Hasta La Ideas

UAE-based studio Roar has paid homage to the Escher-esque stepwells of India in its interior design for Jaipur Rugs’ showroom in Dubai, which features cascading, rainbow-coloured staircases.

The Jaipur Rugs showroom, the Indian brand’s first in the Middle East, is located in the creative district of Aserkal, in one of the former industrial area’s previously abandoned warehouses.

Roar‘s design for the space nods to the architecture of Jaipur, the rug manufacturer’s home city, and in particular its famous stepwells — reservoirs built with staggered terraces and dizzying sets of stairs all the way down into their depths.

“The design concept was born from a simple sketch that I did after my first meeting with the client,” Roar founder and architect Pallavi Dean told Dezeen.

“I was so inspired by the stepwells that I’d seen in Jaipur during my first visit that I wanted to bring them to life in my design,” she added.

“I wanted to strip the idea to its bare minimum though, and work within its architectural purity, in order to avoid any plain pastiche.”

In Dean’s design, the repeating staircases feature across three of the walls, making a striking impression in the double-height space while connecting the ground-floor browsing area to the offices and sales suites on the mezzanine.

The arches that are typical to stepwells also feature in the 780-square-metre showroom, forming doorways or alcoves wallpapered with decorative rugs.

The hues in these rug displays are echoed in the carpet on the stairs, which is rendered in a jewel-toned rainbow colour gradient starting at indigo on one side of the space and ending in ruby red.

Dean called the construction of the staircases a “structural feat” that required navigating challenging approval processes.

“We had to ensure the steps were safe to use by installing a glass balustrade, which gives the impression that they’re floating when they’re actually carefully enclosed!” she said.

Also nestled between the staircases on the ground floor are two rooms described as immersive experiences, the Sapphire and Emerald rooms, which are covered floor to ceiling with rugs custom-made by Jaipur Rugs’ weavers as part of the brand’s Manchaha intiative.

In the project, the artisans design the rugs themselves spontaneously on the loom as they weave, using leftover yarn from the industry.

They would typically use a broader range of colours for the rugs in this series, but were briefed to work with emerald and sapphire tones for the showroom and given the precise dimensions.

The lack of sound in these rooms, created by the acoustic properties of the rugs, adds a dramatic dimension to visitors’ experience, according to Dean.

Next to the rooms, along the fourth wall, is the showroom’s rug library, with custom-made sliding panels allowing visitors to browse freely.

The walls and floors are finished with a warm-grey micro-cement and textured paint, forming a neutral base for the colourful features.

Metallic rose gold features in doorframes, cabinetry and other details, in another reference to Jaipur, which is sometimes called the Pink City.

“All of our designs come from a place of empathy, and this one is no exception,” Dean said. “We always endeavour to understand what the client is trying to achieve – here, the client was trying to create a bold statement for their first flagship store in the Middle East.”

“It also had to be an experiential space, which can be intuitively navigated by its users. This is why, for example, we decided to build bespoke rug libraries with sliding doors for clients to flick through instead of having the rugs stacked on the floor, which, in my opinion, are so inconvenient to browse!”

Dean founded Roar in 2013. The studio’s past projects include the interiors for cafe Drop Coffee and the Nursery of the Future, both in Dubai.

Last year it announced it was expanding into digital design after purchasing two plots of land for a showroom in the metaverse.

The post Roar recreates dizzying Indian stepwells in Jaipur Rugs’ Dubai showroom appeared first on Dezeen.

Imagine having a power bank that charges your MacBook by 50% in just half an hour, or a power bank that can fast-charge 3 laptops, a phone, earphones, and a smartwatch all at the same time, or a power bank that looks slim, but has enough battery power to juice your AirPods 51 times from start to finish. Regular lithium-ion cells can’t pull that off – but graphene can. Built with cutting-edge Lithium Polymer Graphene Composite Cells, the BOLD 2 is pretty much officially the world’s fastest power bank for its size. Boasting a whopping 27,000mAh battery that can output 290W of peak power, the BOLD 2 has a capacity and power rating that outshines any power bank its size. It looks and feels like your average power bank but can simultaneously charge 6 devices at the same time, both wired as well as wirelessly. Take it from us – regular lithium-ion batteries are history…

Designer: Carolina Gutierrez

Click Here to Buy Now: $159 $289 (44% off). Hurry, less than 48 hours left! Raised over $120,000.

