Hasta La Ideas

In the latest in our series exploring kitchen layouts, we’ve picked eight examples from Dezeen’s archive with U-shaped configurations to make efficient use of space.

As the name suggests, U-shaped kitchens consist of three worktops connected to form an open rectangle.

Popular in smaller interiors, the practical layout creates plenty of counter space for food preparation with room for storage underneath and in wall-hung cabinets above.

The design also creates a compact and efficient work triangle, with everything close to hand.

The U-shape is of the most common kitchen layouts along with one-wall kitchens, island kitchens, galley kitchens and peninsula kitchens.

This is the latest roundup in our Dezeen Lookbooks series providing visual inspiration for the home. Previous roundups include living rooms with statement shelving, spa-like bathrooms and home-working spaces.

Paris apartment, France, by Sophie Dries

French architect Sophie Dries combined two mid-19th-century flats in Paris to create a single large apartment.

At the centre of the apartment, this U-shaped kitchen combines dark grey floor and wall cabinets with soft red worktops, walls, floor and ceiling.

Find out more about Paris apartment ›

Delawyk Module House, UK, by R2 Studio

R2 Studio created playful interiors within this 1960s home on a London council estate. Set alongside an open-plan living and dining area, the bright kitchen combines yellow units and custom orange splashback tiles.

Countertops are arranged in a U-shape with the sink placed under a window and one arm of the U dividing the kitchen from the other communal areas.

Find out more about Delawyk Module House ›

Highgate apartment, UK, by Surman Weston

Built within a 1920s residential block in the Highgate, the kitchen and living space in this small apartment are connected by a timber-framed porthole window.

Within the small kitchen, the sink sits under a narrow window with turquoise-blue countertops inlaid with timber to create a terrazzo-like finish, positioned along the walls. The room is finished with cabinets made from fluted panels of oak finished with brass handles.

Find out more about Highgate apartment ›

Ruffey Lake House, Australia, by Inbetween Architecture

Local studio Inbetween Architecture overhauled a late 20th-century house in Melbourne to create a home for a family of five.

The ground floor was opened up to create an open-plan living and dining space that steps down to the kitchen. The cooker was located at the end of the U with the sink on one arm and space for food preparation on the other.

Find out more about Ruffey Lake House ›

Barcelona apartment, Spain, by Adrian Elizalde and Clara Ocaña

Spanish architects Adrian Elizalde and Clara Ocaña tucked the kitchen into a niche that was left over when they demolished the internal walls in this apartment in Barcelona‘s Eixample neighbourhood.

More of a J-shape than a U, the asymmetrical kitchen is defined by a tiled floor. The white countertop wraps around three walls and extends into the living area, which is demarked by timber flooring.

Find out more about Barcelona apartment ›

Carlton House, Australia, by Reddaway Architects

Lit by a skylight, the kitchen separates the more enclosed spaces in this house’s original structure from a large open living and dining space within an extension.

The kitchen, which has a marble countertop above pink cabinets, extends out from the wall in a J-shape to create a partially enclosed food preparation and cooking space.

Find out more about Carlton House ›

The Cook’s Kitchen, UK, by Fraher Architects

Fraher Architects added a black-stained timber extension to this London flat to create a larger kitchen for a client who loves to cook.

A window extends up the wall to meet a roof light that extends the length of the kitchen, which has a single, in-situ-poured concrete countertop.

The painted plywood cabinets feature patterns of randomly drilled holes that double as recessed handles.

Find out more about The Cook’s Kitchen ›

HB6B – One Home, Sweden, by Karen Matz

Karen Matz created this kitchen within a small, 36-square-metre apartment that she designed for herself.

The end counter contains the sink and cooker, while one of the arms can be used as a breakfast bar. The third arm is topped with storage space and supports one side of the apartment’s raised mezzanine bedroom.

Find out more about HB6B – One Home ›

This is the latest in our series of lookbooks providing curated visual inspiration from Dezeen’s image archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks showcasing colourful interiors, outdoor fireplaces and rooftop gardens.

