Mordak will be leaving their current role as the director of sustainability and physics at British engineering firm Buro Happold to take up the full-time advocacy role and help the UK’s built environment sector to halve its emissions by 2030.
“We look forward to their leadership of the team in this critical period for taking urgent and effective action to limit and reverse environmental degradation,” said Sunand Prasad, the chair of UKGBC’s board of trustees.
“Smith combines a deep, science-based and systemic understanding of the climate emergency with a clear-sighted, principled and pragmatic approach for what needs to be done in response.”
“Our actions over the next few years will have an outsized impact”
Mordak is a multi-award-winning architect and engineer, having co-founded London firms Interrobang and Studio Weave before going on to work at Buro Happold.
Alongside this, Mordak has a long-standing history in driving industry action on climate change, as a board member of the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy, a former design advocate for London mayor Sadiq Khan and a steering committee member at climate action group Architects Declare.
Smith Mordak (top) is an architect and engineer known for award-winning projects such as the residential conversion of London’s Hoover Building (above)
“We live in existentially challenging times,” Mordak said. “Our actions over the next few years will have an outsized impact on the Earth’s ecosystems and on many generations to come.”
“I’m honoured that I’ll be playing my part in this crucial period as part of this powerful change-making coalition.”
UKGBC also names new deputy chief executive
Mordak will be taking over the role from Julie Hirigoyen, who last year announced her decision to step down after more than eight years at the helm.
“My decision to stand down was a challenging one,” Hirigoyen said at the time. “But I believe that fresh direction will allow for an infusion of new creative ideas at a pivotal moment in time, ahead of the step-change required to 2030.”
UKGBC set out a new strategy for 2025 just last May, in recognition of the fact that more ambitious short-term targets need to be set to help the industry halve its emissions by 2030 and stabilise global warming around the crucial 1.5-degree threshold.
The charity is also promoting Simon McWhirter, its current director of communications, policy and places, to deputy chief executive to strengthen his role ahead of the UK’s next general election.
In his new role, McWhirter will have a “laser focus across international, national and local policy work”, UKGBC said.
The Böste lounge chair is named after the designer’s hometown in southern Sweden and presents a Scandinavian take on the classic Westport Chair.
Böste is made from planks of teak wood
The angle that the chair’s back and seat meet at invites users to adopt a gently reclined pose suitable for both unwinding and socialising.
Wide arms function as small side tables and the presence of the separate foot rest allows users to fully lay back when desired.
“Originally, it is believed that the reason for this design was so that the chair could be used on uneven terrain – but today the design is mainly associated with outstanding comfort, which allows the user to sink into the reclining chair and relax,” said Skargaarden.
It has a wide back and ample arms
The chair is made from powder-coated stainless steel and sustainably sourced teak, which eventually weathers to a silver-grey hue over time. It’s materiality makes it durable enough to withstand outdoor environments during all seasons.
“[The Böste] lounge chair can be placed on soft beaches, hard rocks, grass between your toes, the poolside or a luxurious roof terrace,” said the brand.
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Initially, hard-top campers were a prevalent choice for adventurers. Now, enthusiasts favor traveling light with possible additional space onboard. This has boosted demand for function-focused high-popping roof truck campers that empower outdoor enthusiasts to live out in their natural environments without compromising a home’s value or modern aesthetics.
In the last couple of years, many worthy pick-up truck campers have sprung out of Denver Colorado. Jumping into this evolution of reducing weight with pop-up style fixtures, Denver-based Tune Outdoors has bypassed the standard designs to deliver a camper with the industry-best weight-to-space ratio.
Compromising little on comfort and functional versatility, Tune M1 is an innovation in the field we believe has reached a modernization highpoint. The lightweight, adventure-ready camper is designed to take you anywhere you want to during the day, and to allow you to rest in utmost comfort within the truck’s pop-top canopy extension by night.
The lightweight truck camper, starting at just 360 lbs, allows the cabin to be used for sleeping, cooking, remote working, or even for toy hauling when you’re venturing out for a ski, fishing, or snowboarding adventure. The camper has full-width back and side windows, it employs aluminum extrusions and durable composite corners to withstand all that your adventure tours can throw at it.
Tune M1 comes with a king-size bed designed to hinge for relaxation. Put the bed in recline and you can sit up to gaze out of the panoramic windows. To accommodate a bigger family or group of friends, the camper has a sleeping loft, while the pop-up roof (up to 6ft 10-in of interior headroom) ensures you can stand up in the living area with ease.
