Hasta La Ideas

The experimental standing chair is an alternative desk chair that integrates an inclined footrest and cushioned backrest for prime spinal support.

Working from home has turned all of us into amateur interior designers. Whether we’re transforming our bedrooms into hybrid offices or renovating preexisting home offices, at this point we know how we work best. When it comes to desk chairs, the right one makes a difference. With so much time spent sitting down during work, Budapest-based industrial designer Ariel Levay conceptualized an experimental standing chair that allows for dynamic posture adjustments throughout the day.

The experimental standing chair from Ariel Levay won an A’Design bronze award for its innovative simplicity. Describing the inspiration behind his chair design, Levay describes, “We heard a lot about the harmful effects of the sedentary work style to our spine while we spend most of our work time in seats. But sitting causes obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases.”

In designing a standing chair, Levay wanted to give sitters the chance to change their standing position throughout the workday to sustain healthy spinal alignment and posture. Resembling the shape of back hyperextension workout equipment, the experimental chair features the main backrest with a cushion where sitters can position their back and recline while working at a desk.

The standing chair incorporates an inclined footrest that allows sitters to comfortably lean back while working. Then, just underneath the chair’s main support cushion, there’s a mid-level footrest where users can prop their feet while sitting with their bottoms entirely on the backrest. Levay designed the experimental standing chair to lessen the load we put on our spines when sitting down and to provide a comfortable alternative to standing in front of high desks.

In his words, Levay says, “The furniture has an ethereal but rigid structure. I wanted it to be static and sturdy, to keep the furniture [natural]. The chair is made up of geometric elements, so I gave [it a] matte black finish for a more serious and elegant look.”​

Designer: Ariel Levay

The Experimental Standing Chair is built with innovative simplicity. 

Argentine architect Edgardo Marveggio has designed an asymmetrical home in Córdoba for his ex-wife that features a waffle-slab roof and walls covered in thick plaster.

Maricel’s House is located in Morrison, an agricultural town in Argentina‘s Córdoba province. The two-storey dwelling sits within a neighbourhood with low-scale buildings.

The client was architect Edgardo Marveggio’s ex-wife, and the two worked closely together on the project, from the big concepts to the finest details.

Roughly rectangular in plan, the 250-square-metre house is composed of intersecting bars, boxes and planes. Facades consist of exposed concrete and thick plaster.

The home has a small front garden and a backyard. The property is surrounded by walls that block views from the street and neighbouring structures.

“This gives shape to the main idea – to provide privacy from the public and the roadside,” the architect said.

The only place where the home gestures toward the street is found on the upper portion of the front elevation, where a yellow, waffle slab extends over a patio.

Inside, the home is designed to be dynamic and flexible.

The ground level encompasses a bedroom suite, a kitchen and an open area for dining and lounging.

“The central module, which is double-height and has zenithal light and waffle slab, becomes the focal point and linking spot of the whole building,” the architect said.

The top floor holds a bedroom. The two levels are connected by a concrete floating staircase, which was envisioned as a sculptural element.

Rooms are fitted with contemporary furnishings and artwork.

Just off the main living space is the rear yard, which features paved walkways, a small lawn, a covered dining area and another sheltered area for gardening and cooking.

Other projects in the Córdoba province include a house by PSV Arquitectura that consists of overlapping layers of concrete and stone, and a concrete building by a team of architects that holds a trio of tall, skinny residences.

The photography is by Gonzalo Viramonte.

Project credits:

Architect: Edgardo Marveggio
Engineer: Alberto lainatti

The post Textured walls enclose Maricel’s House in central Argentina by Edgardo Marveggio appeared first on Dezeen.

Chinese studio DAGA Architects has renovated and modernised a traditional hutong residence in Beijing‘s Dongcheng district, adding mirrors to the walls and floor of the entrance courtyard to make the space feel larger.

The project is shortlisted in the housing category of 2021’s Dezeen Awards and represents an innovative take on the modernisation of these traditional courtyard dwellings.

Beijing’s hutongs are narrow alleys lined by single-storey courtyard houses called siheyuan. The houses were often joined together to create a hutong, with several hutongs then combining to form a neighbourhood.

DAGA Architects‘ project is one of numerous recent attempts to revitalise neglected hutong buildings, including a hotel designed by Fon Studio and a house with curving glass walls by Arch Studio.

This siheyuan’s owner wished to return to the house in which she was raised by her grandparents, but over the years the building had become dilapidated and was in need of comprehensive renovations.

One of the key interventions involved transforming the property’s narrow courtyard, which is concealed behind a wooden door facing the street and extends through the centre of the house.

The architects installed mirrored panels on the floor and a wall at the end of the passage to create the illusion of a much larger space.

The mirrored surfaces reflect the sky and surrounding buildings, as well as the building’s interior, which is visible through new full-height glazed walls.

“With the continuous changes of reflection and the surrounding environment, the mirrored courtyard shows a rapidly changing beauty,” DAGA Architects said. “Each moment is unique and, just like time, cannot be recorded but can only be felt.”

