Screen-printed by hand, these 100% linen pajama sets by Australia’s Holiday The Label certainly don’t need to be limited to the bedroom. Available in several different colorways and patterns, this new warped yin-yang iteration is available in tan or purple. Consisting of high-waisted, drawstring shorts and a boxy, button-down shirt, the set has been made to be comfortable and worn as loosely as one likes. In size XS to XXXL, they are designed in Sydney, screen-printed in Melbourne, and crafted in Bali by a small family-run textile studio with a firm focus on less waste (offcuts are used to make smaller accessories like face masks and scrunchies). Price is in AUD.
2021 marks 65 years since the Eames Lounge Chair was first debuted by prolific design duo, Ray and Charles Eames. The chair and ottoman, with their bent plywood paneling and plush leather cushioning, look futuristic even by today’s standards and are every bit a design hallmark… however it hasn’t stopped British automotive designer Ian Callum from propelling it further into the future. The Callum Lounge Chair builds on the template of the Eames Lounge Chair, albeit with fresh, automotive-inspired design sensibilities and a carbon-fiber construction!
The chair comes from the studio Callum Designs, which was founded in 2019 after Ian Callum retired from his position as the Director of Design for Jaguar Land Rover. Callum’s 4-decade career also includes work for Ford, TWR, and Aston Martin. Embarking on a new creative journey with his own studio, the iconic British Designer debuted the Callum Lounge Chair – a piece of furniture that has a distinct automotive touch. Callum’s reinterpretation of the timeless mid-century design classic showcases sportscar contouring along with automotive-inspired electric blue cushions. The cushions sit against a wood and carbon fiber frame, giving the car its slick, sporty appeal. The vibrant Pantone palette was a conscious design choice too, straying from the Eames Lounge Chair’s black and brown aesthetic. The chairs are finished by hand in Callum Design’s in-house trim shop in their Warwickshire HQ.
Furniture is an exciting new domain for Ian, who’s spent over 40 years in the automotive world. In an interview with Wallpaper, Callum addressed how his previous experiences with chairs has always come with strings attached, given most of them fit inside cars. He mentions that with the Callum Lounge Chair, “[it] doesn’t have to pass any kind of crash test, which is refreshing”. The Callum Lounge Chair will remain a one-off prototype for now, unless it drums up enough customer interest… although one can expect them to cost a fortune!
A year ago we were in the grip of a worldwide pandemic where tests, if you could even find one, involved shoving a Q-Tip up your nose and waiting days for the results. Now a Singaporean company called Breathonix has developed a COVID test that’s much easier to take, is relatively cheap to produce and delivers results on the spot.
The BreFence Go is a breathalyzer (with disposable single-use mouthpieces, naturally) that test subjects breathe into normally. An attached machine then scans the breath for VOCs (volatile organic compounds) with biomarkers for COVID, and gives you a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. The elapsed time from when the patient first blows into the tube until the results are delivered is said to be sixty seconds.
Breathonix’s system will undoubtedly be attractive to high-volume venues, and the low invasiveness is more pleasant for test-takers. And despite the presumably expensive machine hooked up to the breathing tube, the company told Reuters that they can produce the tests for as little as $3.76 each if purchased in bulk.
Accuracy is currently reported at above 90%, and trials are underway at the Singapore-Malaysia border as well as in Dubai, where Emirates airlines is keen to get it up and running.
Other mass gathering spots will surely be interested. Assuming the cost is passed on to consumers, after a year of being crammed inside I bet plenty of folks would tolerate four bucks tacked onto tickets to see the Playoffs.
Dezeen promotion: Swiss brand Laufen and Italian company Kartell have relaunched a flexible set of bathroom fixtures including ceramics, furniture, faucets and accessories, with campaigns shot by two visionary photographers.
Named Kartell by Laufen, the collection comprises furnishings that can be combined in various ways to create open and adaptable spaces, challenging traditional bathroom designs.
The relaunch expands on the original range launched in 2013 by Laufen and Kartell, introducing new colours and finishes to suit the “widest spectrum of tastes”.
The Kartell by Laufen range has been reissued and expanded, as shown in new photography by Oliver Helbig
“Iconic, functional Italian design meets the industrial rigour of a leading Swiss ceramics brand, giving rise to a collection that breaks down the boundaries and barriers of the bathroom,” explained Laufen.
“The new Kartell by Laufen catalogue offers a complete collection for the bathroom, marked by its innovative use of colour, based on the collaboration between two design companies, both excellent in their specific fields: Kartell and Laufen.”
