Hasta La Ideas

Like many, chess was one of the hobbies I took up mid-pandemic. Half the battle of chess is learning and remembering the directions and formations each piece is allowed to move, once that’s squared away, strategy can be weaved into your game. I never got that far, but the new chess set Illuminis designed by Bülent Ünal might do the trick. It’s a chess set that enacts visual pointers on the actual board for kids new to the game who want to learn the rules, but it’s tailored for anyone who’s taking up the new hobby.

Familiarly decorated almost like miniature orange and black minions, the chess pieces look inviting for kids, with a gleaming outer coat and round bodies and heads. Setting his chessboard apart from the rest, Ünal’s chess pieces’ faces have been replaced with protruding circular projectors that look similar to antique scuba diving helmets. The minuscule projectors work by illuminating the squares on the chessboard where each piece is allowed to move, allowing kids and learners of chess alike to understand the rules of chess accurately and quickly. The visual indicators that come equipped with Ünal’s pieces merge technology with the antique chess board to give the game a modern edge, fit for today’s younger, more technologically perceptive generations. The bottom of each chess piece also comes outfitted with battery slots for fast and accessible charging and longer game time.

Chess is a game of skill, memory, and discipline. While it takes determination and patience to develop your own strategy, Ünal’s Illuminis chessboard might help streamline the beginner’s learning process and harness the memory and skill it takes to become tactical at the game of chess.

Designer: Bülent Ünal

Dressed in gleaming orange and black outer coats, the chess pieces have an undeniable personality that will speak to kids and beginners alike.

The pieces’ projectors indicate the different squares on the board each piece is allowed to move.

Underneath each chess piece, batteries can be inserted into slots for quick and easy charging.

Each chess piece has its own distinct personality to hone in on the character’s elements (i.e.; knight, queen, king, rook, and bishop).

Plans to transform the Oxford Circus road junction in London into two car-free piazzas with trees and seating have been announced by Westminster City Council and the Crown Estate.

An international design competition held by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) to deliver the final scheme will be held this summer.

The transformation aims to address air quality, safety and congestion at the road junction in the Oxford Street shopping district and is hoped “to create a rival to Times Square” once complete.

Project is “first significant redesign” of district in decades

The project forms part of Westminster City Council and the Crown Estate‘s wider redesign Oxford Street into a “globally competitive centre”.

The plans also respond to changing shopping and working habits, hastened by the pandemic, a need for greener public spaces and the arrival of the new Elizabeth line that is expected to bring in an extra 60 million pedestrians to the area per year.

“These new bold plans to reinvent Oxford Circus will see the first significant redesign of the nation’s favourite high street in decades,” said Westminster City Council leader Rachael Robathan.

“The serious congestion of Oxford Circus, of people and of traffic, is unsustainable and demands action” she continued.

“In the aftermath of the pandemic, and with the arrival of the Elizabeth line, there is an overwhelming need and a compelling opportunity to build back better; a business-as-usual approach will no longer work,” added Robathan.

“We hope the creation of these pedestrian-only piazzas at Oxford Circus will not only improve safety, security, accessibility but create an iconic destination at the heart of London.”

Transformation to be carried out in stages

The transformation of the area will be delivered through a phased approach, beginning with the introduction of two pedestrian-friendly piazzas with planting and seating at the Oxford Circus by the end of 2021.

Roads between Oxford Circus and Great Portland Street will be closed through experimental traffic orders (ETOs), as well as routes from Oxford Circus to John Princes Street.

Traffic will continue north and south of Oxford Circus along Regent Street.

The second phase of the scheme will include “major improvements to the public realm” and start in spring 2022.

This will see more pleasant places to eat, drink and shop introduced, alongside improved access to Oxford Circus tube station.

The changes are also hoped to improve bus services in the district and support the council’s existing Greenways project, which is improving the experience of cyclists in the area.

Pedestrianisation of Oxford Street in discussion for years

The idea of pedestrianising Oxford Street has been in the works for several years. London mayor Sadiq Kahn planned to impose traffic restrictions there in 2018 – though this scheme was later rejected.

Zaha Hadid Architects imagined banishing cars from the road in 2018 as part of its Walkable London proposal, and more recently Camille Walala proposed filling the site with blocky street furniture finished in her signature colourful style.

This year will also see the construction of Marble Arch Hill, an artificial hill and viewing platform that will be built by MVRDV near Oxford Street to attract people back to the area following the coronavirus pandemic.

