Hasta La Ideas

Leolux LX has presented a selection of highly customisable seating on Dezeen Showroom, including cocooning armchairs that embrace the sitter and ergonomic office chairs with adjustable headrests.

The collection of seating from Dutch furniture brand Leolux LX comprises gently-reclined, cosy armchairs with ample seating space intended for commercial interiors.

These all come in an expansive range of upholstery options as well as varying sizes, finishes and colours that can be mix and matched and made to order, making the products an ideal option for architects and designers working on contract projects.

Leolux LX recently launched the LXR18 armchair by German designer Martin Ballendat. The chair was developed specifically for the contract market to be used in contemporary workplace and hospitality settings, as well as residential spaces.

The LXR18 chair is composed of two rounded sections that seamlessly connect to make up the backrest and seat and give the chair its circular form. The seat and backrest are separated by a small opening with customisable piping that give the chair its distinct “smile-like” appearance.

The chair can also be equipped with a small oak writing table that can be swivelled over the seat, which can be attached to either side of the chair.

Dutch furniture and industrial designer Frans Schrofer created the LX662 swivel armchair, which is well-suited to lobbies, lounges and interiors with “an exclusive look.”

The LX662 chair is designed to maximise comfort and privacy through its engulfing profile. It is distinguished by exaggerated winged sides and an enveloping high back, which is contrasted with a slender metal steel base that comes in a four or five-prong version.

These bases can be fitted with either a reclining mechanism or an auto-return mechanism, which reverts the chair back to its original upright position.

Dutch designers Studio Truly Truly created the LXR10 swivel armchair for Leolux LX, which was conceived as a single, fluid form that folds and bends to take the shape of a chair.

The LXR10 chair was designed as a study of contrasts: the plush upholstery overflows onto a wraparound plywood shell that curves into a half-pipe. The shell comes in a choice of walnut or oak, while the base is available in polished aluminium or powder-coated colour finish.

Other features of the chair include an adjustable headrest and tilt function to offer added comfort.

Amsterdam designer Thijs Smeets created the versatile LXR03 swivel chair, which comes in an array of styling options to ensure it can be tailored to a wide of interior settings. The chair exemplifies the brand’s commitment to creating highly customisable furniture to adapt to various surroundings.

Like all of Leolux LX’s products, the LXR03 chair is available with several upholstery options including coloured fabrics and leathers that can be mismatched with various parts of the chair, such as the front and back of the seat.

The chair also comes in two different heights: the lower backrest conveys a sense of openness, while the higher-backed version creates an enclosed feeling to foster privacy and offer respite in bustling environments.

German designer Christian Werner created the ergonomically designed LX671 chair, which is intended for offices, conferences and meeting rooms, as well as residential spaces.

The LX671 chair features inviting armrests and a distinctive contoured shell seat. Multiple options are available for the base, including solid oak legs that can be finished in a wide range of oil and wood stain colours, as well as a trapezoidal steel base and a swivel base with the choice of castors or gliders.

Established in 1934, Leolux LX is a Dutch brand that produces contemporary furniture for commercial interiors, created by international architects designers for professional craftspeople.

Its products range from modular sofas, stools and chairs to side tables and coffee tables made from PEFC-certified wood, leather, fabric and epoxy.

The company is distinguished by its extensive offering of different finishes, upholstery materials, sizes and colours for all its products, which can be made to order for contract projects.

About Dezeen Showroom: Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen’s huge global audience. To launch a new product or collection at Dezeen Showroom, please email showroom@dezeen.com.

Dezeen Showroom is an example of partnership content on Dezeen. Find out more about partnership content here.

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Dezeen Showroom: Omayra Maymó has designed a sofa named Bay for interiors brand Broste Copenhagen, equipped with a deep seat and rounded edges.

The Spanish designer created the sofa “to transmit a summer indoor-outdoor lounge-by-the-sea-feel, very inviting and welcoming, yet keeping a very Scandinavian, pure and minimal essence,” Maymó explained.

Bay has a laid-back, fluid silhouette with a deep seat and wide upholstered feet. Its base extends out below the padded seat, creating a convenient shelf on which users can put trays, books, or even lamps.

The sofa also features low armrests and a padded backrest with extra cushions that add to its inviting feel.

It comes in beige or grey and the extended base can be to the left or to the right of the seating.

The Bay Sofa is one of a selection of products available through French furniture and design fair Maison & Objet.

Product: Bay Sofa
Brand: Broste Copenhagen
Designer: Omayra Maymó
Contact: assistant@s2hcommunication.com

About Dezeen Showroom: Dezeen Showroom offers an affordable space for brands to launch new products and showcase their designers and projects to Dezeen’s huge global audience. For more details email showroom@dezeen.com.