As the company puts it, Tune M1 is designed to bring humans closer to their natural environment by offering unparalleled performance and comfort. This is ensured by industry-leading livable space onboard, yet keeping the weight light enough to not impact daily driving.
Varied figurative representations by an array of international artists
Each year in February excitement builds as the focus of the art world turns toward Los Angeles for the Frieze Art Fair. This year a local air hangar might have seemed like a surprising location for an art fair, but through the years the Santa Monica Airport has hosted the Los Angeles Festival, Unique LA, art events and countless cultural happenings. Frieze filled Barker Air Hangar with three dozen galleries and activations, while the east side Frieze tent expanded the footprint to be the largest in LA so far.
By the entrance the Regarding Her food offerings celebrated women-owned culinary companies in Los Angeles. Maestro Dobel decked out their flower-filled “Artpothecary” with a collaboration with Clásicos Mexicanos, celebrating 20th century design in Mexico. Entering the Frieze tent revealed a cacophony of sensory stimulation with filmmakers mingling with gallerists and art collectors. Renowned local artists like Catherine Opie and Christina Quarles could be seen walking around to experience Frieze alongside that exuberant crowd. The sheer amount of art to absorb was monumental, but in the midst of a dizzying array of exhibitions, these colorful eye-catching works from artists around the globe told emotional stories of domestic life and heroic journeys.
A solo installation of paintings and ceramic works by LA-based artist Hana Ward were presented by OCHI Gallery. Influenced by anti-colonial histories and spiritual texts, Ward paints women in vibrant mythic landscapes and scenes of domestic life. She sets some of her female figures at the forefront while others are looking out from behind curving tree branches. Completing the space: three ceramic heads topped with a piece of fruit, a bowl and a lightbulb appear to be looking out from the landscape.
Mexican artist Hilda Palafox has painted murals in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Japan and Brazil. At Frieze, Proyectos Monclova, a gallery in the Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City, brought a solo presentation of her paintings depicting a range of powerful women. The women in Palafox’s paintings take up space. The colors—bold golds and ochre—are revealed in light and shadow. In “Soñé con fuego y serpientes,” she paints one woman holding a burning book that releases clouds like smoke into the sky while another gently cradles a thin neon yellow snake. Faces in Palafox’s work take on a mythical quality with sculptural lines and expressions that leave the emotions open to interpretation.
” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/coolhunting.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Tania-Candiani.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/coolhunting.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Tania-Candiani.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1″ loading=”lazy” class=”size-large wp-image-306026″ src=”https://i0.wp.com/coolhunting.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Tania-Candiani.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1″ alt=”” width=”1024″ height=”683″ data-recalc-dims=”1″ />Courtesy of Instituto de Visión
Tania Candiani at Instituto de Visión Bogotá
In the group exhibition from Instituto de Visión, a gallery based in the San Felipe neighborhood in Bogotá, Tania Candiani‘s bold red canvases command attention. Candiani, who lives and works in Mexico City, amplifies the bodies in these works by layering on sewing and embroidery elements. She has depicted women revolutionaries at protests and often creates site-specific art to delve into socio-historical connections. This interdisciplinary artist explores the intersections between art, literature, music, science and architecture.
The Jessica Silverman Gallery, housed in the Chinatown neighborhood of San Francisco, brought together a range of mediums in their Frieze presentation. Andrea Bowers, who is originally from Ohio but based in LA, paints her heroines on found and recycled cardboard. This series of paintings depicts powerful women soaring through violet and blue stormy skies. Bowers has been working with collaged recycled cardboard, evocative of the protest posters that she felt drawn to at Occupy Wall Street.
The solo presentation of Kyoko Idetsu by Nonaka-Hill tells stories of daily domestic life. Tokyo-based Idetsu paints images of people cooking, partaking in family meals and children playing. In a diptych, there is a woman surrounded by plates of food and chopsticks next to another canvas with a woman painting with a bowl of food floating in front of her. A purple arrow connects them and both appear to be submerged in water. These scenes reveal how Idetsu interprets everyday tasks, emotions and relationships.
Every day, our eyes and our brains are bombarded with visual stimuli, especially from the smartphones we are glued to most of the time. Even for the younger generations, there is a tipping point when things become too overwhelming, so many of them retreat to music of varying genres for a reprieve. That often involves putting on headphones for a bit of privacy, but such accessories do remove one other thing that these people crave for: social connections. Balancing sometimes conflicting objectives can be a bit difficult for a single product to achieve, but this concept design attempts to do exactly that by making a speaker transform into a one-seater chair for a more private listening session.
