A Small Design Change Yields Better UX for the Cardboard File Box

It’s shameful, but despite having moved three years ago, I’m still not fully unpacked. I don’t own much storage furniture, and have left lots of stuff in the cardboard file boxes I moved them in. So I’m interacting with these boxes constantly.

They work well enough, but one minor gripe I have is with the lids, which I find a hassle to deal with when you’re digging through multiple boxes looking for something. A design I’d much prefer is this cardboard box with an integrated lid, designed for Muji by Drill Design.

I also like that there’s a half-height variant for smaller items.

One thing I don’t like is that it does yield some waste—the assembly instructions show that you’re meant to remove and do away with the panels the instructions themselves are printed on. But I suppose there’s some waste in all cardboard boxes, as none are made from an entire perfect rectangle of cardboard stock.

Marshalls produces concrete bricks with less embodied carbon than clay bricks

Elevation detail of house with Marshalls concrete bricks

Dezeen promotion: concrete bricks manufactured by Marshalls have been found to contain almost 50 per cent less embodied carbon than traditional clay bricks, according to the British manufacturing company. 

Marshalls brick and Masonry offers a range of concrete facing bricks, which have been developed to be as sustainable as possible.

Research carried out by the brand found that switching from fired clay bricks to concrete alternatives effectively halves the embodied carbon in the external walls of a newly constructed house.

The calculations suggest that, on average, using concrete bricks could offer CO2 savings of 2.4 tonnes over the lifetime of every new house.

“To put this into context, if housebuilders were to adopt this approach across every house built in the UK for one year, then the lifetime CO2 savings would be equivalent to taking 300,000 cars off the road, or reducing transatlantic flights by almost half a million,” said the brand.

Facade of house with Marshalls concrete bricks
Marshalls offers concrete bricks that are less carbon-intensive than fired clay bricks

In a recent talk with Dezeen, Marshalls sustainability director Chris Harrop explained that the products were made more environmentally friendly through innovations in the manufacturing process.

The brand has been able to reduce the amount of cement in its concrete by at least 40 per cent over the past decade, by replacing it with more sustainable substitutes. This reduces the material’s carbon footprint without impacting its strength or durability.

“Once you start to get into the data, you really start to understand the cradle-to-grave impact of products,” Harrop stated in the talk.

“We don’t need to fire a product in hundreds or thousands of degrees to cure it,” he said, comparing the process to the way that clay bricks are produced. “A concrete product will cure naturally on its own without any additional help and will just get stronger over time.”

Interior of house with Marshalls concrete bricks
The concrete bricks could halve the embodied carbon in a newly constructed house

Marshalls believes its concrete products can significantly contribute to reducing the carbon footprint of the construction industry, while also helping the UK government achieve its target of building 300,000 new homes every year until 2025.

The concrete bricks are available in a range of colours and finishes, to suit a variety of different purposes and aesthetics.

They come with carbon labelling footprint information calculated by the Carbon Trust using methodology outlined in PAS2050 and approved by the Carbon Trust, to give customers full transparency.

All products are manufactured in locations all over the UK, which brings an additional layer of efficiency to the process.

They are also 100 per cent recyclable, so they can be repurposed at the end of their life.

For more information about Marshalls’ sustainability performance, visit the brand’s website


Partnership content

This article was written by Dezeen for Marshalls as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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Taste Studio pays tribute to the art of coffee roasting with Paga cafe

A white building behind a tree

Interior design studio Taste Space designed this roastery and cafe in Bangkok to take customers on a journey from coffee bean roasting to cup. 

The Bangkok-based studio drew on the process of coffee roasting to inform its design of the three-storey roastery in the Watthana district of Thailand’s capital.

People sitting in a white cafe
Top: Paga is located on the corner of a busy street in Bangkok. Above: the roastery is spread over three floors

Spread out over three floors on the corner of a tree-lined street, Paga  takes cues from the mountains where coffee originates from.

