Hasta La Ideas

Nestled in North-western Netherlands, in Venhuizen, Noord-Holland is a stunning greenhouse-style home, that is a far cry from the conventional holiday homes most of us frequent. Located forty-five minutes away from Amsterdam, the cute little glass house was designed in 2020 by a Dutch/German couple Marielle and Tobias, and was listed for rent on Airbnb. Yes, the home is available to rent! If you’re able to find a reservation spot, hopefully.

Designer: Marielle and Tobias of Familie Buitenhuys

The home was artfully designed, so that it subtly blurs and merges the boundaries between the interiors and the exteriors, hence creating a space that is highlighted by sunlight, where natural light is its best accessory. Since the transparent glass walls of the home, and the greenhouse-ish facade capture most of the attention, the designers chose to adorn the home with minimal furniture, and a neutral palette that elevates the view, while allowing the space to have an open, free-flowing and dynamic appeal. This also helps the home to seem larger than it is!

The listing includes two vacation homes, one of which is the glass house. The glass house features an open-plan bedroom that lets guests cozily sleep under the stars. It also features a vanity, washbasin, and a fireplace that keeps the space warm and comfy during the winter season. The window treatments of the home are kept to a minimum. The windows have been adorned with simple white curtains, that provide privacy to the space, while also allowing light to generously stream in through the day.

The home creates a surreal indoor-outdoor connection with its translucent walls, hence truly elevating the definition of outdoor living. In adherence to today’s trends, the vacation home is what you would call a ‘designer greenhouse’, and designer greenhouses are anticipated to be one of the most innovative and exciting garden trends of 2023. It seems like more and more people want to stay in homes equipped with modern amenities while featuring a rather outdoorsy and nature-oriented aesthetic, and this tiny glass house certainly merges these two traits magnificently! I don’t know about you, but falling asleep under the Dutch night sky, in a cozy little glass house sounds like vacation heaven to me.

The post Surreal glass house in Holland is ‘the designer greenhouse’ vacation home of your dreams first appeared on Yanko Design.

Earthy tones and natural textures feature in this nature-informed holiday home, which Athens studio Block722 has arranged down a mountainside in Crete.

Named O Lofos, or The Hill, the holiday home is located in the foothills of Mount Thryptis, a mountain on the eastern side of the Greek island, and is designed by Block722 to blend in with the surrounding landscape.

“The mountain and the sea are such strong elements of this place,” Block722 told Dezeen.

“They are very dominating and you understand that you have to respect them and intervene in a humble way,” it continued. “So our design of this house is an ode to this reverent relationship between nature and architecture.”

Comprising a main residence along with two guesthouses and large outdoor spaces, O Lofos is arranged across four interconnected volumes topped with roof gardens that help the home disappear into the hillside.

In response to the site’s steep slope, the blocks of the home sit on two different levels set within a staggered outdoor space.

“The inspiration behind the many levels derived from our strong desire to create something discreet and respectful to its surroundings,” added the studio.

“We had to deal with an extremely steep terrain, located at the top of a hill, and the only way to negotiate the angle of the site and have minimal impact on the natural landscape was through the levels.”

A stepped landscape made from marble slabs sits at the front of the site and extends through voids around the home, acting as planters and stepping stones. This marble landscaping also leads to an angular infinity pool at the other end of the site that is overlooked by a veranda.

Connecting the exterior levels, a marble staircase runs between the two guesthouses and provides access to the main holiday home.

At the top of the staircase, the main residence at O Lofos is split across two buildings connected by a semi-outdoor space. It contains a bedroom, living room, dining room and bathroom, and features large windows that frame generous views of the surrounding nature.

“The fact that the house is built on the mountainside led us to orient the different parts of the house towards either the protective and dramatic vertical mountain or towards the horizontal opening towards the sea,” said the studio.

Neutral and nature-informed finishes and furnishings, including beige plaster and wooden cabinets, are used in both the interior and exterior spaces, along with exposed materials that showcase natural textures. Most of the furniture is custom-made by local craftsmen using marble, wood, terrazzo and stone – forming a bespoke collection that Block722 has named Anata.

Artworks and sculptures are also dotted throughout, including a plaster sculpture by Greek artist Pantelis Chandris that sits within the living room wall and was informed by the Cretan landscape.

Based in Athens, architecture studio Block722 was founded in 2009 by architect Sotiris Tsergas and interior designer Katja Margaritoglou.

Other Greek holiday homes recently featured on Dezeen include a monolithic Santorini villa designed by Kapsimalis Architects and a whitewashed stone home on Mykonos by K-studio.

The photography is by Ana Santl.

The post Block722 nestles O Lofos house into Crete mountainside appeared first on Dezeen.

If you’ve ever even remotely spent time in the design world on Instagram, then you’ve for sure come across Deniz Aktay. His simple, minimal, yet genius furniture pieces have slowly but surely taken the IG world by storm. The success of his designs lies in the fact that they’re oh-so-simple, elegant, and yet packed with massive functionality. The simplicity will almost make you wonder ‘Why didn’t I think of this?’, but unfortunately for us and luckily for Aktay, no one else can conjure these designs up except him. He’s created wonders – from a unique bookshelf that functions as a side table to a coffee table design with intriguing layers. And, we’re currently drooling over the Cobra table.