The post Eight compact U-shaped kitchens designed by architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Stools are probably the most overlooked type of furniture there is. You will almost always find them, forgotten and barely used, in some corner of our homes. When truth be told, they’re much more functional and ergonomic than they are given credit for! They’re compact, and a great space-saving furniture option for our modern homes. They are also super portable! This collection of stools not only provide a healthy seating experience while promoting a good and stable posture, but most of them are created from sustainable materials as well. It’s time to cast aside chairs, and maybe adopt stools as your preferred seating medium. I’m Team Stools for sure!

Sourcing a type of non-existence as his main inspiration, Luu designed Sado as an experiment in unconventional design and the result proves the singularity that can be achieved without blueprints guiding the way. Before designing Sado, Luu wondered, “What if the chair as we knew it never existed?” Eliminating all preconceptions regarding chair designs and all their variations, Luu began at ground zero. Speaking to this, Luu says, “As the archetype of the chair had been left unchanged for the past 6,500 years, an exploration was made to find a unique sitting form.” Settling on both a comfortable and distinct sitting form required a complete restructuring of the traditional upright chair and backrest. Sado’s ultimate form resembles either a horizontal tree log or horseback, suited for a straddled seated position that encourages a healthy posture.

This high stool provides a healthy and playful seating experience. Sano’s seat-bed is placed on an elastic ellipsoid which allows for the movement that makes it unique and also provides support while standing up. The ellipsoid is refillable and can be adjusted via air pressure. The added “bounce” gives a cushioned support when you sit or stand up which is makes it a friendly design for the elderly or those with minor joint issues. Its height creates a more open angle within the knees and the hips compared to conventional seating furniture which further makes the stool a healthier choice. The designer trio wanted to make furniture that would engage and create a more active sitting process that could be enjoyed by people of all ages and heights. The minimal design and evergreen CMF make it suitable for any interior setting.

Nail four legs together put a seat on top, you have yourself a stool. That’s what the most simplistic and basic form of a stool is – four wooden legs capped with a circular or square seat. Award-winning designer João Teixeira, however, is challenging the notion of what that basic archetype of a wooden stool should look like. His design, the Knot Stool, makes use of wood in an unusual way, lending it an appearance that resembles the styles of metal and plastic furniture. The Knot uses a lathe-spun seat beneath which sit three steam-bent wooden legs, giving the stool a fun, funky facelift.

Designer Estab Han created a fusion of two very distinct settings human beings are used to in the context of eating while seated. He has created a product that brings together different aspects of seating merged into each other creating a new human experience built upon old methods – bringing cross-legged sitting to a modern stool design and is influenced by the environment of the Eulji-ro region of Seoul, Korea. Han has brought together these two styles of seating, the old and the new, and created a novel hybrid stool that caters to both of them. The product, called the ‘Eulji-ro Stool’ has two parts, one a standard four-legged stool and the other, also a stool but with a circular profile and a little cutaway section on the top. You can use the ‘Eulji-ro Stool’ in two ways – you can use both the parts separately if there are more people. And when you want to sit cross-legged, you can combine the two by inserting the leg from one into the cut section of the other.

Instead of creating more waste, the 2 Stools from 1 Bicycle project makes use of what’s already there. It creates a product that everyone can use and would be less inclined to throw away. A stool is like a clothes hanger, it is something that you don’t necessarily think about, but it is a product that adds convenience to your daily life. Also, thanks to the stools’ unique aesthetics, you won’t want to give them away. Usually, stools have a symmetrical structure, but these are different. Their slanted legs create an unusual shape and remind me of the original bike frames they were taken from. One stool has three legs; the other has four. Similar to my poorly plucked eyebrows, these stools are sisters, not twins. The seat itself is made from recyclable cork, so even though it doesn’t come from the original bike, it is still in line with the project’s sustainability mission.

Designed by Soraia Gomes Teixeira, a Portuguese designer from Oporto, the Xia Stool aims at revitalizing the common seating object through the power of sound. The accordion-shaped cushion provides an ample visual warning to the user, priming them to expect a sound as they sit, so they’re never caught unawares. Even though the accordion-shaped cushion acts as a visual indication, it’s still incredibly fun and entertaining to actually have the seat meet your expectations, letting out a friendly honk as you sit down! Soraia mentions, “[The] Xia Stool is a fun object that makes people smile and unleashes their imagination.”

