Glass lift viewpoint opens within Battersea Power Station chimney

Lift 109 attraction in Battersea Power Station chimney by Ralph Appelbaum Associates and WilkinsonEyre

The Lift 109 viewpoint designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates has opened within the rebuilt chimney of Battersea Power Station in London, which was recently revamped by architecture studio WilkinsonEyre.

Named Lift 109, due to the fact the lift will take visitors 109 metres up in the air to give views across London and the power station, the attraction opened to the public last week.

“There is nothing like it anywhere,” said Ralph Appelbaum Associates director Phillip Tefft.

“It is a captivating, narrative-led journey that immerses visitors in the power of Battersea and transports them upwards into the light, emerging from the chimney top to an astonishing panoramic view,” he told Dezeen.

Rebuilt chimney of Battersea Power Station in London
Lift 109 occupies the power station’s north-west chimney. Photo by Brendan Bell

The attraction occupies the power station’s north-west chimney, which was entirely rebuilt as part of the rejuvenation of the Grade II*-listed building.

The glass lift rises up through the chimney before emerging from its top to where visitors will have 360-degree views through its walls.

Glass lift at Battersea Power Station
The lift has views across London

A graphic ring surrounding the lift shows icons depicting the significant buildings that can be seen, while QR code-activated augmented reality (AR) technology provides additional information.

Inside the chimney, a series of fluorescent red lights were designed to enhance the “turbo-charged ascent”, while a soundscape was created to “evoke rising energy”.

Inside Battersea Power Station chimney
The chimney contains a multi-media installation

The visitor attraction also includes a multi-level museum that was designed in collaboration with digital studio Squint/Opera. It is entered from the art deco Turbine Hall A, which was originally completed in the 1930s as part of the first phase of the power station before it was expanded to create the current four-chimney form.

Ralph Appelbaum Associates and WilkinsonEyre aimed to retain many of the building’s original features within the spaces, which are juxtaposed with multimedia displays.

The exhibition includes an interactive display called Powering London that aims to explain how the power station, which was once responsible for creating a fifth of London’s power, worked.

Alongside it, displays called Powering Design and Powering Culture focus on the building’s design and cultural significance.

Lift with glass walls
The lift has glass walls

“Once inside, the low rumble of visitors ‘creating energy’ around the Powering London interactive can be heard across the Turbine Hall,” explained Tefft.

“We’re drawn in and we join others generating spiralling light rising into the turbine-like sculpture suspended above. On the cue of the countdown clock, we enter the media immersion space and begin our journey upwards, pulsing to the top of London.”

Lift 109 visitor attraction
The attraction contains aseries of exhibitions about the power station

Lift 109 is the latest part of the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station to have completed as part of the overall of the building by WilkinsonEyre, after it was decomissioned in the late 1970s and was subsequently empty for almost 30 years.

A shopping centre containing over 100 retail outlets opened to the public last month, while a 46,000-square-metre office space for technology brand Apple designed by Foster + Partners is set to complete next year. Over 250 apartments were also created as part of the redevelopment.

The historic building sits at the centre of a wider development that will contain over 4,000 homes when complete and contains buildings designed by Foster + Partners and Gehry and Partners. The redevelopment of the site has been widely criticised for the low percentage of affordable housing. Only nine per cent of the homes are affordable, which is well below the 15 per cent originally agreed upon when the development began.

The photography is by Joshua Atkins.


Project credits:

Lead consultant exhibition design and art direction of media: Ralph Appelbaum Associates
Media design input and production: Squint Opera
Architect: Wilkinson Eyre
Lift engineering/design: OTIS (main lift) and Schindler (express lifts)
Audiovisual hardware design and engineering: Sysco
Lighting design: Michael Grubb Studios
Security and MEP consultant: Steensen Varming
Project management and QS: Fraser Randall
Lead contractor: Beck
Destination strategy: Blace Bureau

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This week we reviewed the architecture, design and controversies of the World Cup

World Cup 2022 final stadium in Qatar by Foster + Partners

This week on Dezeen, we focused on the architecture and design of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar along with the human rights and sustainability controversies that are overshadowing it.

We rounded up the eight stadiums that will be hosting the tournament and took a closer look at the kits of all participating 32 countries, as well as ten cultural buildings completed in the country ahead of the World Cup.

The World Cup has received heavy criticism due to the human rights issues associated with the conditions of the migrant workers that built its stadiums, with Amnesty International’s Peter Frankental arguing that architects working on it risk assisting in sportswashing.

