Hasta La Ideas

Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop Studio features an innovative mid-screen hinge that helps it bridge the gap between laptop and tablet. When the user doesn’t require keyboard-driven laptop functionality, the 14.4″ screen can be pulled forward in an orientation that not only obscures the keyboard—making it clear that it’s in a different mode—but also places the screen in a more ergonomically-sound position for touchscreen use.

The screen can also be extended further into a nearly-flat, face-up orientation. This is meant to more closely mirror the experience of sketching on paper on a desktop, using their Surface Slim Pen 2. The pen, by the way, magnetically docks and charges under the front lip of the bottom half of the laptop.

It’s a clever piece of design, and my hat’s off to the design team.

The Surface Laptop Studio rolls out on October 5th with a starting price of $1,600. Tech specs are available here.

Dezeen Showroom: mismatched legs in wood and marble characterise the Sengu table, created by Patricia Urquiola for furniture brand Cassina in a nod to the mix of materials traditionally found in Japanese shrines.

The Sengu table is propped up by a marble column as well as an oblong and a cylindrical wooden leg connected by horizontal crosspieces.

The design is available with a round or oval top, which can be finished in five different marbles as well as American walnut and natural or black-stained oak.

The dining table can also be equipped with a ceramic Lazy Susan for serving food.

“This revolving top is another important reference to the traditions of the orient,” said Cassina.

“The Sengu table is an almost monumental piece of furniture that celebrates conviviality through poetic dialogue, placing an accent on the union of different materials that together express great visual tactility.”

Product: Sengu table
Designer: Patricia Urquiola
Brand: Cassina
Contact: info@cassina.it

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Small parts of our routine tend to have a big environmental impact, for instance, floss is good for our teeth but it is terrible for the ocean and turns it into a plastic minefield. Toothbrush bristles as well as floss are made up of nylon which is not biodegradable but another thing that makes it dangerous is that it is designed to not tear causing serious harm to ocean life. When looking at these issues it is clear that we need to move away from single-use plastics and find a more eco-friendly, long-term solution like the Seventh Generation Beam – a customizable, subscription-based, plastic-free set that is designed to be the all-in-one sustainable oral care kit.

Did you know one billion plastic toothbrushes are thrown away every year in the United States, creating 50 million pounds of waste annually? The production of the nylon bristles on each toothbrush causes nitrous oxide to be produced and released into the atmosphere as a bi-product; nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that is 310 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Seventh Generation’s goal is to limit harmful chemicals and they use plant-based ingredients, scents made from real ingredients, and no synthetic fragrances/dyes in their products. It encourages the importance of wellness is in our personal care, household products, and generally in our everyday lifestyle. The concept demands we expand our understanding of what nourishes us without harming the planet through beautiful and innovative design.

The aim is to create 100% plastic-free packaging. The challenge is to rebrand a traditional product line and redesign the packaging system to be fully sustainable while utilizing no plastic or bioplastic. Biomaterials like tin, wood pulp, plant cellulose, food waste, grass, algae, and mushrooms are being considered. It will all be sustainably sourced, preferably materials that are at the end of their lives and can be composed into biomass to regenerate depleted farming soils.

The design and aesthetics are playful, warm, organic and unlike the language, one might typically associate with “eco-friendly products” which usually only sparks the idea of “bamboo”. Seventh Generation shows that innovation and changing the things we choose can be achieved with visuals just as much as the value added by the product itself.

The kit consists of toothpaste tablets, refillable floss, and a toothbrush. While this is a concept, the aim is to make these products plastic-free as well. Toothpaste tablets already exist and help reduce product and chemical waste while eco-friendly floss and toothbrushes are also gaining popularity as people become more aware of the consequences their actions have on the environment.

Designer: Beatrice Ma

Paris is “jealous” of London’s cycle lanes and is copying London‘s green initiatives, according to London mayor Sadiq Khan.

Khan, who has been mayor of London since 2016, told Dezeen that he is aiming to make London “the greenest city in the world”.

According to Khan, London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone, tree-planting initiatives and cycle lanes are “the envy of the world”.

