Hasta La Ideas

In South Africa there’s a practice called Gusheshe, which involves using vintage BMWs to burn donuts and drift back and forth at low speeds. The point is to break traction at the rear tires while maintaining control of the car, often within a small or confined area of pavement, as opposed to burning donuts in a wide-open parking lot. It looks like this:

Spectating boys wanted in on the fun, but were too young to own cars. Thus they found a creative way to emulate gusheshe by hacking together special bicycles. These are elongated to mimic the wheelbase of a car, and the rear tire is often wrapped in plastic bottle bodies, to make it easier to break traction. The art of riding them is called spinning.

Image credit: Heather Mason / 2Summers

Writer/photographer Heather Mason and architect Thorsten Deckler attended a spinning event in Soweto. Mason wrote it up here, capturing plenty of images; Deckler, who has a fantastic sketch-heavy Instagram, drew examples of several bikes that he saw at the event.

Image credit: Heather Mason / 2Summers

Image credit: Thorsten Deckler

Image credit: Thorsten Deckler

As you can see, the modified bicycles often don’t have seats. In this photo captured by Mason…

Image credit: Heather Mason / 2Summers

…it might look like the rider is in the middle of falling off of his bike; but in fact this is the way the bikes are ridden, with the rider supporting his weight by placing the front of his hips on the handlebars, legs trailing behind to work the pedals, giving the impressions of a bicycle centaur. Mason captured a reel that demonstrates the technique:

In the reel you probably noticed some strange-looking, short-wheelbase bikes. There’s also a local culture of modifying bikes not for length, but for pure creativity, and those are called stance bikes.

Image credit: Heather Mason / 2Summers

Image credit: Thorsten Deckler

As Mason explains:

“Perpetual transformation is a big part of owning a stance bike. The original change-over involves stripping the bike down to its basic frame, without gears, brakes, or any other mechanisms, so you can mold it into exactly what you want. Every time Percy wants to change the color of his bike, he burns it over a fire until the paint melts off, then sprays it again. A lot of barter goes on between stance bike owners, who trade various parts and decorations to keep their bikes evolving.”

You can see more photos of the bikes on Mason’s blog. There’s also a couple of bike crews that have Instagrams, like the Brixton-based Sentech Croozers and the Soweto Street Fighters.

Dezeen Showroom: featuring oversized floral and jungle prints, the White Deco range by Marazzi delivers the look of wallpaper in a ceramic tile.

The Italian brand describes the White Deco collection of thin ceramic wall tiles as establishing a dialogue “between minimalism and decoration” with their white base and contemporary macro patterns.

The tiles replicate the horizontal lines of Marazzi’s Mikado 3D tile and add one of three decorative motifs — Botanica, Heyday or Jungle.

Botanica and Heyday are both inspired by elegant herbariums, while Jungle references lush, tropical foliage.

The White Deco collection offers the opportunity to bring a wallpaper-like effect to any location, including damp areas like bathroom walls and kitchen splashbacks.

The tiles come in a large 60 x 180 format and have a semi-matt surface that is said to be soft and satiny.

Product: White Deco
Designer: Marazzi
Contact: chiara.incerti@marazzigroup.com

Dezeen Showroom

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Over 20 NYC artists converge inside the Museum of the City of New York to examine contemporary issues through the lens of nourishment

Often heralded as one of the culinary capitals of the world, New York City is made up of renowned and diverse food. “Literally,” says historian, environmental activist and curator at the Museum of the City of New York Monxo López. “Manhattan itself rests on oysters. A lot of the island that was created was done so with oyster shells.” This, as well as other fascinating and unearthed histories of the city, suffuse the museum’s latest exhibit Food in New York: Bigger Than the Plate, an indoor and outdoor installation that reveals and reimagines how and what New Yorkers eat and why. On view until 30 September, the exhibition grapples with mass consumerism, labor, climate change and other issues that haunt food systems in and beyond NYC.

The exhibit originally debuted in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum but has been translated to focus on the uniqueness of the five boroughs. Keeping only two of the artists featured in the original show, López looked to local artists and designers who have been addressing ideas of nourishment. “But conceptually I think we brought the spirit of the London show,” the curator continues. “Both shows are concerned about the challenges of the food system, making the system more sustainable, making the system more fair labor-wise and making the system more equitable so that everybody has equal access to healthy, nutritious, affordable food.”

Across the diverse works by 20+ contemporary artists, the show is organized into three parts: production, trading and eating. While these categories reveal the fragility and instability within growing, sourcing and serving meals, the show is by no means bleak. Instead, López explains, “It’s a very uplifting, colorful, vibrant show. We use that vibrancy and the colorfulness to drive home some of the solutions that are being proposed to the challenges that we have in the food system.”

