Texas studio Tobin Smith Architect has completed a home for an irregular site facing a nature preserve that was envisioned as a “series of shields” clad in limestone and stucco.

Designed for a family with teenage children, Casa Escuda is located in a neighbourhood in the heart of San Antonio in south-central Texas. The home is on a triangular, corner lot and looks toward a wooded preserve in the rear.

“The lot backs up to a nature preserve, giving the property a sense of seclusion despite its residential context,” said local studio Tobin Smith Architect.

The team’s goal was to create a home that could not only accommodate family life, but also serve as a peaceful refuge where occupants feel immersed in the landscape.

Following the site’s geometry, the architects conceived a 6,169-square-foot (573-square-metre) home that is roughly triangular in plan. The dwelling consists of a single-storey main portion and a two-storey wing.

The exterior was envisioned as a “series of shields that provide privacy and mitigate solar exposure,” the team said.

The front facade offers maximum privacy. Pieces of Texas limestone – some smooth, others textured – are assembled in rows that form a long and mostly solid wall.

“Fenestrations are modulated by these datum lines, revealing a precise resolution of material, composition and interior experience,” the team said.

Marking the entrance is a tall, curved water feature made of weathering steel.

“Water from the roof cascades down this element and into a round cistern below, before flowing through a runnel at the base of the stone facade,” the team said.

“These oxidised elements celebrate water conveyance and distribute this captured resource to the landscape.”

The home is more transparent in the rear. The single-level portion of the home has window walls set within a series of white stucco “fins”. The two-storey wing is covered in grey, burnished stucco.

Inside, one finds light-filled rooms, with views oriented toward the nature preserve.

On the ground level, the team placed communal spaces, the main bedroom suite, guest quarters, a study, a garage and a carport. The upper level holds the kids’ bedrooms and a game room.

Interior finishes include porcelain tile flooring, walnut cabinetry and black soapstone.

A central patio, which adjoins the public realm, directs views to the “ephemeral foliage and skyscapes”.

Other homes in San Antonio include a home comprising gabled forms organized around three courtyards by Mary English and Xavier Vendrell Architects, and a small-footprint dwelling that is meant to show “how a family can comfortably live on a compact site without sacrificing space, quality or use.”

The photography is by Dror Baldinger.

Project credits:

Architect: Tobin Smith Architect
General contractor: Mauze Construction
Structural engineer: M. Scott Williamson
Landscape architect: John S Troy Landscape Architect

The post Tobin Smith creates triangular Casa Escuda for San Antonio family appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen School Shows: a jewellery collection made from packaging foam is included in Dezeen’s latest school show by students at Lucerne School of Art and Design.

Also featured is a helium-filled object designed to float alongside the wearer and a project exploring how AI can generate jewellery designs.

Lucerne School of Art and Design

Institution: Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts
School: Lucerne School of Art and Design
Course: Bachelor XS Jewellery
Tutors: Christoph Zellweger, Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Monica Gaspar, Peter Bauhuis, Gabi Veit, Kiko Gianocca, Suzan Curtis and Salome Bruggisser

School statement:

“XS stands for everything special, the X-tra and the X-tended. In other words, an enhanced, forward-looking definition of jewellery.

“Students’ individual art-design stance is explored via interdisciplinary crossovers in jewellery design, performative object, wearable design, medical prostheses, digital materiality, conceptual craft and art.

“What emerges at the end of each entirely individual learning process is the authentic – wearable statements and emotionally evocative products that convey meaning regarding the crucial questions of desirability, viability, sustainability and social relevance.

“What is too much, what is X-cess, what is e-S-sential? Which items are important, what do we carry around with us, and why?”

Airborne Companion: Making Dreams Take Off by Tobias Bieri

“Airborne Companion is based on the idea that jewellery should accompany a person and symbiotically match people’s lives.

“The object developed by Tobias Bieri is intended to be light and animating. The result is a helium-filled companion that joins the user side-by-side and can be steered by gestures.

“A vivacity is conjured up in the fantasy of the user before their own eyes. The rest is handwork, technology and the struggle to find the right material, preventing thoughts from floating completely away.”