The BOLD 2 comes from the folks at UZE, a Miami-based startup looking to reinvent how we charge our gadgets. The company unveiled the first edition of the BOLD back in 2021, with the same Graphene technology and a stunning 260W output. The BOLD 2 pushes those odds by offering a higher power output in the same, classic, crowd-favorite design. Measuring a mere 7.5 inches long, 3.4 inches wide, and 1.18 inches thick, the BOLD 2 looks just like your regular power bank, making it easy to carry along and use wherever you go. It occupies minimal amounts of space in your backpack as well as on your desk, but will charge practically every device around it.

The side of the power bank sports four USB-C ports, two 30W ports for regular devices like your phones and AirPods, one massive 140W port for laptops one with a 100W in-out that charges laptops but also lets you charge the BOLD 2 itself, supporting even pass-through charging. Look to the top and the BOLD 2 has two familiar patterns marking the power bank’s wireless charging spots – one with an indent and a 5W output for your Apple Watch, and another with built-in MagSafe and a Qi-compatible 15W output for your smartphone. Right beside it is also an OLED surface that delivers real-time intel on energy levels and charging status.

The BOLD 2 makes some literal bold claims with how game-changingly powerful it is. With its ability to deliver up to 140W from a single USB-C port, the BOLD 2 claims being the only power bank that’s able to charge your MacBook by 50% in just half an hour – that’s about the same speed as plugging your MacBook charger into a power outlet. Moreover, the built-in 100Wh / 27,000mAh battery lets you completely charge your MacBook twice, your iPhone 8 times, or your AirPods 51 times… all in under 75 minutes.

All that power is all thanks to the BOLD 2’s Lithium Polymer Graphene Composite Cells. Unlike regular Lithium-ion cells, they’re much more efficient, hold more energy, deliver higher power outputs, and last 4x longer than regular Li-ion batteries, allowing your BOLD 2 to consistently charge your devices for more than 5 years with a negligible drop in performance. A cutting-edge temperature defense system also adds a layer of protection, preventing overheating, overcharging, overcurrent, short-circuiting, and surging, while built-in power management features also help the BOLD 2 deliver the right amount of power to each device to charge them all rapidly and efficiently.

This isn’t UZE’s first rodeo with power banks. The original 2021 BOLD device saw over 5,000 users benefitting from its powerful capabilities, and UZE is betting on a future where all power banks will rely on graphene instead of regular lithium-ion. The BOLD 2 is perfect for all sorts of applications, given its ability to charge a wide range of devices. It’s perfect for photographers and videographers looking to power their laptops along with their drones, cameras, and other gear, or even for the nomad who wants to be able to work out of anywhere without worrying about needing to carry 10 different chargers. If you’re hard-pressed for a power outlet, the BOLD 2 acts as a wonderful charging hub, letting you use one single power socket to charge the BOLD 2 itself along with all your other devices.

The BOLD 2 comes made from anodized aluminum along with a polycarbonate charging surface – making it durable, lightweight, and naturally fireproof. At 1.54 lbs (698 grams), it’s perfect for carrying around with you wherever you go, and is rated safe for carrying on flights too. The BOLD 2 starts at just $159 and ships with a 1-year warranty. Besides, you can even grab one of UZE’s GaN chargers to fast-charge your power bank while it fast-charges your other devices!

Click Here to Buy Now: $159 $289 (44% off). Hurry, less than 48 hours left! Raised over $120,000.

The post Here’s Why Your Next Power Bank Should Be Made From Graphene Instead of Regular Lithium first appeared on Yanko Design.

Disclaimer: This article comprises snippets from interviews with organizers of a few leading design competitions. The views in this article belong solely to the writer and aren’t representative of the design competitions themselves. All snippets are inserted in “quotes” for your convenience.

On the 16th of April this year, the obvious happened. By ‘obvious’, I mean a controversy surrounding the use of AI tools, which have seen a dramatic rise in popularity since last year. Boris Eldagsen, a German photographer, admitted to using an AI-based image generator to create an image that he then enrolled for the Sony World Photography Awards. The controversial part is that he won the award, having somehow skirted scrutiny by Sony and even its esteemed jury panel. On his website, Eldagsen issued a statement refusing to accept the award, saying that he “applied as a cheeky monkey” to find out if competitions would be prepared for AI images to enter. “They are not,” he added.

The Award’s response was swift, but not swift enough. Following Eldagsen’s admission, they immediately took back his award and removed the entry from their website… but what’s truly baffling is that these AI tools have existed for over a year, and have been a hot topic of discussion for the better part of that year… so how did the entire awards program not prepare for this? The Sony World Photography Awards just announced that they’re open for their 2024 edition, and the website simply lists that “Computer generated content cannot be the origin of the Entry”, with little mention of how they’re going to distinguish human-captured photos from AI-generated ones, especially given how stunningly realistic AI text-to-image models have got in the last few months.

