A pair of rammed-earth villas in Costa Rica and a fortress-like home in Portugal round off the list of Dezeen readers’ favourite houses published in the past month.
This is the latest roundup in our Houses of the month series, which collects five of the most popular residences featured on Dezeen every month from all around the world.
Here are Dezeen’s top five homes of February 2023:
Informed by an experimental 1960s villa that previously occupied the site on the outskirts on Antwerp, this concrete house was clad in mirrored panels to hide it within the surrounding woodland.
“The mirrored box disappears due to the reflection of the forest, allowing the villa to maintain its slick horizontal bungalow-like appearance,” said Okami Architecten founding partner Hans Vanassche.
This wooden bungalow was designed by Studio Bark using its modular U-Build system and constructed on a farmstead in Herefordshire, UK, by students enrolled on the practice’s No Building As Usual (NBAU) programme.
Built for a retired couple, the single-storey house was built with a timber frame and reusable foundations so it can be demounted at the end of its life.
Set behind the retained facade of a former house on the site, the form of this blocky, white-rendered home in Santo Tirso, Portugal, was informed by the idea of creating a protected fortress.
“The house is designed in a complex balance between the creation of a dense and closed fortress and the reinterpretation of the typical patio house, looking for a protected oasis in its intimate relationship with the sky,” said Pema Studio.
Local architecture practice MIA Design Studio designed this house for a family of four in Phan Thiet, Vietnam, to be a stripped-back and “truly ordinary” home.
Built from modular elements to allow for future expansion or adaption, the home has an exposed steel frame that gives it an industrial character.
Dezeen Awards 2023 launched on 15 February in partnership with Bentley Motors. Enter before 29 March to save 20 per cent on entry fees.
Now in its sixth year, the programme has become the ultimate accolade for architects and designers everywhere, with winners selected by a prestigious panel of international judges.
Read on for more about the first five of 90 industry professionals who will be judging the entries this year.
Farshid Moussavi is the founder of Farshid Moussavi Architecture
British-Iranian architect Moussavi will judge the architecture categories for the sixth edition of Dezeen Awards.
Rotterdam-based Marcelis’ work ranges from furniture and lighting to installation and spatial design. Since founding her eponymous studio in 2011, she has created pieces for architecture firms such as OMA and MVRDV as well as high-fashion labels like Fendi, Celine and Dior.
Her designs are in the permanent collections of Museums Boijmans van Beunigen and Centraal Museum Utrecht in the Netherlands as well as the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia.
David Rockwell is the founder of Rockwell Group
American architect Rockwell will be on the interiors judging panel for Dezeen Awards 2023.
Rockwell is the founder and president of Rockwell Group, a New York-based multi-disciplinary design and architecture practice specialising in hotel and hospitality design with satellite offices in Los Angeles and Madrid.
Béhar has pioneered design as a force for positive social and environmental change, most recently developing a bionic wearable that uses electric pulses and artificial intelligence to correct muscle movements in people with limited mobility.
He has been at the forefront of entrepreneurial venture design, co-founding brands including FORME Life, August and Canopy, as well as partnering with numerous start-ups.
Patrizia Moroso is the art director of Moroso
Moroso is the art director of the family-run Italian furniture brand Moroso and will be joining Rockwell on the interiors judging panel.
Moroso’s designs have been displayed worldwide including at New York’s MoMA, the Palais de Tokyo and Grand Palais in Paris and Venice Biennale. In 2010, the Italian Ministry for Innovation awarded Philippe Bestenheider’s Nanook chair for Moroso the national award for innovation, which was presented to Moroso by then president of Italy Giorgio Napolitano.
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Dezeen Awards 2023 is open for entries. Find out about all of this year’s categories and log in or create an account to start your entries. Enter before 29 March to benefit from our discounted early entry prices.
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Dezeen Awards 2023
Dezeen Awards celebrates the world’s best architecture, interiors and design. Now in its sixth year, it has become the ultimate accolade for architects and designers across the globe. The annual awards are in partnership with Bentley Motors, as part of a wider collaboration that will see the brand work with Dezeen to support and inspire the next generation of design talent.
Designmuseum Denmark has looked at how design can shape the future through its The Future is Present exhibition, which features projects including a tubular chandelier made from cow intestines.
Presented at Copenhagen’s recently renovated Designmuseum, the exhibition showcases a range of “speculative and suggestive” works that examine four themes titled Human, Society, Planet+ and Imagining the Future.
The MYX Chair is a mycelium and hemp chair that has “grown” itself
“Design is very much a forward-looking profession,” said exhibition curator Pernille Stockmarr. “It’s about changing the existing into something better – and what we do in the present creates the future.”
