Mar 01

This tranquil floating pavilion functions as a meditation and yoga retreat

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Marc Thorpe Design created the Crystal Lake Pavilion – a stunning concept for the West Catskills region of New York. It is surrounded by a 497-acre wild forest which is filled with a thirty-two-acre man-made lake, wetland areas, a beaver pond, streams, and seeps. The area holds a plethora of natural beauty, including hundreds of species of flowers, trees, plants, insects, and wildlife. “The lake shore and surrounding moist woodland provide habitats for trilliums, wild leeks, Jack-in-the-pulpits, and Dutchman’s britches,” said Marc Thorpe.

Designer: Marc Thorpe

The beautiful floating pavilion is designed to be utilized for meditation and yoga classes, as well as group therapy. The Crystal Lake Pavilion can be accessed only by boat, in an attempt to honor the remote natural context of the site. The structure has been wrapped in transparent glass skin, to allow the beauty of the surroundings to truly shine through. The pavilion has been constructed using a traditional King Post timber frame.

The structure consists of heavy timber elements that have all been connected together using lap joints, pegged mortise, and tenon joints. The imposing and sloping roof of the pavilion will be formed using light steel connections, and a standing seam steel roof. The focal point of the pavilion is the central post which is held by a single concrete pier nestled in the lake bed. The triangular roof mirrors the lake’s surface intricately, which gives the impression that the pavilion is weightless and floating effortlessly on the lake. It looks as if the pavilion is hovering above the water!

The optical illusion provided by the pavilion makes it look like an ethereal structure floating above the water. In a time, where structures are heavy, hardy, and concrete-ridden, the Crystal Lake Pavilion is a light free-flowing structure that serves as an oasis on the lake. It serves as a cozy and zen-like space to relax, regroup, and calm down our frantic and hectic minds. It is an excellent location to meditate and practice yoga while being surrounded by the best of what nature has to offer. The location of the pavilion is remote, but that is precisely the USP of the structure.

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Mar 01

Next-gen RUF CTR concept looks like the ‘Yellowbird’ with a new badass attitude

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Once holding the mantle for the fastest production car in the world with a top speed of 211 mph at the time, it’s been a hot minute since we’ve seen the automotive enthusiasts at RUF push anything out. Taking matters into their own hands, designer Protohvpe created a next-generation RUF CTR for the 2030s, with an aesthetic that bids adieu to the overtly Porsche-leaning style of RUF’s previous cars. This new-age CTR has the body of a Porsche 911, but not the identity of one. Instead, it adopts its own attitude, with large black eyes that look like they’re wearing war-paint, a flat-panel front that hints at an electric powertrain, and an aesthetic that Protohvpe describes as “Clean, low, wide, and iconic.”

Designer: Protohvpe

Given the fact that this automobile was envisioned for a distant future, seven full years from now, it really doesn’t base itself on an existing Porsche. It has all the traits of a 911, but there’s some distinctly different details there too, all the way down from the bumper to the hood, rear fender, and even the spoiler. Protohvpe’s biggest focus was to keep the design traditional-yet-futuristic, with minimalism being a strong trait running throughout.

In fact, so bare-basic is the next-gen CTR that it lacks appropriate housing for the headlights and taillights, opting for a bare-bones approach instead. Admittedly, it does give the car its discernible glare – a deviation from the friendly rounded headlights seen on almost all of RUF’s custom builds.

Given that this variant of the RUF CTR is just a fan-made concept, we’ve got just the outer aesthetics to work with. Protohvpe hasn’t released any images of what the interiors look like, and there definitely aren’t any performance specs since this is a speculative aesthetic exercise. That said, there’s definitely something that RUF can work with here. This new CRT looks like it means business, and just like its moniker, has a ‘rough’ attitude too!

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Mar 01

This rereleased iconic Danish chair is built using recycled plastic and coffee bean shells

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We often underestimate the importance of a great chair! When in reality we really shouldn’t. We spend the majority of our day sitting on chairs, whether we’re working in our home office, enjoying a meal, or simply sitting and reading a book for leisure! Hence, this piece of furniture needs to be not only comfortable but ergonomic, and aesthetic as well, and if it manages to be sustainable as well, then it really hits the spot! And one such chair design that I recently came across is the Conscious Chair by Mater Design.

Designer: Mater Design

Copenhagen-based furniture brand Mater Design recently re-rereleased a popular chair from the 1950s called the Conscious Chair. Now, why is the Conscious Chair called so? The Conscious Chair is called the Conscious Chair because it is crafted using recycled plastic, combined with coffee bean shells and sawdust. The chair was originally designed by Danish furniture designers and architects Børge Mogensen and Esben Klint in 1958. The chair is characterized by a simple silhouette and a curved wooden seat.