This event sparked outrage within the photography community, and one can only assume that the Sony World Photography Awards’ credibility took a sizeable hit. It also got me thinking about whether design awards were vulnerable to this approach too. Rather than simply waiting for another Eldagsen-like moment, we reached out to multiple leading global design awards to ask them what their thoughts were, if they were concerned about AI-based entries, and whether they were prepared for the eventuality. Only three design awards responded…

Boris Eldagsen and his Award-winning AI-Generated Photo

The Legality of AI-based Creations

Before we really dive into how awards perceive AI-based design creations, it’s important to understand how the law views them. After all, most award rules and regulations state that you need to “own” what you create… and ownership with AI-based tools can be a pretty murky subject. As far as AI tools go, most leading companies like MidJourney, Stable Diffusion, and OpenAI grant you ownership of what you create, but the law works differently. At least in the US, the United States Patent and Trademark Office doesn’t grant copyrights to AI-generated work. If it isn’t created by a human, it isn’t eligible for copyright protection (as is the case with China). In order for an AI-generated work to be eligible for copyright, it needs to have a significant amount of human intervention or input in it. Laws in the UK and EU focus on “originality”, which is highly debatable too, given that nothing an AI creates is ever original – it simply samples work from large datasets. Additionally, in order for a work to be sufficiently original, it should be the result of an author’s “labour, skill or effort”, which can further muddy the water. Rules in countries like India are a little more accommodating, with multiple artists having copyrighted their AI-generated creations.

What do Design Awards have to say?

While design awards, in practice, aren’t too different from photography awards, the primary distinction lies in the fact that Photography is an art form, whereas Industrial Design is a human-centric process that’s an amalgamation of art, science, emotion, marketing, and consumer feedback… and that’s just not something AI can overwhelmingly replace overnight. The Design Intelligence Awards calls this the “long design chain”, versus something like Logo Design or Visual Design which is more of a “short design chain.

Of the three design awards that got back to us with responses, all of them have unanimously expressed that for now, design competitions and awards have nothing to worry about when it comes to the use of AI… primarily because AI has already played a pretty significant role in the submissions in the past. Uwe Cremering, CEO of the iF Design Award, highlights how AI has played a significant role as a feature in multiple products. “Let’s talk about the Fridge, for example,” he says. “The fridge is not a hardware product anymore… It comes with an app, with algorithms, with software, with artificial intelligence that reads your needs.” By just loosely defining AI, any smart product has a measurable amount of artificial intelligence in it, thus making the submission an AI-based submission. A regular phone just can’t compare to a smartphone with its myriad of features – does that make the smartphone an unfair participant? Not in the eyes of Cremering and iF Design Awards. He does, however, highlight that just the same way a fridge isn’t a hardware product anymore, the award’s jury can’t simply comprise hardware designers anymore either. The iF Design Award is increasingly looking at a diverse group of jury panelists who can effectively judge these entries. The Design Intelligence Award, the largest international academic award in industrial design established by the China Academy of Art in 2015, is taking things a step further by developing AI to assist its jury members.

An AI-Powered Jury… Imagined By Midjourney

The DIA AI Jury is just one example of how the international award program is looking at the future. “The disruptive changes in design tools and technical logic brought by AI force us to rethink the unique value of human designers,” say the organizers. To augment the abilities of designers all across the professional spectrum, DIA has also built a DIA BOT, which they describe as an “AI dialogue robot based on design vertical field data, helping designers at different stages to find industry orientation, professional mentors, design knowledge and cooperation opportunities.”

While awards are adapting to this new ‘explosion’ of AI tools, there’s still a consensus that at least for the foreseeable future, Industrial Design awards in particular have nothing to worry about. Cremering does highlight that they’ve included an entire section of AI in the iF Design Award’s trend report, and that for maybe the next 2-5 years, there’s really no danger of AI submissions completely replacing human submissions. For Prof. Dr. Peter Zec, founder/initiator of the Red Dot Design Award, AI just simply can’t be as nuanced as a talented, problem-solving industrial designer… and even if it can, that ultimately bodes well for both the design industry as well as the consumer that benefits from the award-winning design. We managed to catch Dr. Zec just as he was about to leave for Singapore to preside over the jury phase of the Red Dot Award: Design Concept, and have a 30-minute-long conversation on whether design awards need to ‘worry’ about AI the way photography awards do. His answer was incredibly simple – the award’s sole purpose is to look at the result. If it’s a good design, regardless of where it came from, it’s a good design. In a way it echoes what Uwe Cremering mentioned too, about how AI can help make products better… but for Dr. Zec, what matters really at the end of the day is “the result”. For the Red Dot Award: Product Design, the result is almost always a physical product, which an AI can’t make just yet; but even if it did, it doesn’t change any award program’s ethos of rewarding good, consumer-friendly, utilitarian design. Dr. Zec raises the example of companies using AI to create more efficient, aerodynamic vehicles and vehicle parts. If an AI were to help designers determine the best, most efficient shape for the wing of an aircraft, it’s definitely worth an award since it still satisfies the criteria of being great product design. “So this makes a big difference because we are not looking for the most creative designer, we’re looking for the best solutions and then I think every tool is acceptable to reach the best solution,” Dr. Zec concludes.