“Living in a time with major global challenges, this exhibition wants to invite people to see and reflect on the different potentials of design in this transformation and encourage them to think about what kind of future we want,” she told Dezeen.
100 metres of cow intestines were used to make the Inside Out chandelier
Among the pieces on show is Inside Out, a chandelier-style lamp made from 100 metres of knotted cow intestines extracted from eight cows. Designer Kathrine Barbro Bendixen aimed to explore how byproducts can be used to rethink patterns of material consumption.
Faroe Islands-based fashion brand Guðrun & Guðrun created Vindur, a ruffled dress with exaggerated bell sleeves made of woven silk and machine-knitted milk yarn sourced from dairy production waste.
The brand worked with textile designers Amalie Ege and Charlotte Christensen and Lifestyle & Design Clusters to create the garment, which was made using a “traditional technique used during the inter-war period when resources were in short supply and waste was transformed into value,” according to the Designmuseum.
A group of designers created a dress made from dairy waste
More conceptual works include Beyond Life, a collection of biodegradable paper foam urns by designer Pia Galschiødt Bentzen with detachable pendants containing seeds that can be grown.
“Beyond Life unites death, loss, and remembrance with the awareness that we humans are part of nature’s endless circle of life,” said Stockmarr.
Also on show is Library of Change, a “map” of dangling acrylic foil cards charting current trends and technologies, inscribed with questions for visitors such as “would you leave the city for better connection?”
Beyond Life is a collection of biodegradable paper foam urns
Stockmarr explained that the exhibition aims to communicate “the breadth of design” by including works that vary in scale, purpose and medium.
“Their ability to inspire, start conversations and make visitors reflect was a priority,” she said.
“I didn’t want the works to be too-defined solutions for the future, extreme sci-fi visions, utopias or dystopias, but exploratory works. Some are collaborative research projects and others provide foresight into design methods, handicrafts and creative experiments.”
Library of Change is a project that encourages visitors to question the future of design
Alongside the various projects in the exhibition, artifacts from the Designmuseum’s own archive that highlight past ideas for the future are also on display.
One of these designs is the three-wheeled vehicle Ellert, Denmark’s first electric car developed in the 1980s by engineer Steen Volmer Jensen.
Ellert was Denmark’s first electric car
Local studio Spacon & X created the exhibition design for The Future is Present with the aim of reflecting its themes.
The studio delineated the show’s various zones using modular bioplastic dividers that snake through the exhibition space and worked with natural materials including eelgrass, which was used to create acoustic mats to manage noise in the museum.
Objects are arranged on custom tables and plinths made in collaboration with sustainable material manufacturer Søuld, while Natural Material Studio created a mycelium daybed for the show.
Stockmarr explained that the show is meant to be a call to action and empower people to reflect on their individual roles in determining the future of design.
“By asking more questions than giving answers the exhibition wants to inspire visitors,” reflected the curator.
“The show acknowledges that it is not only designers, architects, craftspeople and experts, but all of us who are participating in shaping and designing the future by the questions we ask and the choices and actions we take today.”
The Future is Present was designed by Spacon & X to be an immersive experience
Similar recent exhibitions that explored the climate impact of materials include a show at Stockholm Furniture Fair that visualised the carbon emissions of common materials such as concrete and The Waste Age – a London exhibition that addressed how design has contributed to the rise of throwaway culture.
The Future is Present is on display at Designmuseum Denmark from 19 June 2022 to 1 June 2023.See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
40 international galleries and 400 artists and designers are presenting works at the fair, including 14 installations as part of the Collect Open platform.
The event also features a programme of talks, including five main talks and a series of informal booth talks.
The fair takes place online and at London’s Somerset House, and invites artists, designers, consultants, interior professionals, curators and practitioners.
Architecture and construction trade show New York Build Expo returns in 2023, hosting product launches and architectural services from more than 300 exhibitors.
The two-day event also presents a conference of talks and workshops from over 350 speakers, addressing topics such as the future of New York City, transportation infrastructure, design trends, net-zero projects and workspaces.
New York Build Expo 2023 takes place at the Javits Centre in New York City.
Sinople Gallery showcases at Collectible. Photo is by Charlotte Debauge
MIPIM is a four-day real estate fair taking place in Cannes, France, welcoming 20,000 attendees to the conference, exhibition, networking events and awards ceremony.
The conference is held across nine stages, with more than 350 speakers addressing topics such as co-living spaces, decarbonisation, smart cities and waste management.
Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design at Chatsworth is an exhibition taking place at Chatsworth House in Bakewell, UK.