Matek Design took this classic chair and modernized it by crafting the back and seat from Matek – a material made by Mater Design using post-consumer or post-industrial waste. “Coffee bean shells, extracted during the roasting process, are an example of fiber material – sawdust from wood production is another,” said Mater Design. “The binder material is made from plastic waste or a plastic-based alternative. ”

“[Matek] enables us to make furniture from waste materials by combining fiber with a binder,” said the company. “The technology behind Matek allows us to capture carbon in our furniture by recycling waste into timeless classics using resources already available to us, instead of virgin materials.” This helps to create chairs that have been made using both wooden and recycled composite material elements. The Conscious Chair is available with oak-wood frames in color options of green, black-stained, or natural finishes. The seat and back come in options of wood waste grey, coffee waste light, and black. So, you can pick the color theme that suits your personal taste and preference, as well as the interiors of your home.

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Mar 01

Realme’s latest phone comes with bizarrely fast 240W charging, and a Nothing-inspired light interface

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The Realme GT3 240W can juice your entire phone from 0% to 100% in less than 10 minutes… and just 30 seconds of charging could give you enough battery life for a 2-hour call on a 5G network. It’s so fast that wireless charging suddenly doesn’t seem convenient anymore.

While most of Realme’s presentation at MWC was just stats, there was a nifty 80-second demo of the GT3 charging at 240W, going from 0 to a staggering 23 percent in just the 1 minute and 20 seconds. In fact, the battery consumed most of the phone’s keynote, with a little time spent on a ‘new’ detail that Realme calls the Pulse Interface. Housed right beside the camera module, this interface borrows heavily from the Nothing phone (1)’s rear design, sporting a transparent window with an LED rectangle within it. The LED rectangle shines in 25 different colors, and can be customized for a wide variety of notifications, although its most important ones are to let you know when you’ve got a low battery, when you’re getting a call/notification, and when your phone’s actually charging. Additionally, you can make the lights glow ambiently while gaming or listening to music, or counting down the timer when you’re clicking a photo.

Designer: Realme

With more than 15 full minutes of the keynote being spent on the GT3’s battery alone, it’s probably the most notable feature on the phone. The 240W charging capabilities give you 20% in less than one and a half minutes, 50% in four minutes, and a full 100% in under ten minutes, making the GT3 the fastest-charging phone on the planet right now and making that red battery icon on the top right a thing of the past. The fast-charging feature works while the phone’s in use too, with Realme boasting of a o-100 in just 17 minutes if you’re playing a game.

You’d think that that kind of rapid charging does an absolute number on the battery, but Realme has us believe that their battery and phone architecture are designed to optimize and preserve battery health over time. For starters, the phone has three strategically-located chipsets in the phone dedicated to just charging, and a new stainless steel vapor cooling system to cool the GT3’s ultra-thin 4600mAh battery. The battery is built to charge optimally in both high heat and sub-zero temperatures, with a life cycle that’s double what the average phone has – 1600 charge cycles before the battery degrades to 80% health. To help facilitate this 240W charging feature, the GT3 also comes with its own GaN charging adapter and a rugged 12A charging cable.

Flip the phone over and you see its second standout feature – the Pulse Interface. Sort of like the Nothing phone (1)’s Glyph Interface, but with a palpable lack of, well, glyphs… the Pulse Interface sits right next to the camera bump, under a transparent window. The LED rectangle has the words ‘Dare To Leap’, Realme’s slogan, on it, and right in the center is a nameplate bearing the Snapdragon logo on it. You wouldn’t be alone in wondering whether that’s actually the phone’s chipset… although I hate to burst your bubble, but it isn’t. The chipset sits well within the phone, surrounded by the vapor-cooling system. This, right here, is just a nameplate that serves a branding purpose more than anything. There is, however, an NFC-reader located right below the Pulse Interface… just where it says ‘NFC’.

A close-up of the Snapdragon nameplate and the Pulse Interface

The interface lights up to signify a variety of notifications, with as many as 25 colors to choose from. You can customize the color and blinking pattern of the Pulse Interface to go with various alerts too, with even the ability to color-code certain contacts so you know when they’re calling even with your phone facing downwards. Moreover, the LED ring glows red when your battery’s depleted, blue, when it’s charging, and green when you’re at 100%, so you know when to unplug your charger. Alternatively, you could just wait 10 minutes and unplug your charger anyway!

The GT3 240W also comes with a 6.74-inch 144Hz Ultra AMOLED display that has an in-display fingerprint reader, three main cameras (50MP wide, 8MP ultrawide, 2MP macro), and a 16MP wide-angle selfie camera. Available in 3 colors (black, white, and purple), the GT3 has five tiers to choose from, including a lower 8GB RAM + 128GB storage tier that starts at $649, going all the way up to an absolutely bonkers tier with 16GB RAM and 1TB storage, whose price wasn’t disclosed at the announcement. Hey Realme… does the 240W charger come in the box?

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