The collection comprises a mix of ceramic bathroom products and colourful polycarbonate accessories, which Helbig has captured in minimalist vignettes
To relaunch the collection, Laufen created campaigns with two photographers that have very different styles and approaches.
Along with the more traditional product photography by Oliver Helbig, who captured the bathroom range in styled minimal vignettes, the company also hired fashion photographer Hugo Comte for a more experimental shoot.
Hugo Comte’s campaign for the collection treats the products like fashion styling props
In Comte’s images, items from the collection are carried, sat on and leant against by models – like props in an editorial magazine spread.
Since the photographer primarily works in the fashion industry, the result is a very unique series of visuals for the bathroom brand.
Comte’s images present the bathroom range in a unique way
The wide variety of products in the Kartell by Laufen collection include ceramic washbasins and toilets, as well as transparent shelving, mirrors and soap dishes.
There are also pared-back metallic faucets, stools, lamps and toothbrush holders, alongside bathtubs and bidets.
Helbig’s photos demonstrate how the pieces in the can be combined in various ways
The mix of transparent objects and solid ceramic products are designed to create contrast, but all pieces are unified by their clean-cut finishes and geometric lines.
A highlight of the collection is the wide range of washstands, which include small space-saving units to larger rectangular models and circular versions.
Bathtubs and stools feature in the collection. Photo by Oliver Helbig
All of the Kartell by Laufen washstands are made in thin ceramic and are available in colours ranging from a bright, classic white to glossy or matt black.
The statement Max Beam stools are also available in a range of colours, including transparent amber, blue and a smokey grey.
There are also mirrors and washbasins. Photo by Oliver Helbig
Like the stools, the All Saints mirror, Shelfish shelving, Rifly lamps or Sound-Rack stackable shelves are designed to suit a mix of residential living areas, not just bathrooms.
With new editions released today, Migrate Art’s “Raising for Myanmar” initiative sells prints by well-known and emerging artists, with profits going to Mutual Aid Myanmar. Each poster (including designs by Richard Mosse, Tacita Dean, Guerilla Girls and Bart Was Not Here) sells for £50, and Mutual Aid Myanmar promises that every cent they receive goes directly to those in need: over 750 civilians have been killed and more than 250,000 have been displaced due to the military coup. Countless people in Myanmar are standing up and putting themselves in harm’s way to defend democracy, and purchasing one of these prints helps support them.
The latest crowdfunding smash on Kickstarter may also be the simplest object ever sold on the platform. The Misen Oven Plate is just a 10″ x 13.5″, 6mm-thick piece of steel with rounded corners. And it just shot past the $1-million mark.
Cooking utensil company Misen says that your average oven fluctuates wildly in temperature, exposing its contents to a rollercoaster of temperatures that can yield inconsistent results.
So, Misen says, they’ve borrowed a trick from pro chefs to even out the temperature, which is to merely add a steel plate below (and/or above) the dish being cooked.
I don’t doubt (much) that the plate might be useful; it’s just sobering, as someone trained in industrial design, to see a product with almost no design applied to it achieve such wild success. The campaign was seeking just $25,000, and they’re now 4,000%-plus funded, with 27 days left to pledge.
Dezeen Showroom:: Italian brand Lualdi has introduced the Shoin system of glass sliding doors and fixed panels to evoke the lightness of Japanese interiors.
The Shoin system features fixed and sliding panels placed on one or two rails. It creates glass walls and entryways that delineate spaces within spaces, in a similar way to Japanese interior screens.
The Shoin system is informed by the sliding screens in Japanese interiors
The six-millimetre-thick tempered-glass panels come in a range of styles, including fluted grey and extra-clear.
They sit within a slim aluminium frame with finish options including various woods, metals and matt lacquered colours.
There is also the option of a pivoting door
The rails are fitted with shock absorbers for protection, and the collection also includes a pivoting model.
“The light presence of Shoin pivot creates well-defined and welcoming environments, luminous boxes traversed by light,” said Lualdi.
About Dezeen Showroom: Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen’s huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.
Dezeen Showroom is an example of partnership content on Dezeen. Find out more about partnership content here.
To me, Oakley is to eyewear what Bang & Olufsen is to audio equipment. Both companies lavish heavy, boundary-pushing design attention on objects at high cost, and while their aesthetics don’t appeal to me–they seem to target superheroes or supervillains–I’m always interested to see what they’re doing over there on the cutting edge.
Oakley’s latest is the Kato, a pair of frameless sport sunglasses that rely on the monolithic lens to provide the structure.
The lens changes thickness up top, forming into an arched rib for rigidity; at the bottom the lens flares out to form a nosepiece, inside of which users can attach one of three included nosepads with different thicknesses.