From the show’s red- and green-hued entryways to bio-art pioneer Suzanne Anker‘s mesmerizing petri dishes and Tom Fruin’s “Bombora House” of discarded street signs, the exhibit paints a bright pathway forward. For instance, Björn Steinar Blumenstein and Johanna Seelemann’s “Banana Passport” and “Banana ‘Made In’ Label” unveils the fruit’s 14-day and 8,800- kilometers journey from Ecuador to Iceland, revealing the labor behind food exportation and questioning our relation to and demand for out-of-season produce. This call to re-think food systems is punctuated by a featured manifesto from MOLD (a digital and print magazine on the future of food, and a CH favorite) and the work of Field Meridians, their adjacent organization working to strengthen food ecologies.

“As a museum curator of New York and as a curator of history, I did want to bring in as much as possible from our own collections,” adds López. “There is a ton of stuff in our own collection that relates to the history of food in the city, so roughly half of the show is narrated through historical objects and then half of the show is carried by the work of contemporary artists.”

Included in this are rarely seen pieces from the museum’s collection, such as “Passover,” an etching from artist Philip Reisman made in 1925 and a recently restored “Diorama of the Fly Market,” which illustrates a food market that ran from 1699 to the 1800s in the city.

The museum’s pieces help put contemporary food systems in larger context and excavate how food has shaped the city socially and physically. As López explains, “When we talk about food systems in New York City, it’s not only about restaurants. There is a wonderful, very unique history particular to New York. For example, sugar.”

After being cultivated by people who were enslaved in the Caribbean, sugar was exported to New York, “one of the most important, if not the most important, sugar refineries in the world,” adds the curator. This led the city to become a vibrant candy and soda capital, the vestiges of which can be seen in converted factories and longstanding candy stores.

The show, says López, “is really an invitation for New Yorkers to become artists, stakeholders, in the food systems of the city. It’s to invite people to be active, to organize.” As a group show, the exhibit makes clear that this organization comes through collective action. “For this particular exhibit, one of the important messages is yes, it’s important to make individual changes and shop smartly, but on that individual level we’re not going to be as impactful. If we organize, if we band together with fellow-minded people, we will demand and create change,” he adds.

López also hopes the show helps bring attention to service and food workers. “There’s a lot of work that goes into feeding us. Those workers have value; they should be honored,” he says. “The show is about rendering the labor responsible for feeding us visible.”

In situating the city’s history through a culinary lens alongside artists who are re-imagining new, symbiotic relationships to food, the show emphasizes that what is made can always be un-made and thus, re-made. “That is the gist of the argument of the show,” says López. “Our food system was really different in the past. Human beings organized and took conscious decisions to shape it to the form that it is today. The food system is not natural; it is a human made invention. We designed it, but just as we shaped it, we can shape a change in the food systems of our future.”

A portable beehive from media artist Jan Mun, tableware that rewards you for sharing by Nur Saltik, entrancing photographs of vast cultivars of a single crop from Uli Westphal and other works in the exhibition guide the way forward. “I truly believe that we need to trust and honor the work that designers and artists are doing. I think that artists and designers have the freedom of imagine, to really lead the way into envisioning new ways of doing food,” concludes López. The exhibition calls on each of us to do the same.

Hero image of Suzanne Anker’s “Twilight” by Brad Farwell; courtesy of the artist and Museum of the City of New York

If you love cooking but can never find enough time for it, or you’re completely terrified of cooking but you need to start, and don’t know where to start – then you’ve reached the right place. The first step towards having a streamlined and efficient cooking experience is to have an arsenal of functional kitchen appliances by your side. With the right kitchen tools and appliances, cooking can be a fun and effortless process. The right products can reduce your prep time in half, make the little cooking tasks much easier, and help you with tedious and complicated techniques. From a tiny modular tabletop griller that lets you cook in 7 different ways to an eco-friendly coffee capsule machine – these innovative kitchen accessories are all you need to undertake cooking and become a MasterChef in the comfort of your own home. Happy cooking!

1. The Cavdle WasteCycler

Working both as a garbage disposal system and a compost generator, the Cavdle WasteCycler isn’t the kind of device you’d hide away in the shed. Its cutting-edge design borrows from the aesthetic seen on washing machines, with a clear tinted lid that lets you see the Cavdle WasteCycler go to work at your food waste, breaking it down rapidly using aerobic decomposition.

Why is it noteworthy?

The Cavdle WasteCycler relies on 5 parameters to help turn organic substances into compost – Time, Humidity, Temperature, Dry Organics, and Oxygen. It then goes to work, creating compost without the smell, the mess, or even the sound. Operating at just under 35 decibels, the Cavdle WasteCycler grinds down your food waste while heating it up to the exact temperature needed to help good bacteria thrive while killing off the bad bacteria. At the end of the day, you’re left with a natural fertilizer that you can then use to nourish your plants while resting assured that your food waste isn’t going into a landfill where it generates methane and contributes to global warming.

