Hasta La Ideas

Salt Lake City architecture studio Imbue Design has built a house outside Zion National Park in Utah with sweeping views of one of the USA’s most renowned landscapes.

The Watchman Cabin was completed collaboratively with a nature-loving client who was “captivated” by the area’s natural surroundings after visiting. Located in Springdale, the site is near the entrance to the Zion National Park, which is famed for its dramatic rock formations and rugged scenery.

“All around the Watchman Cabin’s site rise massive stone megaliths that are the handiwork of water and wind and 150 million years of deposition,” explained Imbue Design.

“The client requested that Imbue empathetically design a retreat that would harmonise with its unique environment, capture the essence of the place, and resonate with his deliberate nature,” the studio added.

The home is sited at the foot of a hill and divided into three volumes that encompass 1,900 square feet (177 square metres).

These include a garage, a main residence, and a standalone guesthouse with its own kitchen and a small living room.

Each room is connected by covered, but unenclosed walkways.

“All three are threaded together by a CMU [concrete masonry unit – also known as breezeblocks] retaining wall and organised about a central connecting courtyard for gathering,” said Imbue Design.

Within the shared terrace that separates the main residence from the guesthouse, the architects included amenities such as an outdoor fireplace and a soaking tub.

“Where the retaining wall is the cabin’s spine, the courtyard is the project’s heart,” said Imbue Design.

Inside, the facades facing Zion’s rock formations are glazed from floor to ceiling, offering expansive views of the landscape, while more private areas were clad in weathering steel.

This earthy tone, as well as the masonry’s reddish shade, were inspired by the colour of the soil in the area.

“The weathered steel skin provides privacy and protection from the harsh desert climate, while glass volumes in public spaces act as eyes taking in every magnificent vista,” said the architects.

The interiors were completed in a restrained, grey palette that is contrasted by the underside of the overhanging roof, which was finished in wood and visible throughout the home.

Utah is famed for its remote, dramatic landscapes and desert climate.

Other properties in the Western US state include a home by Klima Architecture in the mountains and a low-slung gabled retreat by Studio Upwall Architects.

The photography is by Miranda Kimberlin.

Project credits:

Contractor: Fahrenkamp
Engineer: Epic Engineering
Geotech: AGEC

The post Imbue Design completes glass-and-steel home in Utah desert landscape appeared first on Dezeen.

Not everyone will be keen on wearing even glasses to experience this metaverse thing. Fortunately, you might not have to, especially if this hologram-in-a-box can deliver the next best thing.

The metaverse is being hyped as the logical evolution of virtual reality, blending the physical and the digital in a single space. Most of the discussions and implementations, however, involve placing ourselves in a virtual space, often with the use of mixed reality equipment like headsets. The metaverse can also work the other way around and bring the digital into our physical realm, most likely through holograms. We’re still ways off from the holograms of sci-fi, but this new holographic display is trying to bridge the gap until that perfect time.

Designer: PORTL

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Imagine trying to keep in touch with family members in a future where the metaverse has become our world. You’d expect that we’d don glasses or headgear that would seemingly teleport us to a common space, maybe in a virtual house bought with your NFTs, but that can be cumbersome to set up for a brief call. What if you could just bring that person virtually into your house instead? That’s where holograms come in, but we’re not quite there yet when it comes to simply project people in just about any physical space.

Startup PORTL, not to be confused by Meta’s Portal video conferencing device, envisions installing cabinet-sized holographic displays in places where they might be of use, like in stores, meeting rooms, or even classrooms. Not everyone will be able to afford these PORTL EPIC boxes, though, which is why the company revealed its desktop, the PORTL M. Again, not to be confused with Facebook Portal, but the associations are really hard to avoid, especially given the design.

PORTL M is what the very first Facebook Portal would be if it were extruded into a box form to accommodate a holographic display inside. The box can be set up in either landscape or portrait orientation, depending on the content you want to display. The device itself lacks some charm, looking like a nondescript plastic box with rounded corners and a curved back. The magic, of course, is in how it will try to make people and things really look like the three-dimensional objects that they are. Or at least that’s the idea.

The PORTL M is intended to be used for full-body video chats, browsing and examining products before you buy, or even for serious work in industrial and medical fields. And, of course, you can also use these boxes to display your NFTs, at least if you have around $2,000 to spare for one.