Elsewhere in London, some London boroughs have recently introduced Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) to prevent drivers from taking shortcuts through residential streets. One of these boroughs is Hackney, which has introduced LTNs as part of a plan to become a net-zero emissions borough by 2040.

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Televisions are now one of those mandatory, must-haves, and simply cannot do without appliances in our home. Whether big or small, flat-screen or even rollable, you are bound to find a television in almost every home. After work, all anyone wants to do is jump onto their couch and binge-watch their favorite show! And, we’ve curated a collection of truly innovative and futuristic television designs that are breaking all the norms when it comes to this home appliance. From a 70-inch retractable TV screen-equipped smart bed to a 165-inch 4K folding television – these mindblowing designs will truly transform your definition of a television! Netflix binging sessions and movie marathons couldn’t get any better with these television designs!

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. A built-in surround sound system with invisible speakers makes the bed feel more like a movie theatre.

Fashioned with 5 display panels that open and close like a folding fan, the M1 television really knows how to make an appearance. Its elaborate structure features a base that the display panels lock into once they open out. This base also houses the television’s powerful speaker system, including two 250W broadband speakers and one whopping 700W subwoofer to really pack that punch. While those stats may be impressive to a few, it’s the TV’s design that really gets my heart racing! The M1 doesn’t come with a single folded display, but rather features 5 panels that can seamlessly merge together to appear as one singular panel.

The blank screen of a conventional television that isn’t in use can become a bit of an eye-sore in the room. But with the help of transparent display panels, this might not be a problem for too much longer. Designed by Jang Junyoung to effectively communicate transparent display panels, this television is capable of blending almost perfectly into its surroundings when it isn’t in use. This intuitive technology is accompanied by a carefully considered and minimalistic design; the control board is housed and hidden within the television’s stand to ensure that it doesn’t compromise the simplistic design. The front and rear of this perfectly symmetrical stand rises at a shallow angle until it connects seamlessly to the thin bezel that surrounds the television screen.

The TinyTV comes as a DIY kit that assembles easily in less than 5 minutes with no soldering or special tools required. It runs off a MicroSD card, allowing you to play back up to 5 hours of content (in MP4 format) on the TV’s ridiculously small screen. The TinyTV also comes along with its own TinyRemote with 6 adorable little buttons to power the TV on, change channels, adjust the volume, and even mute the television (I wonder how loud the speakers on the TV are). The TV’s 3D-printed enclosure is designed to resemble old-timey cathode-ray tube tellies from the 70s… and even though it’s printed in white filament, you can easily give it a quick paint-job with some acrylic paints.

Abdelrahman Shaapan’s Flex OLED TV concept, however, takes the Serif TV’s ideology of merging tech with furniture and amps it up in a way that actually makes the television look remarkable and desirable. What Shaapan’s Flex OLED TV gets right off the bat is separating the television unit visually from the furniture. The Flex OLED TV comes with a dazzlingly sleek bezel-less display that sits on top of the television’s ‘base cabinet which resembles a table – the kind you’d place your TV on. After all, your TV should be surrounded by furniture – your TV shouldn’t BE furniture. With the Flex, that table forms a part of the TV, although visually distinct and separate… and it acts as its base-support and housing its internal components like the built-in soundbar and the mechanism that gives the Flex OLED TV its most exciting feature!

Absolutely pure in its design language, the Maison TV looks like something Muji would build. The simple white block form with the four detachable legs gives the TV a certain elegance which makes the television look like an object fit for a home, rather than a showroom. The thickness of the TV stems from its inclusive design, which has empty spaces in the back for storing streaming boxes, and even for cable management so that you’re left with a TV that doesn’t have any odd boxes or wires corrupting its beauty. The Maison TV comes with beautiful flush controls on the side, along with a remote that echoes the same style that makes the Maison TV’s design language tick every single box in Rams’ ten commandments of good design!

 This conceptual Rollean TV is built into a shelf BOOM! Rollable TV? Shelf? This shape-shifting appliance plays a double “roll”. Unlike the retail industry scam of ‘built-in shelf’ bras, the Rollean TV has been truly designed on the ideology of a built-in shelf. This is genius for a couple of reasons, the first being you don’t have to spend more money on getting furniture to support your TV and second being the TV is actually able to support your things which would otherwise be strewn all over the place (like car keys, house keys, the keys to your future). This rollable TV concept blends with your interiors, it is minimal and sleek, unlike the usual TV stands. You simply roll out the screen when you watch to binge Netflix and slide it back to turn it into a table – ninja skills!