Dezeen Showroom is an example of partnership content on Dezeen. Find out more about partnership content here.

The post Bay Sofa by Omayra Maymó for Broste Copenhagen appeared first on Dezeen.

It’s my favorite time of the month – when I get to explore and dive into some pretty cool tiny homes! Sustainability has been running on everybody’s mind. Ever since the pandemic shook up our world, we’re trying to incorporate sustainability into every aspect of our life, including our homes! And, with everyone aspiring toward’s eco-friendly and mindful ways of living, tiny homes have completely taken over the world of architecture and cemented their place as sustainable, minimal, and economical micro-living setups. What started off as a cute little trend is now turning into a serious option for home spaces. They are a space-saving and eco-friendly living solution that reduces the load on Mother Earth! They’re simple and minimal alternatives to the imposing and materialistic homes that seem to have taken over. And, we’ve curated a wide range of micro-home setups that totally grabbed our attention in the month of September! From an AI-enabled tiny home to a prefab tiny home that gives off major Japandi vibes –  there’s a tiny home out there for everyone.

Developed from the Danish word Hyggee, Hüga was conceptualized, designed, and built over a span of 24 months, during which Grandio’s team of designers were able to produce a 45 m2 residence with space for a bedroom, living room, bathroom, kitchen, and dining area. The final results are these hüga units that are built with reinforced concrete and designed for minimal maintenance as well as reducing your energy costs. These compact homes can withstand all climates and adverse conditions, including earthquakes, wildfires, and hurricanes. Hüga homes are also mobile and modular so much so that you can extend your house in plan in just one day. Weighing about 55-Tn, Hüga requires a team and machinery for transportation but can be placed according to the prospective resident’s preference.

Accruing nearly three weeks in construction time, Short Story was built in the same Territorial Revival architectural style as its adjacent buildings using sustainable building materials and a low-impact construction method. Clad in recycled paper and adobe, Short Story uses both materials like insulation and render for the walls. Designed and built using the Raumplan theory, Short Story comprises a single cubic volume with an interior space that’s divided into varying wooden tiers and quadrants. From different angles of the building, Short Story’s living spaces change in size and function, housing compact spaces that resemble sleeping nooks and even lofty atriums with high ceilings.

Cube Two XD is a prefab unit available in two models – a one-bedroom or two-bedroom configuration, and is clad with steel and fiber-reinforced plastic. The Singapore-based architecture studio has designed this modern home by drawing inspiration from sci-fi and spacecraft imagery. Ever since the launch of their Cube series, the studio received several requests for a larger unit with the option for two bedrooms to accommodate a family of four comfortably and that’s why they made Cube Two X. The company’s latest unit builds on the aesthetics and the functionality of their Cube 2 model. “We figured it was time to give the Cube 2 line an upgrade, and thus Cube Two X was born,” said the Nestron media representative. The compact cubic home looks like if Apple and Pinterest collaborated to create a modern dwelling.

Minima is a 215-square-foot (20-square-meter) prefab module designed to be a flexible structure to serve as a standalone tiny home or as an additional unit in the backyard that can be used as a home office or spacious guest house. It is constructed with CLT (cross-laminated timber) which is a sustainable material and cuts down on the carbon emissions that concrete produces. The modern micro-home is giving me major Japandi vibes! The boxy exterior is clad with a skin of cypress battens and a steel roof which maintains its minimal look. The unit has a streamlined, modern profile that still feels warm and human-centric. The facade opens up with hardwood-framed glass doors that can slide over to reveal its Scandinavian and Japandi-inspired interior.

The Pod, described by TV host Peter Madison as a “love letter to Tasmania,” is a tiny home comprised of two living ‘pods’ merged together by a narrow row of skylights. Covering only 430sq-ft, the exterior of The Pod is wrapped in Tasmanian oak wood which is replaced with expansive, floor-to-ceiling windows around the back of the tiny home. Positioned on a hillside, the tiny home’s back pod rises on steel beams to merge with the front pod, giving the illusion that you’re “floating” above the ground, as described by Hansen. Skylights also line the ceiling of The Pod, complimenting the floating feel with enough natural sunlight to brighten the entire home and visually splitting the two pods into separate living spaces.

In conceptualizing the Rammed Earth House, the team of architects set out to balance contemporary energy production practices with traditional building methods. Located in Dobrava, a settlement in Slovenia’s flatland region, the Rammed Earth House is inspired by the famed floating roof designed by Slovenian architect Oton Jugovec. Since rammed earth involves compacting a mixture of subsoil into an externally supported framework, the three architects behind Rammed Earth House conceptualized a concrete foundation and timber framework. It’s generally difficult to make changes to a rammed earth structure, but the home’s overhang roof allows cement to be added in the case that extra stability is needed. Rammed Earth House is sheltered with an overhang green roof that works to protect the building material from the threat of erosion as Dobrava experiences rainy, temperate, and snowy seasons.