Student: Tobias Bieri
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: zamary.bieri[at]gmail.com

Spinning Mini-Me: The Collection by Jenny Christen

“Like gyroscopes, we revolve around ourselves – around our ideal image of ourselves.

“Spinning Mini-Me collection is derived from photos of the designer’s own self-spinning body, with Christen creatively exploiting the dance imbued with stigma and associations as a metaphor.

“She scales silhouettes and the turns generate abstract volumes. Spinning tops are like pole dancers or performers – they dance on tables, on mirrored surfaces, and like us seek a stage.”

Student: Jenny Christen
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Thai Hua, Anina Schenker, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: jenny.christen[at]hotmail.com

Embodiments: A Collection of Uncanny Body Extensions by Nicole Eugster

“The Embodiments by Nicole Eugster are objects for special use.

“Placed on the body, they oblige the wearer to undertake new patterns of movement, shift the perception of distance and closeness, create an awareness of one’s own gestures and influence others.

“Embodiments are objects that lend power to those who surrender to them. Ambiguous in appearance – between the magical and the morbid – they invite the wearer to a self-empowering role play and to dance in twilight in-between worlds.”

Student: Nicole Eugster
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: eugster.ni[at]gmail.com

Kill Your Darling: Confessions of a Goldsmith by Benedict Haener

“Diamonds, gold, sapphires, pearls – the world of the trained goldsmith Benedict Haener revolves around precious materials, inherent beauty, and felt and real (monetary) value.

“In Kill Your Darling, Haener rethinks these acquired traditions. With manual finesse, he pursues new design strategies and combines them into a collection.

“Innovations are impossible without abandoning what is dear to one.”

Student: Benedict Haener
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: benedict.haener[at]bluewin.ch

Searching for the Soul: Potential for Generating Jewellery in AI by Fabian Laffitte

“‘Fabian Laffitte says that ‘jewellery needs soul’ but how can one search for the quality of being enlivened by soulfulness in images generated using artificial intelligence?

“Laffitte has attempted to do so, revealing his processes and showing his findings as a curated staging of 2.5-dimensional reliefs. He says it is not jewellery, but he sees potential in it.

“However, his mistrust vis-à-vis the randomness – the banality and emptiness of the tool predominates.

“Minus artistic intention, AI simply offers an infinite number of surfaces, which tend more to distract than help in the search for a soul and essence.”

Student: Fabian Laffitte
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: fabianlaffitte[at]hotmail.com

To Be Continued: Fragments of My Diary by Josephine Meylan

“As an obsessive collector of mementoes, Josephine Meylan records the traces of her life in jewellery.

“Fleeting moments of the day, reflections or things already experienced are given form with materials that are meaningful to her, sometimes with existing objects.

“Memories are made visible and physically tangible to be worn as jewellery and companions. Each piece tells a personal story.

“Meylan allows us a glimpse into her everyday life and reveals fragments of intensely lived time.”

Student: Josephine Meylan
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: josephine.meylan[at]googlemail.com

Wobbly Angel Struggling: Or How to Not Grow Up by Kaja Saxer

“Zialo draws. Zialo is three years old, has a vivid fantasy and is bubbling with ideas.

“Zialo always finds daringly ingenious solutions for everything. Zialo is Saxer’s childlike alter ego.

“In Wobbly Angel Struggling, Saxer absorbs Zialo’s unframed approach to art. Inspired by children’s drawings, she creates a collection of airy, wobbly objects.

“What do we lose when we grow up? How can we preserve a certain carefreeness while learning professionalism?”

Student: Kaja Saxer
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: kaja.saxer[at]gmail.com

Surprise Me Once Again: A Collection of Foamy Memories by Christiane Stock

“Who doesn’t know that momentary feeling of happiness when a surprise succeeds?

“Christiane Stock’s work involves condensing, both in terms of content and physically.

“Stocks works with foam. It is an omnipresent packaging material whose characteristics she has researched in order to conjure up wonders – both small and large – and all manually highly accomplished.

“The Surprise Me Once Again collection is a call to playful interaction. When is packaging packaging and when does the content become wearable jewellery?”

Student: Christiane Stock
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: stock.christiane[at]gmx.de

Living Traces: Pigments on the Skin by Lea Tschanz

“People are always moving, each body in its unique way, to their own tact. Lea Tschanz places small objects, utensils and tools soaked in pigments onto the bodies of her family and on herself.