“Paga micro-roastery is inspired by ‘the mountain’ where coffee beans are cultivated, in order to pay tribute and advocate the long and fascinating process of micro speciality coffee,” said Taste Space founder Kijtanes Kajornrattanadech.

Barrista pours coffee at Paga roastery
Baristas and customers are encouraged to interact with each other over the large counter

The top floor, which is meant to represent the mountain’s peak, is reserved for coffee bean storage and a space to hold coffee workshops.

The floor below is split into two rooms: one features grey chairs and tables for customers, while the other has a machine for coffee roasting.

Woman walking through Paga cafe
Paga is covered in a neutral, off-white colour

Thanks to the double-height levels, customers are able to see through the glass windows into the roastery room from every vantage point in the cafe.

“The roastery is an important process of making coffee, therefore we designed this part to be seen from every corner of the cafe,”  Kajornrattanadech told Dezeen.

“We designed the roastery room with an all-glass wall to make it visible but prevent people interrupting while the roasters make coffee,” he explained.

Taste Space paid close attention to the technical requirements needed for roasting coffee here. To control the level of direct sunlight in the room, the designers chose to keep the room windowless.

A bright white light was added to help employees check the colour of the coffee beans while natural light enters from the windows on the ground floor.

Seats, tables and a bench inside the cafe
The first floor features additional for customers to enjoy coffees

The spacious, off-white ground floor is arranged around a large, curved counter. The designers enlisted the help of the local baristas to design this counter bar.

“The highlight is a solid triangular coffee bar that gives lots of space for baristas to perform and communicate micro coffee culture with customers in friendly proximity,” said Kajornrattanadech.

“We worked closely with the barristers to design the counter bar,” he continued. “We wanted to help the barristers work smoothly and perform well while the customer who is sitting at the counter bar can enjoy the performance of dripping coffee.”

Coffee roastery in Bangkok
A roasting room can be seen from all corners of the cafe

An array of stools and small tables around the edges of the building provide customers with places to sit and enjoy their coffees. Vast floor to ceiling windows provides drinkers with views onto the bustling Bangkok street outside.

“We designed the peaceful environment in an off-white colour to encourage customers to enjoy and focus on their cups without other distractions,” said Kajornrattanadech.

Paga cafe in Bangkok
Paga mirrors the structure of a mountain

Further touches are designed to allude to the coffee mountain such as a rough-textured paint which was used on the walls and the curvy ceiling design.

Other coffee shops in Bangkok include % Arabica cafe by Austrian architecture studio Precht. Situated in the largest shopping centre in the Thai capital, the cafe houses 7,000 handmade bricks which are used on the floors, walls and stepped seating.

Photography is by Jinnawat Borihankijanan.

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Five architecture and design controversies that rocked the Tokyo Olympics

Zaha Hadid's Tokyo Olympic stadium

The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games went ahead successfully despite a series of controversies in the run-up, including accusations of plagiarism and greenwashing. Here are five architecture and design scandals that threatened to derail the games.


Zaha Hadid's Tokyo Olympic stadium design

Zaha Hadid’s Olympic Stadium scraped

Perhaps the biggest controversy in the run-up to the games was the hiring and firing of architect Zaha Hadid as the architect of the Olympic stadium.

Zaha Hadid Architects won the competition to design the stadium in 2012. However, the proposed design (top and above) was criticised by a group of leading Japanese architects including Fumihiko Maki, Toyo Ito, Sou Fujimoto and Kengo Kuma due to its scale.

Hadid described these architects as “hypocrites”. “They don’t want a foreigner to build in Tokyo for a national stadium,” Hadid told Dezeen at the time. “On the other hand, they all have work abroad.”

Following the criticism and a budget cut, Zaha Hadid Architects submitted a proposal for a scaled-back “refined” stadium in 2014.

Despite the redesign, the controversial stadium was scrapped in 2015, with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe stating that he had listened “to the voices of the people” and had decided to “start over from zero” with the stadium.