What we like

• The kitchen gadget comes with a transparent-window lid that lets you see how full-empty your device is

What we dislike

• No complaints!

2. The Slush Machine

This iconic-looking device is called the Slush Machine, and mimics an inverted ice cone! It shaves ice on demand and dispenses fine slush into the vessel positioned below to make delicious frozen desserts and slushies.

Why is it noteworthy?

The Slush Machine is an incredibly intuitive-looking appliance with a single-button interface on the top. The appliance stands upright on any countertop surface, with a hollow space underneath for collecting the shaved ice. Just plug it in and press the PUSH button on top for as long as you want and the Slush Machine will keep dispensing shaved ice.

What we like

• The Slush Machine’s design evokes a minimalist simplicity

What we dislike

• No complaints!

3. The Kokãir Cooking Curifier

The Kokãir Cooking Curifier is a device that you use with your desktop cookers if the room you’re cooking in doesn’t have proper ventilation. It is able to absorb the fumes when you’re cooking with oil.

Why is it noteworthy?

There is an internal fan cyclone that uses centrifugal force to collect the oil into a cup underneath for easy disposal and cleaning later on. The oil fumes go through the HEPA filter for cleaning. This will be a huge help especially when you cook a lot in your small space.

What we like

• It’s small enough that it will not crowd your desktop cooker whether you place it on the side or above the cooker

What we dislike

• It’s still a concept!

4. The +Base modular griller

When people think of cooking outdoors, they often presume it’s all about grills, mostly because it’s the most common type of cooking you can’t conveniently do indoors. Of course, that’s probably not the only kind of food you’d want to eat, but other styles of cooking would require other cookware and, consequently, a larger space. The +Base modular griller, however, supports almost any kind of cooking you’d want, from frying (teppanyaki), smoking, stewing, grilling, or even keeping wine warm.

Why is it noteworthy?

Made by a small family-owned Japanese factory that specializes in sheet metal fabrication, the All-in-One Grill is carefully designed to maximize the limited amount of space available, like small grooves on the grill’s frame that keep the skewers in place. The wooden base that protects tables from the grill’s hot bottom also acts as a lid when the griller has to be stowed away.

What we like

• Let’s you cook in seven different ways
• Simplifies outdoor cooking

What we dislike

• No complaints!

5. JIU

Chefs take great care when arranging food on plates, but those of us who cook at home might not have the same talent. Or perhaps you simply want to cut out the middle man and just eat immediately after a meal has been cooked. Whichever way you want it to go, this iron frying pan and plate in one lets you do exactly that and in a beautiful design that embodies Japanese minimalism.

Why is it noteworthy?

It might sound ridiculous at first. Why would anyone want to eat out of a frying pan in the first place? Of course, that question is valid if you only consider those large, messy, and sticky frying pans in everyone’s kitchens. JIU, however, is different. You could almost say that it’s a plate that you can cook your food on or a frying plate with a removable handle. Whatever you call it, it’s definitely a novel way to look at cooking and eating.

What we like

• Since you don’t have to transfer the food from pan to plate, you can enjoy your meal while it’s warm

What we dislike

• No complaints!

6. Coffee Balls

Swedish coffee brand CoffeeB has come up with a coffee machine that uses eco-friendly single-serve Coffee Balls. So basically it’s similar to the coffee pod machines except this one doesn’t have any plastic pods or capsules so you don’t contribute to the world’s plastic waste.

Why is it noteworthy?

You won’t feel guilty using these single-serve energy balls if you need a quick caffeine jolt and you have no patience for the slower coffee machines that you normally use.

What we like

• These coffee beans are made round by an almost invisible outer casing that is made from seaweed

What we dislike

• No complaints!

7. FOAM

Built from soft, shock-absorbing, yet sturdy EVA foam, the eponymously named FOAM portable cooler ticks all boxes. Combining the best parts of your fabric-based cooler bags and the large and clunky (yet effective) rugged coolers, FOAM is built to be light but durable, compact but all-accommodating, leak-proof yet easy to clean.

Why is it noteworthy?

The name FOAM gives you all the information you need to know about the portable cooler. It’s made entirely from EVA foam (NOT styrofoam) that offers incredible insulation along with a lightweight yet virtually indestructible build. Apparently, you could run over the cooler with your 4X4 and it would simply bend back into shape after the onslaught. You may want to conduct those experiments WITHOUT pressurized cans of beverages inside the cooler, though.

What we like

• Keeps your contents chilled for 72 hours
• Durable and virtually indestructible

What we dislike

• No complaints!