Other cities “embracing” London’s policies

He believes that other cities, including Paris, where mayor Anne Hidalgo has been making headlines with a raft of sustainable initiatives, are copying his policies.

“It’s great to see Anne embracing some of our policies,” he told Dezeen. “Anne’s doing it on a much smaller scale, which is understandable. We are doing it on a much bigger scale.”

“So we’re doing lots of things rather than one or two excellent things that Anne’s doing,” he continued.

“We have the world’s first Ultra Low Emission Zone and we’re speaking to other cities across the globe, including Paris, about how we did it,” Khan said, referring to an area in central London where vehicles with high emissions are charged a daily fee.

In October, the zone is set to be expanded to cover around four million homes.

Hidalgo, who has been mayor of Paris since 2014, has recently announced plans to convert the iconic Champs-Élysées avenue into a pedestrian-friendly public space and plant “urban forests” in four of the city’s squares.

“I know Paris is jealous of our safe cycling”

Khan, who spoke to Dezeen at the opening of a brightly coloured zebra crossing designed by Yinka Ilori installed as part of a drive to attract people back into central London, explained that he is implementing a raft of green initiatives in London alongside the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone.

“Put aside for a second the world’s first Ultra Low Emission Zone,” he said. “We’ve increased safe cycling fivefold, going from 50 kilometres to now more than 250 kilometres. I know Paris is jealous of our safe cycling.”

“We’ve also managed to make active travel a big part of our policies in relation to walking as well as cycling,” he continued. “We have more electric buses than any city in western Europe, including Paris, more rapid charging points than any city in western Europe and more charging points – more than 7,000.”

“At the same time, we’ve planted almost 400,000 trees,” he added. “Paris is green with envy.”

“I want the city to be the greenest city in the world”

Last year, Hidalgo announced plans to plant 170,000 trees in Paris while by December 2020, London had 300 electric buses and Paris had 259. Both lagged behind Moscow, with 500 electric buses.

In terms of tree planting, Milan eclipses both cities with its Forestami initiative to plant three million trees.

Hidalgo, who is the first female mayor of Paris, introduced a Low Emission Zone in 2015 and is aiming to ban all diesel vehicles from the city from 2024 and petrol vehicles from 2030.

Earlier this month, Hidalgo announced that she will run for the French presidency. Khan was re-elected to a second term as London mayor earlier this year.

“I’m thinking long-term,” he said. “One of the challenges we have as politicians is we have a four-year cycle and we like to point to stuff within those two, three, four years that we’ve delivered. I’m in this for the long term. I want the city to be the greenest city in the world.”

“I’m quite clear that we face a climate emergency”

Khan set out his plans to make London a zero-carbon city by 2030 in the London Environment Strategy in 2018, the same year that London declared a climate emergency.

“My initial plans were to get to zero carbon by 2050,” he said. “I’m quite clear that we face a climate emergency. So we’ve adjusted our plans to get to zero carbon by 2030.”

As part of this plan, the mayor’s office created its 1.5C Compatible Climate Action Plan, which was independently assessed by C40 Cities – a network of international cities that are aiming to address climate change.

“So the 1.5 degrees plan is my piece of work, but I asked others to mark my homework,” he said.

“So C40 Cities, which is a global network of cities across the globe, almost 100 cities, they looked at my 1.5 degrees plan and I was the first global city to get their sign off.”

C40 Cities is overseeing the Reinventing Cities competition, which will see developments that strive for net-zero carbon built in cities around the world including Paris but not London.

Khan became mayor in 2016 after now prime minister Boris Johnson left the role to become a member of parliament. While mayor, Johnson oversaw the 2012 Olympic Games and was responsible for introducing a public bicycle system and new London buses designed by Thomas Heatherwick.

He also pushed to build a pedestrian Garden Bridge over the Thames, which was also designed by Heatherwick. Soon after becoming mayor, Khan pulled the plug on the bridge, which had become controversial due to cost overruns.

“We are a city that has a responsibility to be a world leader,” said Khan. “I’m hoping people in London realise the progress we’ve made. We are the envy of the world.”