The project also involved modernising the residence’s interior, which had fallen into a state of disrepair. The existing timber structure was strengthened and the original facade was replaced with the glass curtain wall.

The house features an open kitchen, dining and living space, as well as a bathroom on one side of the courtyard. Each of the spaces, including the bathroom, is lined with glazing to draw in daylight from the adjacent courtyard.

“The transparent curtain wall adds daylight to the interior space,” the studio added, “allowing the line of sight to penetrate each other on both sides of the courtyard, creating an extroverted and introverted courtyard space.”

On the opposite side of the central passage is a minimalist bedroom and en-suite bathroom, featuring a black and white interior intended to create a calming and tranquil feel.

DAGA Architects believes that the act of renovation and urban renewal should focus on new materials and approaches to design, rather than the straightforward preservation of buildings such as outdated hutong houses.

“Renovation is not the maintenance and reproduction of old buildings,” the studio claimed, “but to superimpose a new lifestyle with the old history and create a new contrast and integration. Only innovation can inject new vitality into old buildings.”

The Baochao Hutong Mirror Yard project involved just 14 days of construction time on site, with a large team helping to transform the siheyuan into a dwelling designed for modern living.

The photography is by Jin Weiqi.

The post DAGA Architects adds mirrored courtyard to traditional hutong house appeared first on Dezeen.

This week on Dezeen, we spoke to architects and designers ahead of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, which begins this weekend.

In anticipation of the event, 10 architects and designers who are attending told Dezeen about their hopes and fears for the conference.

According to Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) president Simon Allford, the two-week event “marks a critical juncture for humanity”.

In preparation for the event, the UK Green Building Council picked 17 sustainable projects, including a timber cultural centre in Sweden (pictured), to be displayed at its Build Better Now virtual pavilion during the conference.

Also to mark the event, architecture studio Stride Treglown installed a “sinking” Monopoly-style house (pictured top) in Bath’s Pulteney Weir.

In London, the latest in an increasing number of colourful urban installations was opened on top of the Temple Underground station.

Created by Lakwena Maciver, the artwork, called Back in the Air: A Meditation on Higher Ground, was designed to be a “vision of paradise”.

Acknowledging the trend, we rounded up eight examples of polychromatic paint jobs in the city, including designs by Yinka Ilori and Camille Walala.

This week, Ilori also collaborated with toy brand Lego to design the colourful Launderette of Dreams as a playspace for kids in east London.

Also in London, the Waste Age exhibition opened at the Design Museum.

The exhibition aims to show how design contributed to the rise of throwaway culture and demonstrate possible solutions developed by product, fashion and building designers.

In Qatar, the latest World Cup venue was completed ahead of the tournament, which is set to take place next year.

Designed by Qatari architect Ibrahim M Jaidah, the shape and decoration of the Al Thumama Stadium was based on a gahfiya cap.

Popular projects this week included a house in Washington clad in rough-sawn cedar, Balenciaga’s “raw” flagship store in London and Peter Pichler’s angular concrete-and-glass villa in an Italian vineyard.

Our lookbook this week focused on interiors with smart and stylish storage solutions.

This week on Dezeen is our regular roundup of the week’s top news stories. Subscribe to our newsletters to be sure you don’t miss anything.

The post This week architects and designers anticipated COP26 appeared first on Dezeen.

The iF Design Award has been consistently hand-picking the best, most innovative designs since 1953, honoring top-class achievements in categories spanning Product Design, Transportation Design, Communication Design, Packaging, Service Design, Architecture, Interior Architecture, Professional Concepts, and UI and UX for 67 years in a row. The entire iF Design Award program saw as many as 10,000 submissions this year, which were evaluated by 98 international design experts from 21 countries, on the iF Jury.

Just this year alone, 1,744 designs received the iF Design Award for their creative accomplishments across various categories, while an additional 75 designs went on to win the highly-coveted iF Gold Award for their outstanding work. The iF Design Award always culminates in a grand ceremony in Berlin, although owing to the pandemic and global travel restrictions, award-winning products and projects this year are being celebrated digitally with an international content campaign encapsulated by the slogan “The CreatiFe Power of Design” in cooperation with popular design platforms and seven renowned design museums.

Over the course of the past few months, Yanko Design has curated and featured winning designs from this year’s program too – this time, we’ve hand-picked ten award-winning designs from the ‘Professional Concept’ category below(the list even features TWO iF Gold Award winners!) All the iF Design Award winners can also be viewed on the newly-launched iF Design App that gives you access to a grand database of award-winning design projects and their creators, right at your fingertips!

To view all these designs and many more, visit the website of the iF DESIGN AWARD.

Click Here to download the iF Design App – a new experience in discovering outstanding designs.

Award-Winning Professional Concepts from the iF Design Award 2021

Infinity Mover by büro+staubach for Beijing E.U.K. Co., Ltd.

Modeled on the format of a tram, the Infinity Mover bypasses the tram’s demerits – its need to travel on tracks, its clunky nature, and its reliance on a human driver. The Infinity Mover modernizes this by turning the tram into an electric-powered autonomous vehicle that’s modular, interactive and intuitive for riders, and moves on regular roads. Working off a series of LiDAR sensors, the Infinity Mover can easily be deployed on existing roads with no infrastructural changes, and can help turn public transport into a state-of-the-art human-centric public service!

