Hasta La Ideas

Do you know why bathroom stall walls don’t go all the way to the floor? It’s so the janitor can quickly mop out each stall, without needing to get down and scrub out the corners that would be created if the walls met the floor.

Custodian-based design extends to furniture, too. If you look at old card catalogs, you’ll see the wooden legs are almost always tapered, and raised off the ground on metal feet. The tapers make it easier to mop around while minimizing the amount of wet mop contacting the wooden legs, and they’re on metal feet so the water from the floor doesn’t wick up into the endgrain of the legs. (The one below is on carpet, but you get the idea.)

And in fast-food joints, you’ve of course seen seating that minimizes the amount of legs touching the ground. I bring this up, because apparently last year there was a kerfuffle about this real estate listing for a mansion in Texas, that featured unusual kitchen seating:

When Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell tweeted about the listing, people were agog at the seating:

It’s a weird design for a kitchen, for sure; perhaps the original owner was a sports coach who routinely had the entire team and coaching staff over for breakfast. In any case, I guess what people didn’t realize is that the seats are, of course, designed to pull out and swivel. I poked around a bit, and I’m pretty sure these seats are from Utah-based Seating Innovations. Here’s what they offer:

The seats have a spring return that brings them back under the surface:

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As for strength, the seats are not suspended from beneath the counter. As the company explains:

“The suspended seating system is freestanding and mounts directly to the floor. The cantilever frame system is typically concealed behind the finish panel and underneath the footrest, thus giving the illusion of chairs hanging from the countertop.”

I wanted to see what the frames looked like, and found this time-lapse of an installation where you can get a good look at them. They look to be steel and are pretty beefy square tube stock:

While I personally don’t like the idea of seating that has a fixed range of positions, I can see the appeal for neat freaks who are constantly vacuuming or sweeping. It’s a long way to go, but my guess is the customers in that category won’t want to go back to conventional chairs.

Mella is a household mushroom fruiting chamber that uses smart technology to automatically grow and harvest a variety of mushrooms.

Over the past couple of years, our homes have become test kitchens for everything from colorful sourdough bread to dalgona coffee. Now it’s time to make some counter space for an at-home smart mushroom fruiting chamber.

Mella, an innovative new kitchen appliance from FirstBuild, a co-creation community backed by GE appliances, uses smart technology to grow and harvest your own mushrooms at home.

Smart technology has made mealtime simpler than ever. With smart technology, we can program our appliances to do the hard parts for us. Mella’s automated programming brings just the right amount of fresh air and humidity into the fruiting chamber to allow mushrooms to mature at the right time and speed, growing into full-size, edible mushrooms. With automated technology running the show, seasoned mycelium harvesters and recreational growers can sit back and enjoy the show.

Located on the outside of Mella’s chamber, the water basin can easily be refilled to funnel in just the right amount of water to combine with fresh air and become humidity for optimal mushroom-growing conditions. Then, the hygrometer indicates the humidity levels inside the chamber so that users can always keep tabs on the best conditions for harvesting mushrooms. Four LED lights also pour light into the chamber to ensure the mushrooms receive the necessary amount. Finally, a WiFi-compatible program controller allows users to adjust Mella’s settings as they see fit to help mushrooms grow.

Summing up Mella in their own words, the team behind FirstBuild notes, “Made for those mad about mushrooms Mella controls and automates the inputs necessary to grow delicious, edible mushrooms in the comfort of your home.”

Designer: FirstBuild

Finnish manufacturer Tomra makes “reverse vending machines” to accept can and bottle deposits for recycling. These types of machines typically accept one vessel at a time, with an internal scanner classifying each one as it comes down the chute. Even in eco-conscious Scandinavia, not everyone is willing to spend those minutes feeding the machine.

The old way

In a bid to increase recycling, Tomra designed their new R1 model to be “multi-feed.” The R1 has an opening the size of a clothes dryer, so recyclers can just dump their entire bags inside. The R1’s internal system quickly scans up to 100 bottles at once, and spits out the redemption receipt in seconds rather than minutes.

The R1

The R1

The machine is designed to accept only plastic bottles and metal cans; but if the user happens to dump a glass bottle in there, it will count and reject it. A flatscreen on the machine shows you the count.

Here’s an example of the sorting time:

Since installing several R1s, Swedish supermarket MaxiMat Töcksfors, whose customers previously recycled 7,000-8,000 cans and bottles a day, saw the daily number increase to 13,000.

“Tailored to larger supermarkets and return locations receiving high volumes of drink containers, TOMRA R1 offers a more user-friendly and convenient recycling experience. This can attract store visitors and a greater volume of containers returned, leading to increased loyalty among recyclers and revenues for retailers. TOMRA R1 provides mess-free recycling, as there is no need to handle each bottle – so consumers can do their part for the environment without getting their hands sticky.”