We also spoke to a number of sustainability experts who said that the World Cup’s sustainability claims are “built on sand”.

Richard Roger Drawing Gallery
Richard Rogers’ final project wona Dezeen Award

This week we also announced the winners of Dezeen Awards 2022 in the architecture, interiors, design, media and sustainability categories.

The winners include Richard Rogers’ final project (pictured), design duo Adam and Arthur’s Mother and Child cabinet, which won furniture design of the year in the design category and architecture studio Woods + Dangaran’s Twentieth, which took home house interior of the year in the interior category.

Among the media winners were a photo project that captures brutalist architecture in Hong Kong, while K-Briq was one of the winners in the sustainability category.

A silver Audi car featuring the new logo
Audi has unveiled a flat, simplified version of its four-ring logo

In design news, German car manufacturer Audi unveiled its updated logo, a flat, simplified version of its distinctive four-ring design. The rings have been stripped of their chrome colour and are no longer raised.

Another German automotive manufacturer, Volkswagen, introduced an unusual design this week – a drivable office chair that can travel up to 20 kilometres per hour and features a seatbelt and hi-fi music system.

Vancouver House, designed by BIG, has a twisted shape

Danish architecture studio BIG unveiled Vancouver House, a 155-meter-high twisted skyscraper in Canada, this week. BIG founder Bjarke Ingels likened the building, which sits on a wedge-shaped site, to the Flatiron building in New York.

In other architecture news, US studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s David Rubenstein Forum in Chicago was named this year’s Best Tall Building Worldwide by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.

Andrew Kudless
AI-generated images could have an impact on architecture and design

We took a look at how architecture could be impacted by AI text-to-image software such as Midjourney and DALL-E, which experts say has the potential to change the way that architects approach the creation and concept stages of designing buildings and products.

But architects don’t need to worry about being usurped by AI software yet, says design writer Will Wiles in this week’s opinion piece, arguing that “for the time being, AI architecture is simply another form of architectural vaporware”.

Exterior of Granary House guesthouse by MIMA Housing
Granary House in Arouca, Portugal, is clad in slatted timber

Popular projects this week included a retreat in Portugal designed in a “rustic minimalist” style, the interiors of the world’s skinniest supertall skyscraper, and a “forever home” in Melbourne.

This week’s lookbooks showcased interiors informed by the principles of the Bauhaus and homes in converted warehouses.

This week on Dezeen

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 we reviewed the architecture, design and controversies of the World Cup appeared first on Dezeen.

Shargeek’s tiny 35W GaN fast charger is an adorable retro throwback for all Apple fans!

Looking for a good fast charger for your iPhone? Shargeek just designed the perfect one!

Now the Retro 35W GaN Charger from Shargeek isn’t as impressive as is much more popular transparent cyberpunk-inspired power bank, but it has a different sort of appeal that most tech nerds will instantly fall in love with. The charging brick models itself on the original Macintosh computer, complete with the MacOS ‘smiling’ logo displayed on the tiny computer’s screen. Built with a GaN semiconductor on the inside, the tiny charger comes with a max output of 35W, which is enough to fast-charge your iPhone or any other device. Plug it in and not only does it charge your device, but the Mac’s screen comes to life too, lighting up in various colors to let you know your device’s charging status!

Designer: Shargeek

Click Here to Buy Now

The highlight of this tiny charger is its design. Created as a perfect tribute to the Macintosh and also a rather funny juxtaposition of an old-tech exterior but a state-of-the-art GaN interior, the charging brick sits on your plug socket or extension board, smiling at you while delivering juice to your devices. The smiling screen also comes with its own LED backlight which just feels like an incredibly joy-giving experience on its own. Plug your charger in and the backlight lets you know the charging status. A white light means ‘not charging’, while yellow, blue, and green lights range between normal to fast, and finally ‘super’ charging.

As adorably tiny as it looks, the Mac-shaped charger packs a punch. Powered by GaN Ⅲ technology, the charger delivers up to 35W of power in its tiny avatar, charging devices like your phone, tablet, TWS earbuds, drone, handheld gaming console, and even your laptop. Its ability to deliver high wattage to your devices makes them charge faster (that’s putting it simply) – for instance, the Retro 35W GaN Charger gates your iPhone 14 from 0% to 50% battery in just 30 minutes.

The retro-inspired charger is compatible with a wide range of devices, almost an antithesis to Apple’s own ‘walled garden’. It’s tiny enough to fit in your pocket and weighs a mere 55 grams or 2 ounces. Each Shargeek Retro 35W GaN charger also comes with a set of DIY stickers that you can place on the tiny Mac’s screen, effectively changing your charger’s ‘wallpaper’!