The Triplex stool addresses the overconsumption of furniture, especially the kind associated with a nomadic lifestyle that requires people to constantly buy new furniture for their new spaces. Designed to live with you, move with you, and last as long as you need, the Triplex stool comes with a three-part design that uses identical pieces that are screwed together. The identical pieces make the Triplex’s manufacturing footprint relatively small, while their stackable design means the stool can be shipped in a smaller box and can be assembled at home. While moving (or when not in use), the stool can easily be disassembled and stacked/stored efficiently.

Rattan is an eco-friendly natural material that is usually used in the creation of baskets or furniture, especially chairs. It is sustainable and resilient which makes it an exceptional wood that renews in just 5-7 years. Designers love rattan for creating furniture because the manufacturing is low-tech and the production process usually involves crafting by hand or using facilities that do not negatively impact the environment. This stool explores the malleability of rattan as a material in furniture design, we are so used to seeing it in a checkered woven form that the noodle-like seating of this piece becomes a testament to how we can use often overlooked materials unconventionally to push boundaries. As the world moves towards a sustainable future, so must design.

Riemann developed Pylon, a convertible stool that doubles as a piece of interior artwork and also saves space in the living room. At first glance, the Pylon appears as an ordinary traffic cone. Brass hinges line the circumference of the cone’s round base and hint at the traffic cone’s secondary form. By unlocking one of the brass clasps along the base’s outer edge, the traffic cone unfolds and inversely furls back together to form a stool, complete with four-pointed legs. Described as a “cross-section between art and design,” Riemann’s traffic cone stool has a certain industrial appeal – the ideal interior furniture piece for a warehouse turned art studio. Pylon was constructed from laminated fiberglass, fiberglass-reinforced polyamide, as well as a collection of molds that harden Pylon into its full shape.

It’s worth noticing how the OO Stool does such a great job of combining sustainability along with technology and a pinch of heritage. Made from a single board of bamboo plywood, the stool is CNC machine-cut in a way that integrates every single aspect of the stool into its design. Everything you need to build the OO Stool sits within that flat-packed jigsaw puzzle of bamboo pieces, minimizing waste by using as much negative space as possible. The legs form the outside, while the dual-layered seat of the stool sits on the inside, with the negative space being filled by tiny rectangular pieces that help lock the stool in place, and even a bamboo hammer to help assemble the stool! The OO Stool uses absolutely no glue, screws, or nails… just really smart designing and Japanese joinery techniques.

In the Qianhaiwan district of Shenzhen, China, the winning architectural design for the city’s New City Center Landmark competition has been given to Sou Fujimoto Architects for their floating water tower. Slated for ascent in Qianhai Bay, the new tower will appear almost like a freestanding, cylindrical water fountain. Rising to 268-meters in height, Sou Fujimoto Arhcitects’s tower will feature 99 pillar-like support beams, or “islands,” to carry the tower’s upper horizontal structure. Starting from the bay and moving towards the round upper deck, the pillars of the new tower gradually expand in width and stature to close in on the design’s symbolic ode to “the future of society in the age of diversity.”

Finding the initial inspiration for the ‘99-island’ tower, Sou Fujimoto turned to iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower to develop their own urban monument for the modern age, asking, “What does a new ‘tower’ mean in the 21st Century? How can a tower evolve while continuing to attract attention, as the Eiffel Tower does? And [one] which would face towards the bay?” From afar, the new tower will appear as a single entity, a solid structure, slowly distinguishing itself as a collection of columnar pillars that gradually split upon closer viewing. The illusion of being one solid structure as well as an orchestra of different parts sheds a brighter light on Sou Fujimoto Architects’ initial concept of inhabiting a future during this burgeoning age of diversity.

