In January GM said they’d start producing newly-designed electric delivery vans. We know how long these things take to develop. So we’re kind of shocked that just nine months later, amidst a global supply chain in chaos, these vans are already rolling off of the assembly line.
BrightDrop, GM’s latest sub-brand, has completed the first production builds of their EV600 electric van. They’re fulfilling an order for FedEx, who will be incorporating the vans into their fleet for this year’s holiday season delivery crunch time. The EV600—so named because it has 600 cubic feet of cargo space—is built on the same Ultium battery platform utilized by the Hummer EV, which goes a ways towards explaining the speed with which the vehicle was developed.
The all-wheel-drive EV600 has a 2,200-pound payload and 250 miles of range. It’s also loaded with tech, offering automatic emergency alerts and braking systems for pedestrians and collisions, an HD rear camera and even parking assist. In addition to the safety features, the company reckons the cost savings of running EV delivery vans will be attractive to fleet owners; the reduced maintenance and fuel costs compared to a diesel vehicle is estimated at $7,000 per year, per vehicle.
The EV600 is a pretty large vehicle, at 24 feet long. BrightDrop has also announced (but is not yet building) a smaller EV410, that’s just under 20 feet long. You can guess by the model name how much cargo capacity it has. Verizon–who, surprisingly, is one of the largest fleet operators in the U.S.–plans to integrate the EV410 in their field maintenance and service fleet.
Something we’re very curious to see is whether BrightDrop will actually develop the EP1, which they’d also unveiled back in January. The EP1 has our attention because it’s not a vehicle at all, but a sort of electric cargo trolley that was meant to integrate with the EV600 and simplify last-few-feet delivery:
The EP1 is meant to be a part of this BrightDrop Rapid Load Vehicle Concept’s system:
BrightDrop’s website says the Rapid Load Vehicle Concept is planned for a 2023 release.
Public vote winners will be announced on 18 to 22 October. The public vote is separate from the main Dezeen Awards 2021 judging process, in which entries are assessed by our panel of professional judges. We’ll be announcing the Dezeen Awards 2021 winners online in late November.
Who’s in the lead?
With 43,667 votes received so far, here is a snapshot of which projects and studios have received the most support. There’s still time to influence the results, so keep voting!
39 per cent – Tadao Ando by HGEsch Photography 31 per cent – Piazza Giardino by Alberto Danelli 12 per cent – Connections by Breadtruck Films 10 per cent – Rural Studio by Breadtruck Films Eight per cent – Village Lounge, Shangcun by Xiazhi Pictures
Shown in this image are the six most popular visualisations
Website of the year (architecture, interiors, design)
32 per cent – Samuel Day by Samuel Day 26 per cent – Orange Architects by Enchilada and PMS72 16 per cent – Rafael de Cárdenas by Ohlman Consorti and Rafael de Cárdenas 14 per cent – Wyer & Co by Wyer & Co, Studio Round and Pepto Lab 12 per cent – Periscope by Villalba Lawson/United Form
Website of the year (brand)
32 per cent – Plant Designs by Kaleido Grafik 23 per cent – Architextures by Architextures 18 per cent – Muuto by Norgram, Dept Agency, Immeo and Cylindo 13 per cent – Foam by Build in Amsterdam Nine per cent – Notorious Nooch Co by Wildish & Co Five per cent – Molten Corporation by Garden Eight
When designers repurpose shipping containers into shelters, it feels like the adult version of building forts and tents! It’s taking something that doesn’t resemble a shelter – like bedsheets or shipping containers – and turning them into the most wonderful getaways. This MUA getaway cabin is right by the Tbilisi Sea, in Georgia, and gives our summer imagination a life. The cabin is located 20 minutes away from the city center and has been designed by the architecture team to serve as a relaxing space where they can recharge their creative batteries – it’s like when a doctor prescribes medicine for themself, win-win!
The container sits next to the sailing club (another MUA creation) by the Tbilisi Sea. During summer, this area is popular among the locals and becomes a hub for fishing and water sports activities. The impressive monument of Zurab Tsereteli also graces the location which makes it an even more interesting project site.
Shipping container projects are a significant part of MUA’s research into modern architecture. “Replacement of traditional building materials with second-hand, compact pre-fabricated steel boxes and creating various functional spaces requires intensive research and experimentation,” shares the studio.
This type of architecture and design is heavily based on material observation, investigation of potential reuse, and experimentation.”These practices yield truly interesting results. This form of architecture has many positive aspects – it is ecologically sustainable, suitable for reuse, cost-effective and since it is ‘pre-fabricated,’ requires minimal construction time,” adds the team.