The exhibition presents 16 contemporary projects from artists and designers that have been placed around the stately home to correlate with its design and history.
The pieces on display include furniture, ceramics, sculptures and silverware, which reflect architecture, interiors and items in the building.
Joris Laarman, Chris Schanck, Andile Dyalvane, Faye Toogood, Ettore Sottsass, Formafantasma, Max Lamb, Jay Sae Jung Oh, Fernando Laposse, Ndidi Ekubia, Joseph Walsh, Michael Anastassiades, Ini Archibong, Samuel Ross, Najla El Zein and Wendell Castle are the participating artists and designers.
Dezeen is a media partner for Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design at Chatsworth.
Archiect@Work is a travelling trade show that has taken place in 17 countries across Europe and North America.
In March, the trade show is taking place at the Truman Brewery in London, and hosts an exhibition, talks and networking opportunities.
The exhibition presents 200 architecture products including building systems, interior finishings and technology, while the talks programme addresses topics following the theme Energy and Ecosystems.
Dezeen is a media partner for Architect@Work London 2023.
The Swedish Ambassador’s residence is open to the public during Open House Copenhagen. Photo by Rasmus Degnbol
Architecture and design festival Open House hosts its first event in Denmark, welcoming visitors to explore buildings in Copenhagen.
The festival celebrates architecture and design in cities by opening private spaces to the public, and has selected Copenhagen as its 2023 location as it serves as the World Capital of Architecture 2023.
For two days, more than 10,000 attendees can view 40 buildings in the city, including power plants, private homes and palaces.
About Dezeen Events Guide
Dezeen Events Guide is our guide to the best architecture and design events taking place across the world each year.
The guide is updated weekly and includes virtual events, conferences, trade fairs, major exhibitions and design weeks, as well as up-to-date information about what events have been cancelled or postponed due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Inclusion in the guide is free for basic listings, with events selected at Dezeen’s discretion. Organisers can get enhanced or premium listings for their events, including images, additional text and links, by paying a modest fee.
In addition, events can ensure inclusion by partnering with Dezeen. For more details on inclusion in Dezeen Events Guide and media partnerships with Dezeen, email eventsguide@dezeen.com.
Showroom: Swedish furniture design brand Fogia has expanded its Barba series of rounded furniture in collaboration with Norwegian designer Andreas Engesvik, which aim to create a warm and inviting atmosphere.
The Barba furniture collection was launched in 2019 with an armchair and a sofa, and has grown to include a lounge chair and a larger sofa called Barba Lounge.
The new additions to the Barba series consist of a lounge chair and sofa
The collection is characterised by its fleecy fabric upholstery and its organic shapes informed by clouds, which aim to create “softness and comfort”, according to Fogia.
“Barba Lounge adds warmth, a sophisticated ease, and a stylish statement to any space,” said Fogia.
The shapes of Barba series intend to enhance its linear flow
The Barba Lounge armchair and sofa are handmade in Fogia’s factory, and are available in either blue fabric or beige leather.
Both pieces’ frames are made from beech wood and foam that is partly recyclable.
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Sure, not every single one of them is practical, but I’d personally sell my kidney for the Bumblebee-themed helmet below.
I can’t help but reinforce my point that Midjourney and other similar AI art-generators are incredible ideation tools. In a matter of mere seconds, they spit up inspirational images that can sometimes directly and oftentimes indirectly be taken as design inputs. Not everything the AI bots make is ‘usable’ in an industrial design sense, but it does a pretty good job of boiling down the concept-generation phase from weeks to mere minutes, whether you’re creating concept images for an imaginary Tesla Cyberbike, or Marvel-themed Nike sneakers. These superhero-themed helmets are quite similar in nature. Designed by Instagram user Coldstar Art, these futuristic helmets take inspiration from popular cinematic legends spanning a variety of universes. Not all of them are great to wear, but every single one of them is stunning to look at!
The first two helmets exist in Hasbro’s Transformer-verse, with a Bumblebee helmet above, and a Megatron one below. The former helmet distinctly borrows from the friendly black-and-yellow robot’s head design, albeit with a larger visor, while the latter has all the features of a Decepticon, The segmented helmet design is reminiscent of Megatron’s face, which features multiple moving parts, and a gun-metal finish just makes the helmet look brilliantly devious.
We’re now dipping our toes in the MCU, with a Punisher helmet above, and a Deadpool helmet below. The Punisher helmet looks unapologetically badass, with its skull-inspired design and a respirator on the front where you’d expect the mouth to be. Grill lines on it make it look like the Punisher logo’s teeth, while the rest of the helmet looks almost like an exoskeleton with an emphasis on skeleton! Moving forward into slightly more familiar territory, the helmet below pays homage to our favorite merc with a mouth, Deadpool. The headgear is almost instantly recognizable, with its red and black colorway, and those large expressive eye cutouts, although unlike Deadpool’s mask, which is made from fabric, this hard-hat can take impact. Deadpool-meets-Deathstroke, maybe?