The post This holographic display could be how you do video calls in the Metaverse first appeared on Yanko Design.

Here’s an impressively thorough project by Industrial Design students Sandy Zhang, Jodie Xie, Alaa Alshareef and Megan Wiles, who last year were seniors at the Wentworth Institute of Technology. Called Project Timo, the assignment was “to examine and re-think the notion of city based transportation in terms of clean technologies, specific and variable demographics, lack of choices, user/rider safety, available personal time and escalating costs,” the team writes.

In addition to the polish of the finished product, what really struck me was the depth of the students’ undertaking. The quartet did “research, mockups that help inform ergonomic considerations, iterative physical models, detailed specifications for each model, accessories, and ultimately sales website design.”

“The study resulted in the design of a range of three TIMO electric scooter presets – Jarretto, Veloce and Cavallo. Built on a modular system the stakeholder can configure a final product to perfectly accommodate their specific individual needs.”

They even worked out accessories for the scooter:

For their efforts, they were rewarded with an exhibition of the project held in WIT’s CEIS Building:

“The exhibit describes the development of an extremely well executed project by students (seniors) of the Industrial Design Department. The fundamental aim is to demonstrate the level of contemplative depth and detail necessary to create and describe a dynamic new product concept.”

Well done!

The unusual wedge-like profile of Unique 71 concept yacht will instantly click with fat-pocketed individuals who want to own things that are an extension of their flamboyant personality.

Lazzarini Design Studio has displayed its concept superyacht designing prowess countless times in the past with no propitious match that comes close to theirs. That set to be challenged for once with the SkyStyle’s iteration of a stylized yacht for the rich and famous, designed in close quarters with Dension Yachting. The result of perfect harmony in thoughts between Max Pardo and Lucas Colombo, the founders of Denison Yachting and SkyStyle respectively, this sharp-featured water vessel is luxury personified to the brim. According to Denison’s Alex Clarke, “Unique 71 aims to satisfy the most challenging client.  The challenge will be finding a shipyard that can understand this vision and the client’s goals.”

Designer: SkyStyle and  Denison Yachting

The two visionary personalities met at the 2021 Monaco Yacht Show, and instantly their design chemistry clicked, as Denison showed great interest in the SkyStyle’s project. The 71-meters long concept yacht capable of reaching top speed of 30 knots and cruising speed of 25 knots is made up of a reinforced aluminum hull and superstructure that matches Lazzarini’s design vision toe-to-toe. This yacht is made for a luxurious getaway adventure in the summer days courtesy of the glass-wrapped sky lounge, swimming pool on the deck and space for a helipad to land. The interiors seamlessly blend into the outside views – those privacy adjustable opaque glass panels make it possible.

Up to 12 guests can have the time of their life in the cozy confines of the 13-meter beam that makes space for six cabins. It consists of a master stateroom, a VIP suite and four cabins. There’s plenty of space to socialize on the four decks which are accessible via an elevator or wraparound central staircase. What’s more? The sublime yacht has a 12-seat theatre on the main deck, sauna, gym, and an expansive swimming pool encapsulated by seating space and sun pads.  The twin diesel engine-powered yacht’s crew resides in the lower deck having nine cabins with enough space for 17 members.

The post This superyacht’s sharp bow and futuristic shape sets precedence for the high seas first appeared on Yanko Design.

First we saw the rise of designey drawing tools on Kickstarter, then designey arts-n-crafts tools like that AtuMan hot glue gun. Now that second category has a newcomer: The $90 Arrowmax SGS Pro, a “smart mini electric engraving & polishing pen.”

Aside from its size, to me it seems vastly inferior to a Dremel, particularly the bit about having to use a freaking smartphone to set the bit speed. But I guess people these days really like over-tech, magnetic charging cables and sleek form factors. At press time the SGS Pro had landed nearly $250,000 in funding on a $10,274 goal, with over a month left to pledge. I won’t be surprised if it hits the half-mil mark.

I think products in the above categories are pretty dumb, but I can’t deny the developers have a knack for correctly guessing what people will pay for, then producing it. The way they seem to tap into consumer desire reminds me of Jobs-era Apple. And while I don’t know how long-lived these tools will be—they all seem to be from companies you’ve never heard of–I don’t think the trend of people buying designey desk tools is going away anytime soon.