We asked AI to imagine a beautiful Design Award Trophy…

How should you proceed if you want to participate?

Even with this level of acceptance from award programs, it’s important to read between the fine lines before applying. Most awards strictly mention that applicants must own the rights to the work they submit – an area that’s fraught with complications. Most countries don’t allow you to copyright AI-generated work (as mentioned before); and more importantly, even if you were able to copyright AI-generated work, it’s still plagiarizing content by other creators. Unlike humans, who draw inspiration from things they see/experience and create original works of art, AI doesn’t work that way. AI works by sampling other works, creating a collage of borrowed bits from a massive database… and when it doesn’t hide its tracks really well, it’s easy to make an argument on the grounds of plagiarism (a lot of Midjourney users noticed the Getty Images watermark appearing on their photo generations because the AI had sampled the entire Getty database).

If you’re using an AI program that relies on a large dataset or a large language model (LLM), it’s best to err on the side of caution and not make AI-based content a part of your “submission”. These AI tools are an incredible source of inspiration and are great for brainstorming, but that’s all they should be. Maybe don’t use ChatGPT unsupervised when you’re writing your application to an award, or Midjourney images as a part of your submission… but that’s just my take. These tools can really empower designers and humans in general, but they can’t replace what we do or parts of what we do entirely. Moreover, read your award’s rules and regulations very carefully before applying for them, just to make sure your entry isn’t subject to extra scrutiny or worse… disqualification.

The Best and Worst Case Scenarios

Tim Berners-Lee, who’s credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web didn’t know how powerful it would become as a force for both good as well as for evil. Zuckerberg, when he built Facebook, didn’t realize his benign social network would be used as a massive force for misinformation and a tool to destabilize countries, cause genocides, and sway elections. It’s entirely possible that the people building these AI tools are oblivious to what the future could look like, so it seems like a fairly healthy practice to just look at both the best and worst-case scenarios.

The best-case scenarios are pretty evident. More and more designers will find the AI very helpful in ideating, visualizing, and building out concepts. Designers using these tools will be able to achieve great heights without needing large teams with diverse skill sets, helping equalize the divide between designers in different countries, with different levels of experience, and with different backgrounds and upbringings. It all sounds great on paper, but perceptions change the minute a debacle like the one with the Sony World Photography Awards occurs.

As someone who’s commented on new technologies for almost 9 years at this point, the worst-case scenarios sound a lot more dystopian. After all, the worst-case scenarios for humanity should definitely apply to all parts of humanity too – including awards. Every AI relies on a massive database, and let’s just say from experience that massive databases will always contain information that shouldn’t be public. Facebook’s database contains all your thoughts, moments, liking/commenting history, etc. Google’s database is a little more high-stakes, it has all your emails, your location, your bank information, and your biometric data if you use a Google phone. The issue with LLMs and large databases is that data security becomes difficult when the AI kind of has a mind of its own – someone prompt-engineered ChatGPT to give them Windows 10 registration codes… and it did. These LLMs and databases are breeding grounds for infringement/plagiarism that reflects poorly on everyone, and even malicious tools – an engineer got ChatGPT to write malware and it managed to write a working piece of dangerous malware.

ChatGPT can apparently generate software keys for free…

The AI can now do things that weren’t possible – it could analyze every winning design from a particular award program/competition to generate a strategy for what project is most likely to win an award. When asked about this, Dr. Zec expressed concern but also highlighted how this exact process of pattern-recognition could have been done 10 years ago without current AI tools too. Ultimately, for Dr. Zec, if the jury deems a design award-worthy and good for mankind, that’s really all that matters. On being asked whether design awards needed to create an overarching body or consortium to address and tackle these issues, Dr. Zec agreed that this would probably be required in the near future.