Click Here to Buy Now

The post Shargeek’s tiny 35W GaN fast charger is an adorable retro throwback for all Apple fans! first appeared on Yanko Design.

Brilliant or bizarre? This travel case comes with its own detachable electric hoverboard

Whether you want to ride around the cityside or have your luggage follow you around an airport without tugging away at it, the Trunk Car is a wild concept that has a little something for everyone.

Look at the image above and tell me you’re not shocked by its brilliance. A suitcase with a detachable hoverboard built into it instead of those crummy, small 360° wheels! Designed as a clever idea to make transport in general easy, the Trunk Car can either be used to move luggage around or to move you! The hard-shell travel case detaches from its wheel-and-handle platform to reveal what’s basically a hoverboard with handlebars. You can use this, for the most part, to ride around from one part of a neighborhood or campus to another, or when you’re traveling with luggage, just attach the hard shell onto the hoverboard and you now have a motorized travel-case that automatically moves in the direction you’re pulling it in, reducing the effort and allowing you to carry heavy items with relative ease!

The Trunk Car is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2022.

Designer: The 36th Research Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation

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Stash Bag

Yew Yew, a modern smoking accessories brand helmed by Jenny Wichman, has released the Stash Bag, a colorful, smell-proof pouch thoughtfully designed for storing pipes, herbs, lighters and other accessories. Made from vegan leather with a detachable wrist strap and interior pockets, the bag—available in a range of hues—is perfect for at-home or on-the-go organization of buds and beyond.

Hallyu!: The Korean Wave Official Exhibition Book

From cinema and fashion to music and fandom communities, there’s an invigorating creative wave coming out of South Korea that’s quickly made an impact within the mainstream. An extensive hardcover book (which accompanies a V&A exhibition), Hallyu!: The Korean Wave explores the intricacies of this culture. Edited by Rosalie Kim, the tome surveys South Korea from the 1950s onward, traversing BTS, Parasite and more. Price is in Pounds.

PinkPantheress: Do you miss me?

Co-produced by Kaytranada and phil, PinkPantheress’ new single “Do you miss me?” is a sweet yet sad electronic-pop track. Merging a pulsating beat, pianos, bells, woodblocks and the English singer-songwriter’s warbling, soft vocals, it’s a layered, upbeat listen.

LMN Architects creates mass-timber business school for University of Washington

Mass timber Founders Hall in Seattle

Seattle-based studio LMN Architects has completed the mass-timber Founders Hall building for the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business in Seattle.

Founders Hall is an 84,800-square-foot building with five floors spread over three volumes on the University of Washington’s campus in northern Seattle.

University of Washington mass timber Founders Hall aerial shot
LMN Architects designed Founders Hall for the University of Washington

LMN designed the building for the business school to serve a variety of functions for the teachers and staff including offices, classrooms and gathering spaces.

According to the studio, the building is the “first fully mass timber building on campus”.

Facade with outdoor student areas
The structure was made using mass timber

Mass timber – an engineered wood product – elements include glued laminated timber structural posts and beams and cross-laminated timber flooring.

“With the foundation of our design rooted in a mass-timber structure, we leveraged both the inherent beauty and sustainability of wood,” said LMN principal Kate Westbrook.

“The use of mass-timber lowers the project’s embodied carbon substantially while we celebrate the Douglas fir to create a warm and inviting atmosphere on the interior.”

Brick, curtain wall and glass exteriors
Brick, curtain wall and glazing was used for the cladding

Other materials that were used to complement the timber include brick curtain walls and glazing used for the exteriors as well as concrete for the shear cores and steel long-span beams for the classroom ceilings.

“The peeled-away brick facade paired with carefully placed glazing exposes the timber inside the building while providing views of the historical Douglas firs, giving the higher floors of the building an immersive experience with the northwest forest character of the site,” added LMN.

Students in external courtyard
The structure was designed to meet the university’s n Green Building Standards

On the interior, the use of wood is most evident in a five-storey central staircase that is framed by a series of mass-timber support beams.

According to the studio, the building was used as a “proof-of-concept” for construction finance company Aureus Earth‘s initiative to financially quantify carbon storage in new buildings and sell carbon offsets to fund green construction projects.

Mass timber stairway
A central stairway connects the five storeys

“The building will store more than 1,000 tons of CO2 for decades, keeping carbon out of the atmosphere for the lifetime of the building,” said LMN.