Designers: Minsong Cho, Jeonghyeon We, Jihye Yang, Hyerim Kim, Park Sol
Music can be both personal and social, and this dichotomy is best exemplified by how younger listeners enjoy their tunes. On the one hand, they do want to be able to “feel” the musical space around them, pretty much like surround sound, but, at times, they also want it to be more expansive to include other people around them. Wireless earphones and headphones naturally close off other people, while regular speakers just blast audio in either a single or all directions. Although you probably won’t find audio equipment that does all of the above at the same time, this concept is able to change its form depending on what people need.
OunD, which comes from the four letters common to “sound,” “surround,” and “round,” is an audio device that looks like a speaker at one time and a personal chair at another time. A hidden rack and pinion system raises the back of the speaker to form the curved backrest of the chair. The sides of that backrest hide the actual speakers that do the actual work of delivering the surround sound experience to whoever is sitting inside.
The idea of the design is a bit simple when you discover that secret mechanism. If you want a more personal listening experience that still immerses you in the musical space, you can simply press a button to raise the back portion, sit on the chair, and sink into your favorite tunes. If you want to party, on the other hand, lower the chair and transform OunD back into a more traditional speaker.
While the design is quite creative in solving the problem, there might be a few kinks that still need to be ironed out on the practical side. The personal listening space, for example, won’t be as private as headphones unless you’re the only person in the room, and the development of Spatial Audio technologies almost makes it moot as well. The position of the speakers might be great for personal listening, but their orientation in OunD’s speaker form might not be optimal. And while the chair is, of course, designed for comfort, it might not inspire much confidence in stability, especially with a short base and a heavy top.
The decision to issue an Article 31 holding directive comes after the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities received a request to call in the planning application.
“A Holding Direction restricting the grant of permission has been issued to allow time for the Secretary of State to consider the request,” a spokesperson for the department told Dezeen.
The holding direction temporarily prevents the plans for the venue moving forward.
However, the department added: “The issuing of a holding direction should not be taken as an indication as to whether an application will be called in or not. A decision will be made as soon as possible.”
The holding directive prevents the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) – which had previously approved the plans for the MSG Sphere – and the mayor from signing off on plans for the 90-metre-high spherical venue.
Design could face further scrutiny
If the project is called in under Section 77 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, the design would face further scrutiny and an inspector would be appointed to carry out an inquiry.
The MSG Sphere has been controversial from the start, with 852 objections submitted in opposition to the project. In total, 355 responses were received supporting the proposal, which was designed for the organisation that runs New York’s Madison Square Garden (MSG).
Local MP Lyn Brown was among those opposing the London venue, stating that “Stratford does not want to be Las Vegas” and claimed that “the LLDC’s version of the Olympic legacy has become a tyranny”.
In an opinion piece for Dezeen, writer Anna Minton said that there are issues with the project that relate to democratic representation and accountability.
“The decision was opposed by local elected representatives at Newham and Hackney councils, parliamentary representatives and on the development corporation’s board – where it was opposed by four elected members of the largely non-elected board,” she said.
Twin sphere venue being constructed in the US
Despite the opposition to the venue, it was set to be built after the LLDC’s planning committee voted six to four in favour of the proposal. It was then referred to the London mayor’s office for final approval.
The 21,500-capacity venue would be located on a triangular site next to the Westfield Stratford shopping centre and feature a main auditorium placed within the 90-metre-high sphere along with restaurants, cafes and a members’ club.
Dutch architecture studio MVRDV has unveiled the Tainan Xinhua Fruit and Vegetable Market in Taiwan with an undulating green roof that is accessed by a series of planted terraces.
Located in the foothills of east Tainan, the market for Tainan City Government Agriculture Bureau was designed by MVRDV as a food supply hub as well as a space for people to gather and socialise.
The market is topped with a curving grass roof
Created in collaboration with local studio LLJ Architects, the 12,331-square-metre market was topped with a curving green roof that form “rolling hills” designed to blend into the surrounding landscape.
The eastern corner of the structure has terraces filled with colourful planting that descend to the ground to provide stepped access to the roof.
Planted terraces lead visitors to the top of the roof
Visitors can enjoy views of the surrounding landscape from the roof’s grassy, undulating park.
“The building provides an elevated platform from which visitors can appreciate the landscape that characterises this part of Taiwan, from a building that creates a continuation of that landscape,” said MVRDV.
The green roof is interrupted by a four-storey building
The project includes a four-storey structure with a pitched roof that punctures the curving green roof.