A new competition was launched with designs by Kuma and Ito, who were both critical of Hadid’s original stadium chosen as the two finalists. Kuma’s design was chosen as the eventual winner.


Tokyo 2020 Olympic logo by Kenjiro Sano

Olympic logo plagiarism claims

The original logos for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games also proved contentious and, like the stadium, were eventually scrapped.

Designs by Japanese graphic designer Kenjiro Sano (above) were unveiled by the event organisers in 2015 but were quickly embroiled in scandal after Belgian designer Olivier Debie accused Sano of copying his logo for the Théâtre de Liège.

Despite Sano insisting there was “absolutely no truth” in the claims, the plagiarism allegations and a lawsuit led to the organisers withdrawing the design.

A public competition was launched to source a replacement logo, which Japanese artist Asao Tokolo won with a pair of chequerboard designs.


Kengo Kuma portrait

Kengo Kuma accused of plagiarism

Following his victory in the competition to replace Hadid’s controversial stadium, Kuma was accused of plagiarising the original design.

According to Hadid, the new stadium had “remarkable similarities” to her own proposal with a similar shape and layout.

“In fact, much of our two years of detailed design work and the cost savings we recommended have been validated by the remarkable similarities of our original detailed stadium layout and our seating bowl configuration with those of the design announced today,” she said.

However, Kuma rubbished the claims, telling The Japan Times: “I believe if you take a look at Zaha Hadid’s design and mine, you can see very different impressions of the building.”


Kengo Kuma's Tokyo 2020 Olympic stadium

Stadium linked to deforestation

Much has been made of the use of timber in the roof and cladding of Kengo Kuma’s 68,000-seat Japan National Stadium, which was built to host the athletic events as well as the opening and closing ceremonies.

However, the Japanese government was criticised for the timber used as a mould for the concrete structure. An investigation by more than 40 charities found that the tropical hardwood being used was linked to deforestation and human rights violations.

A petition signed by over 140,000 people demanded that the government rethink its use of tropical hardwood at the stadium.

“The Olympics is supposed to be all about ‘fair play’ and ‘the youth of the world coming together’. In reality, the human rights of Sarawak’s indigenous people and the environment are being threatened by the Olympics,” said Mathias Rittgerott of charity Rainforest Rescue, who delivered the petition in Germany.

“The use of tropical timber from Sarawak on Olympic construction sites is nothing to celebrate,” she added.


Tokyo Olympic Stadium from above

Sustainability efforts branded “greenwashing”

The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games aimed to be the greenest in recent history, with a host of initiatives from recycled cardboard beds to podiums made of donated plastic designed to help the games move “towards zero-carbon”.

According to the organisers, these are the first Olympics to be carbon neutral and run entirely on renewable energy. However, a peer-reviewed study conducted by the University of Lausanne found that the Tokyo event is the third-least sustainable Olympics since 1992.

“The majority of the measures that have been included in this particular Olympics, and the ones that were particularly mediatised, have a more or less superficial effect,” said the report’s co-author David Gogishvili.

“The efforts the International Olympic Committee is making are important but they are limited and not enough. From my perspective, unless they heavily limit the construction aspect and the overall size of the event, they will always be criticised for greenwashing.”

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BIG's spiralling double-helix viewing tower revealed

Marsk Watchtower by BIG

The first photos of the recently opened Marsk Watchtower in Denmark designed by architecture studio BIG have been unveiled.

Created to attract tourists to the area, the 25-metre-high viewing tower within the Wadden Sea National Park has a double helix structure.

Marsk Watchtower by BIG
Marsk Watchtower recently opened in Denmark

It recently opened at the Marsk Camp, which is surrounded by UNESCO World Heritage-listed marshland in southwestern Denmark.

Standing alongside the campsite’s restaurant and cafe, the tower rises 25 metres to give views across the national park and out towards the North Sea.

