Carolina Laudon

Swedish typographer and type designer Carolina Laudon is the first woman president of the ATypI. Ksenya Samarskaya caught up with her after last year’s conference to discuss her role in, and vision for the organization.

Tomasa

Anyone who is from or has lived in Spanish-speaking countries will be familiar with the concept of perreo. It’s a word that describes how we dance to rhythms like reggaeton or funk carioca. The way perreo flows through Tomasa is palpable.

Elfreth

I can count the number of times I’ve used a blackletter (unironically, anyway) on one hand. But something about Elfreth caught my attention and held onto it like a Brockhaus-Heuer Schraubstock.

Sandoll Chilseong Shipyard

In 1952, toward the end of the Korean War, Chilseong Shipyard was established in Sokcho, South Korea. The humble family operation built ships and served as a local fishery for generations. In 2017, third-generation owner Choi Yoonseong and his partner Baek Eunjeong restored it as a cultural space to preserve the shipyard’s legacy for future generations, so they could connect with the site. The new Shipyard includes a café, exhibition space, and playground, and also has a new look with a custom typeface.

Type Design in the Museum: Acquiring the Immaterial

Craig Eliason explores how the peculiarities inherent to type design shed light on the purpose and practices of the design museum in the contemporary world.

Epix workplace furniture by Form Us With Love for Keilhauer

Epix collection by Form Us With Love for Keilhauer

Dezeen Showroom: Swedish studio Form Us With Love has created Epix, a range of fully recyclable seating and other workplace furniture for Keilhauer.

The Epix collection features chairs, tables and storage, all made with sustainability and adaptability in mind.

Epix chairs by Form Us With Love for Keilhauer
The Epix seating is available with a choice of four different bases

The seating is made entirely from pure materials to enable easy recycling, with an aluminium frame and a seat shell made of either pure polypropylene plastic or pure PET felt.

Chairs are available in a range of colours and four different leg styles, including a four-star caster or sled base.

The Epix collection also features a series of mobile tables that can either be used individually or pushed together for gatherings and group work. The tables come in conference and bar heights, with square tops in either wood veneer or laminate.

Epix desks by Form Us With Love for Keilhauer
Two caster wheels make the Epix tables easy to move

Completing the collection is shelving in seven sizes, with optional felt panels to create more auditory privacy.

All of the pieces can be used for various workplace settings and tasks. They can also be easily disassembled and their components replaced, giving them further longevity.

“The goal is to prevent the need to replace the furniture,” said Form Us With Love creative director John Löfgren. “It can instead be upgraded over time.”

Product: Epix
Designer: Form Us With Love
Brand: Keilhauer
Contact: info@keilhauer.com

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.

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The Top 10 Weekend Essentials you need to keep your weekend anything but boring!

With most of us locked away in our homes, the weekend can bring in a sense of excitement but also some confusion! If you’re simply stuck at home, how do you spice up your weekends? How do you spend your weekend in a way that’s distinguished from the way you spend your weekdays? I’m always coming up with creative ideas to jazz up my weekends. So when I find products that can help me bring my creative weekend ideas to life, I’m overjoyed! Here are a collection of innovative and exciting product designs that are weekend essentials! These are the products that can totally turn a boring Saturday night in into an indoor barbecue session or an interesting games night! This is the ultimate weekend essentials guide. Enjoy!

A lot of us are still home and that means our plans include bingeing Netflix and a snack marathon! Designed by Sushant Vohra, Couch Console is all you need to have a productive binge/snack session – no more trying to balance your chips, drinks, and remote! The designer did tons of ideating and mockups before settling on a modular couch buddy that holds everything for you while you are chilling to the max (can we bring back chillax?). Couch Console’s core pillars are simple geometry and clear functionality. The cupholder has a mechanical gyroscope with a counterweight that ensures your drink stays still even on uneven surfaces – you don’t have to sit upright anymore, get comfy!

This conceptual lounger is all you need for every mood – zen weekdays for WFH and books with wine on the weekends. After a long day of Skype/Zoom calls and speaking to people across meetings, a relaxing place where you can hear the water trickle is exactly what you need to unwind! Dhyan is a Sanskrit word that means focus, care, or meditation and rightly fits this lounger that has been designed to bring all of that to you. Inspired by the simplicity of the tree of buddha and intricate Japanese zen gardens, the lounger blends traditional eastern philosophies with minimal modern design. It embodies peace and stillness one feels when they connect with nature. Dhyan has three different modes to suit your needs — a standard mode, a water-pond mode, and garden mode.