What the future will look like in an AI-driven world [Opinion]

The printing press was met with a lot of backlash from religious leaders (and their followers) who felt the technology could be used to spread heretical (unorthodox) ideas easily to the masses. The television was dubbed an ‘idiot box’, and people said it would ruin the brains of children because they would stop reading. The internet to this day is still met with concern because of how its presence threatens a sense of ‘control’. Control over how life should be lived, how things should be done, and how societies should behave. This is exactly the same opinion a lot of people have with AI too – that it evokes a feeling of not being in control anymore. However, the printing press was invented in the 1400s and it didn’t destroy humanity – humanity simply evolved to integrate it into itself as a means for progressing forward. Humanity will do the same with AI too. Honestly, I’ll be surprised if AI destroys us BEFORE climate change or war.

How awards evolve to deal with AI is a whole new discussion, however. It’s interesting to see the take of major design awards on AI submissions – especially with awards like DIA highlighting the threat to ‘short design chain’ categories versus ‘long design chain’ categories. Not one single design award we spoke to was in favor of ‘blacklisting’ projects created using AI, which shows that these awards are definitely curious to see how AI changes/elevates/augments human creativity… and that’s a good thing!

An Architect building Futuristic Societies

Images via Midjourney

The post How Are Design Competitions and Awards Planning On Dealing with AI-Based Submissions? first appeared on Yanko Design.

I believe that the secret to a great living room is an excellent coffee table. Coffee tables function as the centerpiece of a living room, hence you need to pick one that truly livens it up, and sets the tone for it. And, once the perfect coffee table has been set, you can start building the rest of the space around it – a comfy sofa, cute side tables, exquisite lighting, and elegant decorative pieces. They are all brought together by the right coffee table! And even coffee tables are getting more innovative, unique, and well-crafted by the day. And one such super cool coffee table is the Superpop tables by Paolo Cappello for Miniforms.

Designer: Paolo Cappello for Miniforms

Designed by Italian designer Paolo Cappello for Miniforms, the Superpop tables feature colorful, terrazzo-like surfaces created from recycled plastic. The tables are super versatile, and what’s even more interesting is that they can be used as coffee tables, side tables, or even stools! They are sustainable, versatile, lightweight, and fun. They have a suitable height and shape that gives them a universal appeal and versatile functionality. The colorful and speckled surface of the Superpop table is really quite unique and attractive to the eye.

The entire intention behind designing the Superpop tables was that sustainable and green furniture doesn’t have to be boring. The Superpop tables are designed to be fun and meant to bring a festive atmosphere to any space they are placed into. They are also super easy to move around, as they have a compact and portable form. The pieces are created by heating plastic that has been separated by color and type at a rather low temperature of 120 degrees. This ensures that it doesn’t mix or change character, and can in fact be further recycled in the future, creating an ongoing loop.

“Superpop is a cutting-edge project that stands out for the attention behind its realization, peppy colors, and smart design, that goes beyond the standard conception of living furniture,” said Cappello. Superpop is available in a choice of two heights and four colors, named Super Black, Super Blue, Super Red, and Super White. It is suitable for both indoor and outdoor use.

The post Colorful + sustainable pieces of furniture can be used as coffee tables, side tables and stools first appeared on Yanko Design.

The latest edition of our Dezeen Debate newsletter features David Adjaye’s reveal of the 130 William skyscraper in Lower Manhattan. Subscribe to Dezeen Debate now.

Ghanaian-British architect Adjaye has completed the 130 William skyscraper in Lower Manhattan, which is the first skyscraper finished by the architect and his studio Adjaye Associates.

The tower is 800 feet tall and has an exterior that is covered in hand-troweled concrete panels.

Readers were fascinated by the tower. One thought it was “wonderful” that the skyscraper is not “just another blue glass box”, whilst another disagreed, describing the building as “another pointless skyscraper for the super-rich to live in”.

Other stories in this week’s newsletter that fired up the comments section included British technology company SatVu’s launch of a satellite that will map the energy efficiency of buildings from space, architecture studio Hickok Cole’s use of AI chatbot ChatGPT to design a large mixed-use building and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and Moody Nolan’s reveal of a museum in South Carolina.

Dezeen Debate

Dezeen Debate is sent every Thursday and features a selection of the best reader comments and most talked-about stories. Read the latest edition of Dezeen Debate or subscribe here.

You can also subscribe to our other newsletters; Dezeen Agenda is sent every Tuesday containing a selection of the most important news highlights from the week, Dezeen Daily is our daily bulletin that contains every story published in the preceding 24 hours and Dezeen In Depth is sent on the last Friday of every month and delves deeper into the major stories shaping architecture and design.

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