Viewing tower at Marsk Camp
It stands next to the Marsk Camp restaurant

Made from Corten steel, the tower appears to be formed almost entirely from stacked steps.

BIG designed the structure to have a double helix formation similar to that of DNA, with 146 steps on the way up and 131 on the way down.

Double helix-shaped viewing tower
The tower has a double helix arrangement

“Marsk tower consists of a unique construction, where the design is based on nature’s twisted structure and human DNA strand,” explained Marsk Camp.

“It is both a sculpture and an observation tower and is shaped like a double helix and designed in such a way that there is only one way up and another way down.”

 

Steps in Camp Marsk viewing tower
There are 146 steps up to the viewing platform

The tower slowly expands outwards from a seven-metre base wide to a 12-metre-wide viewing platform at its top.

A small elevator runs through the structure’s core to provide accessible access.

“When you have climbed the 146 steps and landed on the observation platform, you are standing 36 metres above sea level,” said Marsk Camp.

“This gives a completely unique perspective on the otherwise flat marsh and a fantastic view over the Wadden Sea National Park.”

Corten tower in Denmark
It appears to be made entirely from steps

Fabricated by local company Schack Trapper, the structure was made from around 300 tonnes of Corten steel.

It stands on a plinth constructed using 250 tonnes of concrete.

Stepped viewing tower
It was built from Corten steel steps

The tower is the latest attraction to be built in Denmark. Architecture studio EFFEKT recently designed a 45-metre-high helical tower in the Gisselfeld Klosters Forest.

Led by architect Bjarke Ingles, Danish studio BIG is one of the world’s best-known architecture studios. Other spiral informed buildings designed by the firm include The Twist art gallery in Norway and a supertall skyscraper in New York called the Spiral.

The photography is courtesy of Marsk Camp.

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Mercedes-Benz’s 2021 S-Class is the First Car With Front Airbags for Rear-Seat Passengers

Research, development and clever engineering have made this safety innovation a reality

The all-new 2021 Mercedes-Benz S-Class brims with breakthrough tech, from incredible biometric-sensing that pulls up driver presets based on fingerprint, voice or facial recognition to multi-hue LEDs that illuminate the cockpit and make phased changes depending on the driver’s desire. Perhaps the most impressive update is the company’s development of rear-seat airbags that deploy from the back panels of the front passenger seats. This has never been done in any other vehicle before, partly because it required massive engineering. Front airbags in a car are designed to deploy from a fixed point in relation to the front seats, they will fill the gap between driver and front-seat passenger pretty much wherever the seats are raked to, but according to engineers at Mercedes-Benz, protecting rear-seat passengers presented a far greater challenge.

First, the front seat uprights may be tilted in a far greater variety of angles than any dashboard. The airbag has to deploy so that it acts like a pillow no matter the angle of that front seat, but if you’re the driver and have your seat upright or you like it very relaxed, the airbag still has to protect the rear passenger’s head and torso. Mercedes, via a spokesperson, tells us, “In addition, children and adults sit very differently in the rear of a vehicle. Therefore, particular attention was given to a gentle deployment of the airbag in case people or objects are in the deployment zone.”

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Dr Michael Hafner, Head of Automated Driving

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On right: Dr Michael Hafner, Head of Automated Driving

The Mercedes-Benz team has learned a lot since the first airbags for drivers debuted in an S-Class in 1980, and testing over the decades has led them to understand how the structures that allow airbags to inflate and deflate have to be malleable in order to allow their proper deployment. This was crucial for the rear-seat airbag because second-row passengers may be positioned very differently—and might be using gaming devices, phones or other items—so the tubes that feed the airbags were specifically designed to collapse when they meet a person, or an object. There may also be a rear-facing child seat in that second row, so it was critical to ensure no level of force meant to cushion would instead cause harm.