The office container is 12 meters (40 feet) in length, with the cabin adopting a linear layout throughout the interior. Far edges of the container are transformed into rest areas as well as bathroom and storage spaces. The middle part of the container, the shared space, comprises a small kitchen, a working desk, and a living room. Large sliding doors allow the indoors and the outdoors to blend with each other, creating an open, accessible platform with a sea view.
Currently on view at The Shed, the exhibit explores how AI is inherently human and “parenting is programming”
Astounding and unprecedented, Ian Cheng’s exhibition “Life After BOB,” currently on view at NYC’s The Shed until 19 December, champions art at the intersection of artificial intelligence and cognitive science. In fact, there’s no exhibit quite like this one. On one side of The Shed’s fourth level, a 48-minute narrative animation, titled “Life After BOB: The Chalice Study,” built using the Unity video game engine, plays. It follows 10-year-old character Alice Wong after her father installs an experimental AI, dubbed BOB (short for ‘Bag of Beliefs’), within her. On the other half of the room, the same animation plays but at the viewers’ command. Using their phones as remotes, they can pause, rewind and zoom into the animation to uncover more information about the characters, fauna or objects. Then, whether out or inside the exhibit, viewers can update and evolve the animation through editing the artwork’s wiki page, where edits integrate into the simulation in real time.
Often using technology and video games as his medium, Cheng is no stranger to exploring what it means to live in an increasingly technological world. In 2017, his exhibit at MoMA PS1, “Emissaries,” featured simulations that viewed people interacting in a fictional world. In 2018, Cheng’s exhibition “BOB” created a sentient virtual creature that his latest show draws off of. Yet unlike the others, “Life After BOB” blends narrative, simulated storytelling, interactive world building and the anxieties of the modern world together, rooting out how simulations are human all along and opening up optimistic pathways for the future. We spoke with Cheng about using AI as an art form, the collective aspect of this exhibit and why he believes NFTs are beautiful.
Ian Cheng, “Life After BOB: The Chalice Study” (2021), live animation, color, sound, 48 min. Courtesy of the artist
What inspires you to use AI and video game engines as your medium?
Dumb story, but I was at Whole Foods, having lunch on Houston Street. They have like a little deck for the dining area that overlooks the salad bar. I was watching people there. People were stealing food, they were taking things, putting it back, bringing their dogs, flirting. It was this whole ecosystem, self-contained in Whole Foods and contained in my field of view, and I thought, “Oh my god, I have to make something like that.” Forget trying to make linear narratives. I gotta make something that feels like a little world. The only way to really do that without actually staging it like it’s theater, performance or live animals is to try to like cannibalize the video game engine.
At a certain point, I started researching a lot about, not just AI, but also human psychology and animal psychology, to try to find models that could describe a new approach to AI. And I realized when you embody an intelligence, it’s both a harder problem but also something we conceptualize a lot easier because that’s how we work. I started getting into AI models that dealt with complexity by breaking it down into sub-personalities like Carl Jung.
Your work often deals with emergent behavior. Can you talk about this and why you fall back on this subject?
One of the key things I found doing simulations was that the secret sauce was emergent behavior. To define it very simply, it’s the idea that the sum is greater than its parts. You have hydrogen. You have oxygen. Put them together and you can’t say hydrogen and oxygen are wet but you can say water is wet.
I learned recently that the neocortex of the brain is composed of these kind of cortical columns and varied in these cortical columns you get this emergent effect. So I think emergent properties happen at the level of nature, of course, and in a much dumber, more constrained way, in simulations—a property that makes artworks feel alive. When I look at art and also the art that I aspire to make, there’s a sense of aliveness.
Ian Cheng, “Life After BOB: The Chalice Study” (2021), live animation, color, sound, 48 min. Courtesy of the artist
Part of the aliveness of “Life After BOB” is the collective nature, which you call “worlding.” What is this and what drew you to it?
“Worlding” was something I was writing about in-between “Life After BOB” and my previous project, “BOB.” It was a very simple idea of how can me, an individual artist, essentially produce a habitable community around a specific thing. In the case of working on “Life After BOB” and working with my producer Veronica, we produced a huge team during COVID, and it became the one thing that we all could focus on during COVID.
On one production side, I thought that we made a world through that. In terms of the novelistic sci-fi, fantasy sense, I started thinking about “worlding” as the well that you can keep dipping in as an author, so that you don’t have to reinvent everything from scratch. The more you make a world, like Tolkien, or Harry Potter or Star Wars, the more there’s a world that gets built out through a production of one story, the less legwork you have to do on the next story to start to create meaningful stories in it—especially sci-fi, fantasy stories where so much of the background informs the details that make a story pleasurable.