This structure provides secondary access to the walkable green roof and contains offices and an exhibition space that displays agricultural products.
Original designs for the building included plans for the roof to be used to grow crops and MVRDV hopes the roof can be adapted in the future to grow fruits and vegetables.
Currently used as a park with colourful planting, further development of the roof could see it turned into an educational farm that teaches children about the food supply chain and how produce is grown.
“[The market] is completely functional and caters to the needs for auctioning, selling, and buying goods, but its terraced roof with – eventually – its collection of plants and crops will allow visitors to take in the landscape while escaping from the bustle below,” said MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas.
The walkable green roof gives views of the surrounding landscape
The market is accessible from all four sides with tall openings designed for natural ventilation.
The earth and planting on the roof help to further regulate the temperature and passively cool the market to a comfortable level.
The market space below the roof has a paired-back design
MVRDV was informed by the metal shed-like structures of typical wholesale markets when designing the project, and describes the Tainan market as “simple yet highly functional”.
Architect: MVRDV Founding partner in charge: Winy Maas Partner: Wenchian Shi Co-architect: LLJ Architects Design team: Hui-Hsin Liao, Xiaoting Chen, Chi Yi Liao, Chiara Girolami, Enrico Pintabona, Maria Lopez, Gustavo van Staveren, Emma Rubeillon, Dong Min Lee, Jose Sanmartin, Cheng Cai and Yi Chien Liao Strategy and development: Isabel Pagel and Bart Dankers Contractor: Yuh-Tong Construction Co. Ltd, Jiuyang Electric And Plumbing Engineering Co. Ltd Landscape architect: The Urbanists Collaborative Structural engineer: Columbus Engineering Consultants Inc. Mechanical electrical and plumbing (MEP): Frontier Tech Institute Co. Ltd Soil and water: Kuo Soil and Water Technicians
An Yu’s sophomore novel, Ghost Music, is a mysterious work that combines mushrooms and music, memory and self-discovery. Song Yan, the protagonist, is a concert pianist who begins to be haunted by dreams of a doorless room full of fungi. When a surprise package ends up at her apartment, she unknowingly sets off on a journey that grows increasingly bizarre, thought-provoking and captivating to read.
Dezeen Showroom: wallpaper brand Wall&decò has released its 2023 collection of patterned wallpaper, which continues the brand’s focus on large-format prints and materiality.
Presented across three “mood boards” that group recurring themes and aesthetics, Wall&decò’s Contemporary Wallpaper 2023 collection spans 71 original graphic designs.
The Wall&decò 2023 collection includes the Cave design with its blown-up tree bark textures
The collection includes Cave by Maria Gomez Garcia, a pattern based on wood barks that was designed to create comforting and peaceful interiors.
Cave is part of the Cocoon mood board, which brings together designs with a focus on craft and materials and an overall sense of creating an inviting, oasis-like domestic space.
The Cubic design focuses on the interplay of transparency and geometry
Informed by coloured resin, design duo Draga & Aurel created an interplay of geometry and transparency with a three-dimensional effect in its Cubic wallpaper design, which forms part of the Post-Metaverse mood board.
There is also Studio Salaris‘s Valmont pattern, which aims to create a modern fresco with its painterly curvilinear elements and is part of the Virtual Aesthetics mood board of bright, optimistic designs.
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.
Dezeen Awards 2023 is open for entries with a range of new categories that focus on innovation, sustainability and creativity that will showcase the very best in design talent from around the world.
There are 39 categories to enter which include everything from small-scale residential projects to material innovation. Enter before 29 March to benefit from our discounted early entry prices.
39 categories to enter
New architecture categories have been introduced for both large- and small-scale projects. House extensions can now be entered, as well as education projects, infrastructure and transport projects, and mixed-use projects, which can include urban design and landscape improvements. See all our architecture categories here.
Barlo MS Medical centre by Canadian studio Hariri Pontarini Architects won an accolade in 2022
We’ve grown our sustainability categories, too, adding a category for sustainable renovations and retrofits, as well as sustainable building products to reward cutting-edge products where the innovation delivers carbon reduction or improved climate resilience.
Also new for 2023 is a material innovation category. Products that have made an outstanding contribution to material development can be entered, for example, those that significantly reduce embodied carbon or by using circular economy principles where waste is designed out and materials are re-used, or new materials that could shape the future of construction, interiors and design. See all our sustainable categories here.
Click here to find out more information about Dezeen Awards and subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest news updates. Plus you can always drop us a line at awards@dezeen.com if you have any questions.
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