Picture this. You’re in your home (where else would you be, really?), the popcorn’s in the microwave, the couch is ready, the curtains shut, and all that leaks through is a tiny beam of moonlight, giving the place a dreamy aesthetic. You switch your Netflix 4K projector on and begin watching the movie you’ve been WAITING to watch now that the weekend’s finally upon us. That scene right there, that visual setup is the inspirational mood board behind the aesthetic of the Netflix projector. Designed as a concept (although I really wish it were true), the Netflix projector and Bluetooth speaker don’t just create the perfect Netflix-and-chill setup after a long day of work, they also are designed to look a lot like the moon popping up behind two buildings to create the perfect atmosphere for your night-time binging session. The projector and Bluetooth speaker give you the best experience Netflix has to offer (provided you’ve got a great internet connection).

Every weekend brings forth a new dilemma – what is the most entertaining way to spend this weekend without stepping out in this quickly escalating COVID situation? Well, we now have LEGO to thank to make our weekend castle-making activity (consider this writer guilty of spending hours playing with LEGO creating her personal billionaire homes) a little more adult. What I mean is, the LEGO Art is here to make playing with LEGO more intricate and also creating an artwork that definitely deserves that coveted shelf space! Designed to help adults relax and recharge as they transform a blank canvas (or in this case, small interlinking base plates) using LEGO tiles. Each set can be reimagined in a number of different ways to express the personality of each different builder and to make it easy and simple for pop culture lovers to refresh the LEGO Art piece on display in their house.

Missing the BBQ parties during game nights and holidays in quarantine? This conceptual BBQ grill, Campin, makes it possible to still enjoy it indoors (perhaps with fewer people, and if it is just yourself then you won’t even have to share food!) while following the COVID-19 restrictions about outdoor activities and gatherings. It has two core parts – the BBQ bowl at the top and the bottom base. The BBQ bowl has a metal container that houses the whole setup including the intake vent, a charcoal bowl, a grill, and a lid. These pieces are modular and can be separated for easy cleaning and management. There is an LED located under the BBQ bowl that illuminates the lower side and making it look like there is a real fire for the ‘right vibes’.  Campin lets you grill with a charcoal fire by using the specific charcoal bowl for that authentic taste. The smoke is sucked in through the intake vent outside the grill and it is purified and discharged through the filter structure inside the body – the mechanism is similar to an air purifier. The lower part in front of the base includes an outlet to discharge the purified air.

I think the first instinct for most of us when the weekend rolls in is to put on our favorite PJ’s, laze around in bed, and binge watch some Netflix. This is exactly what Fabio Vinella’s latest creation promises to provide us! Designed by Hi-interiors, the HiBed is quite frankly the bed of my dreams. The second generation in their smart beds, this one is a more minimal and sleeker version of its predecessor, the HiCan. A modern take on the traditional canopied bed, the smart(er) bed is versatile and integrates effortlessly with any and all furnishing. “The design of the HiCan and the new HiBed is a contemporary cocoon equipped with state-of-the-art technology for wellness, entertainment, and health monitoring that syncs seamlessly with your smart device,” said the design firm Hi-interiors. Equipped with a built-in 4K projector that can be synced with a series of devices to binge-watch movies/TV shows on a 70-inch retractable screen, the HiBed is the epitome of in-bed relaxation.

The best way to describe the GEMJI is by calling it a game system. This means that GEMJI’s tiles can be used to devise and play multiple types of games for various audiences across all age groups. Younger GEMJI-players can use it to create mazes, while more proficient youngsters can snap multiple tiles together to build complex 3D models. If you’re looking for less of a creative outlet and more of a traditional game, the GEMJI’s black-and-white pieces can be used to play anything from Chess to Draughts, Jenga, Go, Mahjong, Backgammon and even devise your own games along the way! Each GEMJI box-set comes with 70 of those dual-color magnetic tiles, along with a playbook of 30+ games you can play (including GEMJI’s own original games) and an online app that promises many more games with future updates.

The Ishiyaki Set tackles a unique problem associated with being under lockdown… missing out on great food. The Ishiyaki Set brings an authentic Japanese dining experience to your home by allowing you to prepare food in the teppanyaki style. Designed as a tabletop stone grill that you can cook your meat on, the Ishiyaki (which literally stands for rock-grill) is a charming little personalized grilling set that lets you experience the fun of dry-searing your food right before you eat it, just like at that Benihana you miss going to. You can now have a teppanyaki session at home during the weekend!

The Slab Console is an upscale adult furniture piece with a vibrant, fun personality – so you can upgrade your home’s interior design level and also have a lit time with your playlists! This console is the ultimate audio system, it brings you movie theatre quality sounds with living room-worthy visuals. Inspired by the consoles that existed in the 60s and 70s, the Slab brings high-fidelity audio to your space with immersive 5.1 surround movies and games. It is equipped with passive left, center, and right channel speakers along with a 12 inch recessed active subwoofer and a 500 Watt internal amplifier which basically translates into “I am a top-performing audio system worth every dollar of my $6,995 price tag.” I am having a dance party for one this weekend and my weapon of choice is the Slab Console!