Designer: Deniz Aktay

As its name signifies, the inspiration behind the Cobra table was simple – it was a cobra. While designing the Cobra table, Aktay had the intention of creating something that is artistic and sculptural, but also functional. And the Cobra table checks all three of these boxes! The Cobra table could function as a small center table, or a more suitable side table. It doesn’t have much of a footprint, and it has a snake-inspired form that is accentuated by a rather meandering shape.

The smartly designed table features three storage levels. The different levels slither from the bottom to the top, much like a majestic king cobra! This gives the table quite a sculptural feel and a dynamic and free-flowing form. The base and the tabletop function as storage spaces, as well as the intermediate surface in between them. At first, you may assume that the surface in the center has no function, but Aktay has left no component of the Cobra Table useless. The three storage floors are excellent for storing books, magazines, documents, and other souvenirs. The topmost surface can also hold glasses or plates if you like snacking in your living room.

The table is a beautiful bright orange, which heightens its uniqueness and quirkiness. Aktay does prefer to utilize bright and bold colors for most of his designs, colors that you may not usually associate with pieces of furniture. The orange color he picked for this table is an example of that, but also an example of how a simple color can completely illuminate and uplift a design!

The post Slithering sculptural table with smart storage surfaces is inspired by the king cobra first appeared on Yanko Design.

Dezeen has teamed up with design software brand SketchUp to create a new podcast series exploring the role that architects and designers can play in tackling climate change.

Launching tomorrow, the six-part Dezeen x SketchUp Climate Salon podcast will bring together architects, designers and engineers to explore how to better collaborate across their respective disciplines to create a more cohesive response to climate change.

The first episode, titled Radical Sustainable Living, gathers designer Tom Dixon, architect Siv Helene Stangeland, founder of Helen & Hard, and Sumele Adelana, architectural designer and product specialist at SketchUp.

The host of the series, Dezeen’s design and environment editor Jennifer Hahn, will speak to the panel about how design choices in the home can encourage us to build and live more sustainably.

The first episode will be available to download Wednesday 12 April, in advance of Milan design week. Subscribe now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

Each hour-long conversation will provide insight into how specialists across diverse disciplines can work in conjunction to mitigate the effects of climate change.

The series will also explore the role that technology can play in cutting down emissions, focussing on tools that are readily available to designers and engineers today.

Future episodes will explore topics like regenerative architecture, integrating nature into design processes, how designing for inclusivity is related to sustainability, and the potential of new green technologies.

Produced by Dezeen’s in-house creative team, Climate Salon episodes will be released over the coming months along with opinion pieces by SketchUp relating to the topics featured in the series.

SketchUp is a piece of 3D design software used to model architectural and interior design projects, product designs, civil and mechanical engineering and more.

Partnership content

This competition is a partnership between Dezeen and SketchUp. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

The post SketchUp and Dezeen launch new podcast series about designing for climate change appeared first on Dezeen.

Fashion house Prada has opened the Prada Caffè in luxury department store Harrods, which has an interior that is blanketed in the brand’s signature green hue and mirrors one of Milan‘s oldest patisserie cafes.

Located at the corner of Hans Road in London, the Prada Caffè is accessed via a mint green latticed storefront that complements Harrods‘s Edwardian baroque terracotta facade.

The interior of the pop-up cafe draws on the interior of Pasticceria Marchesi, a Milanese patisserie that opened in 1824, which has similar pale-green interiors that are paired with green velvet-upholstered soft furnishings.

At Prada Caffè, the walls, ceilings and furniture – including booth seating, plush armchairs and architectural elements – were hued in a minty green referred to as Prada green, a colour that has become synonymous with the brand.

A large marble countertop, decorated with textural, pebbled panelling at its base, is located at the entrance to the cafe and used to display Prada-branded patisseries that are presented like individual pieces of jewellery.

The floors of the space were clad in black and white-checkered floor tiles in a nod to the floors of the Prada boutique located in Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.

Floral reliefs and mouldings cover the walls and ceilings of the cafe, which the brand explained aims to evoke the look of Prada stores worldwide.

A mezzanine level, supported by green columns, is decorated with bowed balustrades and used as an elevated seating area overlooking the marble-wrapped patisserie counter.

At the rear of the cafe, a secluded room continues the interior scheme. Here, green velvet booth seating surrounds the perimeter of the space beneath decorative floral relief walls.

Tableware was selected specifically for the cafe and ranges from blue-hued Japanese porcelain, informed by ancient Celadon pottery and decorated with contrasting black lines, to blown-glass crystalware.

To accompany the blown glassware and duck egg blue porcelain, silverware was engraved with Prada branding and features handle ends that are shaped like the brand’s triangular logo.

The cafe will remain at Harrods until January 2024.

During Milan Fashion Week, Prada presented its Autumn Winter 2023 collection in the Deposito of the Fondazione Prada, which featured a moving and retractable ceiling.

Elsewhere in London, Ola Jachymiak Studio brightened a cafe in Notting Hill incorporating terracotta-tile floors and tangerine-hued walls.

The photography is courtesy of Prada.

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