Years ago at design school, for one lesson a pair of professional furniture designers showed us the simple buck they made to work out seat and seatback angles: It was two large metal wire grids, facing each other like the wings of a TIE fighter. They would slide thick dowels through the grid from one “wing” to the other, building up the surface of the seat and seatback, then they’d sit on the dowels to assess the comfort of the angles. It was quick, dirty and clever.

I want to say they were using 1.25″-diameter dowels, which gives you an idea of the grid spacing. It’s only going to get you so close, and for further tweaking a more refined buck would be needed. For greater, literally millimeter precision, you could build something like furniture designer Oliver Trepper demonstrates on his Instagram:

I’d love to see more chair buck contraptions, but unsurprisingly they’re not easy to find. If you’ve got an example of yours and you’re not proprietary about it, please do drop us a line.

Dezeen readers have crowned projects by Ema Peter Photography, HGEsch and three other studios winners of the Dezeen Awards 2021 public vote in the media categories.

Other winners include Mue studio for its dreamlike render of a pool in an interior patio and Samuel Day for a website with an endless scroll full of animated characters.

A total of 53,400 votes were cast and verified across all categories. The results of the public votes for the Dezeen Awards 2021 media categories are listed below.

Dezeen Awards 2021 public vote winners in the architecture categories were announced on Monday, the interiors winners on Tuesday, the design winners on Wednesday, the sustainability winners were revealed earlier today, and the studio winners will be revealed tomorrow.

Dezeen Awards winners announced in November

The public vote is separate from the main Dezeen Awards 2021 judging process, in which entries are assessed by our distinguished panel of judges. We’ll be announcing the Dezeen Awards 2021 winners online in late November.

To receive regular updates about Dezeen Awards, including details of how to enter next year, subscribe to our newsletter.

Below are the public vote results for the media categories:

Architecture photograph of the year

Taken in British Columbia, The One by Ema Peter Photography was voted architecture photograph of the year by our readers with 37 per cent of votes.

The runners up are Niliaitta by Archmospheres with 21 per cent, David Brownlow Theatre by Stephenson& with 12 per cent, Shanghai 92 by HGEsch Photography with 11 per cent, David Rubenstein Forum 0005 by Angie McMonigal Photography with eight per cent, Woman and child, Springdale Library by Nic Lehoux with seven per cent and Bouverie Apartments by Individual with four per cent.

Architecture video of the year

Our readers chose Tadao Ando by HGEsch as architecture video of the year with 47 per cent of votes. HGEsch’s video follows Tadao Ando’s body of work including the UNESCO-mediation space in Paris, the Palazzo Grassi in Venice and a range of museums and theatres in Japan and China.

The runners up were Piazza Giardino by Alberto Danelli / DAP Studio with 20 per cent, Rural Studio by Breadtruck Films with 13 per cent, Connections by Breadtruck Films with 13 per cent and Village Lounge, Shangcun by Xiazhi Pictures with seven per cent.

Visualisation of the year

Mue Studio depicts an architecturally rendered dreamlike space, blurring the boundaries between fantasy and reality in Somewhere in the World. This surreal render has won visualisation of the year with 41 per cent of votes.

Next is The Mulberry Tree by Marek Wojciechowski Architects with 15 per cent, Landmark Pinnacle by V1 for Chalegrove Properties with 11 per cent, Remember To Breathe by Alexis Christodoulou with nine per cent, Rockaway by Notion Workshop for Eerkes Architects with six per cent, Como Terraces, Living by Gabriel Saunders for Sterling Global and The Goodtime Hotel, Bar by Gabriel Saunders for Dreamscape Companies with five per cent, Peckham Rye Station by Flashforward with four per cent, The Modern at Embassy Gardens by V1 for EcoWorld and Ballymore with three per cent and The Secret Cave by Unism for KDW Automobile with two per cent.

Website of the year (architecture, interiors, design)

The innovative and immersive Parallax by Samuel Day‘s website was our readers’ favourite website with 35 per cent of votes.

In a close second is Orange Architects by Enchilada and PMS72 with 32 per cent, Wyer & Co. by Wyer & Co, Studio Round and Pepto Lab with 13 per cent, Rafael de Cárdenas by Ohlman Consorti and Periscope by Villalba Lawson/United Form with 10 per cent.

Website of the year (brand)

Plant Designs is a biophilic design studio and plant shop based in Clerkenwell. The contemporary, intuitive website by Kaleido Grafik has received 33 per cent of votes, making it the public vote winner of the website of the year (brand) category.

The runners up are Architextures with 22 per cent, Muuto by Norgram, Dept Agency, Immeo and Cylindo with 18 per cent, Foam by Build in Amsterdam with 15 per cent, Notorious Nooch Co. by Wildish & Co with eight per cent and Molten Corporation by Garden Eight with five per cent.

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