Photography courtesy of Sadiq Khan.

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We speak with the prolific singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist ahead of his seven-city tour

Beloved for creating songs that are simultaneously tender and witty, sweet and subversive, uncluttered and rich, laconic and entrancing, The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt—whose mellifluous baritone is immediately recognizable—stopped writing at the onset of the pandemic. “I gave up,” he tells us. “I started doing a lot more photography.” He gave up because Merritt’s ritual is writing exclusively in bars, an impossibility in NYC for over a year. “I write songs in bars because A: I need a little alcohol to turn off the editor, and B: I respond to the music I’m hearing,” he says. “I like to eavesdrop, I try not to watch the television, I listen to the lyrics of the songs.”

Not only does that atmosphere sometimes impart jumping-off points for his music, it also provides a welcome distraction. “It obliterates the music that would already be playing in my head. I always, unless I’m quite sick, have music involuntarily running through my head. Right now, I have The Monkees ‘Look Out Here Comes Tomorrow‘ involuntarily running through my head, which I didn’t even realize until I wondered what I was hearing… It’s not a superpower. It’s a mental illness. It’s a kind of horrible thing. It’s really, really irritating.”

While irritating to have playing over and over, that song—at just over two minutes—is the perfect length for Merritt. “Most songs should be short,” he says, before pausing. “Well, there are some songs that are intended to be consumed while under the influence of particular drugs that change one’s perception of time—chiefly marijuana and ecstasy. Both of those drugs make people want to listen to longer songs. I am not a habitual user of either of those. I like alcohol much better. But I get that people want five-minute guitar solos; I rarely want a five-minute guitar solo—and never on any of my own records.”

So it makes perfect sense that most Magnetic Fields songs are short. Merritt has a propensity for brevity and petiteness: he owns pet Chihuahuas, drives a Mini, ran a club night called Runt; “an evening for the diminutive gentleman and his admirers,” enjoys flash fiction (especially by Lydia Davis), wrote a poetry book of quatrains called 101 Two-Letter Words, and last year The Magnetic Fields released their 12th LP Quickies—an album of 28 songs, the longest of which is just over two minutes long. “It’s only over two minutes because the guitarist tacked on an intro and outro against my wishes,” Merritt clarifies. “But I ended up liking so…”

“The thing about Quickies is, as with many of my other concept records, the concept is loose enough so that it actually applies to many of my other records as well. Having the maximum length on Quickies be two minutes and 15 seconds effectively, that rule would apply to a third of 69 Love Songs; 23 of the 69 love songs are two minutes and 15 seconds or less,” he says.

A prolific songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Merritt began making music as a child and, as well as leading The Magnetic Fields, helms The 6ths, The Gothic Archies and Future Bible Heroes, and has composed several theater works and operas. He thinks of listeners only during parts of the process. “I don’t plan for a listener when I’m writing, except probably I keep the vocabulary reasonably comprehensible to people that don’t know me personally—like I don’t include in-jokes. I’m a little allergic to in-jokes,” he explains. “When I’m recording, I definitely am thinking of the listener. And when I’m mixing, I’m thinking only of the listener.”

Famously, he doesn’t love performing live; he prefers recorded music. But The Magnetic Fields are poised to embark on a tour that had been cancelled twice over the past year. Merritt will play in Atlanta, Chicago, Nashville, Boston, New York, Washington and Philadelphia in the coming months. “I wake up every day with a completely different set of feelings about it, running from excitement to dread. I’m not an excitable person, though my ability to feel dread knows no bounds.”

It’s the perfect response from the notoriously wry artist, but Merritt also has a notable penchant for tenderness and warmth within his crystalline songwriting. When working on music for his bands, he bounces between autobiographical and character-driven storytelling. “I used to worry about hurting people’s feelings if they thought that a song’s about them, but it’s so completely unavoidable that I no longer worry about it at all,” he tells us. “People think things are exactly about them, when they have nothing to do with them, which is great because that’s how the listener is supposed to feel—that it’s about them. If my mother bursts into tears thinking a song’s about her, it’s not my doing.”

Hero image by Marcelo Krasilcic