The new tower’s uppermost plane serves as a viewing platform, doubling as a three-dimensional exhibition space with enough room for both a restaurant and cafe. In addition to the minimal structural support that the pillars provide for the round upper deck, a centralized core bolsters the tower, which is then stabilized with a steel truss system and Kevlar tension cables located around the outer edge of the tower’s base. Constructed primarily from steel, concrete, Kevlar Rope, and carbon fiber, Sou Fujimoto Architects’ design for the New City Center Landmark competition uses structurally sound and unadorned building material to realize a contemporary microcosm of our diverse, complex, and ever-evolving world.

Designer: Sou Fujimoto Architects

Appearing as if it’s suspended from mid-air, the plan for the new tower will feature 99 island-like pillars stemming from the round upper deck to the bay.

The upper deck works as an exhibition space.

From afar, the new tower looks like a freestanding, cylindrical water fountain.

The upper viewing area is meant to appeal to tourists and residents alike as a social hub where new views of the city can be accessed.

A centralized core supports the tower while a peripherally located steel truss system and additional Kevlar tension cables stabilize it.

Inside the tower, tourists can view the bay from below and rise to 268-meters above sea level.

A three-dimensional exhibition space gives tourists space to enjoy all the amenities the new tower has to offer.

Transitioning from working out of the office to working from home has undoubtedly thrown our daily movement routines for a loop. While our days once consisted of walking throughout the office and completing our daily move goal ring by lunchtime, our workdays are now split between slouching at a desk and laying on the couch for short breaks. Turning to smart technology to help incorporate more mobility throughout our days, a team of designers based in Korea developed a smart stretching device called Root.

The team of designers behind Root incorporated smart technology into the handheld device that mimics the experience of movement tracking from other smart devices like the Apple watches or built-in smartphone health monitors. Built to be the size of a large pen, Root is as compact and portable as any other health-tracking smart device. Most of the device’s operability is integrated into its internal structure, coming complete with an elastic strap inside that extends for full-motion stretching and built-in motion sensors and coils that provide the groundwork for smart technology. Root’s accompanying app receives information from the device’s internal sensors to provide stretching exercises that are most appropriate for each user’s limitations and individual needs.

After pairing Root with the app via Bluetooth, users can return to their own profile to view upcoming stretching routines, exercises, as well as activity training throughout the day. Integrated coaching and in-app expertise guide users through each movement that Stretch recommends, depending on the handlebar sensors to ensure correct body placement and movement. In developing Root, the team of designers hoped to create a stretching device that helps users generate a solid foundation for our daily movement that will ultimately turn into a daily routine to open up the day to new possibilities. With the chunk of our days taking place behind screens and hunched over our smartphones, Root’s minimal screen provides the ideal recharge we all need.

Designers: Eric Kim, Jae Hyeon Lee, and Nemin Jin

The designers settled on the name Root after finding inspiration in three words: root, routine, and infinite.

The charging station is as compact as the actual stretching device, offering a minimalist display for busy workspaces.

Root is a stretching smart device that’s as compact as a large pen.

Root can easily pair with your smartphone and accompanying app.

Inside, Root carries an elastic stretching band for full-body movements.

Root has an ergonomic build and intuitive design for optimal usability.

Root’s PUI display on its 2.5D glass screen informs users when and how to exercise.

Root’s main smart technology is integrated into the internal structure of the device itself.

root can be used anywhere, at any time throughout the day.

The main body of Root is composed of a type-C port and coils for charging, motion sensors, and wire sensors.

The home page of Root contains each user’s scheduled routine for stretching.

Users can swap out exercises as they see fit.

Integrated smart technology signals to users when their stretching is correct.

Activity tracking fills out most of the app’s main purpose to ensure productive stretching tailored for each individual.

Built-in coaching guides users through each exercise.

Drawing inspiration from the ’70s, Orlando-based designer Mirna Pierre created her new typeface, called View, with Black designers in mind—to honor those across history, pay homage to her peers and inspire those of the future. Curvy, bold and decidedly retro (without being gimmicky), View was made as part of the AIGA SPORT Mentorship program. “I just want people to appreciate my work for what it is,” she tells Ayla Angelos at It’s Nice That. “If they’re able to learn something new and go on a journey of their own to find out more about Black designers and their untold history, then that’s a win.” Read more at It’s Nice That.

Image courtesy of Mirna Pierre