Elsa is a 323-square-foot tiny home defined by Scandinavian design that’s anchored with natural, earthy elements, like an outdoor, teeming garden and greenhouse attachment situated right beside a pergola-covered porch and attached swing for picturesque summer evenings spent in the garden. For all of their innovative architectural feats and resource efficiency, tiny homes can’t seem to shake their tininess. That is until Elsa dropped in. While most of their appeal comes from their small size, when stretched to their edges, tiny homes can feel like small chateaus–spacious even. Designed and constructed by the small family-operated luxury tiny home building company called Olive Nest, Elsa is a not-so-tiny, 323-square-foot tiny home on wheels with an attached greenhouse, garden, and porch swing.

Ahurewa is a 60m2 off-grid tiny home constructed from five shipping containers to provide natural eco-insulation and the potential for modular expansion. Situated in the mountains of New Zealand’s Mahakirau Forest Estate, Ahurewa is a sustainable tiny home equipped with twelve solar panels, a 4kw system inverter, two 25,000 liter water tanks, and a worm-composting septic system. Composed of five shipping containers, Rosie’s tiny home benefits from natural eco-insulation and an industrial build that’s long-lasting and durable. Four of the five shipping containers are dedicated to actual living space, while the fifth shipping container only keeps the home’s mudroom. The mudroom primarily functions as a transitional space between the outdoors and indoors.

Gawthorne’s Hut is stationed on an expansive plot of Wilgowrah’s farmland, right beside a small, quaint pond. The tiny home was born out of Wilgowrah’s desire to introduce the possibilities of alternative income sources for farmworkers. Designed in a similar form to other farmland structures like hay sheds and outbuildings, Gawthorne’s Hut’s 30-degree roof hosts an array of north-facing solar panels to provide the farmhouse with internal and external power. Since the project aimed to create a sustainable, off-grid tiny home, Anderson needed to get the solar panels’ orientations facing a direction where the greatest output could be stored for use. The solar panel roof angles at 30-degree and faces the north to acquire the most solar output.

Ekodome is a New York City-based company and they have many different models and sizes for you to choose from. The base concept is simple, it involves an aluminum frame that you can easily assemble DIY-style. The dome is crafted from high-quality and durable materials so that it is more than a temporary shelter while still retaining its modular, scalable, and lightweight nature. Your kit will come with the aluminum hub and hub caps with an EPDM seal on. Both the aluminum struts and caps will be equipped with TPE SEBS seals and stainless steel bolts and nuts. Some of the popular uses for these geometric shelters have been to turn them into a greenhouse, a garden shed, or even a glamping tent. Once constructed, the geodesic dome can be used for a multitude of purposes such as a greenhouse, garden shed, or glamping tent. You might want to employ it as a temporary workspace, living quarters, or a chicken coop. It would also work as an off-grid tiny home or disaster relief shelter.

Barcelona-based studio EMBT has revealed images of a mass-timber metro station, which is under construction in the Centro Direzionale area of Naples.

The Naples Underground Central Station is being built in a neighbourhood designed by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange as part of a major upgrade to the city’s infrastructure.

The studio, which is led by Benedetta Tagliabue, chose to build the station from wood to create an organic contrast to 1970s district.

“The area is called Centro Direzionale,” Tagliabue told Dezeen.

“Kenzo Tange designed it and he built a very Kenzo Tange-type of city with reflective skyscrapers and a piazza, very 1970s, very clean. It didn’t work because it’s so different from the rest of Naples.”

Instead, Tagliabue’s design was informed by older parts of Naples.

“It’s a place where there are a lot of offices and a lot of business space but at five o’clock at night, it’s deserted and very dangerous,” Tagliabue said.

“So the idea of making a new station there and connecting with the new subway line was also to try to introduce a piece of nature and a piece of the original part of Naples into this artificial piece of the city.”

The swooping new station is being built on top of existing underground lines, replacing a previous building that was little more than cover for the staircase down to the metro platforms.

“We are working on an existing series of platforms and if you put more weight on top, you never know how much you can put,” Tagliabue explained.

“Wood is a very light material, and it combines very well with the pre-existing structures.”

“We used the pre-existing concrete structures, the pre-existing columns, and we inserted new wooden columns in that,” she added.

“We matched the steel part of the concrete to make the base of the new columns, and then the rest of the column is totally made in wood.”

The 20,000 square-metre station’s signature shape was formed from glued laminated timber. The width of the rail tracks below are reflected in the width of the undulating vaults.

“We love vaults,” Tagliabue said. “It’s a great shape that works with most materials – vaults were first made with stone and then with ceramics, and I think it’s also efficient with wood.”