Designed to get the user more involved by removing all unwanted elements, ARTE sets out to break the mold of TV design. The conventional television stand has been replaced with a large stone that is positioned off-center, this adds an interesting element of suspense to the design. Hidden within the stone is an acoustic lens to ensure a superior listening experience for the user and this further engages them. With such a unique and distinct design ARTE is more than just television, it’s a piece of art; it’s able to draw just as much attention when the television is off than when it is on!

Over the years the television has become more and more of a centerpiece within the room, its presence is almost a given and its often-vast size and bold design makes them hard to ignore. So why not draw more attention to it? The Cube is designed to do just this! As opposed to the television resting on a TV stand, the base of the large TV takes its position! The geometric and angular form contrasts the smooth curve of the television and is designed to emulate a sculpture on its pedestal. Its lightly brushed finish features a dramatic gradient that breaks up the flat façade. The top face slightly protrudes out of the cube and light gently illuminates the gaps, emphasizing the subtle feature.

Sero, which is Korean for ‘vertical’, succeeds Samsung’s Flip from 2018, which was a rotating collaborative whiteboard that went from landscape to portrait too. Unlike the Flip, however, the Sero is a real TV. It doesn’t come with a touch-sensitive screen and a stylus, but rather is a 4K QLED screen that’s best suited for lifestyle consumers who want to be able to stream movies, browse the web, and watch videos that they captured on their phone. The Sero comes with a neat easel-like stand that gives it its defining look (like the Serif TV has its bezel, the Sero TV has its stand), and it doesn’t even need manual rotation.

Designed to support two house guests, MUJI’s 23-item host essentials kit for Airbnb covers everything from kitchenware to cleaning products and even includes an elegant aroma diffuser. Retailing for $400, the complete amenities collection aims to make welcoming guests even easier—and lets hosts provide dedicated design-forward items for people on their stays. Our favorite inclusion happens to be the recycled paper notebooks and smooth gel colored pens—perhaps to be used together as a guest feedback book, or simply a place to share sentiments. Read more about the development of the Airbnb host essentials by MUJI at Hypebae.

Image courtesy of Muji

Montréal studio TBA has wrapped the Canadian pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in a green screen so that it can be replaced digitally with other buildings.

Called Impostor Cities, the pavilion was designed to be a comment on architectural authenticity focusing on the way Canadian cities are often used to portray other places in films.

“The Pavilion celebrates the protean Canadian cities and buildings that pose as cinematic doubles,” said the pavilion’s design team.

“Challenging visitors to think about architectural authenticity, the onsite and the onscreen, at a moment when the blurring of fact and fiction takes on an important significance.”

TBA and curator David Theodore aimed to drastically alter the appearance of the Canadian pavilion, which was designed by Italian studio BBPR in 1958 and was recently renovated.

It has been largely wrapped in green sheeting to give the building a dramatic impact.

“Dramatic is the right word, but also theatrical, mischievous, and cinematic,” the design team told Dezeen.

“Wrapping the structure in a green mesh fabric highlights its quirky spiralling profile,” they continued.

“The wrap changes the pavilion into an icon visible across the Giardini, in bold contrast to our neighbours, the staid British, German, and French pavilions. Even at a distance visitors will instantly identify our theme of architecture and cinema.”

The green mesh disguises the building and gives the impression that the pavilion’s renovations are still underway.

“It’s about architectural identity and faking it,” they continued.

“We hope visitors think that the pavilion is under renovation again and that then they discover they can digitally erase and replace the pavilion with Canadian impostor buildings.”

The wrap also allows the building to be used as a digital green screen.

Using an Instagram filter called Svela-Finzione, which translates into English as “reveal the fake”, visitors can replace the pavilion with a building in Canada.

“If you’re standing there, you see a green-wrapped building,” said the tam.

“If you look through your camera, you see buildings from Canada digitally inserted in the place of the Pavilion. The wrap flips the script, making movies double as architecture.”

Within the pavilion is an exhibition that aims to highlight when Canadian buildings and cities have been used to represent other places in the world.

“The exhibition shows visitors that the fictional worlds they see onscreen are likely to be Canadian cities,” said the team.

And it challenges them to reimagine what it means to experience architecture. The cities we inhabit together onscreen are meaningful and valuable ways to live together in a changing world.”

Germany’s 2038 pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale also utilised digital technology with QR codes placed on the walls of the empty building. Scanning the codes allowed visitors to watch movies explore the world in 2038.

We rounded up 10 of the best pavilions from the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale that respond to this year’s theme of How will we live together?

The photography is courtesy of Impostor Cities.

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