In addition, because the rear-seat area of the new S-Class is cavernous, (unlike for a driver or front passenger, whose airbags are backed by the firm surfaces of the steering wheel and dash) the second-row airbags have been designed to reduce whiplash by anticipating the “throw” of the head and neck, and in conjunction with the seatbelt, can significantly lessen the load on the upper torso and skull. Mercedes-Benz also offers the addition of an airbag in the seatbelt. All of these features together can reduce the force and impact of an accident.

The S-Class also gets one other safety feature to augment the rear-seat airbags called PRE-SAFE Impulse Side. It’s a new addition to the suite of PRE-SAFE protection that responds to side impact by inflating air chambers and moving you away from the impact zone. By literally moving you further from the source of impact you are more protected from potential injuries.

As with past pioneering safety firsts, we ask Mercedes if they have plans to share these advancements with other carmakers, and they commented that while no other manufacturers have expressed an interest yet, they are “open to spreading the technology across the market.”

You can learn more about the all new 2021 S Class in the USA here, or visit the global Mercedes-Benz site.

Images courtesy of Mercedes-Benz

Winners of the BigPicture Natural World Photography

Pour sa huitième éditions, BigPicture continue d‘encourager les photographes du monde entier à participer à ce concours qui a un but bien particulier : celui de célébrer et d’illustrer la diversité de la vie sur Terre. Ainsi, il vise à agir pour la protéger et la conserver grâce à l’image et à son pouvoir. Les photographies sont ensuite soumises au jury, présidé par la photographe de conservation primée Suzi Eszterhas. Cette année, la grande gagnante est Jo-Anne McArthur, qui a remporté le grand prix pour sa photo Hope Admist the Ashes. Une image forte en symbole puisqu’elle a immortalisé un kangourou résilient faisant une pause dans une plantation d’eucalyptus brûlée. « Près de trois milliards d’animaux ont péri ou ont été déplacés lors des feux de brousse australiens cataclysmiques de 2019 et 2020. Ce kangourou gris oriental et son petit représentent les heureux survivants, échappant à une zone transformée par les humains pour l’agriculture, puis dévastée par le feu », peut-on lire sur le site du concours. Les autres lauréats et finalistes se trouvent eux dans différentes catégories : vie aquatique, vie terrestre, « vie ailée », paysage d’eau, de terre et flore, art de la nature, humain/nature, reportage photo « hors de l’ordinaire ».

Pour en savoir plus et découvrir les histoires qui se cachent derrière les photographies, rendez-vous sur le site internet.

Hope in a Burned Plantation. Jo-Anne McArthur

Barracuda. Yung-Sen Wu.

Boss. Michelle Valberg.

Beak to Beak. Shane Kalyn.

Another Planet. Fran Rubia.

The Goblet of Fire. Sarang Naik.

Sign of the Tides. Ralph Pace.

Klukshu Ice Bears. Peter Mather.








 

 

Mermaid-In-Training Goggles

Bedazzled with colorful gems, these cat-eye goggles provide extra enticement for kids to jump into the pool or paddle in the sea. With an efficient seal and adjustable strap, they include all the safety specifications of traditional goggles, but are decidedly more playful.

iPad Accessories designed to give you the ultimate work from home tablet setup!

My iPad has almost reached necessity status in my life, I’m pretty sure all of us tablet owners are super reliant on them (I mean, I am for sure)! I personally find tablets extremely handy, they’re the comfortable middle ground between a smartphone and a laptop, and they pretty much perform the same functions as these two. They’re super easy to carry around, and honestly, I could survive wholly and solely on my iPad Pro if I really wanted to. I’m always on the lookout for innovative and fun accessories to amp up my tablet (besides the basic ones Apple offers). Luckily there’s a whole bunch of crafty designs out there that can function as the perfect sidekick to your precious tablet. So, here’s a collection of super cool and functional product designs that promise to upgrade your iPad game to a whole another level!