8. The Haptics of Cooking

Cooking is not for the blind because the preparation of ingredients can be difficult. But in a world where everything must be inclusive, we must think of ways to include the visually impaired. The person behind the ‘Haptics of Cooking’ believes there are kitchen tools that can help. The term “haptic” describes to us that the absence of sight can be replaced by the sense of touch and motion. With good design, anything is possible even when it comes to food preparation and cooking.

Why is it noteworthy?

The Haptics of Cooking is a special series of cooking utensils designed for the blind. Boey Wang presented this design at the Design Intelligence Award last year. The Chinese designer is a narrator at heart with his ability to tell stories. Through his creation’s visual and functional design, he aims for people to experience the world. His five cooking tools offer such an experience: Cutting Board, Knife, Tall Measuring Cap, Low Measuring Cup, and a Pan Lid.

What we like

• Makes the cooking process simple + safe for the visually impaired

What we dislike

• No complaints!

9. BKID’s Graphene Toaster

Working partially like a toaster as well as a panini press, BKID’s Graphene Toaster grills your slices of bread but also lets you watch it in action. The horizontal format of the toaster means you can even use it to make grilled sandwiches, and potentially even use the flat top to heat beverages. If there ever was a clever idea, this would clearly be it!

Why is it noteworthy?

“Graphene can reach up to 200 degrees Celsius in just 90 seconds”, says BongKyu Song, founder of BKID. This effectively allows the sheets of glass to work just as well as the coiled wire inside a toaster does, but in a manner that results in a much more evenly browned slice of toast without those burns and grill marks created by hot zones.

What we like

• The Graphene Toaster actually lets you watch the bread turn brown in real-time

What we dislike

• The toaster doesn’t ‘pop’ out the bread

10. The Range Pop

Called the Range Pop, this innovative microwave is super unique! It features a door and a microwave tray, but they open upwards, instead of being located at the front! It allows your food to descend into the microwave for heating, and ascend upwards when heated.

Why is it noteworthy?

The Range Pop’s new format presents a different experience that has its own set of pros and cons. For starters, the chances of electromagnetic waves leaking out through the chamber are reduced, and it’s easier to access your food without bending over or spilling something. On the flip side, the Range Pop requires vertical space – something that most homes and a few office canteens may not be able to provide… and unlike conventional ovens, you don’t get to see your food rotating on the turntable as it heats.

What we like

• Features an intriguing vertical popping-tray

What we dislike

• No complaints!

The post Top 10 kitchen appliances for an effortless MasterChef-worthy cooking experience first appeared on Yanko Design.

A glazed skin hangs from a timber exoskeleton at this office building in France by French studio GRAAM Architecture, which has been shortlisted in the business building category of Dezeen Awards 2022.

Completed for banking group Caisse d’Epargne in Dijon, Burgundy, the seven-storey building was designed to provide airy, flexible and naturally-lit workspaces that meet the Passivhaus requirements of using no more than 15 kWh/m2 per year.

Raised above its sloping site on a concrete podium containing garage space, GRAAM Architecture‘s design was informed by a desire to use materials and companies local to the area.

“Located on the heights of Dijon in Burgundy, a few metres from the tramway stop, the building is built of seven levels, allowing it to be seen from a distance from the city’s expressway,” said the practice.

“Its wooden structure echoes the local resources of the Burgundy region, whose reputation for hardwood and softwood forests is well known,” it continued.

The timber structure of the building prioritises the use of traditional beam and joist techniques, only using concrete and cross-laminated timber (CLT) where necessary, such as for the floors and stair and lift cores.

Helping to free up the interiors, the structure is supported by an exoskeleton of timber bracing, the upper beams of which are used to hang the external “glass veil” envelope, supported by secondary steel elements.

The choice of materials means the structure could be entirely dry-process built, with the concrete elements prefabricated before being brought to the site.

“The project responds to a desire for exemplarity, modularity and intelligence,” said the practice.

“[It is] designed with a wooden structural skeleton, prefabricated concrete floors, and a wooden exo-structure covered with a glass double skin,” it continued.

“The building allows the bank to play a part in environmental issues, displaying its exemplary and unique nature without ostentation.”

At the base of the structure, thin white steel columns support the building’s outer structure, creating a small sheltered area around the building’s perimeter that extends onto a terrace created by the concrete base and lined by a metal balustrade.

Inside, thin, almost full-height windows on each floor flood the office spaces with natural light, and the spacing of wooden columns allows for the easy addition of partition walls.

“The space can be subdivided to create working areas for specific departments, or rented out to another firm if needed,” said the practice.

Among the other buildings shortlisted in the business building category of Dezeen awards 2022 is the Sanand Factory in India by Studio Saar, which aims to elevate otherwise typical factory structures with thoughtful details.

Photography is by Nicolas Waltefaugle.

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