There’s a certain multiplicity to that, both on the artist and viewer side. Why was this an important factor?
I kept going back to this gut feeling that making narratives in a video game engine will give us a foundation to do more “worlding” stuff later to easily hook in other kinds of tangential experiences that are more interactive. For “Life After BOB,” there’s a wiki that’s online, which was inspired by wikis that emerge when there’s a fandom for a particular sci-fi or fantasy world, and the changes you make on the wiki, if you were so inclined—if you were to then live some of the cosmetic details and, hopefully, layers and behavioral details of the various background artifacts and objects that are in any given scene. I like to think of this as a programmable movie. The hope was to try to make something that looks and feels like a movie right now, but then can have intelligent capabilities to really grow it into something much bigger.
Why do you gravitate tosimulations?
I think two things with simulation. I think, more and more, we’re hearing that word in the context as AI develops. We’re hearing more and more that in order to achieve something that resembles general intelligence, one would have to create an intelligent artificial system that can simulate its own possible futures. And then you realize, in this discourse, where we’re trying to engineer AI, that we ourselves—consciousness—is a simulated property. Consciousness is an emergent property that lives at a simulated level of a simulated representation in the models that neurons create. When you think, “Am I going to get coffee? Am I going to go out? I’m going to be shy,” it’s all simulation.
Ian Cheng, “Life After BOB: The Chalice Study” (2021), live animation, color, sound, 48 min. Courtesy of the artist
How does storytelling relate to AI?
Stories for me are maps. They’re maps of how to behave and how one ought to behave, so inherently stories have a moral valence. The more we can share that responsibility with interesting AI models, the wider range of behaviors we can watch unfold in the form of stories. Sky’s the limit. We don’t have to always have hero’s journeys. We can have different kinds of stories that illustrate and animate the complexity of new kinds of behavior. I’m quite optimistic about that fusion.
Stories for me are maps. They’re maps of how to behave and how one ought to behave, so inherently stories have a moral valence.
You described “BOB” as “art with a nervous system,” and indeed, there are a lot of anxieties throughout the animation. What prompted you to touch on nervousness? And what does channeling these human emotions through art, specifically art vis a vis AI, offer you?
The episode of “Life after BOB” starts with a subtitle that says it’s a great anomic era, which means a kind of restlessness or instability that comes with a certain era, a fancy way of saying people are living in an era of persistent anxiety, where institutions are collapsing and a sense of longterm life meaning is collapsing. It’s something I was feeling myself at my mid-30s. When I was writing, my daughter wasn’t born yet. She was about to be born, so I was thinking about my own life, how it can be impacted by being a father and then of course her. How do you raise a child in what feels like a pretty crazy time? As a parent you have tremendous early influence on the life script of a child. There’s a line where the dad says parenting is programming. That felt really true when I wrote that. It interweaves with AI in particular, as I thought AI would be the kind of sci-fi trope that can animate something as touchy and abstract as an existential crisis.
With the boom of digital art growing and NFTs, we’re curious, what are your thoughts NFTs?
I think they’re awesome. It’s the best of both worlds. It’s the best of early web world, where people really gravitated to the idiosyncratic creator side of the web. Then, it unites that with all the innovations that we see from Web 2.0. NFTs unite the best of both those things, so you can get rid of the centralization and all the privacy and data selling issues, and you can bring back a little bit of that individual creator ethos.
I’m really interested in “worlding.” I think there’s a way in which an individual creator can start up a world—not at the mega-institution, where you have to be the Marvel Cinematic Universe to make a world and develop a community around it—but now, as an individual creator with a blockchain economy behind it. You can create and maintain a thriving world. I think there’s something really beautiful about that.
Hero image from Ian Cheng’s “Life After BOB: The Chalice Study” (2021), live animation, color, sound, 48 min. Courtesy of the artist
The case study is titled How to design a beautiful TV and is the third in a series of four talks by Dezeen and Philips TV & Sound inviting designers from different disciplines to explore the cutting edge of product design.
Philips TV & Sound is represented on the panel by its chief design officer Rod White. Stine Find Osther, vice president of design at Danish textile brand Kvadrat, will also appear on the panel alongside Andy Kerr, director of product marketing at British audio brand Bowers & Wilkins.
The live case study will be moderated by Dezeen’s deputy editor Cajsa Carlson and will feature a collaborative presentation from the three brands that will explore in detail the process of creating the OLED+986 and 936 televisions.