The stems contain a second rotating hinge that allows the lens to tilt, which Oakley says help it better adapt to the shape of one’s face.
As you’d expect, the Kato is pricey, ringing in at $291.
In an effort to top Gio Ponti’s Superleggera (“super lightweight”) chair, Swiss designer Oskar Zieta used two production methods Ponti could never have dreamed of in 1957: Laser-cutting and FiDU.
FiDU is a German acronym for Freie Innen Druck Umformung, “free internal pressure forming” in English. It’s essentially hydroforming, but using air as the inflator. Zieta, who developed the method, used it to create the aluminum frame for his handsome Ultraleggera chair.
The seat and backrest are laser-cut aluminum, and careful design yielded an overall weight of 1,660 grams (3.66 pounds) vs. Ponti’s 1,700 grams (3.75 pounds).
You could argue that shaving 40 grams off of something is a parlor trick, but there’s more to this chair than that–particularly for Industrial Design students, who should definitely watch the attendant product video. It checks a lot of boxes for what would get you high marks on one of your school presentations:
– It discusses and demonstrates an understanding of the chosen material
– It cites the trendy natural sources of inspiration (shells, skeletons, sentences like “we admired the wings of dragonflies,” etc.)
– In addition to describing its basic utility, it highlights a sort of bonus benefit experienced by the user when the chair is not serving its primary function, i.e. an offline consideration, which is that it’s exceptionally easy to move around
– It demonstrates eco-friendliness and ease of recycling
– It cites performance testing numbers
– It demonstrates use cases across different age groups
If your own presentation featured all of the same elements, it’d be a hard-nosed professor indeed who’d give you a bad grade. (Just don’t mention that you’re setting out to top Gio Ponti.)
The architect died in a Sao Paulo hospital of lung cancer on 23 May 2021.
Described as a “role model” for architects, Mendes da Rocha was the recipient of many of architecture’s highest accolades.
He was globally recognised as a major architect of the 20th century, despite rarely building outside his native Brazil.
Mendes da Rocha’s most famous buildings are in São Paulo, including the Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo, the Brazilian Sculpture Museum and the Athletic Club of São Paulo. His cultural buildings are credited with modernising Brazil’s largest city.
Top: Mendes da Rocha won the Praemium Imperiale. Photo courtesy of Japan Art Association. Above: the architect in his São Paulo studio in 2017. Photo by Marc Goodwin
Because he worked with large expanses of raw concrete – a cheap and abundant material in his home country – his name was often linked with Brazilian brutalism. But it was a label Mendes da Rocha rejected.
“It has destroyed education and universities in Brazil,” said the architect, who was banned from teaching and practising under the regime.
“We’re still suffering from the consequences of those actions, and we’re working very hard to catch up and recover what we had.”
Born in Vitória, Brazil, in 1928, he graduated from the Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie College of Architecture in 1954 and established his practice in São Paulo the following year.
The Athletic Club was one of his first commissions. Completed in 1958, the ring-shaped stadium made of reinforced concrete and steel can seat up to 2,000. Mendes da Rocha was just 29 years old when he built it.
It was followed by projects such as Estádio Serra Dourada in Goiás (1975), the Forma Furniture showroom in São Paulo (1987) and Saint Peter Chapel in São Paulo (1987).
Brazilian Sculpture Museum in São Paulo, 1988. Photo by Leonardo Finotti
Mendes da Rocha was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture’s highest accolade, in 2006. “Mendes da Rocha has devoted his career to the creation of architecture guided by a sense of responsibility to the inhabitants of his projects as well as to a broader society,” said the 2006 jury.
“His signature concrete materials and intelligent, yet remarkably straightforward construction methods create powerful and expressive, internationally-recognized buildings,” the citation added.
“There is no doubt that the raw materials he uses in achieving monumental results have had influences the world over.”
Cais das Artes in Vitoria, Brazil, 2008. Photo by Leonardo Finotti
“Many decades after being built, each of his projects have resisted the test of time,” said Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, who curated the Biennale that year. “He is a nonconformist challenger and simultaneously a passionate realist.”
“He is an architect with an incredible international reputation, yet almost all his masterpieces are built exclusively in his home country,” said Jane Duncan, then president of the Royal Institute for British Architecture.
“Revolutionary and transformative, Mendes da Rocha’s work typifies the architecture of 1950s Brazil – raw, chunky and beautifully ‘brutal’ concrete,” she added.
“Paulo Mendes da Rocha is a world-class architect and a true living legend.”
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Superleggera