“Especially laminated, because you can give any shape to the beam that you want,” she added.

The vaulted ceilings are also a nod to classic train stations that are often vaulted, while the shape of the station was intended to create the feel of a “walk in the wood”.

“In a way what we are trying to achieve here is a kind of a new organic piazza, like being able to walk in a wood when you are in this very artificial business centre,” Tagliabue explained.

Centro Direzionale is one of several new metro stations being designed by international architects for the city under the slogan AAA – architecture, art and archaeology – with each station featuring both art and archaeology.

However, the overall project has seen a number of stations delayed due to archaeological finds in the ground, including a design by Studio Fuksas that will now also act as a museum after an ancient Roman temple was found on its site.

The Centro Direzionale station did not have the same problem, as it is in a newer part of town, but construction was shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic and Tagliabue says there have been other changes and delays.

“We also had a garden, which now they are trying not to build – budget is always a problem,” Tagliabue said. “It’s been two years of not building anything because of the coronavirus.”

“Naples is not an easy place for maintaining timetables,” she added. “I really hope they’re not going to cancel the garden, because it’s really important and it shows that we’re trying to make it into a natural place.”

The finished station is also supposed to feature a piece of art on its roof that will depict a face from an archaeological piece found in Pompeii, in a nod to both the art and architecture in the project’s slogan.

The exact completion date of the Centro Direzionale station has not yet been announced.

“We started the project in 2004; infrastructure is very slow,” she said. “And the Naples way of doing it is not so easy, so you have to be very patient.”

“I think because of this station, we won another station in Paris in 2014, 10 years after [the Naples station] and I’m sure the one in Paris will finish before the one in Naples.”

Other Naples infrastructure projects designed by well-known architects and designers include a high-speed rail station by Zaha Hadid and another station that was designed as part of the underground project, the University of Naples Metro Station by Karim Rashid.

Photography is by Paolo Fassoli.

Project credits:

Architect: Benedetta Tagliabue – Miralles Tagliabue EMBT
EMBT design team: Joan Callis, Eugenio Cirulli, Alessandra Deidda, Cecilia Bertozzi, Mirko Silvestri, Joanna Karatzas, Gabriele Rotelli, Guile Amadeu, Lucien Puech,Valeria Alfonsi, Michela Cicuto, Francesca Martinelli, Guido Bigolin, Maira Carillo, Jan Kokol, Andrè Temporelli
Structural Engineer: MC2. Julio Martínez Calzón

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Dezeen has teamed up with Dutch Design Week to host a live talk about how designers and architects can help remove carbon from the atmosphere. Tune in from 11:00am Eindhoven time on Saturday 16 October.

This special edition of Dezeen’s Good Design for a Bad World talks series looks at ways of tackling climate change including carbon-capturing materials, net-zero cities and alternatives to fossil fuels.

An estimated 40 per cent of global carbon emissions stem from buildings and infrastructure, which makes the built environment one of the largest contributors to global warming.

Titled Good Design for a Bad World: Carbon, the talk will explore the various ways that architects are trying to achieve net-zero developments and offer sustainable alternatives.

Taking place ahead of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in November, the talk builds on Dezeen’s pioneering carbon revolution editorial series, which explored ways of capturing atmospheric carbon and putting it to use on earth.

Dezeen’s founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs will moderate the talk, which will feature contributions from biomaterials researcher Darshil Shah, Hélène Chartier of C40 Cities, designer Teresa van Dongen and solar design specialist Marjan van Aubel.

Shah works at Cambridge University as an associate professor in materials at the Department of Architecture and a senior researcher at the university’s Centre for Natural Material Innovation.

Shah specialises in studying biomaterials, such as engineered wood, bamboo and natural fibre composites as well as hemp, which can be used as alternatives to conventional materials for building, construction and transportation.

Chartier is head of zero-carbon development at C40 Cities, an organisation coordinating the climate strategies of almost 100 cities around the world.

Her team develops programmes and activities that connect cities and progressive players within the built environment sector to push forward low-carbon and resilient building design, as well as urban regeneration projects.

Dutch designer Van Aubel is an innovative solar design specialist whose work focuses on integrating solar technology into everyday objects and buildings.

Her studio works at the intersection of sustainability, design and technology, with the aim of making solar power more accessible to everyone.

Van Dongen is an Amsterdam-based lighting designer whose work explores the uses of light as an energy source, as well as alternative forms of energy and materials.

Van Dongen’s work typically takes a scientific approach as a result of a long-term fascination with nature and science, which motivated her to study biology before graduating from Design Academy Eindhoven.

This talk takes place on 16 October in Eindhoven, Netherlands as part of Dutch Design Week. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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