The Apple Pencil is arguably the iPad Pro‘s secret sauce. Along with the Pencil, the iPad Pro becomes the ultimate creator’s setup (for both 2D as well as 3D creation). It would therefore make sense to explore how the Pencil could further become a ‘power-user tool, allowing creators to unlock new potentials. Yanko Design has imagined what these new nibs could look like, with explorations for more niche 2D uses. The interchangeable nibs include a fine-tip nib, a chisel nib, and a flexible brush-pen nib. Other nib styles could unlock 3D modeling features like being able to sculpt on the iPad. “The filing suggests the nib could contain several different sensors for varying purposes. The component list includes tactile sensors, contact sensors, capacitive and touch sensors, a camera, a piezoelectric sensor, a pressure sensor, or a photodiode”, reports Apple Insider.

Stationery in general gets lost all the time. Our favorite pens fall into hard-to-reach cracks and our pencils roll under our beds, never to be seen again. The iPad Pro Stand from Yohann features an exact slot for your Apple Pencil to slink into when not in use. The secure lip allows the iPad Pro to remain stationary on the stand. The Apple Pencil holder features magnetic ends to ensure secure storage and that you’ll never lose your Apple Pencil again. The stand itself is handcrafted from a single piece of wood for a solid and durable structure that ages well and stands the test of time. The iPad Pro stand features a winged back for multi-angled use.

The most obvious convenience of gaming on an iPad is that you can practically play anything on it. You don’t need to go out and physically buy a board game or order cards online. Everything is just an app-install away… although that comes with an obvious caveat – it isn’t easy playing group games on one iPad. The Wonder Cover comes up with a clever little hack to facilitate better group gaming on the iPad. The covers are just plastic parts that slide onto the tablet, creating a shielded enclosure to allow players to “protect their hand”. Perfect for card games like Poker and Uno, or even for Scrabble, the Wonder Cover is a nifty way to bring a physical/personal element to a digital gaming experience.

The iTrack comes from the fine folks at Brydge, who’ve developed some of the best accessories for Apple products over the years (they released a keyboard+trackpad attachment for the iPad before Apple did). Debuted at CES back in 2020, the iTrack (which officially launched just last week) is a compact multi-touch trackpad that’s designed to give your iPad workflow a significant upgrade. Styled to look just like Apple’s own Magic Trackpad 2, the iTrack is much smaller (with a 6.1-inch diagonal) and sports the same space-grey aluminum body and touch-sensitive glass top.

The Moment M-Series multidirectional lens mount works perfectly with your iPad, or iPhone even! You can move the mount in any direction, and capture your priceless moments and that too at the perfect angle! You can use it to shoot on the front, as well as the back camera. Amped with a sleek aluminum frame, the mount is extremely easy to install and stays securely fitted in one spot. You can now capture your next shot with ease!

In hindsight, you really can’t call the HoverBar Duo an iPad ‘stand’. The multi-hinged, incredibly versatile, height/direction adjustable arm is capable of doing much more than your conventional stand is. In fact, think of it as a mechanical butler who just holds your iPad for you at any angle you want, for any length of time. More versatile than a stand or a tripod, the HoverBar Duo for the iPad and iPhone is better described by the things that it’s capable of… and it’s capable of quite a lot! Simply put, the HoverBar Duo holds your iPad or iPhone wherever you want it, and in any orientation you need.

At nearly 1/4th the price of Apple’s own Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro, the Mokibo Folio provides the same set of features in a portable, accessible, and universally compatible format. Designed to work with multiple devices, and with a foldable stand that lets you prop those devices up as you type, the Mokibo Folio is a QWERTY keyboard that also doubles up as an iPad case. Designed, however, with a touch-sensitive surface that sits under the entire right-half the keyboard’s key-surface, the Mokibo goes from keyboard to touch-board just simply by running your hand over the right-hand side of the keyboard’s surface, allowing you to swipe, pinch, and perform a wide variety of gestures.