The designers also implemented a sustainable strategy for heating and cooling the structure, in line with the University of Washington Green Building Standards, which aim to reduce carbon emissions by 90 per cent.

Students in mass timber building lobby
The structure includes classrooms, offices and meeting spaces

According to LMN, this goal was achieved through the sequestering of carbon through the use of mass timber and by “integrating natural and mechanical ventilation”.

LMN principal Robert Smith told Dezeen that Founders Hall’s energy usage is free of fossil fuels. While it has a “solar ready” rooftop, the architecture studio achieved the energy goal by not connecting the structure to the steam grid on campus.

“Founders Hall is an efficient, electric building and has been designed to be fossil fuel-free,” said Smith.

“It is all electric and gets its power from the local electric utility which uses cleaner power sources such as wind and hydropower.”

Internal shot of Founders Hall with students working
The building has a seperate energy grid connection from the rest of campus

LMN has built a number of buildings on the University of Washington campus, including a computer science centre that bears billionaire Bill Gates‘ name.

Other projects by the studio, which was founded in Seattle in 1979, include an extension to the Asian Art Museum in Seattle and a viewing platform on top of a bridge in Everett, Washington.

Recently, a structure with mass-timber elements in Milwaukee designed by Korb + Associates Architects became the world’s tallest timber building.

The photography is by Tim Griffith


Project credits: 

Architect: LMN Architects
Design-builder: Hoffman Construction Company
Structural engineer: Magnusson Klemencic Associates with Katerra, Carla Keel, and Autoscan
Civil engineer: Mayfly Engineering & Design, Pllc.
Landscape architect: Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, Ltd.
Lighting design: HLB Lighting Design
Mechanical and electrical engineer: PAE Consulting Engineers, Inc.
Plumbing engineer: Burman Design
Signage: Studio Matthews
Accessibility: Studio Pacifica
Commissioning: Wilson Jones Commissioning
Envelope consultant: Morrison Hershfield with McClintock Façade Consulting
LEED administration and energy modeler: O’Brien360
Environmental graphic designer: Advent, LLC.
Acoustics: The Greenbusch Group

The post LMN Architects creates mass-timber business school for University of Washington appeared first on Dezeen.

This cute gadget is the physical manifestation of checking off a task

Almost everyone has a smartphone these days, and each of these devices has some form of a to-do list app or another. That said, not everyone uses these apps to keep track of things they need to get done, and some don’t even have such a list of tasks at all. There are, however, many proponents of keeping even the simplest of task lists, not just for the sake of writing down those to-dos. There is evidence of a subtle yet effective psychological benefit to checking off boxes or striking out tasks, something that doesn’t translate cleanly to their digital counterparts. That’s the kind of mind trick that this simplistic-looking device uses, offering a distraction-free way of getting addicted to getting your to-dos done.

Designers: Go Eunseo, janchi

There is definitely something satisfying in the physical act of marking a task as completed. Sure, you can tap on your phone’s screen to do the same, but it requires almost no effort to make that action really meaningful. Perhaps it is the physical activity paired with the sense of accomplishment that gives us that dose of dopamine, which means that it might not require pen and paper to pull that same trick off in other forms.

PRESS is a concept for a device that brings a bit of that phenomenon in a new way that bridges the physical and digital worlds. It has a minimalist design that leaves no room for guesswork on what it does, especially with a big orange button that simply says “Press” on it. Of course, its actual implementation might not be so simplistic, and the theories behind it are quite profound as well.

In a nutshell, this device shows a single line of text displayed in an almost retro LCD-like font. There is a small part above the text for a 2×2 matrix of numbers representing the time in 24-hour format. All these displays are “hidden” beneath the surface so that the gadget looks completely clean when there is nothing to show.

The idea is for PRESS to show a single task at a time and the time when it needs to be done. Ideally, it could be a recurring task that happens at the same time daily, like writing or reading at night. When the time for doing the task nears, it will display that data. And when the task is done, you simply press on the orange button to mark it as completed, almost like those buzzers that contestants smash on TV game shows.

It is a pair of triggers and actions that can help develop a habit over time. The design does leave plenty of room for possible features, like automatically syncing data with a phone or computer. Those, however, can just be icing on the cake since PRESS really focuses on delivering that little bit of euphoria whenever you complete a task and press that big, orange button.

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Ceramic Dog Ornament

These small, hand-painted ornaments from artist Steph Becker each feature a charming portrait of a pooch on a ceramic pendant. The ornaments come in a variety of breeds and a black and white palette. They make for artful, whimsical decorations for dog lovers.