Cineorama by Erika Hock is an outdoor viewing space, so you can sit and watch a couple of your favorite movies with your family and friends, within the comforts of your own backyard! Although during this pandemic, it may be wise to simply have a movie session with your family. No outsiders!

Share the bear! Help Dezeen win a Webby Award

Share the bear!

Dezeen and Samsung’s Out of the Box Competition has been nominated at this year’s Webby Awards. Vote for us to help us win the People’s Voice award!

The Dezeen x Samsung Out of the Box Competition was a global contest that challenged contestants to design innovative new objects for the home that can be made by repurposing TV packaging.

The contest received over 1,500 entries from more than 80 different countries around the world.

The Out of the Box Competition challenged contestants to create designs by repurposing TV packaging

It was won by recent Royal College of Art graduates Sarah Willemart and Matthieu Muller, who designed a series of animal companions for children, including a polar bear.

Now we are asking Dezeen readers to share the bear to help us win a People’s Voice award at the Webby Awards 2021, where the project is nominated in the branded content category for products and services.

Vote now ›

Voting closes on Thursday 6 May. Once you have voted, you will need to confirm your email address in order for your vote to count.

Dezeen x Samsung Out of the Box competition was a partnership between Dezeen and electronics brand Samsung.

The top photograph is by Benjamin Swanson with set design by Jam Studios and retouching by The Wizard Retouch.

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Lexus Design Award announces its Grand Prix winner for 2021, the ‘Portable Solar Distiller’



Earlier today, Lexus Design Awards announced their winner for the 2021 edition of their award program on April 27th. The winning project ‘Portable Solar Distiller’ by Henry Glogau was declared the Grand Prix Winner, surpassing 2,079 other design entries from 66 countries. Chosen as the project that best encompasses “Design for a Better Tomorrow”, the Portable Solar Distiller provides clean drinking water by filtering polluted water or overly saline sea water using sunlight. Merging local resource production with community architecture, this low-
tech solution also serves as a shaded gathering place.

The ‘Portable Solar Distiller’ was selected as the Grand Prix Winner from a roster of 6 finalists. Initially named the Solar Desalination Skylight, the design went through the mentorship phase under the expertise of Joe Doucet, Sabine Marcelis, Mariam Kamara, and Sputniko! These four world-class creators guided the finalists in surmounting challenges, helping refine and define the project and bring it to a fully refined stage. The 6 finalists were judged by an elite jury panel comprising Paola Antonelli, Dong Gong, Greg Lynn, and Simon Humphries, the elite panels who judged the entries. After selecting the Grand Prix winner, Judge Greg Lynn commented that “The winner was one of the designers who surprised me the most from the application to the final submission. The consistent mission of the winner persisted while the transformation in scale and social function was exemplary. The design became more refined, more functional and more open-source during the [mentorship] process”. Senior Curator at MoMA and Judge of the Lexus Design Award 2021, Paola Antonelli added, “It is heartening, after a year of isolation and “suspension,” to see that designers are still so firmly focused on the widespread issues connected to the environmental crisis. Our Grand Prix Winner tackled water shortage in exquisite low-tech fashion, using universal technologies that make it scalable and deployable worldwide.”

The Portable Solar Distiller by Henry Glogau aims at providing communities with easy access to fresh drinking water by relying on a highly-effective yet low-cost filtration method using sunlight. Its large canopy serves a dual purpose – harvesting sunlight to help purify water through evaporation, and acting as a community center for people to gather under during the day or even at night. The Portable Solar Distiller’s open-source schematic can easily be tweaked and implemented by anyone, allowing the design solution to have a wider reach and impact. The Portable Solar Distiller is designed in a way that can be carried, opened out, and assembled anywhere. Almost like a beach umbrella, it provides shade for groups of people, while having the added benefit of being able to purify water. The un-drinkable water goes into the canopy on the top, and heat from the sun causes the water to evaporate. Pure drinking water condenses on the upper part of the canopy, trickling down into a jerry can that fills up over time, giving people fresh water that can be consumed or used to cook food. Aside from providing free drinking water, the portable nature of the solution and its ability to create community gathering areas under the shaded canopy are what make the Portable Solar Distiller such an effective design that delivers on the promise of a ‘better tomorrow’.

Take a look at all the Lexus Design Awards Finalists featured on Yanko Design.

Designer: Henry Glogau

Click Here to See the Grand Prix Winner and the Finalists!