“These items respond to their movements like seismometers. The results are unique traces and unexpected patterns on the skin.

“Tschanz then photographed them in order to recall them. Colour on skin is jewellery to her – completely archaic, completely primal, and completely in the here and now.”

Student: Lea Tschanz
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: leatschanz[at]hotmail.ch

Partnership content

This school show is a partnership between Dezeen and Lucerne School of Art and Design. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

The post Nine jewellery projects by students at Lucerne School of Art and Design appeared first on Dezeen.

This year’s Core77 Design Awards included our very first edition of the Editor’s Choice Prize. Our team of editors ultimately chose Liquidplant as the winner, a progressive materials project that directly tackles the issue of microplastics, but there were many excellent projects we considered as finalists. In a series of upcoming articles, we will explore these projects and what makes them an outstanding example of design in 2023.

Maori Design Specialist Dr. Johnson Witehira’s journey to realizing the award-winning Paku gardening tool began when he noticed the tools used by children at Maori early education centers. Despite the rich cultural context these cultural institutions provided, these tamariki (children) were still engaging with European tools in the gardens and sandpits. This observation sparked a thought-provoking question: What if the children could connect with their Maori identity and Te Ao Maori (the Maori world) in a tactile way through tools that truly represented who they were? Thus, the seeds of Paku were sown.

The manifestation of this idea came in the form of Paku Toki and Timo, modern reinterpretations of traditional Maori agricultural tools once prevalent in Aotearoa (New Zealand). The underlying motivation was simple yet profound: to provide children with objects that would nurture their connection to their indigenous Maori and Pakeha New Zealand heritage. In a country where product design has predominantly reflected imported settler culture, Paku stands as a counterbalance, shining a spotlight on Maori knowledge through contemporary design.

The development of the Toki and Timo spanned over two years, guided by a deep desire to engage meaningfully with matauranga Maori (Maori knowledge) and Maori communities. The initial stage involved sharing prototypes with various Maori spaces, including kohanga reo and wananga institutions. “We gave the prototypes to a select group of Maori experts in Design, education and agriculture,” the Paku design team said in their awards entry about the design process. “The response to the research was resoundingly positive. So, with support from our communities, we began to dive deeper into developing and refining the products.”

Throughout the design process, children were at the heart of their journey. By observing how they interacted with different prototypes in diverse settings, the team gained profound insights that inspired them to create a scaled-down version of older Maori gardening tools.

In adherence Paku’s commitment to sustainability and Maori values, the team sought a partnership with a local manufacturer and embraced the use of recycled materials. By identifying a waste stream from an existing product and repurposing the plastic through grinding, they found a way to minimize landfill waste and uphold their values.

With the Paku Toki and Paku Timo, children now have the opportunity to dig into the whenua (land) with tools that embody their cultural heritage. The journey of Paku represents more than just gardening; it is a pathway to self-discovery, identity, and a profound connection to Maori culture. Through these innovative tools, Paku aspires to empower the next generation, fostering a deep appreciation for their cultural roots and a sense of belonging to Te Ao Maori.

The Core77 editorial team bookmarked this project as especially notable for its power to utilize design as a tool to preserve and pass on culture, and the projects’ emphasis on challenging design’s persistent Eurocentric ideals. Paku represents a future of design that is not solely informed by dominant Western perspective, and the potential for indigenous wisdom to influence design philosophies and processes.

Read more about the project, a Winner in the 2023 Toys & Play category, on designawards.core77.com

Cutting tool manufacturer Olfa’s CK-2 features a blade shaped like a kiridashi, or Japanese wood carving knife.

The blade is held in place by a thumbscrew. The butt end of the handle features a hole, which one might assume is to attach a lanyard. But London-based industrial designer Cairn Young makes the following observation:

“[I] always thought the hole in the handle was for a lanyard, but it was only when I misplaced my blade that I realised it was a parking place for the T-bolt and nut so you don’t lose them. Simple, perfect.”

“I love to design difficult and deliberately complex pieces, but when I design things for utility, this is the standard I aspire to.”