Sure, these two helmets look incredibly familiar, but let’s just say that Midjourney took a bit of creative liberty with them. You’ve got a green Iron Man helmet on the top, and a purple and gold Iron Man helmet on the bottom. I’ll be honest, the green helmet just doesn’t feel right. There’s something deeply unsettling when I look at that helmet in green, although the purple+gold helmet sort of feels weirdly familiar in a Thanos-meets-Tony-Stark way. Perhaps a conceptual helmet for a Thanos-buster suit?
We near the end of this list with two Power Ranger helmets for good measure. The helmets really feel natural because the superheroes wore helmets too, but Midjourney really pulled no stops, giving each headgear flaps/horns on the top that make the helmets look more edgy. The two helmets also display one of Midjourney’s most fundamental flaws – the inability to maintain basic symmetry with its art generation. The notch on top of the visor on the blue helmet seems discernibly off-center, and it seems like the purple helmet doesn’t even have a matching set of horns on its left side.
Our final helmet is perhaps the most easily recognizable yet, following the Marvel helmets. Meet the Predator helmet – it looks rustic with its stony finish, rasta-futuristic with its dreadlocks, and is the kind of helmet you wouldn’t want to see in your rearview mirror… definitely not if you identify as an alien!
We’ve still got some time to go before commercial space tourism goes mainstream, and the early birds taking up the initiative will reap the maximum benefit of client accusation.
SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have already planted a firm foot in the space tourism industry, but their packages are only within reach of the ultra-rich. Not to forget the amount of training and acclimatization it’ll require to stamp the ticket beyond the stratosphere.
Ambitious start-up Iwaya Giken, based in Sapporo, northern Japan wants to make space tourism accessible for everyone, and “democratize space” with a two-seater cabin and a balloon that’ll rise 15 miles above the ground. The Open Univercse Project’s cabin will have one pilot and a passenger, without the need for any special training since it’s not a rocket or spaceplane.
They’ve been working on this project ever since 2012, and now it has met fruition. The attached balloon filled with helium gas will make the drum-shaped cabin (measuring 1.5 meters) rise up in the air. It’ll take off from Hokkaido, and take around two hours to complete the ascend. Then stay there for an hour to view the mesmerizing curvature of the planet and the celestial void, before descending for one-hour to return home.
Iwaya revealed the capsule cabin at a press event in Tokyo, hinting to get down the initial boarding price tag down from 24 million yen ($180,000) to somewhere in the five-figure region. They’ll have to do so since Arizona-based World View Enterprises is also developing a stratospheric balloon tour for a price tag of around $50,000 per person.
Their cabin is more spacious and the journey will last around 6-12 hours. Another high-end option by Space Perspective will transport passengers to the stratosphere for $125,000 per person in comfy luxury.
The company is accepting applications until August end for the space cabin ride slated for to take flight early next year. The first five passengers will be announced in October 2023, and the five flights will be weeks apart, subject to weather conditions.
Debuting (rather by surprise) at MWC 2023, the Motorola Defy Satellite Link does for all phones what Apple built into the iPhone 14 – gives them satellite connectivity so you can send texts in areas with little to no network coverage. The palm-sized dongle comes as a collaboration between Motorola and Bullitt, and connects to pretty much any Bluetooth-enabled smartphone, making the potentially life-saving tech accessible to many more people.
Built with a rugged IP68 waterproof and dustproof exterior, the Motorola Defy Satellite Link comes with a portable design that weighs a mere 3 ounces (70 grams) and can strap around your keychain or even onto your backpack using a simple carabiner clip and the strap-loop built onto the Defy itself. The Defy sports three buttons, including a power button and location button on the left, and a larger, more visible SOS button on the right. A USB-C port helps charge the Defy’s 600mAh battery, which lasts for “multiple days,” according to Motorola and Bullitt.
A hallmark of the Motorola Defy Satellite Link is that not only is it device agnostic (supporting both Android and iOS devices), but it can be used by multiple phones together once paired via Bluetooth. The large, orange SOS button on the right side helps instantly call for emergency assistance, tapping into Defy’s partnership with FocusPoint International, an ERaaS (Emergency Response as a Service) company with 24/7 monitored response centers in 120 countries that handle emergency and assistance requests. The location button built on the other side sends your current location to your close contacts, and the Defy even allows you to send text messages via the Bullitt Satellite Messenger app.
