Hasta La Ideas

Long Live the Christmas Tree, an exhibition of unconventional Christmas installations, has opened at Harewood House in West Yorkshire, England.

The country house invited 11 artists, designers and makers to create “traditionally untraditional” Christmas trees that draw from the history and resources of the country house and its estate.

The results include tree-like installations made from materials including deer antlers, carnival costumes and weeds.

Each is on show within a different room inside Harewood House, creating playful juxtapositions with the lavish decoration of the historic interiors, which date back to the 18th century.

British set designer Simon Costin used antlers gathered from the Harewood Estate to create his tree, which is located in the Cinnamon Drawing Room.

In the State Dining Room, costume designer Hughbon Condor has combined elements of different winter festivals and celebrations to create a tree that celebrates cultural diversity.

“You may instantly see elements of your own celebration but may require closer observation to see other celebrations,” he said.

Many of the designers have worked with natural or recycled materials.

Set designer Meriel Hunt combined oak, hazel and straw to create a tree-shaped house for bees, which will be relocated in the grounds after the exhibition closes.

Meanwhile, florist Swallows & Damsons has created a giant wreath using primarily mugwort and honesty.

“In the shadow of Harewood’s history of opulence and riches, where once no expense was spared to impress, show off and entertain, this wild wreath is composed of purely foraged materials some may call weeds,” said Swallows & Damsons founder Anna Potter.

“It has nuances that are seen by quietly contemplating, and scents that refresh and calmly embalm us with medicinal properties.”

A plaster cast by sculptor Phoebe McElhatton is reminiscent of a church spire, decorated with food items and body parts, while Costa Rican artist Juli Bolaños-Durman has created a tree-shaped tower out of old glass bottles.

British designer Matthew Galvin, of the furniture brand Galvin Brothers, decided to drop the tree form altogether.

In the Yellow Drawing Room, he instead installed playfully crafted ash-wood benches that are adorned with tubes of dried flowers.

“We created this piece in early September, so it became a sober reflection upon the longevity and service of our late Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II,” said Galvin.

The aim, he said, was to “explore and express some of those multifarious aspects of the Yuletide period – the rituals and the traditions, the associations and the memories – which seem so defined and historic, but also intangible, ethereal and transient.”

American artist Yasemen Hussein imagined a goddess of ancient folklore when designing her copper and crystal tree, while paper artist Andy Singleton has created a huge unfurling paper spiral.

The exhibition is completed by film and soundscape works intended to capture the spirit of the festive season.

“Long Live the Christmas Tree presents a unique version of the classic winter pine and spruce by 11 wonderful artists,” said Jane Marriott, trust director at Harewood House.

“Harewood’s ambition is to be bold and sometimes untraditional in our approach to commissioning artists, so we are delighted with the diverse, unexpected, joyful, thoughtful, and creative installations across the house.”

Long Live the Christmas Tree takes place from 12 November to 5 January 2022 at Harewood House. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

The photography is by Tom Arber.

The post Harewood House presents exhibition of “traditionally untraditional” Christmas trees appeared first on Dezeen.

Do you often doze off during the day even if you slept well last night? Do you have difficulties with focus and concentration? or Do you have chronic fatigue despite regular exercise and a healthy diet? It might be possible that your healthy lifestyle doesn’t include the most important thing… HEALTHY AIR!

The air you breathe may affect your health in various ways. For example, High concentration levels of carbon dioxide may cause a variety of health effects including headaches, dizziness, restlessness, and even needless feeling. Other air components such as VOCs, particulate matter, and carbon monoxide can be also causes of minor health deterioration and sometimes even lead to fatal illnesses.

Designers: Kangnam Kim & Sujin Lee

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The thing with air is that you really can’t tell when the air quality you’re breathing is bad. Sure, bad water has a specific off-taste or color, food that’s spoilt has a distinct flavor profile that tells you something is wrong, but if your air has too much CO2, there’s really no way of knowing on your own. CO2 is odorless, quite like oxygen, although it isn’t as good for you as the latter.

Reduce fatigue in daily life.