Lilium Aircraft by Lilium GmbH (iF Gold Award Winner)

With 36 tilting jet engines that give this eVTOL the power of flight, the Lilium Jet is capable of carrying up to 5 passengers for a distance of 300km on a single charge in just a 60-minute ride! It boasts of a wingspan of only 11 meters, with a design that has no tail, rudder, gearboxes, or oil circuits, making its design truly revolutionary. The iF Gold Award-winning design is all set for its debut in 2025, with a hope that future models will be able to fly autonomously too!

OBEX Protective Surf Hood by Design Partners

Concussions are bad enough… combine them with being stranded in a water body and you have a deadly combo that can easily become a life-threatening situation for surfers. The OBEX is a life-saving piece of equipment that helps protect surfers in the event of a rough fall. While the hood can’t prevent concussions, it helps soften the impact with a head-enclosing design. A special pressurized container near the neck also contains an automatically inflating neckband that keeps the surfer’s head above water in the event of a fall. The inflatable flotation device is colored yellow, making it easily visible against the blue of the water, and comes with reflective tape too, to increase visibility and save lives.

BMW i Interaction EASE by DESIGNWORKS for BMW Group

The reason the BMW i Interaction EASE looks the way it does is because it aims at challenging the very notion of how cars will look in the future. Envisioning a future where cars are simply extensions of our homes and our selves, the BMW i Interaction EASE concept comes with a ‘cabin/chariot on wheels’ design that autonomously moves from one point of the city to the other with the passengers sitting inside as they would in a lounge. The i Interaction EASE is powered by the virtual BMW Assistant, which recognizes the passengers as they board, welcoming them by adjusting the interiors to suit their preferences. The warm, welcoming seats with 3D-knit-surfaces awaken on contact with embedded smart materials ready to assist, giving passengers the freedom to move and naturally interact. “Depending on passenger desire, the space adapts using gaze, gesture, and touch for the closest, most natural interaction to transform the entire interior”, mention the DESIGNWORKS team (an in-house subsidiary of the BMW Group).

S I X T Y & T W E L V E by Rosenthal

Sixty years ago, Rosenthal stirred up the porcelain industry – with avant-garde designs by artists, designers and architects. Now the German porcelain manufacturer is celebrating its studio line with a limited anniversary collection and translates 60 iconic vases with twelve contemporary colors (hence the collection’s name). The vases come in a dizzying variety of styles that are the very antithesis of wheel-spun pottery. Designed to look like they were created using generative design techniques (I wouldn’t be surprised if they were), the vases don’t show the same revolved symmetry you’d associate with traditional ceramics. Instead, they’re boldly inventive, unabashedly geometric, and have an artistic quality that brings pottery and ceramics into the 21st century!

Interactive Intelligent Unmanned Sweeper by LanWei for Jilin University (iF Gold Award Winner)

Approaching autonomous vehicles rather differently, the Interactive Intelligent Unmanned Sweeper isn’t your average self-driving vehicle. Instead of providing transportation as a service, it provides cleanliness, working like an oversized Roomba for your streets. “It can clean streets automatically by means of accurate sensors and intelligent algorithms, and it can also do more”, mentions designer LanWei. “Unlike current street sweepers, the new design makes it futuristic and approachable, and also ensures that citizens can safely come into zero-distance contact without danger.” Moreover, the sides of the sweeper can even display important messages, civic announcements, and even traffic guidance.

CITO Liquid Biopsy Analysis for Cancer Treatment by Cambridge Consultants

CITO is a rapid liquid biopsy diagnostics platform that improves patient experience in cancer care. The platform makes it possible for non-specialist technicians in small clinics to monitor patient response to treatment while a patient waits, significantly reducing delays to diagnostic results. The compact device combines functions of three instruments in an easy-to-sterilize form and sub-surface lighting pulses intuitively to alert system status. CITO opens the door to personalized cancer treatment by giving oncologists rapid access to biopsy data so they can make informed adjustments to each patient’s treatment plan.

Atmocube by notAnotherOne for AtmoTech

With its interior-friendly design, Atmocube is a one-stop solution for complex air quality management in private, public, and commercial buildings. It accurately measures the most dangerous air pollutants and vital environmental parameters in real time, while looking less like a complex, technical, bordering-on-industrial appliance and more like a design-forward product that helps blend into the space while giving it a touch of avant-garde tech. Considering the serious impact of indoor environments on people’s well-being and health, the device serves the user by integrating various air pollution sensors into a single neat platform. The wall-mounted device comes in a variety of colors with replaceable swatches (like terrazzo, wood, concrete, metal, glass) to suit different interiors, allowing clients to customize their Atmocube to suit their decor. This approach to design brings products like Atmocube into the forefront, allowing people to place such gadgets in their living rooms and lobbies, instead of relegating them to store-rooms.

To view all these designs and many more, visit the website of the iF DESIGN AWARD.