Philips’ OLED+986 and 936 televisions feature an inbuilt Bowers & Wilkins soundbar, which is upholstered in a Kvadrat fabric.
The panellists will discuss how Philips TV & Sound realised the designs for the televisions by combining its own specialism in manufacturing consumer electronics at scale with Kvadrat’s expertise in craft and materials and Bowers & Wilkins’ approach to boutique sound design.
The discussion will cover the challenges of incorporating premium materials into the design of consumer electronics, as well as what the future holds for the design of technology in the home.
Rod White, chief design officer at Philips TV & Sound
In his role at Philips TV & Sound, an arm of the electronics brand Philips which designs and produces television and audio products, White is responsible for the company’s design strategy and direction and leads its design studios in Amsterdam, Taipei and Shenzhen.
Stine Find Osther, vice president of design at Kvadrat
As vice president of design at Kvadrat, Osther is responsible for the creative arm of the business. In her work with Kvadrat’s collections, she collaborates with a wide range of external designers including Patricia Urquiola, Olafur Eliasson and the Bouroullec brothers.
Osther started working at Kvadrat in 2007 in the brand’s product development team. She holds a masters degree in textile design from Kolding Designskole, Denmark.
Andy Kerr, director of product marketing at Bowers & Wilkins
Kerr joined Bowers & Wilkins in its research and development department before becoming its director of product marketing and communications. During his time at the company, he has contributed to every major product the company currently produces.
Bowers & Wilkins was founded in 1965 by John Bowers and Roy Wilkins. The brand’s iconic Zeppelin iPod speaker was one of the first devices to utilise Apple’s AirPlay system.
Bowers & Wilkins’ audio equipment is used in Apple Stores around the world, as well as George Lucas’s Skywalker Sound studio and London’s Abbey Road recording studio. Its speakers are additionally installed in a number of Jaguar, Maserati and Volvo car models.
Dezeen x Philips TV & Sound
This article was written by Dezeen for Philips TV & Sound as part of our Dezeen x Philips TV & Sound partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.
Danish studio ReVærk has completed House of Nature, a school building designed to promote learning about nature through its traditional timber structure and wooden shingles, which has been shortlisted in the civic building category of Dezeen Awards 2021.
The Aarhus-based practice designed the building to accommodate the teaching of Nature and Outdoor Life at the Silkeborg Folk High School, with the building itself conceived as a lesson in sustainable timber construction for its users.
The House of Nature has an all-timber structure
Framing views of an adjacent forest, the timber structure, acacia shingle cladding, Douglas fir interiors and wood fibre insulation were all part of a strategy to design a building “as purely based on wood as possible”.
“The brief for the new educational building was to create a space that exudes nature and creates a close connection to the surrounding forest,” said the studio.
The school offers views of an adjacent forest
“The construction is inspired by the old Danish ‘bullade’ timber frame construction, dating back to the Viking age.”
A cluster of four of these lightweight timber-framed forms make up the school building, connected internally but visually distinct from the outside, where they gently fan out along the edge of a curved, decked path.
House of Nature sits along a curved path
Presenting a blank elevation clad with distinctive acacia shingles on approach from the north, the building opens up to the forest along its southern edge, with full-height windows forming a close relationship between the classrooms and the trees.
“The surrounding forest gives a play of light that creates a unique atmosphere in every room,” said the practice.
This atmosphere is enhanced by the Douglas fir planks that cover the interior, working with the exposed timber structure and parquet flooring to create a feeling of being immersed in the woods.
Simple pendants and light switches in black have been chosen to complement the “rustic” nature of the building, and provide a contrast to the paler shades of the timber.
Pendant lights aim to add to the building’s rustic atmosphere
A lightweight metal staircase in the centre leads up to the second storey of the central block, where a circular window above a built-in seating area looks out across the forest canopy.
The whole structure has been designed in a way that could be easily dismantled and removed from the site with little trace. Screw-pile foundations raise the building slightly off the ground to avoid flooding.
A metal staircase leads to the second storey
Small vents along to top of the windows form part of the ventilation and heating strategy, which is based on thermal buoyancy to avoid the need for mechanical systems.
The need to rejuvenate amidst nature is crucial in stressful times to heal and grow. This has sparked a trend for a nomadic lifestyle without any compromises in living comfort. Yes, I’m talking about the growing popularity of towable trailers, RVs, caravans, and houses on wheels that promote an upbeat mobile lifestyle. So, how will things be, say, a decade or more from now?