Improve concentration at work.

That’s where AirNotis comes in. Designed to monitor your air quality in real time, AirNotis is a smart display that actively scans the air you breathe to check CO2 and CO levels, fine dust, TVOCs (Total Volatile Organic Compounds), and overall humidity. It’s wireless, and can therefore be carried around with you wherever you go – in your workspace, in your car, your kitchen, or even outdoors.

Real-life examples of “how fast carbon dioxide accumulates indoors”.

As smart as the tech around us has gotten, nobody’s really developed a smart air monitor yet. You’ve got thermostats that tell you the air temperature of your house, but it isn’t a detailed air quality breakdown… and a quick online search can give you information about the general air quality of your neighborhood, but it isn’t hyper-localized or in real-time. That’s really where a device like AirNotis shines through. About the same size as an alarm clock or a tiny smart home hub, AirNotis sits on tabletops, windowpanes, shelves, or even on your car dashboard, actively monitoring the air you’re breathing. It even comes with an adorably retro-inspired design, featuring a quirky pixelated typeface and an overall design aesthetic inspired by Braun’s cathode-ray tube televisions.

The AirNotis has all the hallmarks of a great, disruptive product. A winner of the CES Innovation Awards and the iF Design Award this year (and also accelerated by Samsung’s incubator program), AirNotis is compact, portable, intuitive, and incredibly powerful in its capabilities. Most of us are exposed to high CO and CO2 levels and we don’t even know it. This may sound benign, but high CO2 levels are linked to fatigue, lack of concentration, chest pain, headaches, or in severe cases, unconsciousness or death. A room filled with 4 people can push CO2 levels beyond 1500 particles per meter (PPM) in just 10 minutes, which is linked to health issues like headaches and drowsiness. While humans can’t really detect this change, AirNotis can, and it immediately tells you to ventilate the area to bring the CO2 levels back in check.

Carbon Monoxide is arguably more dangerous than CO2, and exposure to it prevents our red blood cells from carrying oxygen efficiently to the heart and other parts of the body. Just the way AirNotis lets you know if CO2 levels spike beyond acceptable limits, it does the same for CO levels, with an alarm that alerts you into action, and advice to help you remedy the air quality. The device also does the same with fine dust particles, volatile organic compounds, and even temperature and humidity levels. Its touchscreen display acts as a dashboard for your air quality data, with useful notifications that tell you to ventilate your space, exit a room, or wear a mask to stay healthy. Moreover, the AirNotis device also connects to your phone, sending data to an app that allows you to view the air quality of all the places you’ve been to, comparing to see the air you’ve breathed through the day.

Prevent drowsy driving.

Sleep better.

Designed to deliver your daily ‘air notice’, this handy gadget has the potential to be the next smart health device for personal and home use. It’s compact and unlike the internet, delivers air quality metrics of the room you are in, in real-time. You could be in your bedroom, an elevator, your car, your kitchen, even in the outdoors, or in a tent. The idea is that just the way humans tend to focus on the food they’re eating and the nutrition they’re putting into their body, it’s time we also put equal importance on the air we breathe because bad air has as much of a negative impact (or even more) than bad food or bad lifestyles. The device runs on a 2000mAh battery that gives you 24 hours of wireless use, or you can keep it plugged in too, using the USB-C port on the back!

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The post Samsung-backed portable air quality monitor is positioned to be the next game-changing smart health device first appeared on Yanko Design.

There aren’t many engines that have had quite the illustrious career that the W16 has had. Debuted with the Bugatti Veyron in 2005 (that’s a staggering 17 years ago), the W16 has been at the heart of all Bugattis made since, but the company’s decided to say farewell to it in style – by giving it the ultimate send-off in the form of a stunningly beautiful new racer that brings back Bugatti’s original open-top style. The W16 Mistral, unveiled mere days ago, marks an important epilogue in one of Bugatti’s most noteworthy storylines, with Bugatti CEO Mate Rimac saying, “For the final roadgoing appearance of Bugatti’s legendary W16 engine, we knew we had to create a roadster. Well over 40% of all Bugatti vehicles ever created have been open-top in design, establishing a long lineage of performance icons that – to this day – are revered the world over. In the Chiron era there had, to-date, been no roadster, so the introduction of Bugatti W16 Mistral continues this legacy, driven by enormous demand from our clients for an all-new way to experience the mighty performance of our iconic engine. The W16 Mistral opens the next chapter in the Bugatti roadster story, inspired by over a century of open-top legends.”