The PencilSnap Apple Pencil iPad Sleeve from Twelve South stores and protects your stylus at all times! You can slide your Apple Pencil into the beautiful leather sleeve, where it will be safely stored. A snug grip ensures that the stylus does not slip or slide out. A magnetic mounting system makes it compatible with an Apple Smart Cover. The magnets ensure that the stylus is stuck in place! No losing your Apple Pencils anymore!

Made of powder-coated steel sheet, the FCTNDSGN Bookend comes in an ‘L’ shaped form, albeit with one flat end and one corrugated one. This unique form factor isn’t just a stylistic design choice, it serves a unique purpose too. The flat and corrugated surfaces allow the FCTNDSGN Bookend to work not just as a bookend, but also as a bookstand that lets you prop up anything from hardbound (or even paperback) books, vinyl discs, or even tablets, including your iPad!

Plug the Hello X3 in the top left corner of any display (or any flat surface) and suddenly you have a stylus-capable screen that you can draw on, annotate against, and present with. Up until just 5 minutes ago, I was ready to throw a little over a grand at a new, 12.9-inch M1 iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil. I’m honestly reconsidering now after stumbling across this $120 gadget that transforms any flat surface into a stylus-friendly touchscreen. Titled the YELANG Hello X3, this 3-axis-shaped device plugs onto the corner of any flat rectangular surface (although it’s much more useful when mounted on a display), practically turning it into an iPad. The Hello X3 works with displays as large as 27-inches and comes along with a pressure-sensitive stylus too to rival the Apple Pencil. It may not be an iPad accessory, but it definitely does not let you feel the lack of a tablet!

These magnetic modular glasses with a hingeless design resolves the most common frame breakage problem!

MagLeg is a pair of 3D-printed magnetic eyeglasses that allow for hingeless, unrestricted movement of the temples with an ergonomic design.

If you wear glasses, then you know the struggle of keeping them in one piece. All it takes is one wrong move and your glasses are squashed, scraped, or broken. The temples of glasses are especially notorious for breaking off at the hinges. The temples of glasses are flexible to point, but when they’re over flexed to fit larger head sizes, the hinges snap from too much tension. For designers Marc Sapetti and Arthur Carvalho Vieira, this is all too familiar, so they created MagLeg, a pair of 3D-printed magnetic eyeglasses that allow for hingeless, unrestricted movement of the temples with an ergonomic design.

Small magnets are embedded into the temples and rims of MagLeg to connect all the pieces together and these magnets curve upwards only slightly to ensure an upright fit. Sapetti and Carvalho Vieira set out to design a pair of eyeglasses that stands the test of time and wear, looking toward magnetic joinery to bring them there. Each pair of eyeglasses comes in three parts: the isolated frames and two temple legs. Embedding the tip of each temple with small magnets, they connect to each corner of the rims to form a single pair of glasses.

While MagLeg’s construction is unique and unlike any other pair of glasses on the market, their appearance remains inconspicuous. Magnets replace the hinges of traditional eyeglasses, allowing for unrestricted movement at the temples and rims. Following a thorough research period filled with interviews and trial periods, Sapetti and Carvalho Vieira took a human-centric approach in creating MagLeg. The designers note, “We noticed a gap in the glasses industry. These magnetic glasses were developed to address the lack of lasting glasses that also offer stylish design and human comfort. We used our experience from other segments like backpacks and industry-machines to come up with this innovative solution.”

The frames are produced in high volume following a plastic injection template or a 3D printmaking process that uses nylon material to create the eyewear. The designers followed a thorough period of research with trial runs of their eyeglasses on 3D-printed heads to ensure a comfortable, secure fit. Using these construction processes opens the door to customization work that might call for acute measurement adjustments or color changes. The magnetic and modular makeup of MagLeg also makes for easy and long-lasting maintenance, allowing users to reorder individual parts of their glasses instead of having to order an entirely new pair of frames.

Designers: Marc Sapetti and Arthur Carvalho Vieira