Portable Solar Distiller by Henry Glogau

A holistic approach to providing coastal informal settlements with water, energy and natural light. The design utilizes abundant solar energy and seawater to create a Portable Solar Distiller. It emits a natural diffused light, produces drinking water, and utilizes leftover salt brine for energy creation.

Testing was done within an informal settlement home over a one-month long expedition to Antofagasta, Chile. Over a 12- hour period the prototype could produce 540 ml of purified water, with a reduction of salinity levels from 36,000ppm (parts per million) down to 20ppm.

Salt brine waste from the evaporation process is further used to create a source of energy through a reaction when placed in storage tubes holding copper and zinc. These 12 salt batteries provided 9.53 volts, powering a LED light strip during the night and charged by a mini solar panel during the day.

As well as the functional performance, the desalinated water adds a morphing dappled effect that changes mood throughout the day, creating a soft ambiance for the living room space where family activities take place.

Click Here to See All Six Lexus Design Awards Finalists!

Aesthetic Lab adds pops of colour to all-white classroom in Taiwan

Aesthetic Lab by CloudForm Laboratory

Architecture studio CloudForm Laboratory has transformed a classroom in a secondary school in Taiwan into a “blank canvas” for creative education.

Called Aesthetic Lab, the multipurpose classroom was redesigned for New Taipei Municipal Xintai Junior High School in the capital city Taipei.

Aesthetic Lab by Taiwanese studio CloudForm Laboratory
Aesthetic Lab is a classroom in Taipei

Local studio CloudForm Laboratory turned a traditional schoolroom with wooden workbenches and a pinboard into a pared-back space that the firm described as a “blank canvas” for imaginative learning.

Rectangular in shape, the large classroom’s ceiling and two of its walls are painted in all-white, creating an uncrowded space for students to learn in.

The classroom was redesigned for a high school in Taipei
The room is mainly white

The classroom’s front wall is dedicated to a floor-to-ceiling whiteboard, while its back wall is a mirror that expands the space by reflecting the classroom’s activities.

“Encompassed by white interior walls and ceilings, children’s rich and diverse imaginations are able to run freely,” explained CloudForm Laboratory.

The only colours used in the classroom are cyan, magenta, yellow and black, which are borrowed from the CMYK colour model. The model refers to the four basic colours used in colour printing, with K meaning “key” for black.

A white island sits in the centre of the room, above which thin coloured pillars that double as taps plunge down from railings attached to the ceiling, and act as the classroom’s focal point.

Aesthetic Lab uses four colours
A central island with colourful taps is the room’s focal point

Complete with a sink that can also be used as a tabletop and various storage units, the central island leaves space for a variety of activities to take place within the rest of the room.

Stackable white chairs are stored under white tables on wheels that line the edges of the room, available for students to either pull out or push to the side as they need.

Aesthetic Lab is designed for flexible learning
Collapsable chairs can be stowed away

CloudForm Laboratory designed the classroom to be as open-ended as possible for students to use in their art projects.

“Students can transform the classroom into an exhibition space by replacing the ceiling’s rail-mounted lights with projection lights to illuminate their projects,” said the studio.

A teacher presents a lesson
Tables can be arranged for different lessons

Aesthetic Lab’s grey concrete floor is defined by a series of colourful patterns that fit into the dimensions known as the golden rectangle, which takes its measurements from the mathematical golden ratio.

The various spirals and squares traversing the floor resemble markings on a sports court, and add accents of playful but organised colour to an otherwise monochrome room.

Aesthetic Lab uses a golden rectangle for its floor design
The golden ratio informs the classroom’s floor

Aesthetic Lab’s floor design is intended to bring a sense of symmetry and order into an open-ended classroom built to encourage creative learning.

“While intangible concepts are conveyed to students, the flowing lines on the floor are a manifestation of the knowledge applied within the space,” explained CloudForm Laboratory.

“The four colours draw out the central axis of the classroom through the golden ratio, and double as teaching materials for aesthetic exploration within the classroom.”

Students enjoy using Aesthetic Lab's colourful taps
The central features a sink with colourful taps

CloudForm Laboratory is an interdisciplinary architecture and design studio based in Taipei.

More creative spaces for students include a series of indoor and outdoor classrooms for a school in Peru designed by Rosan Bosch Studio and IDOM in response to the spread of coronavirus, and a school filled with colourful playgrounds in China by designers Paul Mok and Jiayu Qiu.

Photography is by EdiTrio Studio and Jason Chen at Bole Studio, courtesy of Taiwan Design Research Institute.


Project credits:

Design: CloudForm Laboratory
Client: New Taipei Municipal Xintai Junior High School
Advisor: Ministry of Education
Organiser: Taiwan Design Research Institute

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