt-clad cabin overlooking a lake.

Photography is by Einar Aslaksen.

Project credits:

Client: Oslo municipality
Architects: Lundhagem and Atelier Oslo
Interior architects: Scenario
Project management: AFRY Advansia
Structural engineering: Bollinger Grohman and Multiconsult
Consultants: Multiconsult, COWI, Rambøll, Asplan Viak / Kan Energi
Contractor core and shell: SKANSKA
Contractor facade: Roschmann Group
Contractor interior: AF Byggfornyelse

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