Industrial designer Jason Carley imagines a future where the urban lifestyle will be punctuated by life on the road triggered by sky-rocketing living costs and the aging infrastructures that are dependent on ecologically disruptive fuels and technologies. Jason thinks of a time in the year 2035 where nomadic life will revolve around mastery of resources and an efficient mode of travel. Thus comes into the picture this towable trailer that gives love back to nature. Targeted for the young and resilient urban customers, the rig is an accessible retreat to escape from the stresses of life for a few weeks or even months.
This is the RV2035 towable trailer designed to be aerodynamic for minimal impact on the road and fully compatible with electric vehicles that are centered on performance and maximum range. When on the road, this trailer having a tight turning radius is a compact capsule behind an EV, but as soon as it arrives at the resting destination, there’s another side to the rig. It opens up to expand the usable space to 120 sq. ft. as the raised roof and tent provide around 7 feet of headroom. Keeping in tune with nature the wing cantilever a few inches above the ground preserves the integrity of the natural habitat underneath.
The outer structure of the trailer is made out of lightweight carbon fiber which will be recyclable and durable. The expanded sections on either side have two rooms for privacy and the windowed flaps having screens welcomes nature inside. To the rear is the kitchenette that comes with an insulated cooler drawer and ice-maker. The induction cooktop’s backlit display keeps the occupants informed about the current weather, battery status, and the time for a solar recharge. The solar panels actuated by motorized brackets track the movement of the sun to keep themselves aligned optimally to capture maximum solar energy.
To the side of these solar panels, arrays lie the rain harvesting channels that collect grey water for the toilet or laundry. By the nighttime, the trailer turns into a cozy place to doze off as the convertible sofa and the two twin cots turn into a queen-sized bed. A compact bathroom section with a showerhead allows for everyday chores to be done within complete privacy. When you are done with your adventurous escapade the trailer can be returned back to the rental outfitter, to get it ready for the next journey. Changes can be made to adapt to the client’s requirements or the climatic conditions.
From the celebrated Brooklyn eatery Di An Di, which specializes in contemporary Vietnamese American cuisine, comes a pair of golden scissors. Made from stainless steel and zinc alloy, these clippers feature a dragon relief design along the handle and the restaurant’s logo on the blade. Whether cutting up Vietnamese clam pizza or herbs or getting crafty some other way, Le Golden scissors will come in handy while providing plenty of elegant and fun flair.
Public vote winners will be announced 18-22 October. The public vote is separate from the main Dezeen Awards 2021 judging process, in which entries are assessed by our panel of professional judges. We’ll be announcing the Dezeen Awards 2021 winners online in late November.
Who’s in the lead?
With 40,907 votes received so far, here is a snapshot of which projects and studios have received the most support. There’s still time to influence the results, so keep voting!
British designer Es Devlin will unveil a temporary installation of 197 trees and plant species to highlight issues related to climate change during the COP26 conference.
Called Conference of the Trees, the installation will be presented at The New York Times Climate Hub at the SWG3 Arts Centre in Glasgow, an event running alongside the COP26 climate conference to be held in the city this November.
Artist and stage designer Devlin designed the installation to coincide with the conference involving 197 parties who signed the 1994 United Nations Climate Change treaty, who will gather again at COP26 for 12 days of talks centred on how to tackle the increasing climate crisis.
Creating space for reflection
Conference of the Trees will bring together 197 trees and plants positioned around a low-lit clearing, which will also house chairs to seat audiences attending a series of events held within the installation.
According to Devlin, the project is intended to counter the atmosphere of ordinary conference rooms, which are traditionally top-lit and rectilinear spaces.
“Having read Richard Powers’ book The Overstory, I began to consider trees as protagonists, as they are within the context of this extraordinary novel,” the designer told Dezeen.
“I wanted to view the conference of the parties from the perspective of a non-human species bearing witness to the decisions the humans might make.”
The installation comprised 400 trees that filled the courtyard at Somerset House and sought to raise awareness of the United Nations’ climate initiative Global Goals.
Forest for Change was an installation at Somerset House in London
“Forest For Change is certainly part of the same evolving train of thought within our studio,” said Devlin.
“As Hans Ulrich Obrist mentioned recently, a lot of artists and designers are working with gardens and plants, trying to explore ways of creative expression that can be regenerative and circular.”
Like Forest for Change, the trees and plants that make up Conference of the Trees will be replanted after COP26, in this case in urban reforestation sites in Glasgow.
Forest architect Philip Jaffa and landscape specialist Scotscape, who also worked on Devlin’s London Design Biennale installation, will assist with the new project.
Conference of the Trees will be held at the New York Times Climate Hub at the SW3G Arts Centre in Glasgow from 3 to 11 November. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
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