If you’re a passionate lover of cooking, or you’ve recently kickstarted your cooking journey, and want to accelerate it even further then you’ve reached the right place. Having an efficient and streamlined cooking process is the key to preparing dishes that simply taste excellent! And the number one aid you need in having an effortless process is an arsenal of great kitchen appliances.  With the right kitchen tools and appliances, cooking can be an increasingly fun and simplified process. The right products can reduce your prep time in half, make the little cooking tasks much easier, and help you with tedious and complicated techniques. From the ultimate smoker to an aesthetic coffee machine that lets you experience the brewing process – these innovative and exceptional appliances are all you need in your kitchen.

1. The COit

The COit was designed by LG to function as a robot that can serve as a hub in your kitchen ecosystem. The robot can be easily used by both novices and professional chefs alike, and it functions as an autonomous device that shifts from focus from videography back to cooking – which is the primary aim behind entering a kitchen.

Why is it noteworthy?

The COit features a mountable rail with a circular display that is encircled by a projector, light, camera, and a smart grip. All the various modules can be moved around freely and independently on the small rail, covering the entire prep area or keeping them away from the fire and vapors.

What we like

• These modules – that clip onto the rail with built-in magnets – can be customized in orientation, depending on user requirements

What we dislike

• Food over the globe has such diversity, trying to standardize the recipe as per one instruction set would impact the diversity of that dish

2. Fender Amp Lunchbox

This super cute lunchbox is inspired by the Fender Amp whose lasting legacy is really something to consider! The brand Aquarius created their music-inclined lunchbox series around this amp, making it quite timeless and an absolute joy to carry around.

Why is it noteworthy?

The tin box features embossed dials on the front along with immaculate detailing of the Fender relief logo, the grill, and even the screws holding the front frame to the cabinet. The back, on the other hand, features a graphic of a 1/4″ jack and the Fender label… and that handle almost exactly copies the one seen on top of Fender’s amps!

What we like

• The amp’s naturally boxy shape lends itself perfectly to the lunchbox’s design too

What we dislike

• It is limited to people who love music or are musically inclined

3. The SMOKER-X

Measuring only 24 x 24 cm by 21 cm, the SMOKER-X allows you to smoke wherever you like whether indoors or outdoors! The smoker has been equipped with a compact body that works well with all kinds of stovetops. Whenever you feel the craving for a good smoked dish, you can quickly whip out the SMOKER-X to satisfy your appetite.

Why is it noteworthy?

The SMOKER-X is portable, and also extremely versatile, as it allows you to smoke any kind of food or ingredient. If you want a traditional hot barbecue, you can simply place some wood chips within the main frame, and light up a fire underneath. Equipped with a built-in thermometer, the smoker gives you a precise readout of how hot is it inside.

What we like

• The smoker’s unique design creates a narrow 6mm pathway for the smoke to pass through the saucer, making it possible to create all types of smoked foods

What we dislike

• Aesthetics are a bit boring and unassuming

4. Brew

This automatic coffee maker is called the Brew and it looks super cool. It not only helps you prepare your coffee, but also provides you with an entire sensory experience including the taste, aroma, and visuals.

Why is it noteworthy?

Because it has an open dripper, the aroma that comes from your coffee beans will spread within the room, which is what coffee lovers prefer. And since the top is open, you’ll be able to have a good view of the entire process, which includes an indicator light and then a series of chimes to add to the aural experience.

What we like

• Operating the machine is supposedly easy enough as you will be able to choose between regular, strong, and iced options

What we dislike

• The aesthetics of the coffee machine are boxy and traditional

5. Luvia Jug

The Luvia Jug lets you watch your water being purified! It’s built from glass and has a good-looking minimal appearance which makes it great to place on your tabletop or kitchen counter.

Why is it noteworthy?

Usually, water purifiers tend to look quite industrial, however, the Luvia has a rather decor-worthy appearance, with a compact catalytic carbon filter suspended in the center, and a chic bamboo lid, that helps you keep it covered.

What we like

• The jar has a double-walled construction with two levels – one for the water you pour in, and another for the water that gets purified by the Luvia jar
• Environment-friendly + somewhat recyclable design

What we dislike

• It seems to be easily breakable

The post Top 5 innovative + functional appliances for your modern kitchen first appeared on Yanko Design.