The $99 Defy Satellite Link can connect to geostationary satellites 22,300 miles (35,888 km) above the Earth using the 3GPP NTN open standard “direct-to-device” satellite communications technology, although hardware doesn’t factor in the subscription you have to pay to actually use the service. Just the SOS feature starts at $4.99 a month, and there’s also an optional $149 bundle that gets you the Defy dongle with a 1-year subscription that also includes 30 outgoing and incoming messages per month using the Bullitt Satellite Messenger app, available on Android and iOS devices.
Satellite coverage should be live across Europe and North America at launch, followed by Australia and New Zealand, Africa, and Latin America in mid-2023, according to a report by CNBC. It’s unclear when Asia (where Motorola’s parent company Lenovo is based out of) will get satellite coverage to support the Defy Satellite Link.
An integration of tradition and innovation informs the automaker’s new studio and evolving visual language
Polestar (an EV brand co-owned by Volvo and Geely) has always upheld a pure and sophisticated design language. With the introduction of their forthcoming electric SUV, the Polestar 3, this remains true and further attests to how the Swedish carmaker has evolved its style. It makes sense then that the brand inaugurated a new studio dedicated to cultivating their lexicon of design. Visually and architecturally, the new space in Gothenburg, Sweden (right next to their global headquarters) represents Polestar’s ethos while serving as a site to refine how it’s conveyed going forward.
Acting as a home for 120 design team members, the modern, minimalist facility is where the automakers’ next three models will come to fruition. Formerly, the space was a Volvo facility completed in 1984 by Italian architect Romaldo Giurgola and local partner Owe Svärd. While it has since been given extensive upgrades and renovations, the new version honors the building’s history.
“When such care, attention to detail and material quality was so carefully considered at the point of construction back in 1982, it was important to me that we respected the original intentions when integrating our studio into the building. We deliberately showcase the original structure and detailing, respecting the very fabric that gives it its unique character,” says Maximilian Missoni, Polestar’s head of design.
“But while we wanted to respect tradition, we also wanted this to be a state-of-the-art home for our growing design team,” he continues. “So, alongside the glorious views out west of the Gothenburg archipelago, the studio features the latest equipment on the inside to make our jobs easier and produce better results in the most efficient way.”
As such, the building houses a clay working station, VR rooms, a material and color lab, digital studio spaces and more to inspire the team as they explore the ever-growing style of the brand. Much like the new SUV, the space nods to the brand’s Scandinavian heritage and a sense of forward-facing, thoughtful luxury.
Table space is often very precious, especially for smaller furniture that’s often a bit more decorative than functional. Coffee tables, for example, don’t have much space for a lot of stuff, limiting their use when it comes to work. You can place a laptop, maybe a notebook or two, and then suddenly find yourself out of a safe space for that coffee from which the table gets its name. It’s even worse when the table is a circle because there’s less surface area compared to a square tabletop. Of course, you should probably work at a desk or a larger table, but some public spaces prefer these round and more attractive designs. It doesn’t have to be an either-or situation, and this table design concept tries to make room for all the essentials without forgetting the most important thing of all: coffee.
Designer: Liza Chernova
Coffee tables are a bit of an amusing misnomer since their earliest known ancestors were made to hold tea cups rather than coffee. Today, the typical coffee tables are large and low pieces of furniture that occupy a central place in living rooms, and they’re meant to hold not only beverages of any kind but also books, remote controls, and even knickknacks. There are some coffee tables, however, that are literally what they’re called, tables with regular heights used for holding your favorite blend and maybe even working for a bit.
Things can get cramped easily with you have both drinks and work competing over a small area. It might even become precarious, as evidenced by so many anecdotes of spilled beverages over papers or, worse, laptops. This table design idea solves that problem by giving beverages a more special place that sort of puts them on a pedestal while also keeping your work safe.
Named after Russian rotary dials, Vertushka puts a similar mechanism at the service of your coffee. An arm protrudes out of and over the table, creating a safe location to place a drink away from whatever else is on the table. Plus, it also frees up space for more of your stuff instead of forcing yourself to clear out an unobstructed space around your cup. That said, that’s not the only thing that this coffee table is able to do. That “handle” can revolve around the edge, giving you more freedom where to place your beverage.
That revolving handle is actually more than just a drink holder, though. The design also includes a multi-angle lamp to shed more light on what you’re working on without taking up precious table space. In theory, this could be expanded to support a modular system for anything you need to be at arm’s reach but doesn’t need to actually be on the table. Vertushka offers that flexibility without changing the coffee table’s minimalist design substantially, letting you keep your work safe while sipping your favorite beverage.
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