Designer: Bugatti

The engine, however, is just a mere component in the glorious machine that’s the W16 Mistral. Named after the powerful wind that blows from the Rhône River valley, through the Côte d’Azur in southern France and into the Mediterranean, the car touts power, along with a performance that can ‘blow you away’. The car comes with a stellar open-top design that harks back to Bugatti’s origins with some of the first cars being open-top racers. Shift your eyes to the side and you’ve got one of the most interesting profiles possible. There’s a gestalt of continuity with the open-top design, and the car isn’t one to shy away from tight curves in certain places, and fuller arcs in others. The car still comes with Bugatti’s horseshoe radiator (although one could wonder what would happen of this detail if the company’s next powertrain was electric), aggressively sculpted air-vents on the front, side, and back, and that gorgeous C-pillar on the back that still comes with a tight C-shaped design. The headlights on the front sport four bars that “subtly nods to the W16 Mistral’s four-wheel-drive and four turbochargers”, mentions Frank Heyl, Bugatti’s Deputy Design Director.

“We know the W16 Mistral will always have significance in the story of Bugatti, marking the last time that perhaps the greatest ever automotive powertrain is used in a roadgoing production car”, said Achim Anscheidt, Design Director at Bugatti. “We, as a design team, felt enormous pressure to deliver styling that immediately conveyed this landmark moment, drawing inspiration from some of the most beautiful roadsters in Bugatti history.”

The X-shaped taillights show the company’s willingness to still retain a canvas for exploration. While the front of every Bugatti since the Veyron has remained strongly loyal to the brand DNA, the rear of the car still has its creative elements that allow each model to stand apart, from the Veyron to the Chiron, Divo, Centodieci, Bolide, and the La Voiture Noire. The X seems like a hat-tip to the Bolide’s X-shaped headlights and taillights, although much more striking and elegant, and believe it or not, functional. Heyl mentions that the X-taillight “serves the function of venting the side oil coolers through ducts connecting the triangular negative space in between the X beams to the side radiators. Therefore, a pressure drop is created between the side intakes and the outlets at the back of the W16 Mistral which helps to manage the mid-temperature cooling circuit of the mighty W16 most effectively.”

The color scheme is no coincidence either. The black/yellow palette is an ultimate hat-tip to the company’s founder, Ettore Bugatti, who chose the black and yellow combination for many of his personal cars, including his Type 41 Royale. This celebration of color continues onto the inside of the cars too, creating a kind of contrast that seems striking yet pleasant.

Bugatti plans on building only 99 units of the W16 Mistral, with deliveries in 2024. Priced at a whopping 5 million euros, the car’s entire production run has already been sold out!

The post The new Bugatti W16 Mistral is a gorgeous open-top roadster that celebrates the W16 engine’s legacy first appeared on Yanko Design.

For the ultimate pizza lover, or simply anyone curious about the history of and techniques behind one of the world’s most beloved foods, Modernist Pizza is a three-volume, 1,708-page informative and immersive tome. Authored by Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya, and published by Modernist Cuisine, this definitive guide incorporates more than 1,000 recipes from around the world and lists must-visit pizzerias, both domestic and international. Thoughtfully designed—and featuring 3,700 photos—the collection comes in a red stainless-steel case worthy of a place of prominence in a kitchen or on a bookshelf.

Beloved California-based brewing company Firestone Walker has augmented their classic nitro stout with cacao nibs, Madagascar vanilla beans and whole-roasted coffee beans for this rich and creamy limited edition release. The chocolate-forward, dessert-like seasonal beer measures in at 6% ABV. Price represents one six pack (of 12-ounce cans) and will vary based on location of purchase.